Happy Valentine’s Day, to Sweetheart and all (but especially to Sweetheart up there in our big cold city).
You know it’s a good sign when you pull into the roadside pescaderia and see a boat. Still dripping from the briny waves, towed by an extremely muddy jeep (begging questions about just how and where this particular barco puts out to sea), with an iron handed fisherman transferring gigantic long fish into a bucket to be transferred directly into your lap to be transferred directly onto the flames of an open fire to be transferred directly into your mouth. It’s certainly a good way to cut out the middle man.
Two things. Firstly, the color of the interior of this fish case. I might move in. Then, LOOK at that fish-eye! Now that is a fresh fish. A fresh 16 pounder plucked from the waters that very afternoon. How much? 200 pesos. $15. You’ll scale it and clean it for us? Um, ok, sure, that sounds good (inside we’re saying: OHMYGODTHISISPARADISEANDWEBOUGHTALLTHEWHITEWINETHEYHADATTHEFUNNYGROCERY!!!). We’ll take it, after all, we’re having seated dinner for 19 in the Weekend at Bernie’s dreamhouse.
Sweet Philly K (my favorite, pictured here as an ancient fisherman-scientist, “The Old Man and the COBE“) dressed her up in spangles of orange, lime baubles, onion bracelets, and strange dark peppers, we rolled her like a 10 cent Havana cigar, and roasted her over the open flames for an hour. Para Comer, El Pez Gigantesco!
thanks again to E.B.P. for the last photo.
And then we drove down to Mexico. Heading through the border gates, past the towering, glittering white granite and steel monolithic wall on our side and the ten feet of corrugated rust just south, looping down along the coast, on a road that makes the highway up near Big Sur look like a dowdy dowager aunt. And then, we ended up here. 
A deserted stretch of beach, lined with abandoned “Weekend at Bernies” style bungalows and dotted with black-gold sand and mysterious mother of pearl and bone jewels. In short, total paradise. More on adventures and treasures tomorrow…
infinite thanks and lasers to Mr. Egon Brainparts for the last two stunning photos. Like what you see? Listen too: E. Brainparts noise to be found here.
I love a good origin story, the confluence of events leading to the creating of something great. Some uppity American ladies visiting south of the border have a hankering for a midnight snack, a Tijuana barkeep tosses whatever old tortillas he has with some canned jalapenos, the ladies swoon, Nachos are born. The Earl of Sandwich wants something he can hold in one hand to chow down on whilst playing poker, the rest is history. In a pinch, Caesar Cardini uses the dregs of his larder (egg yolks? parmesean? anchovies?) to quick dress a salad, and voilà. It all seems a matter of luck, happenstance, and, generally, a deep hunger. Which, when adventuring, is sort of how I roll- letting fate call the shots, getting really hungry in the process. How fortuitous, then, that TWO different places in Los Angeles both claim to have invented the French Dip Sandwich. Forget Grauman’s Chinese Theater, this is the kind of thing I want to do in LA. 
Philippe’s (which looks just like Katz’s inside) claims that their pre-jused buns were accidentally dipped first when Philippe himself (slippery Frenchman) butterfingered a roast beef sandwich into a pan of meat drippings. Cole’s (which looks just like Milk & Honey inside*) claims that the sandwich was invented in 1908 by a sympathetic chef for a customer (une Frenchy?) who was complaining of sore gums. Philippe’s comes wet with juice, Cole’s comes with a side of dip. Philippe’s has briny deli-style pickles, Cole’s has shoestring fries. Phillipe’s has beers, Cole’s has impeccable whiskey cocktails. Both have an incredible (and incredibly horseradishly spicy) mustard. We ate both. We came, we dipped, we conquered. It would be wholly impossible to pick a favorite, and, in the rarified world of archetypal sandwiches, why should you have to?
*ed. note: light googling actually informs me that the new Cole’s cocktail menu is created by Milk & Honey’s Sasha Petraske, so- boom.
In this year of 30th birthdays, it seems as if all bets are off. I mean, sure, for 28 you should schlep yourself to the local bar and toast a few, and for 29 you should meet up for the big dinner, but for THIRTY, well, that’s a whole new ballgame. We’re talking major celebrations, we’re talking islands, we’re talking oysters, we’re talking serious left-coast roadstripping down into Mexico hoping to pick up a beater accordion for >$25 on the way making sure to eat strange meats and lush fruits and, of course, the old head-scarves-and-jewels-and-jean-shorts-song-and-dance. So. I remain faithfully yours, off the grid in California, please follow our adventures over on Instagram (@featherbyfeather) to return next week very sunburnt and full of beans.
ps. I wish you were here.
Yes, this is me riding on top of a moving piano welded to a shopping cart with lower Manhattan in the background. nbd. Let’s just say that this weekend marked the umpty-umpth anniversary of the Brooklyn Idiotarod. The Idiotarod is modeled on Alaska’s famous Iditarod sled dog race except that instead of sleek sleds and beautiful mush dogs, the Idiotarod features shopping carts and idiots. In short, teams of morons decide on a theme and build, weld, and decorate shopping carts (secured via various nefarious dealings of which I have no knowledge) according to that theme, and race from neighborhood to neighborhood, from checkpoint to checkpoint, competing in games of wit, battle raps, and feats of strength to learn the location of the next stop. Brilliant. This year, we were a mobile speakeasy- replete with illegal gambling, a speakeasy bar with punches and teas that would surely give you the jake leg, and an ACTUAL PIANO for prohibition-era ivory tinkling. That’s right, a Piano. And, obviously, all on wheels.
We battled snow and salt, the ample hills of Brooklyn and her painful BQE crossings, teams of Pac Men, Nuns with Bad Habits, Game of Thongs (feat. House Stark Naked), bubbies from behind the Iron Curtain, knights in armor, a circus menagerie, apocalyptic steampunkers (whose cart featured a working woodstove, wtf omg), and Charlie Sheen.
And, of course, the race finished at the Gowanus Ballroom with a drag show, a brass band, and a giant trebuchet called the cart-a-pult specifically designed to hurl the carts from the race against a wall. On fire. (more info on that here).
Only in New York. Bless you Brooklyn. And bless Rav and Stephen for coming up and really making it something special. 
Images from flickr (thank you), Gothamist for the first and flaming cart images, and Tony and Evan, fellow idiots and dear friends. Oh. And we made the news.
This, from the car window, us hurtling back down south in time to beat the snow (and then to turn around and beat it right back to catch the snow again), a thousand birds playing crack the whip, ten more V’s than this, heading home, honking “we’re all in this together, we can make it if we try”. We’re all in this together, we can make it if we try.
So, these sweet brown boys have been hanging out. Nipsey Russell, meet Mr. Samson. They both think that they’re human, so they’re constantly confused as to what the other guy thinks he’s doing hanging out. Still slightly skeptical of each other (and the existential crisis of whole cat/dog thing), one thing they both agree on: laying by the woodstove, as close as possible to our people is just about as good as it gets.
In reflecting on this, my dear friend Kitty (sweet town mouse and brilliant list-maker) tells me what should perhaps be obvious to us (lest we be blinded by the plumage of Autumn in some May-December leaf romance), that trees laid bare are at their most beautiful in the winter because then you can see their true structure, like sculptures, or like drawing nudes. They show you their bones, their secret tight blossoms, their adorning nests, the passage of the moon. Which, in turn, brings to mind this spare verse from William Carlos Williams:
Winter Trees
Feather By Feather 