My friend L, who lives in Manhattan and only ventures to the outer boroughs for the occasional baseball game, told me recently that her mother had wanted to go to a performance at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, but that L had advised against it because she didn't think it was a good idea for her mother to drive into Brooklyn by herself. Her mother lives in New Jersey, by the way, about an hour or so from Manhattan, and is to my knowledge a rational and responsible woman.
I must've looked at L like she was crazy because she said "you think I'm being paranoid, don't you?"
"Well," I said, trying to be diplomatic, "I just don't think of Brooklyn as particularly...dangerous."
"But she's never been there before. What if she gets lost and ends up in the wrong neighborhood?"
We went on like this for a little while, and I ended up letting it go. After all, what if I end up winning the point, and then L's mom has a heart attack and dies on the Manhattan Bridge? It'll be all my fault.
It's funny, though, the perceptions people have of New York. I'm used to it from people outside of the city. I was in South Africa a few years ago, and I had a bit of a fling with a guy who ran an adventure travel business there. The morning after the first night we spent together he got up and got dressed. First boxers, then a T-shirt, then jeans, then a gun. A pistol, relatively small, easily concealed. He took it from the drawer of his nightstand.
"But you’re from New York," he said when he noticed my shock. Like many non-New Yorkers I’ve met, his visions of New York were shaped by movies and television shows of the 1970s and 1980s. Riots and blackouts and burnt-out tenements. He didn’t see the new New York, the post-Giuliani New York, freshly scrubbed and cleaned of all character.
But he had an excuse. He lived in Johannesburg, half the world away. L, on the other hand, lives in...Chelsea.
Um, I can't go out because I have to stay home and clean the toilet
OK, this one wins the prize for lamest excuse ever:
My boyfriend's friend J just cancelled their plans for Thursday night because she has a life insurance physical the next morning and doesn't want to blow it with booze.
We so need new friends...
OK, it's still a great restaurant, but...
Recently my boyfriend and I had dinner at
Banjara, an Indian restaurant in the East Village. It's on the corner of First Avenue and 6th Street, and it's definitely a few notches above the other Indians on curry row.
We had a delightful meal, accompanied by a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc that was listed for about $35.
When the check came we realized that they'd forgotten to charge us for the wine, so we called the waiter over and told him.
You'd have thought we'd rescued his first-born son from a burning building. He gave us free desserts, free after-dinner drinks and a thousand thank-yous. In the end, the freebies he lavished on us were probably worth about as much as the bottle of wine. It got to the point where we wondered if he'd ever let us out of there.
A couple months later, my boyfriend and I had dinner at
Milos. For those of you who don't know it, it's a pretty high-end Greek restaurant that Zagat's describes as a "modern Midtown seafood temple where the prices are as high as the quality of the catch."
This time we ordered a $140 bottle of French white (I mention the price only because it's relevant to the story).
Sure enough, the check came and they'd left off the wine. After a brief crisis of conscience, our better natures won out, and we called the waiter over to point out the mistake.
He looked coolly at the bill, took it from my hand with a brief "sorry about that" and returned it five minutes later, wine included.
And that's it.
Now, I wasn't expecting him to fall at our feet in gratitude, and we'd already had dessert and after-dinner drinks so it wouldn't have made sense for him to offer us anything else, but don't you think he could have shown us a tiny bit of appreciation for the fact that we'd just saved him $140?
I'm just sayin'.
Better than birth control
My guy and I just spent the weekend in the Hamptons with a couple we know and their two cute but very spoiled children.
When we got out there on Friday night, the cuteness was more in evidence than the spoiledness, and for a brief moment I thought, hmm, maybe I should have kids after all.
By Saturday afternoon I'd pretty much come to my senses, and by Sunday afternoon I was ready to start doubling the dosage on my birth control pills, and maybe use a sponge and a condom each time we have sex just to make absolutely, positively sure that we don't inadvertantly procreate.
I firmly believe that spending a weekend with two children under the age of five should be mandatory for anyone who's even thinking of having kids.
