Five to try

New York is a pizza town, but it's also a burger town, which is great because I'm a burger guy; click here and here for more on my burger adventures. I'm also a list guy, so it was fun reading this list of Alan Richman's Five Favorite Burgers in New York City. They are, in no particular order, burgers from Shake Shack, Big Nick's, Blue Smoke, Burger Joint at Le Parker Meridien, and Peter Luger. I've had the Shack burger, which was almost as good as a burger from a true paragon of fast-food, California's In-N-Out, but not any of the others. (I did eat a steak dinner at Peter Luger many years ago, but I obviously have to return for the burger.)

Let's see how quickly I can go through Richman's list, shall we?

Knife point

I normally don't recycle news stories, but this one is just plain special: A Bronx man got mugged on his way home from work, and, instead of calling the cops or shouting for help, offered to give the mugger his coat, then took him out to dinner. Read the story here, and be humbled.

By the way, being mugged can be demeaning at least and life-threatening at most. One of my old co-workers got mugged on the way home from work -- he was jumped by a small group of youths just a few blocks from his home in Brooklyn. They wanted his iPhone and his wallet, and took both forcibly, never giving him the chance to hand over the items himself.

Any way you slice it

Before there was a Pizza Hut in my Malaysian hometown, my mom used to make a homemade version of pizza, which was basically a deep-dish pie filled to the gills with mushrooms, peppers and tomatoes, and baked in a Pyrex plate. I'd have a hard time finding anything like that in New York City, where the most popular style of pizza is one with a thin, chewy crust, a rich tomato sauce, plenty of mozzarella, and no toppings. I have a slice of New York-style pizza once a week, on average (I live just around the block from the first Ray's Pizzeria in New York, and only two blocks from Lombardi's, the nation's first pizzeria). But come visit me in the City and I'll take you to Luzzo's, my favorite Neapolitan pizza joint in Manhattan. We'll order one quattro stagioni and one arugola. And we'll be happier than coals in a brick oven.

Any New Yorker knows that it's hard to find good New York-style pizza outside of the City. My experience has been the farther you travel away from Northeast, the worse the pizza gets. But what do I know? Brush up on the twenty regional pizza styles in the United States by reading this article.

Web vs M.D.

As a young-ish adult, I take many things for granted: my ample head of hair, my ability to troubleshoot computer problems without calling a 1-800 number, and Sam Waterston returning for yet another season on Law & Order. One day, my hair will be gone, computers will be incomprehensible quantum machines, and Sam Waterston will be playing a 110-year-old district attorney on Law & Order. The one thing I shouldn't be taking for granted any more is my health, and this was never made clearer to me than a year ago, when I began treatment for a chronic pain problem.

Before last year, I hadn't seen a real doctor in about eight years. Once, in college, I went to the campus health center to get some prescriptions for a nasty case of the flu. The medical professional who treated me was the sweetest lady ever; she explained everything she did before she did it, smiled brightly the whole time, and gave me a printout from a web site that listed all the things I should be doing to feel better. "You're the nicest doctor I've ever had," I told her as I was leaving. "That's because I'm not a doctor," she said. "I'm a nurse-practitioner."

I had to go home and Google that one.

How seriously should you take your doctor's advice versus the advice you find on a web site? When my condition developed last year, the first thing I did was to do some research online. After several hours of reading and cross-referencing various web sites, I concluded that I had a pinched nerve. This shallow self-diagnosis informed all my interactions with actual doctors later. I told my general practitioner that I thought I had a pinched nerve. He referred me to a neurologist who then sent me to get a battery of tests over several months. The neurologist concluded that I did indeed have a pinched nerve, and the solution would be to undergo physical therapy for three months.

But a funny thing happened when I went for my first therapy session. My physical therapist, who asked me a few simple questions and made me do some stretches, determined within minutes that I didn't have a pinched nerve after all -- I had, in fact, a condition called bursitis. I'd heard of bursitis before, in professional sports injury reports in the news, but it had never occurred to me that I might have it. But the more research I did, the more I think my physical therapist is right.

Sometimes doctors are right, and sometimes they are wrong. Sometimes, the Internet can help, and sometimes, it can't. I wish I knew the lesson here, but I don't. For every doctor who thinks it's a bad idea for a patient to use the Internet as medical resource, there's another who disagrees.

Point: When the Patient is a Googler [Time Magazine]
Counterpoint: Is There a Doctor in the Mouse? [Salon]

My favorite New York website

To get a feel of what it's like to live in New York, I'd say the best thing to do short of actually moving here would be to read Gothamist, the best New York City blog out there. Never crass, jaded or sensationalistic (characteristics that too often define other NYC blogs) Gothamist is fun and informative enough to read multiple times a day, since it covers events, weather, sports, business, and politics. Yet somehow, it's got this small-town newspaper feel to it, too. For example, recent posts have included a recipe for cherry almond chocolate chip cookies, and a news story about a cow on the loose in the streets of Queens. Hey, if Bessie's tearing up the sidewalk on my street, I'd want to know.

Click here to read Gothamist.

Gastronomic proportions

I'm going to post a link to one of the best food articles I've read in my entire life. But first, a preamble.

Living in New York to a one-year countdown is like visiting New York with an enlightened tourist's agenda: you have too many things to do and not enough time to do them all. In our case, our adventurous appetites might never get around to finding satisfaction at any number of restaurants in the City in which we aspire to dine. Here's the problem: between Sarah and myself, we like food from virtually every corner of the world. If, for example, neither of us liked French food, we could just eliminate every café, boulangerie, pattiserie and restaurant from our mental lists. But we can't, because even though Sarah is not particularly fond of French cuisine, I love it, especially anything with fromage de chèvre or beurre demi-sel in it. I drool already.

