Unapologetically Mundane » living in new york is neat

The NY Giants Ticker Tape Parade in NYC

katie ett — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 17:00:19 +0000

Everything else about it sucks, but there are exactly three reasons I love working downtown:

1) the view,
2) my apartment is one subway stop away, and
3) ticker tape parades!

I had originally planned to go down to the street to capture some pictures of the players for anyone who might actually care about sports, but the sidewalks were barricaded by the time I got to work at 9, and the teeming hordes of fans were already infiltrating (don’t these people have jobs?), so my co-worker Roxanne and I took to the balcony on our floor instead to shoot some skyline pictures and talk about which of the team members she’s going to marry someday. Our office is 25 stories up, so the panorama from the balcony is pretty incredible.

The parade began on the Western-most side of lower Manhattan, Battery Park City:

and continued up Broadway to City Hall:

We think this tiny black car held Mr. MVP, Elisha Nelson “Eli” Manning (haha, Elisha).

New Jersey, across the Hudson River.

This office emptied case after case of copier paper out of their windows.

There was plenty of toilet paper flying, too.

Toilet paper in the air over the in-progress One World Trade Center, a.k.a. Freedom Tower.

Football players in NYC sightseeing buses.

Roxanne is actually a sports fan, so this is way less fake than if I had been holding the sign.

And thus concludes my half-hour of caring about football once every four years. Hooray!

Long-Exposure Photos on 42nd Street

katie ett — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 19:00:27 +0000

My friend Anthony taught me Photoshop before I even had any idea I wanted to know it. He bought a DSLR when mine was only a pipe dream. And lately, he’s been paving yet another path for me: long-exposure night photos.

Last night, I attempted my first ones outside Kamran’s apartment, looking down 42nd Street at the Chrysler Building, the Bank of America building, and Times Square:

And of the flower shop nearby, where little old ladies walking their dogs kept stepping right in front of my camera, but the shutter was open so long it didn’t even catch them:

You just set up your tripod, set your aperture really small, set your ISO really low, open your shutter for a loooong time (preferably with a remote), and wait patiently.

I can’t wait to do more! Too bad I kind of sort of overtightened one of the legs on my tripod last night, broke off the pin, and now have to use it at about waist-high all the time. Low-noise night photos are worth bending over for, right?

Best NYC Store Names #2

plumpdumpling — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 17:00:55 +0000

On my bus ride to work from Kamran’s apartment, I pass through the outer edge of Chinatown and see a store with the worst/best name ever: New BJ.

please excuse this crappy merged Google Maps image

Apparently it’s a 99¢ store, but the review I found on Yelp is just what I was hoping for:

There’s nothing worse than a used or distressed BJ, amiright?

As-Wordless-As-I-Get Friday

katie ett — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 17:00:37 +0000

Some random New-York-y pictures I haven’t had any other occasion to post:

a technically crappy picture that I nonetheless enjoy of Kamran in Beekman Place, overlooking the East River

the Chrysler Building on a cloudy day

the gate at the end of a street overlooking FDR Drive and the East River

the Upper West Side at midnight

a little lion someone left behind on the East River Esplanade

The Time I Had a Couple of Freaks from the Internet Come Stay with Me

katie ett — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 18:00:05 +0000

My longtime blogfriend Ellie found me because my old LiveJournal icon was a still from the movie Grey Gardens. My longtime blogfriend Kinard found me because we both had an unnatural-yet-totally-not-fangirl-ish love of the band Jump, Little Children, and she sat next to me at a concert without introducing herself. They found each other when Ellie moved from Oregon to South Carolina, and I told her to look Kinard up. They became fast friends and left me in the dust.

Until Ellie’s birthday approached, and they decided that the perfect way to celebrate would be to spend a few nights not doing touristy things in NYC with me. We planned extensively and then totally changed our plans. We watched the TKTS discount ticket listings and tried to convince Kinard she didn’t really want to see Mandy Patinkin and Patti LuPone on Broadway. I woke up the Saturday after Thanksgiving in Ohio and clicked repeatedly and extensively on the Momofuku Ko reservations website until I secured us a dinner spot after mentioning to Ellie and Kinard that it’s the most interesting restaurant in NYC and finding out that they knew of it and wanted to go but never thought we’d be able to get in. We tried to figure out a way to eat both truffles and caviar while they were here. I didn’t tell them our living room still doesn’t have blinds after a year and that they’d be sleeping in full view of our nosy neighbors.