I should have just bought a sixpack of beer
I’ve been out of town on business for the last couple of days, and tonight I got sick of room service. So I ordered takeout from a sushi restaurant down the street, and on my way back to the hotel picked up a half bottle of wine to go with my dinner. Only to realize once I got back to the room that I didn’t have a corkscrew.
Motherfucker.
After about fifteen minutes of struggle, involving keys, pens, chopsticks, and just about every other implement you can possibly imagine, I had the bright idea of doing an internet search on how to open a wine bottle without a corkscrew.
The first idea I came across was
this:
Get a hammer and a butter knife. Put the butter knife in the cork, hammer it in and push the cork through.
Hammers and butter knives being in somewhat short supply in room 234 of the Omni Shoreham, I tried using a shoe and chopstick. OK, not so much with the success on that one. So I looked further and came up with
this:
Turn the bottle upside down and lightly hit the bottom of the bottle against a tree. After a few hundred taps, the momentum from the wine inside the bottle will slowly push the cork out.
Guessing that my neighbors would not appreciate the sound of a wine bottle being lightly hit a few hundred times against our shared wall, I looked further and finally came up with my personal favorite--
using a saber:
The bottle is held in the left hand and the saber wielded with the right hand: the saber slides along the neck of the bottle and hits with its flat the place where the bottle seam joins the thicker (and last) part of the neck. If done properly, the high pressure inside the bottle will crack cleanly the glass, and the top of bottle (cork and all) will fly away.
* * *So anyway, I ended up calling room service and having them bring me a corkscrew.
And you know what else? It's not going to be a prodigy, either
Dear expectant mother:
No, as a matter of fact, you are not the first person in the history of the world to ever have a child. So kindly stop behaving as though you were.
Thank you.
I know, I'm being a total girl
With all of the teams I'd originally been pulling for knocked out of the World Cup, I'm left with a bit of a dilemma as to who to root for.
After much soul-searching, I've decided on Portugal because (i) I can't resist an underdog and they're probably the lowest-seeded team left, other than Ukraine, who I can't support because they're the ones that knocked Switzerland out, and (ii) based on two weeks of careful observation, they appear to have the best-looking players. And to anyone who might question that, two words: Cristiano Ronaldo.
In case you need evidence...
check out this:
or even better, this:
Yes, deep down inside I am still a 16-year-old girl.
Geographical illiteracy
I’ve been watching the Brazil/Ghana World Cup match, and if I hear Ghana referred to as a “tiny African nation” one more time, I’m going to scream. A few facts for our friends at ESPN, courtesy of
this site:
Ghana
Population: 22.4 million
Area: 240,000 square kilometers
Netherlands:
Population: 16 million
Area: 41,000 square kilometers
Portugal:
Population: 10.6 million
Area: 92,000 square kilometers
But oddly enough, no one seems to refer to the Netherlands or Portugal as “tiny European nations.”
Sigh. I suppose we should just be grateful that the American commentaters even realize that Ghana’s in Africa.
Either the West Village is expanding, or someone at the New York Post is smoking crack again
From
today's New York Post:
June 21, 2006 -- A man set off a small explosive device last night in a failed attempt to rob an automated teller machine in the West Village, police said.
No one was hurt in the 11:40 p.m. blast outside New York City Bagels on Sixth Avenue between 16th and 17th Streets.
Last I heard, the neighborhood north of 14th Street on the west side was called Chelsea.
And I thought baby animals were always cute...
In the interest of continuity, I'm posting a photo of the
baby pigeon I've been obsessing about for the last month or so, which finally made its appearance a day or two ago (it's the somewhat scraggly and bedraggled-looking one on the left, in case you can't tell).
I have to admit that I'm pretty disappointed. I was expecting something cute and fluffy, kind of like a kitten but with wings and a beak. Or maybe something like this, although not yellow, of course:
Instead, I got what's pictured up top--something that looks like a cross between a turkey vulture and a buzzard. Not even remotely adorable.
I guess I can go back to disliking pigeons now like most normal New Yorkers.
