By the Book

One of the craziest things about fast-changing technology is how quickly we take it for granted. For example, with Apple Maps on my phone, I’ve almost forgotten how much of traveling someplace new previously consisted of getting lost along the way. A couple months back, I went apple picking with Jess, an hour or so upstate. And, en route, I missed a turn-off from one country road to another. Armed with GPS, we rerouted, and still made it to the orchard just five minutes past the initially estimated time. But, without it, we easily could have just never found the place. In fact, even after mobile maps first became a thing, smartphones weren’t GPS enabled for a few more years, and it was still possible to get completely lost if you botched a turn. I vividly remember sitting pulled over on the side of a New Jersey highway one afternoon, scrolling endlessly around a zoomed-in map, trying to figure out where I was, so I could drop a pin and navigate the rest of the way to my destination.

Similarly, when I first moved to NYC, finding a restaurant while out and about in the city was inevitably a crap shoot. Dropped into a random neighborhood, and without Foursquare or The Infatuation (my now go-to restaurant reconnaissance pair), I had no way of figuring out what good options existed nearby.  I’d simply look for places that looked crowded, or whose signage seemed somehow appealing, and hope for the best.

But, at least, when I was back in my apartment, and planning meals in advance, I had one trusty resource: the Zagat restaurant guide.  As a budding foodie, I spent endless time pouring over its pages, and (as this was pre Resy and OpenTable) dialing for reservations.  At one point, I even hit on the idea of cycling through the guide alphabetically, eating at a restaurant whose name began with ‘A’ one week, then with ‘B’ the next.

Still, I had pretty much forgotten about Zagat entirely, until I saw, about a year and a half ago, that the aforementioned The Infatuation had just acquired the Zagat brand.  So when I got an email last spring with an invitation to submit reviews for the new 2020 New York City guide, I couldn’t resist.

By way of thanks for my additions, Zagat just sent along a copy of the finished guide:

And I couldn’t be more thrilled.

I won’t be toting it along with me day-to-day, nor honestly even consulting it regularly as my go-to for restaurant planning,

But I’m nonetheless enjoying picking it up from time to time to thumb my way through. It’s still an excellent resource. And it’s a great reminder of how lucky we are to have a web full of resources, any time we want, right there in the palms of our hands.

January 2, 2020

Che Avventura

I love Manhattan, but our Little Italy is touristy garbage. For the real deal, you’ll need to head up to Arthur Ave in the Bronx.

Head to Tino’s Deli, Casa Della Mozzarella, or Mike’s in the Arthur Ave Retail Market for a sandwich that will change your life:

Tino's
Casa Della Mozzarella

Buy handmade pasta at Borgatti’s, the city’s best cannoli at Artuso’s, and fresh bread at Madonia:

Borgatti's
Artuso's
Madonia

Or eat dinner at Zero Otto Nove for truly excellent pizza and red-sauce standbys, paired with always delicious and much more interesting nightly specials:

Zero Otto Nove

It’s a short walk from Fordham station on the Metro North, or a slightly longer (but still totally manageable) one from the Fordham stops on the D or 4 subways.

However you get there, it’s worth the trip. Vi auguro buon appetito!

May 26, 2019

Sunny Day?

Earlier this week, Jess pointed out that, while it was beautiful and sunny outside, it was less so in our apartment, because the windows were so filthy the light was barely filtering through.

Indeed, living above a busy New York avenue, our windows are constantly buffeted by exhaust and city smog. And though I always think the regular rainstorms should be sufficient to wipe that away, they usually just kind of smear the dirt around into impressionistic streaks instead.

Still, like with the proverbial boiled frog, it’s also sort of impossible to track the slow accumulation of window-covering layers as they’re happening. So, until Jess pointed it out, I hadn’t really noticed at all. Whereas, since she did, I’ve pretty much entirely stopped seeing through the windows, and have just been looking at the sooty windows themselves instead.

Fortunately, one of the handymen in the building clean windows. So, next week, he’ll be coming through to wipe them spotless. And, for at least a couple of days, we’ll be able to see NYC in technicolor clarity. After which, the dirt will again start building up, and we’ll be on a long slide back to exactly where we started.