My roommate/landlord/co-worker seemed totally fine with their visit until he realized halfway through our workday on Friday that:

1) I had never actually met either of them, and
2) they were alone in his condo.

But they didn’t steal anything that we know of (not that my candy wrapper clutch is interesting to anyone but me), and I met them and my other blogfriend-turned-real-life-friend Kim at Tocqueville for dinner. It’s one of my favourite restaurants ever, despite what our chef at Momofuku Ko said about it being stodgy. HE HAS NEVER ACTUALLY BEEN THERE. HE DOESN’T KNOW.

We ate hearty squash soups and roasted Brussels sprouts over succulent chicken breasts and truffled grits with dunky eggs and were plied with bowls and bowls of ice creams and sorbets on the house until 7:59 p.m., at which time we decided it was time to leave for our 8 p.m. Broadway show, which was Seminar starring Alan Rickman of Harry Potter and Love Actually fame. It was basically what I wanted every one of my college writing seminars to be and made me nostalgic for a time when people thought I had potential and I wrote on actual paper.

via seminaronbroadway.com

Afterward, we unintentionally walked out into Times Square, and while Kinard and Ellie acted like they didn’t care about it, I definitely caught them doing this:

And also this:

And this:

Even Kurmudgeon Kim was having a good time:

But then Pedophile Mickey Mouse showed up

and we had to go.

The next day, we rode the train into Madison Square Park

and ate sloppy Shake Shack burgers

and cheese fries with little wooden forks:

An evil squirrel came within inches of Kinard’s candy cane/hot fudge/marshmallow shake

but there wasn’t a chance that thing was wrestling a bite away from a girl enjoying her dessert this much:

Ellie, meanwhile, was trying to play it cool and succeeding wildly:

We spent the afternoon at MoMA, which I’ll have to recap in a post of its own, and then stopped at a nearby coffee shop to refuel for that evening’s big dinner at Ko. There was nowhere to sit in the coffee shop, so I had the brilliant idea of leading us down a few more blocks to Rockefeller Center, where there are sprawling plazas full of unoccupied benches.

EXCEPT DURING CHRISTMASTIME, OF COURSE. The streets were brimming with families leaving the Rockettes show at Radio City Music Hall. There were barricades at every corner meant to corral traffic that only succeeded in making the sidewalks unpassable. We finally did make it to 30 Rock, only to discover that the “sprawling plaza” was packed with strollers and women yelling, “Someone’s going to get HURT!” It was, to say the least, a mistake.

So we took the train down to the East Village, made a couple of laps from 1st Avenue to 2nd Avenue and back again until it was time to meet Kamran at Momofuku Ko for the girls’ first Michelin-starred-restaurant experience. Dinner was phenomenal: cheese-flavored broth with bone marrow over brioche, snail and chicken sausage on top of hand-torn pasta, the famous frozen shaved foie gras over fresh lychee and Riesling gelee, just to name a few. Plus that first taste of caviar Ellie was looking for, served in a heap next to a smoked egg. Ellie and Kinard were pros; they ate everything without question and said that some things they hadn’t liked so much in the past were made to taste delicious at Ko.

Kamran said I was being a snobby show-off at dinner, and it’s true that I complained to our James-Franco-look-alike chef that when we were in two weeks prior, the guys beside us had an embarrassing lack of knowledge about food, and yes, even James Franco told me to stop being a snob, but he hadn’t even eaten at Tocqueville, so I think my snobbery is deserved. No? Really? Okay, fine. Ellie and Kinard took it in stride, though, because I imagine they expected me to be a total braggart, anyway.

BFFs!

We spent the rest of the night visiting dive bars and pretending like we’re the kinds of girls who do shots. There was, for some reason, a surprising lack of people out anywhere, so I think NYC came off as this nice, serene place where you can just walk into a bar and actually get a seat and/or service from a bartender. Must have been the cold.

The next day, we went to Artichoke for pizza, because:

1) it is delicious.
2) it’s unlike any other NYC pizza.
3) normal NYC pizza is bland and dumb.
4) some people call it the best pizza in NYC (maybe me, too).
4) I wanted them to have an awesome insider pizza-eating experience.

So of course they were naturally like, “This pizza is okay, but we were really looking forward to getting the bland and dumb pizza Ellie’s boss recommended.” And then I died.

Look at that! So cheesy and creamy and thick-crusted! How could they not love it?!

