Posts Tagged Under ‘New York City’

Not Missing NYC Right Now

“The temperature hit 99 degrees at La Guardia Airport, 4 degrees higher than the previous high set on June 9, 1984; it was 99 degrees at Newark Liberty Airport, tying a record set in 1933. In Central Park, the high temperature was 96, one degree shy of the record. Temperatures in Islip, on Long Island, and Bridgeport in Connecticut, easily broke previous records.

Tuesday was not likely to offer any respite from the 90-degree heat, according to the National Weather Service, adding that temperatures would drop back into the 80s by Wednesday.” — The New York Times

So many memories from those New York summers of 2002-2005–the smell of rotting food in plastic bags; the rolling sweat streams down the back of my leg while I stood on the subway platform each morning; sweaty fat dudes in tank tops bumping into people; the brownouts; the residents yelling at each other in anger on the street.

Yes, summer is the worst time to be a New Yorker, and it’s descended on the city like a dumpsterful of fermented trash juice. So to my peeps still living there: I miss plenty of things about my old town, but as for this and the other heat waves headed your way this summer, I sure am glad to have bailed out.

Don’t forget a change of undershirt–I know I used to need a new one by 2 p.m. or so. Sexy.

I Come to Praise the Irish-Food Quarter-Aisle

Erin Go Bragh, dudes.

It being St. Patrick’s Day — at least in one hour — I’d like all of you still living in NYC to take a moment at your local grocery establishment and appreciate the 1/4 of an aisle devoted to feeding the Irish immigrant masses, those still moving to New York after all these centuries. It’s one of the things you don’t really get here in D.C. — the last one I saw was when I went to visit Boston a few weeks back — and it’s much missed by your correspondent. Having lived in Queens, where there’s an immigrant community for every nationality known to man, I’ve gotten to know and love the Irish-food section while perusing the aisles of Sunnyside, Astoria and Woodside.

You’ll know you’ve found the aisle when you see Barry’s Tea, in the familiar red box at the top of the section. It’s meant to be drunk in the Irish style, meaning strong enough that you mistake it for coffee. Also known as “the bomb”. Next to that they’ll keep the breakfast theme going with some McCann’s Irish Oatmeal. They should probably change the name from “steel cut” to “oat gravel”. For real, it’s stony. For those who like their biscuits named for what happens after you eat them, we have my grandma’s favorite Digestives tea cookies from Burton’s. It all finishes off with some Chivers jam and Fruitfield Orange Marmalade. We in America eat normal fruit preserves like grapes, peaches or strawberries, but in Ireland they like to invent weird fruits like “gooseberry”, “bramble” and “lemon curd” (?), pack them in sugar and sell them to toast fans who don’t know better. Watch out for these, they’re strange.

Under your breakfast stuff comes the Knorr and Erin soup. I’m down with Irish potato, but a little wary of the brown tomato. You can top your soup off with some HP Curry Sauce or maybe some Bisto White-Sauce Granules — what discerning eater doesn’t love granules? Also a winner is Chef brown sauce, which comes in a handy 2.5 liter (or “litre”) container for those times when you need to dip 200 dozen french fries (or “chips”) at once.

Below the Cadbury chocolates, the beauty of which I have already described, you have the junk food — a personal favorite. We all enjoy Tayto cheese ‘n onion crisps, but the real pleasure is washing it down with a cool, sugary glass of Club orange. This stuff is definitely the best-tasting orange pop in the universe, but I will concur with my friend John who said it probably shouldn’t be drunk out of the bottle, lest the world’s most well-fed bacteria colony grow in its incredibly high-fructose medium. Club lemon and Club rock shandy (again, ?) are a little disappointing, but you won’t go wrong with pop made from real orange juice. Fizzy orange: favorite of both me and my bro.

On another Irish food note, the one thing missing from the Irish food aisle is the best Irish food of all, the breakfast bangers. You have to special order them in the U.S., but they make a great gift for your family porkosseur this March.

To end on another Queens food note, the poultry market in Flushing, across the street from the U-Haul, is the proud home of the worst smell in the world. That is all.

White Folks’ Subway

I’m proud to have lived in three locations not on this map.

Image!

Too Easy, Yet Great

You don’t see these guys living in DC. Some things about New York, I really don’t miss:

Though I’d say hipsterism became a parody of itself around 2003 or so, it’s still funny. (Thanks, John.)

Quick Hits

• Back in my New York days, it seemed that every time you turned around, someone was praising the independent, gritty spirit of 1970s-80s New York, the culture that produced hip-hop, tagging, Reggie Jackson, Taxi Driver, CBGB-OMFUG, The Warriors and other art inspired by the city’s crushing, nigh-bankrupt bleakness. While I acknowledge the period as one of the truly great creative eras in the American scene, one that I think I can explore forever, the nostalgia to me seems to overlook the big, fat suckitude of crime, urban decay, poverty and a general pessimism that pervaded New York in the 1970s and 80s. Does anybody really miss this? John Carpenter didn’t make Escape From New York because it was a great logical leap from reality. People suffered greatly in those days.

  But let’s assume that you believe despair breeds the greatest art (I tend to agree), and you’re an urban hipster who craves the dangerous, anything-goes spirit of the 1970s. There’s another town out there for you long past its mid-century glory days; one with miles of burnt-out dwellings, a suburban population that’s afraid to go downtown, weak political leadership and an economic death spiral to boot. Plus, it’s been this way for a good three decades, so it’s not likely to have changed by the time you arrive.

  So what I really want to know is, why isn’t Detroit seeing a nostalgia-driven hipster influx?

• Esquire magazine (to which I have a subscription; I hit my news/business base with The Economist, my sports base with SI, and my man-of-the-world, well-read, how-to-buy-suits-I-will-never-afford base with the big E) had the cover line this month “Can a white man still be elected President?”

  Sometimes, one can take provocative cover taglines a little too far from reality, to the point that the reader says, “Man, they are trying way too hard to get my attention.” Then, to take a journey of rhetorical absurdity that’s hemispheres beyond that, one can write, “Can a white man still be elected President?”

• The more President Bush’s approval ratings drop, the more I fear what the government might do in the name of “Hey, we’re hated lame ducks anyway.”

Out.