“Welcome to Hollis”
The year was 2012, and I got fired.
Yeah. Fired. Let go. Terminated. Services no longer required. And not in some back office with tissues and a soft goodbye—no, I got fired on a train ride home, like a character in a bad breakup movie. The owner didn’t even do it himself. His wife did the honors. Unceremonious doesn’t even cover it.
To be fair, the shop had been a circus for a while. Just the week before, the owner fired the entire crew and shut the place down for a day—because of an ongoing feud between the head body man (a illegally documented Englishman, for some reason) and Junior, our Puerto Rican painter from the Bronx who thought everything could be fixed with a two-foot extension cord and some duct tape. That had nothing to do with me, but still, I should’ve seen the writing on the lift.
Congratulations! You’re a 35-year-old unemployed body shop estimator.
But I didn’t get to mope long. I walked through the front door, and Jamie—my wife, my partner, my permanent hype squad—was already in coach mode. “That guy was a lunatic,” she said. “You learned a lot. Sometimes about cars. Sometimes about untreated mental illness. But don’t sweat it. Doors close. Doors open. Just go look. There’s probably a perfect job out there for you.”
I love her. She always talks me off whatever ledge I’m pacing.
So I hit the classifieds—yes, this was the early days of the internet, so half my leads still came from the Pennysaver—and there it was:
“Body shop estimator needed. Busy shop. Poughkeepsie, NY. Must know CCC One. Insurance experience required. Excellent pay.”
Perfect. Sure, the drive would be long, but in the Hudson Valley, every drive is long. Plus, every county line you crossed seemed to boost your pay by $10,000. I scheduled an interview.
The place used to be a bread factory—now it was a polished shop with tile floors, granite counters, and an owner who looked like he’d fought in four union battles and won three of them. He asked if I had what it took.
I said, “I think so.”
He replied, “Good. I’m sending you to my other shop for a couple weeks. If you can cut it there, the job is yours.”
Cool. Where?
Hollis, Queens.
He handed me the co-owner’s name and a basic set of instructions. “Be there at 8 AM. Stay however late you need to get the job done.”
“Do you think you can find your way to Hollis?”
“No problem,” I lied. “I got family down in Astoria.”
In truth, all I knew about Hollis came from Run-DMC:
"It's Christmas time in Hollis, Queens,
Mom's cooking chicken and collard greens..."
Still, I left that interview floating. $1,200 a week plus a $1,000 cash envelope. In 2012, that was “I can buy the fancy cheese” money. It was $25k more than I’d ever made. My bones almost turned to Jell-O right there on the tile floor.
I went home and told Jamie. “I got the job. Pays amazing. Just gotta commute to Hollis for a few weeks.”
“Where the hell is Hollis?” she asked, like she missed that episode of Yo! MTV Raps.
So Monday morning, I’m up at 5 AM. I’ve got a soda, a thermos of coffee, and a bag of road pretzels. Crossed the Tappan Zee Bridge—which, by the way, should I say, that rickety retirement plan for steel that somehow managed to stand longer than common sense said it should.
The original Tappan Zee was less a bridge and more a dare. Built in the 1950s at the widest part of the Hudson River with cheap materials because New York was in a budget crisis—what could go wrong? It's like saying, "Hey, let’s build a treehouse during a windstorm using plywood we found behind a gas station."
Driving over it felt like a full-body diagnostic: if you didn’t feel every bolt rattle under your tires, congratulations—you were already numb from life. And God forbid you hit traffic, because that meant sitting in a swaying, creaking metal stress test above the river, wondering if today was the day the whole thing finally gave up.
I rolled into Hollis just before 7
It’s a very Black neighborhood. Full of Jamaicans, Haitians, West Indian families. Demographically, it was about 2% white. Make that 2.0001%—counting me.
