Category: Local

Take Me Out…

Aaaaaaaaand PLAY BALL! After hearing about the vintage baseball league that plays by 1864 rules out on Governor’s Island (more info here), we simply had to go. On a most gorgeous summer Saturday, Meags and Sweetheart and I packed up the bare essentials (champagne, bread, cheese, sunscreen) and hopped on the free ferry to go see some baseball. In short: it was awesome. The New York Gothams wore navy pants, pillbox hats (you can see the lineage of those wonderful throwback Pirates hats) and white tunics emblazoned with a gothic “G”. What they didn’t wear? Gloves. Maybe gloves hadn’t been invented or maybe all leather was earmarked for Union cavalry saddlebags, but by the 1864 rules, the intrepid fielders go barehanded. The old rules are slightly different— you can’t overrun first base, the pitches are underhand, the strike zone is from the head to the ankles, and (most noted) the barehanded fielders can catch the soft rag ball on one bounce and the batter’s out—but the game is the same, the joyous, methodical, rhythmic American wonder reminds you why the game took hold of us in the first place. In typical American fashion, nicknames abound (Crash, Monk, Bugs) and, perhaps the most nostalgic element, even the heckling is genteel…Can you picture a Yankee fan telling at the Red Sox “That was UNMANLY!”? All of this, on a divine day, with the newly regenerating skyline of lower Manhattan in the background? Perfection.

 

top and third image by Hiroko Masuike from this NYT article (we were interviewed, but didn’t make the cut…).

Found in Nature

On our way out to spend Memorial Day at Sweetheart’s house in Rockaway we drove past Floyd Bennett Field. I’ve always had a bit of a love affair with the old airfield (see here and here). How interesting, then, to discover this amazing photographic series “Found in Nature” by Barry Rosenthal: collections of items and objects found out at Floyd Bennett Field. This weekend, on that brilliant, sunny, fresh-hot birth of summer day, they had a carnival set up: a Ferris Wheel, a funny purple roller coaster, big fat circus lights and cotton candy. How many new contributions must have been left behind…

Read more about Barry Rosenthal and his art here and thanks to Things Organized Neatly for the heads up (man I love that site).

A Moveable Feast

This weekend we had our first ever moveable feast– a progressive dinner moving from course to course, cocktail to cocktail, between our five Brooklyn apartments. It was so very, very lovely… We feasted: prosciutto wrapped asparagus with peppadew sauce and lemon honey gin fizzes, roasted pear and arugula salads with cucumber gin tonics, pork carnitas tacos with home pickled onions and fresh tomatillo salsa with micheladas, cheese fondue (!!!) paired with funkily perfect hard ciders, and cool, rich tiramisu with cognac. We walked: from Bed Stuy to Clinton Hill to Fort Greene. All of the ladies rocked the flower party crowns I made. The night was warm the light was perfect, we started under a maple tree in the slanting early summer sun and finished on the roof under the stars watching at the twinkling lights of not-yet-finished One World Trade. All we kept saying was how we live SO close to each other, and how most of us had never even been to each other’s apartments. Here we were- opening our homes, laughing, breaking bread, toasting bubbly, and simply enjoying each other. How marvelous, how easy, how truly lovely.

Infinite thanks to the brilliant Oh Happy Day for the progressive dinner idea (yes, I’ve been thinking about doing this since last November, and yes, follow Jordan’s very helpful tips).

Also from Oh Happy Day- the ahhh-mazing flower party hat tutorial! I can’t recommend this little project enough. It only took me three episodes of Girls, a glass and a half of wine, and $13 worth of supplies from the dollar store to make 6 headbands (with tons of paper left over). Note: I used tissue paper instead of the crepe paper recommended in the tutorial because I couldn’t find any folded crepe paper in the hood, and the tissue paper worked fine.  Also- in a moment of divine inspiration, I picked up a loopy stainless steel pot scrubber that I cut up and used for fun shiny/textured centers, you really can use your imagination here… I want to wear a flower party crown everywhere I go- and I think I just might.