But we followed it up with karaoke, which they were awesome at despite Ellie’s poor choice of Neil Diamond and my even poorer choice of Cat Stevens, and fries from Pommes Frites in the courtyard of St. Mark’s Church and a quarter-ton of frozen yogurt topped with mochi cubes and peanut butter cups and gummy bears from 16 Handles.

And then instead of walking across the Brooklyn Bridge like we had planned, we went back to my apartment and watched Jackass 3 and “The Virgin Diaries“. Like not-tourists.

And then they left the next day without having seen any New York friends other than me. I win I win I win!

Happy birthday, Ellie, and happy four-days-since-meeting-me anniversary, Kinard!

The Practice Thanksgiving

katie ett — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 16:00:55 +0000

One of the things about living in NYC that I’ve found hardest to adjust to is not hanging out at people’s apartments. We all either live in places too small to hold more than two people at a time or places too out of the way for anyone to want to travel to. If it’s not one, it’s the other.

But this year, my friend Ash was determined to have a practice Thanksgiving at her apartment and went all-out with impressive invitations, a massive menu, and promises that she would hunt us down and stuff us if we didn’t make it worth her while to take up her entire refrigerator with a brining turkey for two days. So we took cabs or spent three hours navigating weekend subway construction to make it to her and her husband, Michael’s, Queens apartment last Saturday night for a pre-Thanksgiving feast our families will have a hard time topping tomorrow.

Michael and Ash got rid of about half of the furniture in their place to make room for this new dining table they bought especially for the occasion. Well worth it, I say.

Ash carved a turkey for the first time and looked smokin’ doing it.

The turkey was about the moistest meat I’ve ever had in my life. The stuffing was fruity, the sweet potatoes spicy, the twice-baked potatoes bacony, the cauliflower casserole creamy, the green beans smoky, the apple pie belly-warming, the lemon cheesecake rich.

There was gravy, too, but I never eat gravy. Am I the only one who thinks it’s tooooooootally weird stuff?

Michael was in high spirits,

Ash was being Betty Sue Homemaker,

Jack was his usual pleasant self,

Jeff was complaining that the ice cream was regular vanilla and not vanilla bean,

Gizmo was pretending to innocently play with a ball under the table while secretly waiting for dropped turkey,

and Penny, the cat we found in the Hamptons, was acting like all of us would be about two minutes after dinner:

Success!

To Not Letting Fall Slip Away

katie ett — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 16:00:41 +0000

I know Fall isn’t even close to over–especially having spent the weekend in Miami, where it was still 80 degrees–but I’m getting scared for Winter and figured I should post these October pictures before corn and zombies are nonsensical.

I’d like to say that NYC looks this dirty all of the time, but really, Kamran and I were in Union Square after a street fair had just ended. Street fairs here are mostly awful–picture blocks and blocks of stands, only they’re the same smoothie, sunglasses, and bedsheets vendors alternating over and over–but no New Yorker can resist the opportunity to walk down the center of a usually-crowded street.

I love how gothic this building looks against the overcast sky:

The famous magic wand in Union Square is known to stream steam at intervals, but I had never noticed the hand reaching out from above it. Halloween prank or totally-normal-thing-I’d-just-never-noticed?

Lovely corn in the Union Square Greenmarket:

This zombie locked eyes on us from across the park, and we both tried to ignore it until it was clear that he was ambling right for us on his stiff zombie legs. We accepted the haunted house flier he was handing out and admired his costume as he stopped to let me take his picture, but after he started hunting another couple, we realized that we figured him for a Halloween stunt all along and never once considered that he could be an actual lunatic. We’re clearly unprepared for a zombie uprising.

Campbell’s Gets the Last Laugh at the Andy Warhol Monument

katie ett — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 16:00:07 +0000

While in Union Square the other night, Kamran and I noticed that the Andy Warhol Monument had been defaced:

The question is: was it done out of love (an admirer playing a bit of a practical joke) or out of hate (a fellow artist scorning Andy with the very thing that he’s remembered by most)? Either way, I think it’s brilliant.

Put a Bird On It

katie ett — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 16:00:30 +0000

I love hipster SoHo as much as the next gal, but when I saw this lamppost coming out of the subway the other day,

I couldn’t help but think of the “Put a Bird On It” sketch from “Portlandia”:

NYC: The Really Hot Boyfriend Who Beats Me

katie ett — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 16:00:08 +0000

The Hamptons feels so far away from New York City that I sometimes forget I’m still in the same time zone. We ride around in cars there and eat pastries on the empty patios of cafés and stock up for the weekend in grocery stores with aisles big enough to fit carts. The town has ten boutiques, and the people who live there make conversation with you for no reason.

