Even though it certainly doesn’t feel like the official beginning of summer, today is May Day! In honor of the pagan half-solstice and commemorating the birth of the 8 hour work day, we’ll be knocking off early and wreathing our brows with May crowns of newly-arrived bodega peonies and market lilacs (both spotted this week!).
Glorious old May Day images from the Ames, Iowa Hstorical Society.
Bowling: Good! Lack of affordable reproductive healthcare for women: BAD! This weekend was the NYAFF Bowl-a-Thon, where 200 pro-choice New Yorkers got down to business and raised over $70,000 to give underprivileged women across the city access to essential reproductive health and counseling services they would not otherwise be able to afford. At a time when women’s rights are increasingly (maliciously and inexplicably) coming under fire, when women are being demonized for wanting comprehensive health care, it feels good to do something that actually has a tangible result. Maude Lebowski would be proud. Stellar team names included: Plan Bees, The Morning After Pins, and (universal favorite) Roll v. Wade. Our team, Ladies of the Lane, dressed as Spanish senoritas, raised $2,743, and collectively knocked down all of the pins over ten times. Feels good, looks good.
Infinite thanks to everyone’s support support so far, and, hey! We’re still accepting donations! Check it out (and get more info) here.
Nobody mess with the Jesus. Or my awesome teammates:
Lebowski image from here.
Ta Ta For Now, dear ones! Sweetheart and I are heading to tropical locales, turquoise waters, and sweet funky and spicy rum cocktails. So, I’ll bid you adieu for a bit…
In my absence and in the spirit of adventure, exploration, wanderlust, and the ever quickening pulses we’re all feeling due to the rising temperatures of summer, please enjoy a MIXTAPE I made you guys. A Feather by Feather first, this one is meant to be played with the windows down, wherever you are and wherever you’re going. It’s called Breezes Kiss Collarbone. Click to download and please share! Besos!
awesome porsche image from here.
I am in love love love with this Molly Ledbetter painting. Deep Dark Secret Confession: I’m one of those boring poopers who usually prefers when art is a picture of something. Like a horse or a ship or a faith healing. I probably would have been gasping and “well-I-never!”-ing at the 1913 Armory Show. Yet even though dear miss Molly’s work is large scale, graphic, and abstract, it’s also deliciously tactile, lovely and compelling, with riotous pops and swags of color and I just love it. She’s got a marvelous new site (and a great blog to boot). Now if I could only decide which piece is my favorite…
Two things. 1) a store has opened up four blocks from my house that ONLY SELLS MAYONNAISE and 2) Last Sunday they had their grand opening and were giving away deviled eggs AND champagne for free and somehow I didn’t hear about it until today. Mayonnaise something wrong with that.
Empire Mayonnaise makes mayonnaise from scratch on site in their tiny storefront using exotic formulations and flavors- black garlic, white truffle, or preserved lemon here, emu or ostrich eggs in lieu of standard chicken eggs there. My love of mayo is no secret, but this could be dangerous.
Empire Mayonnaise
564 Vanderbilt Ave.
(btw. Dean and Bergen)
images from the source.
My Mama sent this along, equal parts bad cocktail party joke and it’s-so-simple-it-just-may-be-the-ultimate-truth brilliance:
Sayings of a jewish buddah: Be here now. Be someplace else later. Is that so complicated?
Trying to live it. Shantih Shalom.
ps. isn’t that just what a jewish buddah would look like?
pps. big doins in the backyard, the JB and I drove to Westchestah yesterday to pick up a long wooden trestle table with benches…for free! Will keep posted. In the meantime, stay zen.
This weekend we have dear friends visiting from down south, a pair of bon vivant and raconteur travelers who’ve found themselves in the flats of Iowa, the mountains of Virginia, and the deep pines of Athens, Georgia- all for the pursuit of knowledge. Though they live among the rolling country hills right now, the countdown is on for the end of their bucolic tenure and their subsequent carbetbag transatlantic move to London. There couldn’t be a better time to show them our New York. She’s tricking herself out in flowers and opening her arms as she always does for spring wanderers. And, in making plans for their arrival, I’m reminded that the best way to fall back in love with your own city is to show off her best sides to someone you love.
