Two Dishes But To One Table

Lunch at the Newspaper Cafeteria

The new New York Times Building is lovely to encounter – there’s  so much wood going in.   The enormous building, sort of WTC-ish from the outside {cold, geometric, very-clean Corbusier modern} , has textures on the interior that are warm, and organic.  The chosen interior colors are a very lively orange, sponged on, and a deep, solid red.  The bleached wood becomes the third color, making a sort of liason between the orange and red.    

The lobby is empty, like a set for Gattaca or 1984.  The lone ornamental object there is an immaculate but ordinary NY Times vending box.   [I should have pulled it to see if you have to pay a dollar still.]

The cafeteria had 200 people chowing down.  At least three tables had raging chess games going on.  I am a chess moron but I enjoy watching it played to a clock (timed chess has a button and each player runs down a 5 minute clock, victory coming on points, rather than checkmate usually).  My friend is part of the chess culture there so I got to see him beat a coworker in a ten minute game.   Both queens died.

The food was the best cafeteria food I’ve had.   The quality was the same as the AMNH cafeteria.   A dry erase board showed which nearby farms had contributed to today’s meal.   A full-time sushi chef was cutting up yellowfin tuna.  An international table had Afghani and African food.   There was a separate line for Satay.   The greens were good in the salad bar.  The plates were real plates, including the one i took for the salad bar, which was bigger than any dinner plate in my apartment.  I thin a plate this big is called a charger and should just be a pedestal for a real plate to sit atop it.   

I don’t know if I saw anyone famous at lunch today.  I do know that about half [my host’s estimate] of the 200 diners were writers or editors, and hunger is catholic, so, there must have been people from every possible section.    I heard someone say “nice writing today” to a chum.  And I definitely saw the editor of the chess column.   He was taking on anyone who wanted to play.  My friend, a chess nut, explained “he’s a national grandmaster so he always spots you a piece to start, the knight ”.

My Neighborhood, Mapped

Even as my written blogging has suffered, I have discovered an additional outlet, this Map Blog , a map of places to go in New York City.  Maybe it will help a friend or stranger someday.

Tongue in Cheek

summer fun with a fake protest.

File Under "Urban Memoir"

I just read a chapter of  “Zami” (© 1982, 17th Printing, Ten Speed Press).   What a clean writing style.  It has just enough words to get the point across, plain language, words so natural you don’t notice you’re reading a book.  Zami is a teenage memoir of being one of only three black kids at Hunter College High School, circa 1948.   

The full title is "Zami, A New Spelling of My Name” by Audre Lorde.  Lorde recalls being 15, playing hooky to sit on the couch in midday with her best friend Genevieve, drinking Champale and toasting marshmallows on a pencil with a match.  Other times the girls ride the open air double-decker omnibus “singing union songs at the tops of our lungs”.   

After Zami’s friend Genevieve commits suicide, Lorde inventories the things the two teens never got a chance to do together:

• Learn Swahili.
• Take a course in international obscenities.
• Smoke reefer.
• Go to a Village gay bar or any bar anywhere.
• See Martha Graham’s dance troupe.
• Visit Pearl Primus.
• Derail the freight that took circus animals to Florida.
• Write THE BOOK.
• Make love.   

Zami covers teen life in old, dirty New York in similar fashion as Jim Carrol’s "The Basketball Diaries".   

If you ever go for New York teen bios I recommend Zami and Basketball Diaries first but I also enjoyed, slightly less, the more famous “a Tree Grows in Brooklyn” (which is set in the Williamsburg neighborhood where I now teach) as well as Henry Roth’s “Some Call it Sleep” (memorable for his father’s diarrhea problems at work and young Henry’s role standing on the Harlem train platform, daily pitching  a pail of home cooked, soothing food as his dad drove the train past 135th Street).

Two to Watch

Graffiti guy #1 is Bloke, the paper airplane guy:

Graffiti guy #2 is  the mummy guy, Faro.

Fresh Noodle Soup

There’s a man on Eldridge Street who charges $4 for fresh pulled noodles. 
Here is the chef in action:

And here is the payoff, fresh neo rho mien (beef noodle soup).  I found it to be a great relief: finally, good beef noodle soup in New York!  The dough was good, the marinated sliced beef was good, the spices in the broth (40? really?) were good.
   

I’m not sure why the place isn’t mobbed.  Even in New York these pulled noodle places  (“la mien”) are rare. The menu at Golden Dragon is extensive, especially for a tiny storefront.  If you crave Chinese breakfast food they do congee, they do yams.  Churros, fried radish loaf, scallion omelets, they’re all here.   The dinner menu includes many delicacies which I won’t name here but they are things that you would think unavailable outside of China. The interior is spartan (folding chairs, linoleum tables). 

The menu at Golden Dragon enshirines beef noodle soup as one of the four cornerstones of Chinese northern cuisine, which it calls "Four Most Favorite Foods of China:  Lanzhou Hand-made noodles, Xi'an Lamb soup, Shanki Knife-Cut noodles, and Tianjin Goubuli buns".

The menu further poetically notes that the key to good beef noodle soup is to remember the four colors:
    CLEAR broth
    WHITE flour
    RED hot chili oil
    GREEN fresh parsley & garlic bolt

You can find Golden Dragon (“Chin Long”) at 7 Eldridge Street, a few steps east from the cheap buses under the bridge in Manhattan’s Chinatown.  Open til 2 AM seven days a week.   