But on the drive home, you quickly realize how close to the city you still are. On the road trips I used to make in college to South Carolina and Chicago, I remember stopping for gas at highway exits that had little else. A truck stop, an adult bookstore, and a McDonald’s perched on a hill with nothing but miles and miles of farmland as far as I could see. I always felt like I was on the prairie, even if I was really in the middle of the Appalachians. On the way back from the Hamptons, if you blink your eye, you’re in Queens. The exits all lead to neighborhoods with constantly-busy streets, strollers full of babies of every ethnicity, skateboarding teenagers, shopping bags on every arm.

There’s no rest. I feel my chest tighten as soon as the row houses come into view and a taxi cuts us off. The fact that I hold my breath all day in NYC is only noticeable after a weekend away with nothing but exhalations. It’s like I’m always bracing myself for the worst.

But then we’re on the Brooklyn Bridge, and the city’s skyline is the most exciting one I’ve ever seen, and I tell my friend Jeff, “If I’m this happy to see New York after only a weekend away, imagine how I’d feel after a year.” It’s scary to imagine yourself as a tourist here, older and settled somewhere else and without any more ties to this city than to London or Tokyo. Part of the thing about living in NYC is feeling like you’re in on a special secret that no one else knows about.

Well, no one but the 18 million other people who live here.

To the Hamptons Once More

katie ett — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 16:00:28 +0000

My friends and I have gone back to our house in the Hamptons one last time this weekend to pretend like summer didn’t end already. I guess if the ocean’s too cold, we’ll just have to spend the time in our heated pool, sipping our alcoholic beverages and peeing in the water at length to keep ourselves warm.

Five Years of Bliss in NYC

katie ett — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 16:00:27 +0000

Written in my old LiveJournal, from five years ago today:

I called him at 7:01 to let him know that I’d be a minute late. “Well, more like two minutes,” I said, since I was already at the one-minute mark. “I’m just waiting for you outside,” he said, and I crossed to the opposite side of the street so I could check him out from a distance when I got there. I’d seen a couple of pictures of him, but after my best friend, Tracey, had a horrible almost-blind-date experience where the guy looked great in his pictures and literally like a cartoon in person, I was skeptical. I’d told him in an e-mail earlier this week, “I’ll arrive in disguise to scope you out beforehand, so please plan to be there a few minutes early.” He’d written back, “Okay, fair enough. I have to warn you though, I will also be in disguise. Look for someone dressed as a goofy-looking persian guy in a ‘business casual’ ensemble with a briefcase,” and I’d replied, “I will likely be dressed as a mid-16th Century Scottish warrior and will spend the entirety of the meal playing renditions of Celine Dion ballads on my bagpipes. You should feel free to remove your costume, as I’m not sure I could stand to be seen with a goofy-looking persian guy.”

He wasn’t goofy-looking at all, though. He was born in Iran and lived there for a year, but he just looked like a regular, old white guy. Who happened to dress better than any regular, old white guy I’ve ever dated. He was wearing a brown sweater with a white collared shirt underneath and black pants with brown pinstripes and had-to-be-picked-out-by-an-ex-girlfriend black shoes, and I thought he was pretty much the most adorable human being ever. He stuck out his hand and said, “I’m Kamran,” and I said, “Handshakes are weird, and I feel like I know you already, anyway. Let’s hug.” He said, “We’ll talk about the possibility of a hug if this encounter goes well.” He was trying to joke about it. I said, “Encounter?!”, and he smiled as he opened the door to the restaurant for me.

It was a macaroni bar in the East Village called S’Mac that I’d chosen for us after a co-worker recommended it to me. While we looked at the menu, I asked, “Will you think me too rebellious if I put broccoli in mine?”, and he said, “That is pretty daring.” I asked what he was getting, and when he said he was thinking about the brie, I punched him in the arm and said, “I knew that’s what you were going to say!” He was a little hurt that I’d already pegged his entire personality in the first two minutes of our date.