I passed a bodega about a block from the shop and decided to kill time with a baconeggandcheese and a Cawfee (say it all together like a New Yorker). When I walked in, a bell rang, and every person inside stopped to look at me like I was a substitute teacher or an undercover cop. I nodded. They stared. I got my sandwich and retreated like a man who had definitely wandered into the wrong movie.
Back at the shop, I met Leroy. He asked if I was lost.
“Nope. I’m here to work.”
He tilted his head like my dog Titus when I try to explain Wi-Fi to him.
Eventually, the co-owner showed up and gave me the rundown. This was the first-ever GEICO ARX shop in the country, and they ran a tight ship. Two adjusters, each taking an appointment every half hour from 8 to 1. then 6 more estimates until 4Pm My job? Go out with the adjuster, write the sheet, Sell it to the customer, so we keep it, get them in a rental, then hustle it around back, get it torn down with someone, and bring the finalized estimate back. No supplements allowed.
Math isn’t my strongest suit, but even I could figure out that meant a lot of cars in not a lot of time. And it showed. The shop was like a maze of 90-degree turns and corners made for compact cars, not full-size sedans and half-baked diagnostics.
I did my best to keep up. By 1 PM, I had four cars still to finalize.
I thought I’d made a friend.
The folks at Crown Fried Chicken looked at me like I’d asked for directions to Vermont.
I brought back the chicken and we ate lunch together. That’s when Leroy became my unofficial Hollis tour guide. He was Jamaican, about 50, and ahead of his time in meme culture. He grilled me with every "ask a white guy" question he could think of. The one that still lives rent-free in my head?
“Yo, what’s up with you people and mayonnaise?”
He also told me with my short hair and demeanor that I looked like an undercover cop, and that why everyone was side eying me. It also didn’t help, he pointed out that you rolled up here in a ex detective’s car.
Every day, I got a little faster. I learned the rhythm. I found where they kept the good screwdrivers. I figured out who smoked what, where. I ate lunch with Leroy most days, absorbing stories about LL Cool J, Run-DMC, and why nobody in Hollis was ever going to forgive Nicki Minaj for pretending she was from Trinidad or British when she worked at the damn McDonald’s right up the street.
He told me she was terrible at that job, too.
Two weeks flew by. I passed the test.
So that was Hollis, Queens—two wild weeks in the birthplace of hip-hop, where the corner bodega sold everything from oxtail to incense, and the streets hummed with basslines, car horns, and life. Where every stoop had a story, and every story had a beat. Where I learned how to hustle a repair order in less than 30 minutes and how to order a baconeggcheese without sounding like I was from upstate.
I came in looking like a narc and left with a belly full of Crown Fried, a lesson in street logistics, and a new friend who thought mayonnaise was a war crime. And honestly? He’s not entirely wrong.
Hollis wasn’t just fast—it was flavor. It was West Indian patties in a warming tray, Crown Royal bags repurposed as dice pouches, chopped cheese debates, church ladies side-eying your parking job, and murals of LL Cool J keeping watch over the block. It was rhythm and motion, code-switching in real time, and a city within the city that somehow made room for a body shop kid from the Hudson Valley.
Leroy said if I made it in Hollis, I could make it anywhere. I thought he was just being dramatic—but he wasn’t wrong either. Those two weeks sharpened me. They stripped off whatever professional ego I had left after getting fired on Metro North and replaced it with a faster gear, a better eye, and the ability to translate between a GEICO adjuster, a Jamaican welder, and a furious customer all before lunch.
Eventually, I packed up, thanked Leroy for the chicken and the comedy, and headed back over the Tappan Zee. I had earned my spot—and maybe even a little respect.
I’ll be back to Hollis in a future story, but for now.
Keep your hood straight, your paperwork cleaner than your work boots, and don’t forget—no matter how far from home you are, a good bacon egg and cheese is worth the risk of looking like a cop.
Catch you next time,
—Nate
P.S Leroy came to work at the new shop eventually and he didn't change one bit, but you can't get a 15 piece legs thighs and breast bucket for 10.99 anymore
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