Mike D of Beastie Boys Gives Back
Courtesy of Good.com
Sometimes you just give back. New York City born Michael Diamond, a.k.a. Mike D of the hip hop group Beastie Boys, found that the quickest and most effective way to give back and bring about a little hope after the devastation of Hurricane Sandy was through food. Hot food. Free food. So that’s what he did.
Good.com sat down with the hip hop drummer and singer and he told them how Rockaway Plate Lunch came about.
Mike D and a friend, restauranteur Robert McKinley (the Felice wine bars in New York City), took a trip out to Rockaway Beach right after Hurricane Sandy tore through the area.
“So we loaded up Rob’s car to the roof,” he recalled, “and brought them out to Rockaway Surf Club. We saw right away all these people living without any power, without any businesses being open, and therefore, no food. We saw the immediate need for warm food, but we didn’t have time to put together a long-term cohesive plan, we just had to react quickly.”
They got together with McKinley’s contacts in the restaurant business and began getting volunteers and food out to the devastated area. But they soon realized that it wasn’t enough fast enough.
“But we quickly saw,” he said, “to get a lot of people fed and to have something warm we needed a truck.”