What Not To Do After A Night of Drinking
From
The Villager:
A 28-year-old man who had been drinking with a friend in the East Village on Friday night was impaled on an iron fence at a parking lot on E. First St. near Avenue A when he tried to vault the fence at 7:30 a.m. Sat. May 27.
The victim and his friend were taking a shortcut across the parking lot to a nearby diner at the time.
An Emergency Medical Service team and police were able to free him from the fence spike that penetrated his lower left leg. He was taken to Bellevue hospital in stable condition.
That reminds me of the time my college roommate (you know who you are, wench) tried to vault a fence while drunk and ripped out the entire seat of her jeans. Being the die-hard alcoholic that she is, she just borrowed a sweater from one of the guys we were with, tied it around her waist, and proceeded to the next bar.
I miss college.
Chivalry
So I was getting onto the subway after work the other day and I was in a particularly bad mood because it was raining and I didn't have an umbrella and I had spent the entire day rushing from meeting to meeting and I was exhausted.
And I just wanted a seat.
A seat.
A place to sit down for the 15 minutes or so that it takes me to get from my office to home, so I could rest my legs, which were still sore from the idiotically long run I'd gone on that morning, and take the weight off my feet, which were aching from the moronically high heeled shoes I'd been stupid enough to wear.
And I got on the train and even though it was rush hour there were four empty seats, gleaming orangely at me from across the subway car, and I was so excited.
And I paused to breathe a (metaphorical) sigh of relief, when all of a sudden, from out of nowhere, an overinflated blonde who must’ve topped the scale somewhere around 250 barreled in front of me and made a bee-line for the empty spot, where, of course, she took up not one but two seats.
Goddamn cow.
But there were still two seats left, and one of them had my name on it and was about to have my ass on it as well, when suddenly, as I was almost within sitting distance, they were snagged practically from out from under me by two guys, two hard-edged looking young guys wearing wife-beaters and gold chains.
"Goddamn motherfucking inconsiderate fucks" was probably the kindest thought that went through my head, followed by "whatever happened to chivalry in this fucking city anyway?" and other little tidbits of that nature.
And yes, I'm fully aware that I had no more right to the seats than they did and that I was behaving like a spoiled twit. Your point?
But then, lo and behold, the closer of the two looked up and saw the pissy look on my face, and in the split second it took me to realize that he hadn't noticed me before and hadn't known I'd been going for that seat, he stopped in mid-sit and offered it to me.
Instantly feeling like the world's biggest asshole, I smiled my prettiest see-I'm-not-really-a-bitch smile and in my nicest see-I'm-not-really-a-twat voice said, "no, that's OK, but thank you."
But he insisted and so I sat down and all the way home my aching calves and sore feet thanked him from the bottom of whatever bottom aching calves and sore feet might have. And when I got off the train I tapped him on the shoulder (he'd gotten a seat across the way by that point) and said "thank you again."
And I thought about it as I was walking home and I realized that every single time I've been offered a seat in a subway car it's been by a hard-edged looking guy in jeans and a wife-beater, or a working class fellow in paint-spattered dungarees and a T-shirt, or hip-hop looking dude with a funky afro.
I have never, ever, been offered a seat on a subway by a guy wearing a suit.
Why do you think that is?
The Manhattan equivalent of a fish tale
Between the time she told me the story two weeks ago, and the time she told the story to a group of our friends at dinner last night, L's necklace, the
re-gift, miraculously doubled in value.
I guess she forgot that she'd originally told me what it had really been appraised at.
Pretentious twit.
The Banker and the Blonde
My friend the Banker began dating someone about three months ago, and she seemed to decide more or less immediately that he was the one for her. I figured this out when, the second time I met her, she took me aside after he’d gone to the bathroom. “Tell me what I need to do to make this work,” she said, gesturing with her head in the direction he’d gone.
I thought that was a pretty bold thing to say, given that he’s one of my best friends and she reasonably could have assumed that it would get right back to him. So many of my female friends tread so lightly where men are concerned, afraid that any indication of interest in a long-term relationship will immediately foreclose the possibility of such. Instead, they dance around the issue, bits and pieces of "
The Rules" floating around in their heads.
