Things I saw in 20 minutes

I went to Freemans Sporting Club, the barber shop I wrote about in this post, to get a haircut this morning, but they don't open until 12:00 noon. So I came back home. It was an interesting trip nonetheless. Here were some things I saw in the 20 minutes it took for me to go there and back.

"Snowman Seeks Skibunny" -- graffiti on wall, Rivington Street

"Angry Fembot Army" -- graffiti on door frame of private home, Freeman Alley

"Fascism Sucks" -- slogan on t-shirt worn by a middle-aged man sitting outside the Salvation Army building

As I walked by a construction site at the corner of Elizabeth and Prince Streets, just two blocks from home, a construction worker sweeping the sidewalk flagged me down and asked if this area was called SoHo. He wore an orange hardhat and had no front teeth. I told him that it was closer to Little Italy than SoHo, and that SoHo was on the other side of Broadway.

"So if I was to tell people where I work, what would I say?"

"Well," I said, "you could say NoLIta. It stands for North of Little Italy."

He didn't like the word "NoLIta" (probably because he didn't know the name and neither might anyone else he'd care to tell) and instead asked if he was anywhere near the Lower East Side. I told him that, in fact, the Lower East Side was a merely one block away, on the other side of Bowery.

"Ah, okay," he said. "Cos I'm like, where the hell am I?!"

We laughed at the absurdity of his predicament. I imagine he's going to go home tonight, and his wife will ask, "So, honey, where did the company assign you today?" And he's going to say, "Well, it wasn't Little Italy, and it wasn't SoHo, and it wasn't the Lower East Side, and some dude told me it was a 'hood called Noriega or Normandy or somethin' like it." And then his wife's eyes will narrow, and she will say, "You weren't at work today at all, were you? You were out drinkin' with your cousin Leroy! Remember what happened the last time you drank before 5:00 PM? Remember how you lost them front teeth?"

Short notes

I've been a little negligent with the blog over the last few days, though not for lack of things to write about. I'm not feeling particularly healthy -- when I get sick, it's usually a combination of exhaustion, lack of sleep, irregular eating, and not keeping warm at night. Currently, my symptoms are very mild: a heaviness in my head, an itch in my throat, a barely discernible fever. It's been enough, however, to lower my spirits and put me off blogging temporarily. But here I am again.
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Last weekend, I ate at the Red Hook Ball Fields. According to the New York Times, "there is no better street-food scene in all of New York," a statement I am unfit to confirm since I don't eat a lot of street food. But it sure beats the San Gennaro festival. I'll post pictures and more about the food later.
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Sarah and I will be heading out to sunny Los Angeles, California, in a few days. The last vacation I took was 14 months ago, so I'm overdue. We'll be attending a wedding (at which Sarah is a bridesmaid and I will be playing guitar with the groom during the ceremony), after which I'll be staying another whole week while Sarah jets over to Milan, Italy, for work. It'll be a good opportunity for me to rest and relax, but an overwhelming urge to go on a food tour of the Los Angeles area has gripped me of late, so this perennially skinny boy may return to the east coast with some excess baggage, if you know what I mean.

I love L.A. One thing I'd like to do is blog about the differences between Los Angeles and New York, two iconic American cities on opposite coasts. Last summer, when drivers rolled their windows down and turned up their speakers on the streets of Manhattan, they played Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy," a fitting anthem for the neurotic New Yorker. In Los Angeles, drivers blasted... Coldplay. That's right, Coldplay -- the band whose songs "wallowed happily in their unhappiness," to quote Jon Pareles of the New York Times (he also called them "the most insufferable band of the decade.") That's how persistently nice the weather in the Golden State is: you have to play depressing music to offset the sunshine.
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At the end of this week, I'll be roughly one-sixth of the way through my final year as a New York resident. Highlights have been the free Battles gig at the Seaport Music Festival, attending the NYC premiere of Rocket Science, walking through Richard Serra's immense steel sculptures at MoMA, and our anniversary dinner at Babbo.

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.

Molto buono: a dinner at Babbo

On September 18th, 2004, Sarah and I were married. To celebrate our third anniversary tonight -- and fulfill a long-time culinary goal -- we dined at Babbo, Mario Batali's first New York restaurant and one of Gourmet Magazine's 50 Best Restaurants in America. I know I insisted in this post two weeks ago that we don't often eat at places run by celebrity chefs, yet there we were tonight, feasting on Batali's outrageously delicious Italian dishes: a three-minute egg broken over warm lamb's tongue; marinated sardines with caramelized fennel and lobster oil; gnocchi in a veritable stew of oxtail and tomatoes; lamb chops and mint leaves nestled on a summery lemon yogurt sauce.