July 5th

The first day of summer vacation (school is out finally) was just a lot of little nice things:

8:30 Woke up. Got out of bed (Dragged a comb across my head.)
10:30 Passing the BQE at Kent Ave, spied about 18 well dressed Hassidic men with umbrellas, waiting for the OrthodoxBus.  Eighteen guys enduring the drizzle in satin overcoats and Ben Franklin knee socks.  Why create your own bus system, just for Hassidim?  They must have a massive convergence of where they are going and what time they need to go there and desire for an express bus that goes only there.   I love self-starters, especially on a community wide hive-mind basis. Any self organizing process is great, bus routes included.    Were they all on their way to work at B&H Camera? 42nd Street gold shops?

1230 In line to return modem box at Cablevision.  Kid asking for directions in Brownsville hailed me with a "Mister, do you know where the..."    This Mister thing is very New York.   All kids address me at school as simply "Mister".

1240 Spotted another self-starter, an African-American man collecting bottles in Brownsville (Brooklyn).  Bottle deposits are only a nickel here, hardly worth it, so NOBODY takes them back, and the trash is FULL of nickel returnables.   The catch is you have to collect a lot to get any return on them.    Poor Chinese are the most willing to do this.  The remaining 30% of the bottle collectors are Spanish or Black folks.  The guy in question, the guy I saw today at 1240, had invented a sort of street person's freight train:  5 foldable (old lady grocery store) carts, tied with twine to form a meandering caterpillar, bearing dirty soda bottles to the grocery store's back door.

300 Had mixed feelings.  Forgot my camera and saw a blissed out old fellow fully supine next to a reflective chrome wall on 53rd Street.   Part of me was relieved to not have to face the questionable sensation of photographing a passed out man who made an awesome Siamese Twin image of a homeless person.

440 Reading an occupational outlook handbook at the library.  As far as possible jobs, it notes the PoTUS makes 400 grand "but has little (no) opportunity for advancement and has higher than average job stress" but "very good free housing and transportation" included as perks of the job.  Competition for this position is "much higher than average".

800 briefly considering the all-1913 silent film program at MoOMA (Museum of Old Modern Art).   

820 Enjoying a jam session:  30% white group, trying to get their percussion on.   Site:  "True" Meat Packing district (i.e. the place is moving animal flesh, not cocaine-steeped Bridge & Tunnel human discotheque flesh).   A loading dock facing the Hudson River provided a noise tolerant site for a bunch of people banging on stuff.   It was an authentic Caribbean marching drum corps in the making, headed straight for Carnival.  (Isn't Carnival a half year away??)   I loved the presence of the white people, who were getting so much repeated corrective tips from the conductor.   One percussion instrument in the loading dock jam band that sounded really cool was a rattling tambourine clapper rack, mounted linearly rather than circularly, with each clapper much larger than the ones on a normal tambourine,   teacup saucer size, actually. 

920  Home for a Scrabble rendezvous.   When we all realized each had assumed the other was providing the Scrabble board, it turned into a pen and paper Boggle game (invented by me in 2005).

Hot Dogs By the Numbers

More than once I had stressed out friends say they wanted to quit their jobs and become hot dog vendors.   The statistics don't make it look particularly good or bad.   The guy that was interviewed in the current New York Magazine says he has been at it for 7 years.  He scrapes by with a two bedroom apt in the Bronx for him, his wife, and four kids.   

Here are the stats from "A Day in the Life of Hakim Elnagar, The Kebab Man of 42nd Street" by Michael Idov in New York Magazine (June 25, 2007)

Annual income:  $35,0000 working 6 days a week

Per day:
Hot Dogs sold: 28
Kebabs: 12
Pretzels: 6
Sodas: 28
Water: 22
Total sales:  $140
Profit for the day:  $70

Hakim Elnagar

Overhead:
Parking at the Hot Dog Cart Garage on 39th Street: $2400/ year
City vendors license:  $3000 / year.

Daytimer

What giant sweeps Queens
But gathers no trash?

What fraidy cat disappears on rainy days
Worse than an Angelino?

What white elephant has become an elegant inheritance from the Ancients?
What has Heidi Neilson done?

The Citibank Building realized as the outer borough's largest sundial.
Including a flight of the hours video from the POV of this grand sweeping second hand.

The Booming Brooklyn Bike Culture

Next time you’re biking with friends, try this game:  everyone throws a buck in the pot and then rides in a circle until only one man is standing.   If it is a small space, people eventually crash and fall over.   

Photo by Tod Seelie.

This was one of the contests at the Bicycle Fetish held last Saturday on a closed block of Havemeyer in Brooklyn.   
Other contests  included number of seconds standing still on a bike, backwards riding on fixed gear bikes, and longest skid.    The rule on longest skid is, running start, back wheel locked up.   Some guys skidded in a full tuck.  The best skidders could skid for over 7 seconds and would cover almost two short blocks in that time. 
Many photos at Flickr.
The bike meet was sponsored by the City Reliquary, a private storefront museum which is a de-facto center of secret local events.  If you want to see why people like locals-only Williamsburg show up for some of the events sponsored by the Reliquary.