Men don’t seem to be that way at all. My significant other told me on our second date that it had been a long time since he’d liked someone as much as he liked me, and on our fourth date that he’d never met anyone like me (I’m reasonably confident that he meant that in a good way). In any case, we’ve been together ever since, so his honesty seems to have worked.
I never did tell the Banker what the Blonde said to me, and they’re still dating. I'd like to think it wouldn't have made a difference if I had.
At least it wasn't cubic zirconia
My friend L (the one whose
ex-husband who made her buy a new bed before he'd stay over her place) recently bought an apartment.
Being a prudent sort, she decided to purchase homeowners insurance to cover said apartment.
And while she was at it, she decided to buy personal articles coverage for the single decent piece of jewelry she had, a Tiffany diamond necklace her ex-husband had given her.
But first, she was told, she would have to get the necklace appraised. So off she went to Tiffany, necklace in hand. And as she handed it over the counter, she flashed back to the day he had given it to her. The little blue Tiffany box with its elegantly tied white ribbon. The anxious look on his face as he presented it to her.
"I hope you like it," he had said, with uncharacteristic concern. "I had the hardest time deciding what to get you. I was driving the sales clerk crazy."
"I'm sure I'll love it," she replied, as she accepted the box. And she was right. She did. It was gorgeous
"When did you say this was purchased?" the clerk asked, interrupting her reverie.
"Fall of 2003," she answered. "He gave it to me for my birthday that October."
The clerk frowned. "I don't have any record of it. Although it definitely looks like one of our pieces."
L was perplexed. "Hmm," she said. "Maybe he bought it a little earlier than I thought? Maybe the summer of 2003?"
"OK, I found it," the clerk said, after another minute of typing. "You were off by a couple of years. He bought it in December of 2000. Let me just go print this out."
The clerk excused herself, leaving L to face the realization that the necklace her ex-husband had "the hardest time deciding on" and had "driven the sales clerk crazy over" was, in fact, a re-gift, having obviously been purchased as a Christmas present for his previous girlfriend.
Of course, with that discovery any guilt she might have felt about keeping the necklace in the first place vanished entirely...
An open letter to a co-worker
Dear [redacted]:
Please be advised that none of us care how much you paid for your apartment. Nor do we care how many square feet said apartment has. We also don't care which type of Viking range you're going to put into the kitchen, how much your bathroom tiles cost, or that your interior decorator is fresh from doing [insert name of random celebrity]'s place.
In fact, it might be best if you stopped talking about your apartment altogether.
Thank you.
Pigeon update
The
afore-mentioned pigeons still appear to be nesting in the wall behind my building. I see them flying in and out periodically. No sign of progeny yet.
Guilty as charged
This is actually pretty fucking funny.
The cutting edge of fashion reporting
Oh man, I so underestimated the New York Times. I’d predicted that it would take at least until the end of May before the Times’ style mavens picked up on
this trend, which was reported in the Los Angeles Times a couple of weeks ago, and in various Midwestern newspapers earlier in the spring.
But here it is, only the 4th of May, and already the Thursday Styles section includes a
story on the increasing popularity of Crocs.
I’m going to have to seriously re-think my opinion of the Gray Lady.
Expansion of Greenwich Village Historic District
From today's
New York Post:
Five blocks in Greenwich Village were designated landmarks yesterday - protecting their historic buildings from being torn down and replaced by high-rises.
In a unanimous vote, the city's Landmarks Preservation Commission expanded the Greenwich Village Historic District three blocks west. The new extension runs from Perry Street south to Christopher Street, and from Greenwich Street west to Washington Street.
It also created a new two-block Weehawken Street Historic District along the waterfront around tiny Weehawken Street.
The Post doesn't say this, but the designation is the first expansion of the
Greenwich Village Historic District since its establishment in 1969.
Given all the hype about construction along the Hudson River, it's important to note that, except for the new Weehawken Street Historic District, which includes several buildings on West Street just north of Christopher Street, the landmark designation doesn't cover the waterfront. So there's nothing to prevent the construction of additional high-rise buildings like Richard Meier's
Perry Street towers.