The place was packed, so we went to the bar at the window and sat next to each other with our feet propped up on the windowsill. I stuffed my hands in the pockets of my hoodie, and I saw him look at my reflection in the glass in front of us. I asked him about his job, and he said he’s a patent advisor at a law firm that’s going to pay for him to go to law school, even though both of his degrees are in physics. He just moved here two months ago after finishing up his Masters at a school that he kept modestly referring to as a “college in New Jersey” until he slipped up once and said Princeton. Princeton! I hate capitalism, and I hate lawyers, but education still impresses me.

Without any broaching from me, he mentioned how much he wants to see The Science of Sleep, which led to me ranting about why I hate Woody Allen so much. We talked about old David Lynch films and how Zach Braff is so amateur and narcissistic and great. He asked me about the book I was carrying–the new Chuck Klosterman, naturally–which led to me ranting about why I hate On the Road so much. I told him I would’ve never agreed to go out with him had I known he liked Jack Kerouac, and he said, “How fortunate for me that I didn’t mention it in an attempt to impress you.”

He’d used the phrase hits the spot in an e-mail the day before, and I’d written, “I wonder where that comes from. That’s your research project for tomorrow.” When I asked him if he’d remembered, he reached in his pocket for a folded piece of paper, and I said incredulously, “NO!” He recited facts to me about the origin of the phrase and then handed me the paper, which had the Pepsi jingle that supposedly made it popular–and the parodies that followed–neatly typed in a font that wasn’t your run-of-the-mill Times New Roman default. In one spot, he’d accidentally written fo instead of for, and he said he’d noticed the error but liked it too much to correct it. I handed the paper back to him, but as he began to fold it, I snatched it away and said, “I just decided that I should keep it,” and I was embarrassed that he knew I wanted a souvenir of him.

Our food was delivered to us in little skillets with potholders sewn to fit the handles perfectly, and I asked him what he thought we should hide in the potholders. I ripped off a little piece of his Pepsi jingle paper, and he feigned like he was hurt. I asked him what we should write on it, and he said smarts, so I tried to impress him with my handwriting and then shoved the paper into the potholder before putting it back around the handle. We agreed that we were sorry to miss the moment when someone discovers it. I told him about a shirt Tracey had in high school with a pocket in the sleeve where I used to store things like Doritos, and when I finished, I said, “I’m sorry. You’ll have to get used to me talking about her every other minute.” And then I realised that crap!, I’d just assumed that he was liking me and would be seeing me in the future enough for me to mention Tracey another 100,000 times. He went to fetch forks for us, and when I swiveled around in my chair to see where he’d gone, he was watching me from the side of the counter. And he smiled at me and I smiled at him like neither of us could help it, and then I turned back around and had to cover my mouth to keep from giggling. It was one of The Most Perfect Moments in Dating History™.

After we ate, he left me again to get some containers for our massive leftovers, and I noticed a Post-It folded in half lengthwise underneath his chair. I picked it up and read the writing, which was the address of the restaurant, my phone number, and a couple of professors’ names. I’d wanted it to be something scandalous–like maybe a love poem he’d written for me but been unable to give me out of embarrassment, or, you know, a detailed drawing of his genitals–but no luck. When he came back, he saw where I laid it beside his napkin and asked, “Why did I get this out?” I said, “I pulled it from your pocket while you weren’t paying attention.” He said, “What?!”, and then I laughed and he knew I was kidding. Trust me; this was very cute at the time.

He asked me what I do for fun, and I said, “I walk.” As we got outside, he asked where I wanted to go, and I said we should walk to the East River.” He said, “I’ve heard that Avenue D is pretty shady,” and I said, “Luckily, I know Kung Fu.” He asked, “So you could protect my honor?”, and I said, “But I wouldn’t.” He said, “Well, I have . . . a ballpoint pen?”, and I said, “There are something like 36 ways to kill someone with a pen, right?” I led him down the street and asked him if he thought he could ever poke someone’s eye out with a pen. He asked, “Just for fun?” and I said, “No, like, in a rape situation.” He said, “I suppose I could do anything if I had to.” I said, “Not me. I’d take an unwanted penile invasion over that squishy eyeball-poking-out sound any day.” Just then, I realised that we were walking toward Avenue D even after we’d decided not to, and I asked, “Why did you let me take us the wrong way!?” He said he didn’t want to be the one to break it to me, so he decided just to go along with it. I asked, “Do you feel like you’re about to get raped?”, and he said, “A little bit.”