Glorious Weekend

In New York, the literal distance between friends- the few blocks separating a single neighborhood- can be the difference between weekly wine dates and once-a-year-in-review catch ups. You live in Cobble Hill? Are you free next September? You live in Clinton Hill? Come over for cocktails this very minute. Le sigh. It can be daunting. BUT- after much karma, zen real estate, and wise choices in love and loft we find ourselves with four very good households of friends all living within a five minute walk of each other. This seems a New York miracle. Yes, Virginia, Brooklyn sometimes feels like Virginia. Ever since I read this post from Oh Happy Day!- a progressive dinner carousing from arrondissment to arrondissment through the streets of Paris- I’ve been dying to try it. A Progressive Dinner, in short, moves from house to house with each stop serving a different course of a meal. A Moveable Feast of Brooklyn intuition. I’m thinking that the whole shebang will probably look and feel like the above picture from Comet in Moominland– which Eben and I both read as children and made mental notes that we wanted our lives to be like this-  as he agrees: so far so good. I’ll let you know how it goes. Cheers to good friends and a lovely weekend to you!

 

ps. I also made these for tonight. They are so absurd and wonderful!

pps. Love and congratulations to Dear Rav, tying il nodo in Tuscany this very night. My heart is full for you.

 

Moomin image from here, naturally.

 

Coney Island Love Letter

On this rainy Brooklyn day, what could be better than a little Coney Island Love? I’ve been a believer ever since Sweetheart’s dad bought me my first chow mein sandwich (a bizarre Brooklyn food tradition proffered by a third generation Brooklyner? Perfect.*) after two rounds of re-rides on The Cyclone a few summers ago. Maybe it’s the continued (de)construction, the shuttering of classics like the El Dorado Bumper Cars, or just a pang of tangible nostalgia for a history I’ve only brushed up against, but this lovely love letter seems just the right amount of bittersweet.

 

*reminiscent of the time Sweetheart smuggled a Yonah Shimmel’s kasha knish into the Sunshine Cinema on our second date. Eating my first knish in the dark, it was sort of like the blind men and the elephant… until he handed me the mustard.

 

gorgeous video from the brilliant geniuses at Land of Nod. I dare you not to watch, like, all of their videos right. now.

Great Googa Mooga!

I went to both days of The Great Googa Mooga this weekend and… I had an awesome time. There’s been a fair amount of backlash about long lines, the weirdness of porta-potties and how sunny it is in an open field in May but… have these people never been to a concert before? Or a bar? Porta Potties are weird. Period. You might have to wait when 7,000 (*update* 40,000!) people want a beer at the same time. Luckily you can listen to the Preservation Hall Jazz Band for free while you’re waiting. Oh well, Haters gonna Hate. And while haters were busy hating, I ate fried leeks, delicious pork pupusas and arepas from Red Hook food truck staple El Olomega, brisket tacos with roasted corn from Hill Country, fried chicken banh mi that tasted like it had old bay in the rub from Joseph Leonard, Coco-Limon y Cucumber-Lime popsicles from La New Yorkina, maple cotton candy, bourbon and bacon caramel corn, and about a thousand beers. Pair that belly with the rowdy beats and Tuba Gooding Jr. of The Roots or the dulcet tones and hair of an amazingly resilient Hall & Oates (jesus, what did they have- 38 #1 hits? every song is amazing!) and how could this get better? Oh yeah, this girl brings you beers while you lay on the grass:

Love and thanks to my wingladies, Smills and Njoki, and to the amazing Mels for holding it down and keeping it real.

Tiny Bubbles

Nothing could make me thirstier than seeing this legitimate last-of-the-old-guard seltzer delivery man parked on our block. Now, after Sandro ruined Sweetheart’s relationship with the legendary Walter Beckerman in the great Brooklyn unreturned bottle dispute of 2006, our hand has been forced and we’ve gone the way of the soda stream. But, in the same way my heart sings when I get my knives sharpened by the knife grinder, there is somewhat of a New York romance with the seltzer man. May he live long and forever deliver bubbles to the outer boroughs.

Garden Party

Sweetheart and I just returned from the Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s amazing annual plant sale with this little red wagon load of delectable goodies for the backyard! Early Girls and Kirby Cukes, Packman Broccoli and Medusa Peppers, Rosemary, Thyme, and Lavande de Provence… like all gardeners at the beginning of the season, out wagon brims almost more with hope than with bounty. Luckily my ever-lovin-horticultural Mama is coming next week for any course correction if we city mice have bitten off more strawberries than we can chew.

ps. I always love the Botanic Garden, every time you go it’s different depending on the weather and the season. Today, the bluebell wood was in bloom. After last night’s hard rain, the trees were silent except for the occasional drop of water and the flowers were like a quiet sea. It was truly beautiful.

Roll v. Wade

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.

Mother Mayo

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.