Tag: Brooklyn

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.

Aim for the Rainbow


These are the hand drying instructions at one of our all-time favorite restaurants, Grand Sichuan in Bay Ridge. Since the chengdu spicy and aromatic fish is so hot and sichuan pepper tingly, and it is our wont to have water, tea, tsingtao, and coke classic on the table at all times, I’ve seen this a lot. I love it every time. I take the instructions as follows:

Throw an arrow from your wrist at a rainbow while wearing short shorts.

I’m gearing up to do a bunch of projects this weekend (involving paint, gravel, chalk, mulch, and beer) I can’t wait to share!

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.

Damn Yankees

Where I’m from, people still talk about the Civil War, or, as we like to call it “the late unpleasantness”. O Sweet Virginia, capitol of the confederacy, birthplace of true gentleman Robert E. Lee and dashing horseman J.E.B. Stuart, home of Stonewall Jackson back when the commonwealth stretched all the way out to Kentucky in one great big genteel expansionist yawn, and where, as children, we’d would leave bourbony Hornsby Family Christmas Parties in Yorktown to go play in redoubts and earthworks from the peninsula campaign that are still standing 150 years later. It wasn’t that long ago, your war of northern aggression, and it still comes up. Down there. No one talks about it in New York. Unless it’s in passing to mention the atrocities of the draft riots. They talk about the Revolution, they celebrate their Yankees (perhaps this further explains my antipathy for the Bronx Bombers), and they love their gilded age. But there’s no wistful Shelby Foote letter-reading over the strains of Ashoken Farewell taking place in the borough of kings. Or so I thought. Imagine my surprise and delight to get the invite to hear my friend speak about the exploits and adventures of the Illustrious Brooklyn 14th. In full regalia.

The Brooklyn 14th originally was a social club, a carousing and toasting outfit for the well-heeled sons of Brooklyn’s elite, men of venerable families, privilege and education. When they were called to duty in 1847, they were ready. The regiment fought at most of the major, bloodiest battles- Antietam, 1st and 2nd Bull Run, Fredricksburg, Chancellorsville, The Wilderness, Gettysburg. Like the hipsters they begat, they looked fabulous. Enamored of the pantaloons of the Zoaves (ed. note. pictures coming soon of me dressed as a zoave blockade runner for Miss McKay’s birthday), the men of the 14th wore red and blue vests with bright gilt buttons and bright red pants, which led Stonewall Jackson to give them them the name “Red Legged Devils” after their dogged assault at the first Bull Run. Each soldier also wore a flat topped red hat called a “kepi”. Kepi. Yiddish for head. These Brooklyn sons were probably the only regiment that might have had jewish mothers at home telling them to “watch your kepi, bubbelah” when sending them off to war. They were led by Gen. Edward Fowler, a beloved commander who moved to my neighborhood after the war and became an accountant. There’s a statue of him just a few blocks from my apartment, I’ve passed it without knowing every time I go to BAM.

This history is fascinating, not quite hidden, but certainly not on the tip of everyone’s tongue… let’s talk about it, let’s celebrate it, and while we’re at it any New Yorker who got married under the Marriage Equality Act, or any Californian who has a medical marijuana card should certainly understand making a stink about state’s rights. A very sincere thanks to Matt and the rest of the Red Legged Devils of the 14th for a wonderful talk (and I can’t wait for Matt’s book on the subject).

ps. the lecture was at Pete’s Candy Store, part of the OCD: Open City Dialogue lecture series, the next one is about the Tiny House movement, which is totally fascinating.

 

Fowler image from here.

Feeling Alive

Chalk it up to multiple childhood readings of The Secret Garden, but I’ve always felt a kinship with plants. If you read this, you might have gathered that the dried up dead ole plant lurking in the brightest but apparently-not-bright-enough corner of my basement brownstone was making me feel dried up, ole, dead, and stuck in a dark corner. Just like when my college roommate killed my orchid by mistakenly watering it with vodka, the symbolism doesn’t go too deep there. After writing about the dying plant, I left the house to go to a meeting and returned to find Sweetheart had populated the window with two new, very green, very alive plants. The next day, it’s warm enough to have the windows open, the breeze is coming in bringing tidings of adventure, and it’s bright enough in here (at least for now) for the prisms I have hanging hopefully between the window bars like a hipster Polyanna to yield little rainbows. Sometimes all it takes is a little green and a little light.

Soweto Gospel Choir!

The amazing Soweto Gospel Choir is playing a FREE SHOW tonight in Fort Greene! It’s through Carnegie Hall’s “community sings” program, so the whole crowd just might get involved. If you’re in the hood, stop by for Reubens at our house before (fresh made corned beef and house-baked-rye bread)… now thatsa New York.

Details:
Emmanuel Baptist Church (that’s where this was happening on marathon day)
7:30
279 Lafayette Avenue (at Washington Avenue)
Brooklyn, NY 11238

Brooklyn Friday Night: what to do?