April 17, 2019

Hotel Delmano

While I was still an undergrad at Yale, coming down regularly to NYC for my startup, I was thrilled to discover the then newly-opened Campbell Apartment. When the current Grand Central Station was built in 1913, John Campbell, who chaired the board of the New York Central Railroad, had the space built in as a private office. After his death a few decades later, the apartment was abandoned, eventually repurposed into a little-used storage closet. Then, in 1999, the architects upgrading Grand Central rediscovered the space, with its 1910’s decor, stained glass windows, etc., still intact. With a few million dollars in renovations to return it to its previous opulence, The Campbell Apartment opened as a semi-secret speakeasy. It was, in a word, perfect.

This past year, that version of the bar closed, soon to reopen as a cheesy, DJ-centric nightclub. But a slew of great, semi-secret speakeasies remain – places like Bathtub Gin, Raine’s Law Room, Angel’s Share, Employees Only, and Please Don’t Tell.

But I’m always thrilled to discover another addition to that list. So, this weekend, while out in Williamsburg, I was particularly happy to stumble across Hotel Delmano.

As my go-to restaurant review site The Infatuation put it, “Hotel Delmano is probably the best date spot in Williamsburg. It's dark, cozy, and feels like an ocean liner that sank a long time ago.” Which is precisely right:

It seems like a place where Hemingway would have been thrilled to enjoy five or six daiquiris. Though, in the picture above, we’re instead testing out the Junebug (dill-infused gin, lemon, sugar snap peas, fino sherry, suze) and the San Francisco Handshake (thyme-infused gin, st germain, lemon, fernet branca).

If you’re in Williamsburg, or even if you’re not, consider heading their way to enjoy it yourself.

July 9, 2017

Punchy

Yesterday afternoon, I was walking on 60th Street towards Columbus Circle, holding an umbrella in one hand, my phone in the other.

Halfway down the block, a black guy in his mid-20’s walking past me suddenly and unexpectedly elbowed me in the face.

Hard.

Hard enough that it bent my glasses, that I could feel the beginnings of a bruise under my right eye.

It took me a few moments to regain my bearings. Then I turned around and followed after him.

“Hey, buddy,” I said. “You just hit me in the face.”

“Yeah,” said the guy.

“Why the fuck did you do that?” I asked him.

“Because I felt like it.”

By that point, we were face to face.

“Now walk away,” he said.

I could feel my heart beating, adrenaline pumping through my system. But my mind was calm. Old sense-memory came back to me, from younger days when I competed in semi-pro MMA competitions, would get dragged into bar brawls alongside drunken friends upset because somebody was sitting on ‘their’ stool.

I found myself envisioning the choreography for what would happen next. My hands were already up near my face, palms open and forward – a well-practiced, nonthreatening street fight stance. His arms were by his sides, a stupid move. I imagined thrusting the fingers of my left hand into his eye, swinging a hard right elbow hook into the side of his face, grabbing the back of his head with both hands and driving it down into my right knee. Beneath us was smooth sidewalk, and I knew I could take it to the ground if I needed to, pull a double-leg takedown, get to a mount position, then punch him in the face again and again with his head pinned against the concrete.

For a moment, I almost snapped into it. The first rule of a street fight is to hit first, and hit hard. But with age and wisdom, I realized that because I could, I didn’t need to.

Go ahead, I thought, hands still in a nonchalant guard. Make my day. My lips curled into a smile. I slowed my breathing, stood my ground.

The second rule of a street fight is to never get into one with someone crazier than you. I think it was the smile that did it, a little too unexpectedly anticipatory. Seeming unsure, he took a step or two back, then turned and walked away.

I bent my glasses into shape, used the camera on my iPhone to examine the bruise forming below my right eye. I thought of Sun Tzu: “he will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight. The greatest victory is that which requires no battle.”

June 7, 2017

Down on the Corner

Jess’ online dating profile included the phrase “mostly vegetarian,” so when I met her for dinner on one of our early dates, I pointed out a handful of vegetable-based entrees we might share.

“Actually,” she responded, “maybe the steak?”

