Rusyns boycott Little Veselka

We were delighted yesterday morning to open our email box and find that Thrillist had posted a .jpg of the menu of the new Little Veselka (75 East 1st Street at Houston), featuring sandwiches named after famous Ukrainians.

Excitement turned to horror, however, when we hit the end of the list – a sandwich named after Andy Warhol.

As Slavs of New York should know, Warhol’s family used to be called Warhola and hailed from the village of Mikova, in present-day Slovakia. And they were Carpatho-Rusyns, not Ukrainians (and NO, it most certainly is NOT the same thing!).

And so the Carpatho-Rusyn boycott of Little Veselka has commenced.

The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh actually just hosted the 9th annual Carpatho-Rusyn Event last month, highlighting Warhol’s Rusyn heritage and the bringing together the large Rusyn community of Western Pennsylvania.

The museum’s website is currently running a podcast series entitled “Living History: Early 20th Century Carpatho-Rusyn Culture in Pittsburgh,” with the latest one (The Julia Zavacky Warhola Recordings) featuring recordings of Andy Warhol’s mother Julia from the 1950s and 1960s telling stories and singing Rusyn songs from Mikova.