We can't keep this up for much longer, for both the expanding waistline of doom and the incredible shrinking bank account will soon stretch us to uncomfortable limits. But it's impossible to think of eventualities when, in the immediacy of celebration and the breaking of bread that accompanies it, you partake in all the riches of God's creation artfully arranged on a ceramic dish. I'm not saying we had a religious experience at Babbo -- a few things detracted from the otherwise excellent meal, including slow service and some over-seasoning. But, man, oh man, food like that makes you believe you can do anything. Like eat lamb's tongue.

Michigan rising

Finally, I see New Yorkers wearing University of Michigan apparel again. When Michigan, a perennial championship contender, went 0-2 to begin the college football season, including a stultifying loss to Division I-AA school Appalachian State, there was nary a maize-and-blue t-shirt in sight. Then, last Saturday, the Wolverines shut out Notre Dame for the season's first win. On Sunday, I saw a guy on the subway wearing a Michigan sweatshirt. And today, on my way to work, I rode the elevator with a gentleman wearing a button-down shirt, necktie, and a Michigan cap on his head.

Shopaholics wanted

I found this sign taped to the front door of our building this evening:

Attention Residents:
Disney Pictures and Bruckheimer Productions are going to be filming a new movie this fall entitled, "Confessions of a Shopaholic". As research for this film, we are looking for apartments belonging to women between the ages of 21 and 28. We would like to take pictures of the apartment for our art department so that they can get a sense of how to design the main character's apartment. This is NOT for filming. If you fall into this category and are interested, please contact Malaika Johnson at 347.528.6709.
Malaika Johnson
Locations Department

We get signs like this one all the time. And film crews set up lighting and filming equipment on our street, on average, about once every two months. Since Sarah is outside the specified age range, we certainly won't be calling Ms. Johnson. But Sarah is likely to be in the target audience for this movie, which, I'm guessing, is likely based on Sophie Kinsella's book of the same title. It may end up being a fluffy chick flick, but at least you'll know the main character's apartment will be based on a real home in one of the best shopping districts in the city.

Winners and losers

My mother in-law, echoing a popular and accurate sentiment, often says, "New York loves a winner." This is especially true for the city's professional sports teams. Now, I'm no sports pundit, and the only pro sport I follow with any true conviction is basketball. Unfortunately for me, the New York Knicks, once an NBA powerhouse, has in recent years been about as exciting to watch as my cat's attempt to remove an ice cube from her water bowl. I did attend a couple of games last season at the famed Madison Square Garden, both times using free tickets, both times leaving disappointed as the home team sort of gave up altogether. I've never really been a fan of the Knicks, though, so it's hardly a personal loss.

For more successful sports organizations, there are always the Mets and the Yankees, New York's major league baseball teams. Confession: Having been born and raised in another country, I only recently figured out the game of baseball. Until about two or three months ago, I didn't know what RBI stood for. Until tonight, I didn't know what ERA stood for.* And I'm still learning. I don't know for sure if an understanding of various acronyms and statistical categories is essential to enjoying the "American pastime," but it sure does enhance the enjoyment for me. Tonight, as I watched the Yankees hold off perennial rivals the Boston Red Sox in the ninth inning to win the game by a precarious margin, it occurred to me that I might be in danger of becoming a fan.

It's not hard to be a fan of the Yankees -- they're the most successful North American professional sports franchise in history, winning 26 World Series championships (by comparison, the Boston Celtics, the most successful pro basketball franchise, have a paltry 16 NBA titles). Fairweather fans are a dime a dozen in this city, but still, you have to appreciate the support from the New York area for the phenomenal success of the Rutgers college football** team, who last year finished the season with a 10-2 record, the best in the school's history. Not too long ago, they were lucky to win two games in one season. When I was at Rutgers, several years ago, I never ever went to a game. In fact, when I was at Rutgers, I didn't even know how the game of football is played.

Rutgers is 40 miles outside of the city, but it's the closest you can get to a winning local college football team in a city that desperately wants a college football team to root for. I was on the train today heading back into New York from New Jersey, and in between standard announcements ("ThisstationstopisMetroparkpleasewatchyourstepasyouexitthetrain"), the driver came on the PA system to announce that "Green Bay is beatin' up on the Giants." Then he reported that "Rutgers is number nine in the country," meaning that the Rutgers football team was now the ninth-best*** college team in the nation, according to the AP Poll. In spite of myself, I let out a celebratory "whoo-hoo!" and the teenaged boy in a Nike baseball cap sitting next to me flinched and gave a me furtive glance, as if worried that I might behead him with my cellphone.

*Yes, I know I could have looked up these things online, or asked one of the many sports nuts I know, but it's been far more rewarding learning the game as I watch it on TV.
**By "football" I mean gridiron, or American, football. Not to be confused with "soccer" which, while indeed a beautiful game and one I grew up playing, is merely the second-greatest game in the world.
***Rutgers is actually ranked 11th. Apparently the train operator's information was as reliable as New Jersey Transit's schedules.