Apparently, ‘mostly’ is a relative term.

We’ve since been touring through NYC’s essential burger joints, with stops at places like Burger Joint (my perennial favorite), The Spotted Pig (never quite as good as I’d like it to be), P.J. Clarke’s (good burgers, even better martinis), Bill’s Burger Bar (get the Fat Cat), Salvation Burger (though it’s a Spotted Pig spinoff, I prefer it to the original), Shake Shack (kind of like the band you used to see in a dive bar that then became a Top 50 radio act), Union Square Cafe (fancy!), etc.

Today, with beach-minded Memorial Day Weekend plans thwarted by inclement weather, we instead headed down to the West Village’s iconic Corner Bistro. Because, as New York magazine once put it, “if you call yourself a New Yorker, consider it your civic duty to have a beer and a burger here at least once.”

Admittedly, I’d already responded to that call of duty countless times over the past two decades, in part because Corner Bistro serves beer for under $5 (an NYC rarity), and in even larger part because they serve hamburgers into the wee hours of the night in a neighborhood the younger me often ended up in while totally blitzed.

Jess, however, had never been.  And, though I frequented it more in the past, it had been a few years since I had returned (and a few more since I had while sober.)  It seemed like an excellent adventure.  Away we went.

The restaurant itself is essentially a dive bar, with about a dozen seats around an old mahogany bar in the front, and about a dozen small tables in the brick-walled, tin-roofed back.

The real draw is the food, despite a fairly minimalist menu:

And, honestly, even that’s more info than you need.  You just want the cheeseburger with a side of fries.  Or maybe two cheeseburgers and a side of fries.

Usually, there’s a line out the door.  But today, despite (or perhaps because of?) it being Memorial Day Weekend, we breezed in and were seated immediately.

We ordered beer (still miraculously sub-$5) while we waited, Jess the Brooklyn Lager, and me a McSorley’s Ale (the house brew from NYC’s oldest continuously operated saloon):

 

 

Next arrived our fries, served (like everything at Corner Bistro) on paper plates. They were delightfully crispy, though a bit short on flavor – the texture of a McDonald’s fry (which, even for food snobs, is kind of the platonic ideal of skinny french fry), yet somehow without that much taste.

Nonetheless, as we were coming to lunch after a morning run along the Hudson River bike path, we were starved, and I polished off half my plate before Jess reminded me that I had intended to photograph the meal.  (On the plus side, that’s definitive proof that, though I’m just months outside the 1980 birthdate cutoff, I’m most certainly not a Millennial.)

The burger itself is a half-pound of beef, layered between an onion slice below and dill pickle, tomato, and iceberg lettuce on top, all packed onto a not-terribly-large, possibly-from-a-bag bun:

Or, as seen intact and from above (on Jess’ plate, as the following picture was actually taken after the above one, given that I generally eat like a starving feral animal, and had polished off half of my half-pound burger while she was still genteelly applying mustard):

Regardless, despite the slow start, Jess eventually caught up.

Me:

Her:

At that point, I was still strongly considering a second burger, as I usually had in the past.  But, in my age and wisdom, and with a greater appreciation for the law of diminishing returns,  I decided I probably didn’t need to eat a full pound of hamburger for lunch, especially if my plans for the balance of the day included anything besides lying on the floor, digesting.

So, adventure complete, and Jess’ Corner Bistro NYC civic duty fulfilled.  Though, honestly, I don’t think we’ll be headed back any time soon.  It’s a very good burger, and in decades past it held a much-deserved spot on pretty much any ‘Five Best Burgers in NYC’ list.  But, in today’s culinary world, there are just a whole lot of great hamburgers, and even a whole lot of better hamburgers, in the city.

Final verdict: if you’ve never been, go.  If you have, don’t rush back.

May 27, 2017

Save Christmas

Way back in 1998, the Cacophony Society, an anarchic group of neo-dadaist pranksters (slogan: “you may already be a member!”), brought their annual December event to NYC.

They called it SantaCon, and billed it as a "not-for-profit, nonpolitical, non-religious demented Santa Claus convention.”

