Where it started.
Posted in postcard from new york on Monday, Aug. 6, 2007
My parents met at Roseland in 1961. I’d never seen it before today. Did it really look like this back then? I wonder.
Archive for August, 2007
Awwww….
Posted in etc. on Monday, Aug. 6, 2007
Gothamist: Pet Mug Shots Coming to a Bus Stop Near You.
I kind of have trouble feeling bad for these two, though:
Tables for One: Tres Pasos, in West Harlem
Posted in tables for one: when you vant to/must eat alone on Monday, Aug. 6, 2007
(The scaffolding is because our landlord is replacing the windows in our building, just above and ‘round the corner.)
Tres Pasos appeared one day just downstairs, right across the sidewalk from the subway station. It’s my daily pit stop on my way to a job or the park, and often gives me a reprieve from my kitchen when I can’t stand the heat in there. I can design my own taco for $2.50, with crisp, colorful pico de gallo, the greenest, freshest guacamole, cilantro, and a good dose of jalopeño. They know my habits by heart, and smile as they fill my taco before I bother to speak. The choice of meat is either pork, chicken, or beef. I’ve only tried the pork, which is alternately tender and chunky, or a little more like shredded cochinita. Either way, warm spices like cumin, oregano and cinnamon (and the rest of what goes into achiote) call forth gustatory memories of my Aunt Carmen’s Christmas pork roast, and the portions are as generous as those memories. ¡Me gusta!
I went downstairs just now to buy a couple, intending to photograph them, but I completely forgot, and ate them.
So, to continue with the $6 burritos, which are humungous: I have been unable to bring myself to order one, but I’ve watched the City College kids Hoover them down quite appreciatively. If you sit outside on the bench next door at Vinegar Hill Bakery (review TK), you’ll be sitting next to their like, or maybe just a tired old-timer taking a load off on his way to another bench further down Broadway. I told one such neighbor that I believed the heat of the jalopeños took the edge off the summer sun, and she let out a surprised cry of “Oy!” as if I’d set myself on fire right in front of her. Which was the first and only time I’ve ever impressed anyone in this neighborhood.
Don’t be surprised if they call you “mami.” That means you’re nice.
Here’s their menu.
Tres Pasos
3385 Broadway (at 137th St.)
New York, NY
10031
212-281-2814
Reject du jour: gentrify genteely
Posted in rejected cartoons, TNY on Sunday, Aug. 5, 2007
(Rejected cartoon, Carolita Johnson.)
(The post that was here was simply much to grumpy! It has been removed by the author!)
TNY weekend reader: talk about it…
Posted in TNY weekend reader on Saturday, Aug. 4, 2007
(image: carolita johnson)
Emdashes proves herself to be the master of the a propos header with “Let me take you to Monkeytown!” I’ve been humming the reference song all week. Thought it was out of my system, but now it’s been reactivated.
Speaking of music, why pick on Prince? He was very nice at the Paris “Bains-Douches” (yes, I did dance next to him, but he didn’t recognize me—and yet, he didn’t act too uppity either), surprisingly petite and sexy. I’d gladly pay sixty thousand dollars to have brunch with him. If I was the kind of person that does things like that, I mean.
This week’s TNY was very informative. Everything you always wanted to know about spam, in Michael Specter’s “Damn Spam,” which I’m tempted to send out as link in a huge mass mailing, to see if the tautological effect could make the world explode.
I’d love to meet somebody who thinks Elizabeth Kolbert is a big time downer. I mean, the prospect of the end of the world as we know it need not be so depressing, right? Well, it kind of is. But maybe she’ll start putting more jokes in her pieces, to lighten things up. Did you hear the one about the entire honeybee population disappearing? You know the punch line. “Stung” (or, “everything you never knew about honeybees and never even thought to ask about which then made you feel a sense of impending hopelessness when you got the answers”) is not online, but certainly absorbing enough to make you miss your subway stop, in both directions. Which I did. UPDATE: “Stung” is now online, here.
I haven’t finished “An Unsolved Killing: The murder of an Assistant U.S. Attorney” by Jeffrey Toobin yet, but it’s boding ill. I’m not really sure, but in spite of the writing, which drew me in well enough to find myself reading it on the elliptical, I think I won’t like the end of this story. (UPDATE: I didn’t. Even more depressing and ill-auguring than the bees.)
My favorite line of “So it is in life,” a series of short fictional texts by Daniil Kharms:
I was very curious as to what sort of scholarly works these were. But that remained unknown. Marina said that he had been born with a pen in his hand, but didn’t divulge any more details of his scholarly activities. I began to suss it out and, finally, I learned that he was in the cobbler’s line of work.
I know many people like that.
And cartoon of the week goes to Crawford, of “I have people coming.”
And I’m sure the only reason this story didn’t become a GOAT item, is because it only happened last night: submarine surrenders in Brooklyn.
Postcard from New York: week ending August 3rd, 2007
Posted in postcard from new york on Friday, Aug. 3, 2007
(the back of the ice cream truck on my block).
Need I say more?