Of course, since glass buildings
aren't cool any more, we have nothing to worry about, right?
How to look like a complete douchebag without even trying
From a New York Times
dispatch from Las Vegas on today's nationwide illegal immigrant rights protests:
Regina and Danny Howell of Dallas complained that service was poor at the buffet at the Bellagio Hotel-Casino this morning and wondered if it was due to the protest.
"It took forever to get our drinks," Ms. Howell complained. "I don't know if they're having trouble because of the immigration thing, but it didn't seem like anyone was working."
And you thought New Yorkers were self-absorbed.
You can call it grandstanding if you want, but I support it
This is the best bit of news I read all day.
It's a fucking t.v. show, damn it
One of the favorite pastimes in my neighborhood is mocking the people waiting on line at
Magnolia Bakery.
"It's a fucking cupcake, damn it," the locals say, rolling their eyes and shaking their heads, and bemoaning the passage of
Mary's Off Jane, whose cupcakes, they all agree, were infinitely better than Magnolia's.
I happen to like Magnolia's cupcakes. A lot. OK, I won't wait in line for them, but luckily I don't have to, as I live close enough to pop in on slow nights and satisfy my craving for buttercream frosting.
What I find far more annoying than the lines themselves is their primary source, namely, the
"Sex and the City" tours. On what seems like an hourly basis, huge golden buses with "On Location Tours" splashed across the side rumble down 11th Street, make a right onto Hudson, then pull over and disgorge dozens upon dozens of identically clad women (and the occasional sheepish-looking male). En masse, they disembark, gather in the park next to the Bleecker playground, and listen intently to what I imagine must be a detailed description of the Sex and the City episode where Carrie helped Samantha stuff cupcakes up her vagina. Or something like that.
I know I'm
far from the first to complain about this, but come on, folks...the fucking show has been over for MORE THAN TWO YEARS. Could we please move on with our lives?
The Villager once credited the Sex and the City tours with "remaking" the area. The rest of us just wish the show's fans would restrict their gawking to
Il Cantinori.
There goes (what's left of) the neighborhood
I hear that Starbucks is desperately scouting a space in the West Village within striking distance of the stretch of Bleecker Street between West 10th and West 11th. (The closest locations now are the ones at
72 Grove Street and
450 7th Avenue.)
One site they considered was the corner of West 11th and Hudson Street, where the lease was coming up for renewal. But apparently the current tenant,
Hudson Corner Cafe, reupped for an additional term.
There was also a rumor that they wanted the old Hue space on the corner of Bleecker and Charles, but according to
Curbed, that's going to become a Juicy Couture store. And they were considering the former Blind Tiger location, but apparently that hasn't gone through.
But neighborhood
coffeehouses beware, it's only a matter of time before Starbucks spreads its tentacles to a corner near you.
Apparently cuteness is also in the eye of the beholder
There's a pair of pigeons nesting in my back yard. OK, maybe back yard is a slightly grandiose term to use for the tiny patch of concrete and grass that the first floor of my apartment opens out to, so let me rephrase that: there's a pair of pigeons nesting in the tiny patch of concrete and grass that the first floor of my apartment opens out to.
And they're really cool.
Now don't get me wrong, I share the typical New Yorker's dislike and disgust for the average pigeon-on-the-street, but these two seem different. They're plump and shiny and well-groomed, they don't seem to be depositing a lot of pigeon poop around the place, and they're kind of cutely affectionate with each other.
Wisely enough, they've decided not to build their nest at ground level. Instead, they've built it on a ledge on the building behind mine, about a dozen feet up, under a slight overhang. Because the building is very close to mine, they're only about two or three yards from my second floor window.
Do you think this means I'll be one of the few New Yorkers who actually gets to
see a baby pigeon?
This year's Uggs
According to today's
LA Times, Crocs are set to become the latest must-have fashion accessory.
Admittedly, the LA Times is a little behind on this. Such fashion industry heavyweights like the
McCook Daily Gazette and the
Fort Wayne News Sentinel ran stories on this almost a month ago.