The problem is compounded by the fact that several of the restaurants we would like to visit are -- how shall I put this delicately? -- stupidly expensive. Not that we don't think they are worth it. On the contrary, we have no problem spending money on a fastidiously prepared meal, made from hard-to-acquire ingredients. There are people who spend as much on a new cellphone, or a car payment, or a watch. But it does mean that these restaurant visits are very few and far between; special occasions, if you will.

But.

But, sometimes you read a food article that makes you want to empty the checking account, jump in a cab, and head over to a restaurant where you just might have the best meal in your life, and where that in itself is the special occasion. That's because the article contains these words: [It is] the most expensive restaurant in the country, if not the world. It is also the best sushi restaurant in the country, if not the world. But it's not a story about a restaurant. It's a story about food. I read this article a couple of months ago, and I haven't stopped thinking about it since.

Please read the whole story, all ten delightful pages of it. At the very, very least, you'll be a more knowledgeable member of civilized society.

If You Knew Sushi [Vanity Fair]

Are you experienced?

For years, I've wanted to come up with an "Experience List" -- a collection of things to do. I'd have to put it online, I thought to myself, and make it interactive so people can check off the things they've done, and get an Experience score at the end. Swum with a pod of killer whales? Check. Climbed a coconut tree? Check. Driven a yellow Ferrari more than a hundred miles? Check. Run in ten inches of snow with no shoes on? Check. You are more experienced than any living person ought to be. Consider a career in outer space exploration.

[This reminds me of the fact that even though I love watching films and consider myself a movie buff of sorts, I still haven't seen Raging Bull, It's A Wonderful Life, On the Waterfront, Casablanca, Taxi Driver, Seven Samurai, Scarface, Annie Hall, North by Northwest, or Ben-Hur. Yes, yes, it's a shame...]

I haven't come up with the Experience List yet, but I have thought about the many things I haven't yet done that are virtually essential to living in -- or even visiting -- New York. Some of them are a bit "touristy" but it doesn't make them any less worthy of doing. I'm sure I will think of many more in the year to come, even as I try to check the following experiences off the list:

• Dine at Nobu.
• Get a pastrami sandwich at Katz's Deli.
• Tour the Statue of Liberty.
• Visit the Bronx Zoo.
• Attend Shakespeare in the Park.
• Run the New York City Marathon.
• Catch a major league baseball game involving these guys or these guys.
• Be a member of the Museum of Modern Art.
• Listen to Les Paul play at the Iridium Jazz Club.

"Wow," you might think as you peruse the list, "this fool hasn't done anything!" Not true -- I have done some things, including:

• Rollerblade down Broadway.
• View the city from the top of the Empire State Building.
• Hike the largest remaining natural forest area in Manhattan.
• Visit the Brooklyn Aquarium.
• See dinosaurs at the American Museum of Natural History.
• Dine at Peter Luger Steakhouse.

Anything else I should add to either list?

The director speaks

Quickly now: here are Rocket Science director Jeff Blitz's thoughts on the premiere we attended this week (via Gothamist).

More than a supermarket

Weird or cool? Our local Whole Foods is hosting a singles event in a couple of weeks, where you can meet other single people who, like you, enjoy organic groceries, toilet paper made from post-consumer pulp, and ten-cent rebates when you use your own shopping bag instead of a plastic bag.

I still tell people that the best place to meet other single people is church. The crazy thing is that shopping at Whole Foods kind of feels like going to church: you visit regularly, everyone is friendly, you give them your money, and at the end of it all, you get fed.

Check Out, A Singles Event at Whole Foods
Whole Foods = church? (Church of the Customer)

Cabbie fever

This morning, just as I was arriving at work, I heard a guy yelling on the street, right at the corner of Broadway and Spring Street. It turned out to be a cab driver who had gotten out of his vehicle and was screaming at the driver of a Boar's Head delivery truck in the next lane. At least it would have been the next lane but for the fact that they were on a one-lane street. The cab driver threw his coffee cup (or fat-free raisin bran muffin or something -- I couldn't really tell) at the truck. The truck driver ducked inside his vehicle, and passersby were literally running for cover. Then the cabbie realized he had nothing else to throw, so he popped his trunk and got a tire iron. That's when the truck driver drove off. And that's when I slipped inside my building.

Someone was obviously having a case of the Mondays.

More about cabs and cabdrivers in New York City:

NYC Taxi Cab Rider Bill of Rights
NYCabbie - lots of cab-related information
New York Hack - a female cab driver's blog
And finally, an article about Ahmed Ibrahim, a 52-year-old cab driver who plays matchmaker with his passengers. My wife and I had never heard of him until we happened to hail his cab about a year ago. We got in, told him our destination, and he said, "Have you ever heard of Cupid's Cab?" Our driver turned out to be a minor celebrity.

Everything you ever wanted to know

I'm still amazed when I read some facts about New York City. For example:

• Out of 216 U.S. cities with populations of more than 100,000 in 2002, NYC ranked 197th in overall crime (with about the same crime rate as Provo, Utah).
• The average New Yorker consumes less than half the electricity used by a resident of San Francisco and nearly one-quarter the electricity consumed by a resident of Dallas.
• Chocolate is New York City's leading specialty-food export.

Wha? Apparently, in 2003, NYC exported more chocolate confectioneries than peanut butter, frozen foods, or spices (by dollar value). Why is this information important? It's not! But it's included in Wikipedia's entry on New York City -- everything you ever wanted to know about the Big Apple on one page.

New York City - Wikipedia