Don’t feel like braving the hordes on the Lower East Side (ever. again.)? No good music in the hood? Bored to death with “Bored to Death”? I have three words for you, my friend: Minor League Hockey. Did you know that Brooklyn has its own hockey team? Did you know that Minor League Hockey is totally awesome? Did you know that there’s still a place in America where you can get a beer for $3? All of this: amazing and true. Pretty much every Friday night the Brooklyn Aviators take the ice out at Floyd Bennett Field- the oldest airfield in New York City, once a home base for flyboys like Douglas “Wrong Way” Corrigan and aviatrices like Miss Amelia Earhart– the rink is in a converted hangar. The hangar complex has been re-modeled into a fantastical bizarrely/wonderfully suburban feeling sports complex with a climbing wall, middle-school-date-ripe skating rink, basketball courts, gymnastics gear, and a funny, all-nations-food-court where the guy who runs the pizza ovens sort of looks like Robert Deniro in Taxi Driver. The place is great- a departure, an adventure- but the hockey… that’s something else entirely. Fast and furious and beautiful and funny and brutally action packed, it’s everything you thought you knew about hockey (the missing teeth, the fights, the French Canadians) writ large and about 8 feet away from you. I think I saw someone’s nose get broken. And it was awesome. Also, I now understand the origin of the phrase “the gloves come off” (see above- ice littered with gloves, nose of dude on right- yeah, the big dude- about to get broken). Also, if the game stops because of a fight, they play the “Rocky” theme song over the loudspeaker. Also, because it’s minor league, at intermission they do hilarious things like “hockey bowling”- slinging a small child across the ice in an inner-tube to knock down huge inflatable pins and stadium employees. Also, zamboni. And if all that weren’t enough, let me reiterate: Beers are $3.

Tonight, February 10th, the Brooklyn Aviators face off against the Danbury Whalers at 7:35 pm sharp. Buy tickets here.

To get to Floyd Bennett Field you can:

a) If you have a car: drive all the way down Flatbush avenue, and turn left just before the Marine Park Bridge. Or, take the Belt Parkway (under the Verrazano Bridge, swinging by Randazzo’s on the way) to exit 11S.
b) Take the 2 or 5 train to the Flatbush Avenue/Brooklyn College  station (last stop), Take the Q35 bus one block from the train station – Flatbush  Ave. between Nostrand Avenue and Avenue. Request the bus to stop across from Aviator Sports and  Recreation at Floyd Bennett Field.
c) Stop one of the dollar buses cruising down Fulton yelling “Utica! Utica!” out of the window. It will cost you $1.
d) charter a helicopter flight and land at Floyd Bennett’s helipad.

Broke Ass Emily Post: The $100 Dinner

Whew! Thank you for all of the posts and comments on the matter of the $100 dinner (if you missed the initial argument, check it out here). From the responses, it appears as though the entire 1% is forcing everyone I know to drop a cool hundo on boozy Manhattan dinners against their will, and it also seems, regardless of tax bracket, that pretty much everyone feels a certain ambivalence at check time. I am not alone. The problem with the $100 dinner boils down to this: at best, it is easier just to split up a bill evenly, at worst it’s a microcosm of judgment over the life choices of the broke (musician, writer, yoga teacher, butcher, baker, occupier etc.) vs. those of the well heeled (people who chose to be a “banker” on the Oregon Trail). As Hilty so perfectly put it: I didn’t want to bring it up at the table that I was the only one without a well-paying job. So. What to do when the check drops? A collective of like minded souls gave me some great suggestions:

– Always order the most expensive and delicious thing on the menu at a group dinner, that way at least you will have enjoyed the meal you’re paying for.
– Let them know you’re no longer subsidizing their Kobe steak or Caspian Sea caviar.
– Eat absolutely nothing and have one glass of wine. That way you can simply say, “I only had one glass of wine”. No spending, no paying. You could even (sadly) leave early and leave cash for your drink just to be on the safe side.
– Go back to the bathroom and make a break for it?
– And the most popular: Don’t be afraid to grab that thing and do the arithmetic!

Last week I decided to test the waters, put all this talk into action. A group of us went to The Fat Radish, the exact little studied and purposefully casual kind of hole in the wall where these things always seem to go down. Subway tiles, distressed brick, old mirrors, expansive expensive cocktail list with funny names, reclaimed wood tables, bartender with an accent, edison lightbulbs… you know the drill. It was a great crew of girls… ladies…uh… women. And not a bunch of stuffy banker types either- all of us work in one creative field or another- a gallerist, a yogi, an artist- all incredibly lovely, the exact right mix of gorgeous and profane you always hope will fill your table when you first move to New York City. We were kindred spirits. But when the oysters started coming and the cocktails kept raining down, I knew I was going to have to step it up in the stink making department. If a stink was required, a stink I would make.I had a big delicious kale salad, two yummy beers, and when the bill came I snatched it right up, grabbed a pen out of my purse, did my math (I forgot: I am slooow at math), wrote my name and $33 on the back of the bill (yes, that’s how much a kale salad and two beers costs you in lower Manhattan), put my card down and handed it to the person next to me.

She said “I’m so glad you just did that”.

The girl who ordered the oysters and the vodkas said “Aww, Look at that”, referring to my writing my name on the back of the check, “That’s so cute”, and plunked down $90 cash.

The girl across from her said “Thanks for figuring the check out”.

The waiter came and everyone lived happily ever after.

So, I guess the moral of the story is: Only a jerk would be a jerk about splitting the check, and there’s no shame in divvying it up. If someone has a problem with that, then I guess you’ve just paid $100 to know that you don’t have to be friends with that person anymore. A bargain.

Love,

Broke Ass Emily Post

Thanks to Rav, Hilty, Todd, Brittany, Janelle, Mels, Carrie, Andrew, Sara, Irina, and Sally for the advice and moral support. Let’s all go out to a big dinner together sometime soon.

Fat Radish images from here.