Which means we should probably expect an article touting Crocs as the next big thing to appear in the New York Times Sunday Styles section, let's see, maybe some time toward the end of May?
Happy Easter...
.
If only they cared this much about the people of Darfur
Just got back from watching the miraculous rescue of Molly the cat. Complete coincidence, really. We were walking back from a relaxed Friday night dinner at El Faro, and decided to check out the media clusterfuck that 634 Hudson Street has become.
WB11,
Fox 5 News,
1010 WINS--you name the station, and its news vans were parked outside.
We were about five yards away when a huge cheer went up from the crowd gathered out front. We looked at each other in disbelief...could it be true?
It was...through complete dumb luck, we happened to be passing right by
Myers of Keswick when Molly the cat was finally rescued.
Bit of a letdown, really, because other than the media clusterfuck, there wasn't much to see. The storefront had a metal grate down over it, and the rescuers inside started to roll it up, then quickly reconsidered when they saw the hordes outside. We were hoping they'd hold Molly up in the air like Rafiki did Simba in the Lion King,
but all we got was a peek at a little black head inside a metal cage, illuminated by spotlights and the flashes of a dozen cameras. Must have been quite a shock for the poor thing, after 14 days in the dark.
Best moment of the night: a woman outside the barricades that were blocking off the front of the store (read: a passerby like us) calling out, with what sounded like sincere happiness, "we're so happy for you, Milly." And a woman inside the barricades (read: an animal rescue nut who'd likely been camping out there for 10 days) turning around and, with narrowed eyes, hissing "her name is Molly. MOLLY!"
Ah, I love New York.
All that aside, good on you, Molly. Here's to many happy years of mouse-hunting for you.
If it had been "expired registration day" would you have let me off with a warning?
So I got a ticket for not wearing a seatbelt yesterday. Never mind the fact that I was sitting in traffic so bad that it had taken us 45 minutes to make it from 30th Street to 51st Street. Never mind the fact that the car hadn’t moved a fucking inch in at least ten minutes. Never mind the fact that the only reason I’d taken OFF my seat belt in the first place is because we were STUCK IN TRAFFIC and I wanted to stretch for a few minutes. Never mind all that.
It was “seat belt day,” the cop told me. I interpreted that to mean “it’s Passover-so-lots-of-Jews-will-be-in-their-cars-so-let’s-fill-the-city’s-coffers day.”
Sigh. The ticket was only $40 (I’d expected it to be about $60). And at least the cop spared me the lecture on the dangers of NOT wearing a seat belt. I guess even he realized how ludicrous that would be, given the circumstances.
Remind me never to drive anywhere on Passover again.
I've also got a friend in the Nigerian foreign ministry, in case you're interested
So I just got the following little gem in my inbox:
WARNING!
A well known telephone scam is now being used on cellular telephones.
There is a fraudulent company that is using a device to gain access to the Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) Card, which contains all subscriber related data (this is the brains in the phone) in your cellular telephone.
A scam artist places a call to an unsuspecting person and the caller says he or she is testing mobile (cellular) telephone circuits or equipment. The called party is asked to press #90 or #09. If this happens END THE CALL IMMEDIATELY with out pressing the numbers. Once you press #90 or #09 the company can access your SIM Card and makes calls at your expense.
People. Would you PLEASE do five seconds of research before passing on to everyone you know every piece of alarmist garbage that arrives in your inbox? Now granted, this isn’t as bad as the email I got a few years ago from a well-intentioned and usually reasonably straight-thinking friend begging me to sign an email petition outlawing
bonsai kittens.
But 99 out of 100 times when I get an email like this, it turns out to be bullshit. And I rarely have to do anything more to confirm that than take a quick look over at
snopes.com, which has usually debunked it.
As is the case with the warning referenced
above.
People. Do us all a favor. Limit the email forwards to
anti-Starbucks rants* and pornography. Thank you.
_____________________
*Click "videos" and then "Starbucks" if you're the one person on the planet who hasn't seen this one.