So we turned around and headed back to Avenue B to this amazing bar called Luca Lounge that was filled with Victorian-looking red velvet furniture. We went to the empty back room to sit at the ends of two couches that formed an L-shape and seriously talked about music for, like, two hours. He made fun of me for loving Bush, and I made fun of him for loving Sublime. He told me about his college band back in California, and I told him about all of the awesome band names I’ve thought of over the years. I asked him what his guilty pleasure bands are, and he said, “You really know the right questions to ask.” We talked about the two years of his childhood when he lived in Ohio before moving to Idaho and the fact that he revisited Ohio in 2000 and went to the science museum where I was working at the time. We wondered if we saw each other then and wished for a map of our lives so we could see how many times our paths have crossed. Then we somehow got on the topic of how badly I want to take up smoking and then all of the drugs we’ve tried, and when we were finished, I said, “I can’t believe we just had that conversation. That’s what you talk about when you’re trying to seem cool and impress each other.” He asked, “Aren’t we trying to seem cool and impress each other?”

I kept having to get up to use the restroom, because I seriously drank four gallons of water at dinner, and right before I left one time, I asked, “You wanna time me?”, and he said, “Ready . . . GO!” When I came back, I said, “I just remembered that cellphone commercial where the man asks the woman if she wants to time him while he goes to the bathroom and we’re supposed to think this makes him a horrible date.” He said, “I thought of it, too, but I didn’t want to tell you.” I said, “I don’t care; I always thought it made him adorable,” and he said, “So did I.” And then he looked at me out of the corner of his eye and smiled. !!!

He insisted on paying for my soda at the bar, and I said, “But you already paid for dinner.” He said, “That’s just how I roll,” and I told him that he couldn’t have said anything lamer or awesomer. We both needed to get to Union Square to catch our trains home, so we got on the L together, and he mentioned how incredible it was that the rain managed to control itself all night. I said, “New York is the worst when it’s raining. The garbage smell is about 400 times more powerful, and all of those assholes walk around with their giant umbrellas with the–” He finished my sentence with, “–the two tiers.” Which is just what I was going to say.

And then we had tons of babies.

Or, uh, I mean, . . .

When we got to Union Square, he asked, “Can I have a hug?”, and I said, “Isn’t this your stop, too?” He said, “Yeah, but I want a hug, anyway.” So we hugged, and it was wonderful, because he’s so close to my height–which is a perfectly respectable 5’7″–that our faces touched. He walked downstairs with me to ask me questions about my schedule for the weekend while we waited on the platform for my train, and we decided to go see the new Zach Braff movie. He said, “I’ll call you,” and I said, “Thanks for taking me out,” and he said, “The pleasure was mine,” which is really cheesy in writing but really nice in person. I gave him another hug, and he said, “I’m still going to wait until your train comes.” I said, “But we’ve already said goodbye! Now we’re gonna be all awkward.” He asked, “What’s better than two goodbyes?”, and I said, “No goodbyes.” And I looked at him out of the corner of my eye, and he was looking at me out of the corner of his eye, and Tracey says that this is the moment in the trailer of the movie version of the date right before the screen goes black and the title comes up.

And here we are, five years later:

And I’m still just as excited about him today as I was back then.

The Worst 9/11 Memorial You’ll Read

katie ett — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 16:00:04 +0000

I was still living in Ohio on 9/11/01. I was on summer break from my freshman year of college, living at home, and working at a science museum. After the first plane struck the first tower, my dad called up the stairs to my bedroom, “Kate, I think you’ll probably want to be awake for this.” I came downstairs and watched as the second plane hit the second tower, and my dad told me I wasn’t allowed to go to work that day, and I thought he was being ridiculous.

But then again, I’m basically a sociopath who couldn’t understand why everyone across the U.S. freaked out in the coming days and weeks and months and years. I get being sad that so many people died. I get being scared about your safety. I even get being angry at the perpetrators, even though, you know, the U.S. bombs everyone all the time. But “Freedom Fries” and a bazillion shirts emblazoned with “Never Forget” and all that sort of rubbed me the wrong way.

You know what’s worth getting upset about? First responders being denied healthcare coverage. Yeah.

Anyway, despite my general cynicism, I’ll admit to being excited to watch the new World Trade Center tower and memorial pools go up from my office in downtown Manhattan, and I even get a little . . . I don’t know . . . sentimental? . . . about all of the remembrance ceremonies scheduled for this weekend. So when I saw this morning that Battery Park had been turned into a field of honor flags, even I felt some reverence.