I attended that first NYC SantaCon, wherein about two hundred of us in cheap Santa suits walked Fifth Avenue, caroling badly, and handing out candy canes and good cheer to the children (and adults) who were inevitably thrilled to stumble across a giant roving pack of jovial Clauses.

But somewhere in the nearly two decades since, things went badly wrong. What started as cheeky performance art metastasized into, as the Village Voice described it, "a day-long spectacle of public inebriation somewhere between a low-rent Mardi Gras and a drunken fraternity party.”

Or, as Gothamist summarized, “SantaCon steadily devolved from cleverly subversive to barely tolerable to 'time to lock yourself in your apartment for the day.'"

This past weekend, when Jess and I popped out of a subway in Union Square, inadvertently deep in the midst of SantaCon 2016, I couldn’t help but cringe. While I’d been proud to attend that first event, the drunken mayhem going on all around us just made me embarrassed for everyone involved.

What happened? In short, New Jersey and Long Island. Per the LA Times, "some see SantaCon as a way for people who live in the suburbs to come to the city and ruin the weekend.” Indeed, at least by visual stereotype, this year’s SantaCon crowd was about as bridge-and-tunnel as you could possibly get.

In short, this is why we can’t have nice things. Though the weekend experience does lead me to a small proposal for fellow snotty New Yorkers: perhaps, instead of fighting against Trump’s wall, we should just be lobbying him to build one a little closer to home.

December 12, 2016

15

It’s hard to believe it’s been 15 years since 9/11. This morning, I went to a memorial service with Jessie, and looked hard at the pictures there of first responders who died when the towers collapsed. I tried to imagine their families, the lives and dreams that were taken away from each of them. I thought about what the city was like that day, and what it was like in the weeks and months and years that followed.

Five years ago, I wrote a piece here reflecting on the tenth anniversary of 9/11; I’m posting it again today. Never forget.

###

On September 11, 2001, I came into my office early, to follow the market, to watch the tech bubble slowly implode on the monitors in our bullpen that perpetually played CNBC and CNNfn.

I can picture our small company that morning, gathered in twos and threes around those monitors, as video played and replayed the first plane crashing into the North Tower.

We were still gathered around those monitors when the second plane hit, as we slowly realized that neither strike had been a mistake.

We were still gathered around those monitors, an hour later, when the South Tower collapsed.

##

Shortly after the second plane hit, I called my parents’ house in California. My father picked up. “I’m okay,” I told him. “I just called to let you know I’m okay.”

“That’s great,” my father said, still asleep, not understanding why I was calling. “I’m okay, too,” he said, before hanging up.

##

We were evacuated from the office before the second tower came down. We were a half block from Grand Central Station, and police feared an attack on that similarly iconic target.

Still, after I made it downstairs, I stood on the street corner by our office for at least fifteen minutes, looking downtown, watching smoke billow. Gusts of wind brought an acrid smell, a fine coating of ash.

I worked the game theory in my head: my apartment, nearby, was across the street from the United Nations, clearly unsafe. Some of my office-mates were headed to an evacuation center the city had set up at a West Side high school. But any terrorist group sophisticated enough to mastermind this complex an attack would have also known where large groups of evacuees would be directed by city plan, where they would gather as sitting ducks.

I stayed away from my home and from the evacuation centers. I stayed away from crowds, from city landmarks. I headed west, then north. I stayed away from the tall buildings of Midtown, from the crowds of Times Square, from picturesque Columbus Circle and Central Park.

By quiet side streets, I headed up to Harlem. There, I wandered, dazed, from one block to the next, listening to the news with groups gathered around radios on old buildings’ front stoops.

##

Late in the evening, I headed back towards my apartment, showing my ID to dozens of policemen as I inched closer to the UN.

Along the way, I reached my parents again briefly. Now, understanding, they were effusive in their relief.

Once home, I fell asleep nearly before my head hit my pillow. I slept badly, fitfully. And briefly: we were evacuated from the building early the next morning.

I headed to work, but after an hour, we were evacuated from there, too.

For days in a row, I was evacuated from one, and then the other. Unsure of what to do, I wandered the streets, still dazed. I considered heading out to relatives in New Jersey or on Long Island, but transportation was a mess. Besides, though I had only been here for three months, I already knew that New York was my city. I couldn’t simply leave it behind.