On the docket: Sichuan in Bay Ridge, a visit to MoMa, a walk across the Brooklyn Bridge and a brown bag picnic at the carousel, dinner at Roman’s, The first session of the Brooklyn Flea back outdoors, the opening of the Dekalb Market, Passover Seder with Sweetheart’s family, lunch at Spumoni Gardens, a trip to Coney Island to ride the soon-to-be-closed-Sweetheart’s-childhood-favorite Eldorado AutoSkooter Bumper Cars, A trek either to Arthur Avenue or to Staten Island for Italian delights, and Michael Daves at Rockwood.
Chag sameach, thank you New York, and may everyone have a marvelous weekend.
Gorgeous top image: Ernst Haas, Central Park, Spring, 1970
from the awesome ICP photography blog.
Carrie came over last night and we had what might be the last glasses of red wine of the season. Now, New York hasn’t exactly been cooperating with this season business- winter was a mere turkish delight’s worth of chill and March has come on like a liger, tricking the crocuses and then making them cry. My mourning for red wine and whiskey is almost more symbolic than anything else, a wish for the warmth I know/hope is coming. To that effect, I think maybe instead of looking back on the end of the season, I’ll look forward. To late sun and backyards and flowy striped dresses with bare legs. And for that I need to raise my glass with something fresh, light, champagney, and not too silly. Perfect timing for Meags sending me this early-spring-perfect concoction, the cherub’s cup. Added bonus: you can fix it in batches in a big pitcher, alleviating muddle fatigue, and allowing for that “breezy effortless hostess” thing that’s so very hard to capture. Oh this? Just whipped it up.
Cherub’s Cup
1/4 cup sliced strawberries + more for garnish
1/2 cup St. Germain
1 cup Hendrick’s gin
1/3 cup lemon juice (this is NOT exact, so you can adjust)
~1.5 bottles dry sparkling wine (enough to fill your pitcher 3/4 of the way)
:: Muddle your strawberries with a bit of the St. Germain (it’s easier to muddle if you’re working with a small volume)
:: Pour the muddled berries and all the hard alcohol into a large pitcher. Stir in the lemon juice and the sparkling wine and taste to make sure you like the proportions. You can make a bit more of the St. Germain + gin mix and add it in if you like. Add additional sliced berries to the top for a pretty finish, or slice a slice on the diagonal and perch it on the rim of the champagne flute.
:: Put on pink lipstick, something cottony, maybe a silk scarf, and tiptoe through the tulips.
It should get to 55 today, let’s cross our fingers and our legs at the ankle and pray for 60. Happy weekend.
Cherub’s Cup Recipe/image from new fave (and serious sister-in-cocktails) Heart of Light.
The real March Madness takes place at Archbishop Molloy High School in Queens. And, apparently, there might be nothing in the world better than eight year olds playing basketball. They have the swagger and skill of the little men they’re becoming, but they still sometimes cry if they’re called traveling or sustain a rather nasty foul. Luckily, though, they’re of an age where any ill can be cured by pizza.
A few weeks ago I stumbled across a life(style) changing product: CUPPOW! The idea is incredibly simple and totally genius. It’s slender plastic insert that turns any wide mouth canning jar into a travel mug. BAM.
Who doesn’t love drinking out of a jar? Who hasn’t spilled all over themselves doing so? I had to get a few for Miss McKay for her birthday. It seemed created for her: Cold brew coffee anywhere, pina coladas to go, hot coffee refills, champagne cocktails on a bike, mojitos in the back of a pickup truck. No frills, no spills, all thrills. Even better, the tiny company is run by American humans who just seem to really love coffee and want to bring manufacturing back to New England. Simple, elegant, affordable, sustainable, and local? Be still my Brooklyn heart.
Buy one here, you know you need it.
images not featuring Miss McKay from cuppow.
Feather By Feather 