The Sphere, a sculpture that stood between the World Trade Center towers

The Sphere with the partly-completed One World Trade Center in the background

the Statue of Liberty between the flags

In a way, I’m glad I was removed from all of the grief and upheaval surrounding the 9/11 attacks, but in a way, I’m sad I wasn’t one of the people walking home across the Brooklyn Bridge that day, wondering if the world would still be around the next morning.

The One in Which I Lose the Two Black Friends I Have

plumpdumpling — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 16:00:14 +0000

A salon in Downtown Brooklyn:

So, then, what is white elegance? Is it too racist if I say “spelling things correctly”?

How Many Times Can I Talk About Excrement in One Post?

plumpdumpling — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 16:00:33 +0000

A pretty fountain in the gardens outside of Kamran’s apartment building that speaks of a grander time when you noticed the 1920s handmade Italian tiles on the sides of the buildings more than the streaks of not-quite-cleaned-up-well-enough dog poo on the sidewalks. Not that I blame them. Touching feces through a plastic bag is still touching feces.

And speaking of poo, I finally posted another poll on IS IT PEE-PEE? today. This one was motivated by Dishy of The Daily Dish and The Daily Dish, and her hilarious bloggin’ daughter, Madison.

HURRICANE WEEKEND!!!

plumpdumpling — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 16:00:12 +0000

• Friday morning: Kamran and I cancel our Saturday night dinner with Kim and have a fancy lunch instead to fill our weekend fine dining quota.

• Friday afternoon: I attempt to order groceries through FreshDirect but find that all of their delivery slots are sold out already.

• Friday evening: Kamran and I stop at the grocery store for cheeses, meats, chocolates, Oreos, and a bottle of water. Not a gallon. A bottle.

• Friday evening: Kamran and I order chicken fingers parmigiana sandwiches with cole slaw, potato salad, and French fries for dinner, citing that it’s “Hurricane Weekend” and we have to store up fat.

• Saturday morning: Kamran and I order $80 worth of noodles and crispy pork belly from a restaurant on Seamlessweb to last us the weekend, wait an hour, call them to see where our food is, and find that they’re closed.

• Saturday noon: The subways and buses shut down. My best friend texts me and asks how I’m doing. I tell her we’re STARVING TO DEATH.

• Saturday afternoon: I call around to every restaurant in the neighborhood. One pizzeria is open. We order enough calzones and pizza for two days.

• Saturday afternoon: Kamran realizes I’ve had some roses he bought me sitting in a vase for approximately two months now and curses me under his breath as he throws them away and fills his apartment with stinking water smell. I tell him to take it down a notch, because this is Hurricane Weekend, and we’re trapped in his apartment together for two days.

• Saturday afternoon: The mandatory evacuation of the neighborhood where my office is begins. My dad texts me and tells me to go to Kamran’s, which of course I already have. My great-aunt calls to make sure I’m still alive. It hasn’t even started raining at this point.

• Saturday evening: Kamran’s building warns that we won’t be able to flush the toilets if the power goes down. We consider filling his bathtub full of water for approximately three seconds. Then we consider at least filling his sink. Then we go back to watching “Jersey Shore”.

• Saturday evening: I buy a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Red Velvet Cake ice cream from the convenience store in Kamran’s building and eat it all, citing once again that it’s Hurricane Weekend.

• Saturday evening: Kamran and I do absolutely nothing to prepare for what’s about to happen overnight, deciding that if the water reaches us at more than ten stories high, we deserve to die.

• Sunday, 3 a.m.: I wake up to some light sprinkling outside.

• Sunday noon: Absolutely nothing has happened.

• Sunday afternoon: Everyone feels really embarrassed about those 24 gallons of water taking up 3/4 of their studio apartments.

• Sunday evening: Kamran and I go outside for the first time since Friday night to survey the damage and find what amounts to this:

Which is basically what we expected. But on our way back, his neighbor tells us about this downed tree around the corner in the other direction:

So that’s kind of impressive, I guess. Still, overall, quite a bust.

Aint Wet

plumpdumpling — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 16:00:48 +0000

I’ve had this picture waiting on my hard drive in my special Things to Eventually Post on UM folder since 2008. That was the last time I saw one of these deconstructed “wet paint” signs. And probably also the last time the MTA did any repairs on the subway platforms!

j/k, MTA, j/k.