##

Months later, I was asked to contribute photos for a gallery showing of young New York photographers reflecting on the city in the wake of 9/11.

I thought about that week wandering, about how little I remembered of it. Where had I gone all day? What had I thought about?

I made two images for the show.

##

I visited my brother, a freshman at the University of Denver.

A woman who checked my ID there saw I was from New York and asked if I had been in the city during the attacks. I had, I told her.

“Even if we weren’t there, all of us were New Yorkers that day,” she said.

##

On the first anniversary of 9/11, I headed to the roof with my trumpet and played Taps facing downtown. I read the Mourner’s Kaddish, a Jewish prayer of remembrance.

I did that each year, until the fifth anniversary.

On the sixth, I didn’t.

##

In the wake of 9/11, we came together in a way that still awes me: with heroism, generosity, and community. We love our country. And, even if we don’t always show it, we love each other.

Yet much of what has come after 9/11, of what has been done in its name, has troubled me deeply: from the security theater of the TSA and the Orwellian Department of Homeland Security, to the serious violation of citizens’ civil rights by programs like the CIA’s warrantless wiretapping and the even more serious violation of others’ human rights at Guantanamo and through programs like extraordinary rendition.

We’ve slid slowly towards a security state, yet we remain ultimately insecure. We’ve run afoul of framer Benjamin Franklin’s cutting remark: that “they who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

We’re now permanently at war. We piss away lives and hundreds of billions of dollars yearly, in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, and elsewhere. We have no clear objectives there. We have no clear exit criteria.

Like Britain during the Boer War a century before, we’ve spread ourselves too thin, have begun to underfund crucial long-term investments at home, like education, infrastructure, and scientific research, in favor of fleeting yet ever-expanding pursuits abroad.

Historians often argue it was the Boer War that ultimately ended the British Empire; I wonder if, a hundred years from now, historians will reflect similarly on our War on Terror.

##

A few weeks ago, Air Force pilot Chris Pace contacted me about a 9/11 fundraiser bike/run he was doing to benefit the Disposable Heroes Project, a nonprofit that supports wounded veterans from Afghanistan and Iraq, where he had done four tours of duty.

His plan was simple, albeit vaguely insane: leave Arlington Cemetery by bike on the evening of Friday, September 9th, bike 150 miles, then dismount in New Jersey and run 100 miles, all without stopping to eat or sleep, to arrive in New York City on the morning of September 11th.

He had been training for this simply by doing CrossFit workouts. So, he wanted to know, would it be okay if he used my gym, CrossFit NYC, as the endpoint of his run?

Obviously, I said yes. But I also thought about the patriotism and generosity and welcoming sense of community, that feeling of being in it together, that had made me proudest in the wake of September 11th.

So, this morning, I woke up at 4:30am, and met Chris (and his support crew) as he crossed the Verrazano Bridge into Brooklyn, to welcome him to New York, and to show him our support, by running with him for the final 12 miles.

##

After we made it to the gym, after we hooked Chris into an IV to rehydrate him, then packed him into a car to his hotel so that he and his crew could get some much-needed sleep, I hailed a cab home.

The driver asked what I had done that morning, so I told him. I told him about Chris’ 250 mile trip, about my joining him for the last New York stretch.

“Your friend,” said the driver admiringly. “He is very strong.”

Yes, I agreed.

“Not just body strong,” said the driver. “Strong in heart.”

The driver told me he was from Mauritania. And that, back there, ten years ago, his brother had similarly biked a 150 mile round trip, to and back from the capital. But there, he said, nobody had been proud; instead, they had been angry.

“We thought it was embarrassment!” he laughed. “We say, who bike 150 miles? Only poor people who have no car!”

But now, this driver told me, he thought about that differently. He thought about a lot differently. For ten years in the US, he had been able to consider his country from a distance. And he’d been able to consider this one with an outsider’s eye. He told me that each had good and bad. And that, for those ten years, he had thought carefully about where there was more bad, where there was more good. And, earlier this year, he had become a citizen of the United States.

September 11, 2016