The Great Hot Dog Cookoff 2011

plumpdumpling — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 16:00:54 +0000

The best thing about summer, of course, is hot dogs. And the best thing you can do with hot dogs, of course, is eat 13 of them.

Check out my review of this year’s Great Hot Dog Cookoff! It’s pretty incredible food porn, ifIdosaysomyself.

Adventure Time with Kat and Kam: Chinatown to Battery Park City and Back Again

plumpdumpling — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 16:00:53 +0000

It was Mother’s Day, and Kam and I were both motherless in the big city. Mine has been gone since 2000, and his is on the exact opposite side of the country. So free of lunch and flower obligations to anyone but each other, we took to the streets. That day, we noticed for the first time just how many apartment buildings in the East Village have rooftop happenings: little windowed rooms, little gardens, little backyards eighty feet in the air. We also saw several new-to-us instances of our favourite oft-seen graffiti, “WOMP”:

Speaking of graffiti, we passed this installation by Paul Richard:

I get a real kick out of that.

Our first stop was Congee Village, which Kamran has been pestering me about for two years and which I’ve been actively avoiding. The menu is full of things like braised whole sea cucumber, steamed bird’s nest with rock candy, duck’s blood with ginger and scallion, and sun dried dace fish steamed with preserved pig’s belly. You can see why this might have me a little worried, right?

I pictured this creepy old dive serving pork stomach porridge out of its kitchen full of old men in soiled pants, but it was this bright, friendly restaurant with the most delicious little treasures. We had soup dumplings, which look like moneybags that you bite the top off and slurp the soup out of before eating the meat and wrapper. We had shark’s fin soup ($14 a bowl!), which is like eating not-quite-set-up Jell-o with bits of seafood in it (and is actually good, despite the weird texture). We had sea clams with XO sauce, which I have thankfully since forgotten. We had beef congee, which is thick rice porridge that was truthfully mostly flavorless until we dumped a bunch of red pepper flakes into it. And we had fried bread, which is on the dim sum part of the menu but comes with a side of thick icing to dunk it in.

Please ignore my hair here. I hadn’t showered and was full of sea clam.

We continued into Chinatown for Quickly bubble tea (do not get the lemon), gawking at durian hanging out innocently in markets, and buying $22-a-pound beef jerky in flavors like oyster sauce beef and wet spicy pork at New Beef King:

Chinatown was wildly crowded, so we decided to head for the water, which is always so relatively desolate as to seem like the suburbs. We found what we thought was an entirely unnecessary Western wear store but then passed a random horse down a street not three blocks later:

On our way to the Hudson River Park, three little kids suddenly came from behind us on scooters. They made it to the West Side Highway and then turned back around to join their parents. Then they came at us again, this time coming so close to Kam that he accidentally knocked one in the head with his pound of beef. (And I don’t mean that as a euphemism.) I turned around and shot the parents the meanest look to control their kids, but then I realized I was the childish one wearing a t-shirt with a dinosaur vomiting a rainbow on it.

We followed them to Pier 25, where we found a massive playground, a soccer field, and stunning views:

Also trash:

We ran into the Irish Hunger Memorial, an elevated little plot designed to look like the Irish countryside. I guess. I’ve never been to Ireland. And Kam’s never been hungry, as witnessed by his poor attempt at trying to fake it:

We somehow found ourselves walking down an alley and winding through some trees and coming upon these giant rock walls that didn’t seem to serve any purpose but were wildly impressive. And then just behind one of them, we found a secret playground! It was tiny and had exactly one slide and nothing else in it, but still:

Walking back uptown, we found a walkway from Stuyvesant High School across the West Side Highway, allowing for a vantage point we’ve never been able to appreciate before. Highway 9A is a little scary from the ground as a pedestrian in a city otherwise full of one- and two-lane streets, but it seemed like a lazy country road from up above that day:

Meandering from the West Village to the East, we found nonsensical signs and our very favourite NYC tag that would make for the greatest gay gang name of all time (MuffinMilk!):

And then appropriately, we ended the day by finding what may be my calling in life:

6.9 miles!

You Know What This City Needs? Some Condos.

plumpdumpling — Sun, 24 Jul 2011 19:30:11 +0000

This is no New Yorky I almost can’t stand it: “A Final Look Inside The Legendary Mars Bar“.

It’s so absolutely awful that it couldn’t exist anywhere else.

And so absolutely cool that it couldn’t, too.

Unapologetically Mundane » living in new york is neat

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