I feel good, but not great, about my progress to date. Read the rest of this entry »
Mmm, a chocolate factory…
Our strongest sensory memories are attached not to vision but to smell. Yes really! Pass someone who looks like your significant other and you think, “they look like my gf/bf.” Pass someone who wears their cologne or perfume, and your nervous system has you feeling like you just bit into a popsicle on a hot day.
One of my favorite things about New York is how in the course of walking one block, aromas leaking out of stores and restaurants can elicit such distinctive and disparate experiences from my past. I can go from the fruit-shaped glycerin soap in my grandparents’ guest bathroom when I was 8 to the Beijing street food vendors I encountered two years ago faster than it ever took me to wash sidewalk chalk off my young hands or down a skewered eel, both activities I relished at the time, and genuinely miss. And on the same walk, I’m registering new scents that I’ll recall another 10 or 20 years from now. I can only hope the memories prove as fond.
Cold season be darned, these are a few of my picks for scents worth remembering.
SWEET
Billy’s Bakery
9th Ave between 21st and 22nd in Chelsea, and a Tribeca location I haven’t yet visited
What you’ll see: The Chelsea location exudes so much charm–whites and pastels and rows of cupcakes and a smiling staff.
What you’ll smell: I’ve been to all the popular bakeries. Billy’s cupcakes are my favorite by a lot, and Billy’s bakery has the best aroma too. There is ALMOST –and I can’t believe I’m actually going to suggest this in writing for fear my olfactory “palate” will come under question– an essence of corn or cornmeal.
When to go: Check their hours here.
Koppers Chocolate Factory
Clarkson between Hudson and Greenwich, West Village
What you’ll see: A loading dock in a tall brick building with a teeny tiny “Koppers” placard, and through a singular window at the street level, a narrow room with a candy-striped wall, nothing in it. I’ve passed it at least once a day for about two months, and I’ve only once seen a person stand in the candy-striped room. Not an Oompa Loompa, but quite honestly, it would not have completely surprised me.
What you’ll smell: Mint chocolate, white chocolate, sugar and cream, aromas you might not even know. Their candies include dark chocolate covered pink peppercorns and chocolate covered goji berries.
When to go: When you’re feeling lucky–it’s unpredictable. Sometimes it just smells like New York.
SAVORY
Joe Doe
East 1st Street between 1st and 2nd Aves, NoHo technically
What you’ll see: A small restaurant with specials written on an oversize paper roll, jars of spices and unfamiliar liquor bottles behind the bar, family photos, seasonal kitsch, people who look very happy about what they’re eating.
What you’ll smell: The sweet, briny aroma of pork fat. Chef Joe Doe serves (bless his heart!) grass-fed beef, free range chicken, rabbit, fish, duck. And he makes use of the whole animal, which I have so much respect for. But the unctuous smell of pork lingers, maybe from the fried bologna I like to order from the bar snack menu…
When to go: I like the beginning of service so I can definitely get a seat, though any wait would be well worthwhile.
Bonus: Chef Joe Dobias just won Chopped on Food Network!
East side of Lexington, between 28th and 29th
What you’ll see: This area between Murray Hill and Gramercy is often affectionately referred to as “Curry Hill” for the many south and southeast Asian restaurants there. Curry in a Hurry and Curry Express bookend the strip, and between them are several sundries and dry goods stores that sell… spices. I like Kalustyan’s and Spice World.
What you’ll smell: Spices. Raw cumin, coriander, cinnamon, turmeric, dried mango, things I’ve never heard of. It’s kind of a bitter smell–these spices really open up when they’re cooked. I think there’s a somewhat rubbery smell to packaged foods that aren’t from here, too. Which I happen to like.
When to go: Sunday afternoons, so you can hear the old French accordion music spilling out of Chez Le Chef.
Brooklyn Brewery
North 11th and Wythe Ave in Williamsburg, Brooklyn
What you’ll see: a seemingly empty street with seemingly empty brick warehouses.
What you’ll smell: Hops. Wet, fermenting hops. I’ve been to Guinness, Miller, Anheuser-Busch, and Shiner, and a slew of small brewery/restaurants with copper vats of home-brews proudly lined up behind glass separating the dining rooms and production areas, and this smell is so distinctive. Take a raw cereal and make it dirty, nutty, creamy, and mildewy, kind of like after a long rain.
When to go: On Friday evenings or Saturdays, so you can go in the tasting room and find out how the hops smell after their top-secret malts are added.
Basil Twist’s Ballerina from Petrushka
I am a “festival person.”
Already I have to add an asterisk to that and exclude some festivals. Read the rest of this entry »
All I knew was the Brooklyn subway stop where I needed to be at 2pm today. The sky was overcast, and it was raining just enough to need an umbrella as I made my way to the F train. I was ready for anything, I hoped. Almost anything, maybe. Was I? High-fiving strangers and staging an art installation in a subway station I would absolutely be up for, but could I really take off an article of clothing or two to pose as a model in an Abercrombie store or forego pants on the subway, in a winter snowstorm?
Let’s be honest: pretty much everything seems like a good idea to me at the time, as is blatantly obvious in this blog, so yeah, I was probably ready for anything.
To my surprise and delight, shortly after 2pm, a huge –huge– crowd of us were ushered into a fashionably decorated warehouse and given its brief history; originally a belt factory, built in the 1800s, the building was being converted into a gallery space. And, interestingly enough, that building was where the Invisible Dog toy was invented and manufactured for years. As many as 2,000 Invisible Dogs would be distributed to us to walk around Park Slope and Red Hook as we pleased for two hours. The trick was, of course, to stay in character, never to let on to people that we knew our dogs were imaginary.
I found inspiration for Norman the Norwich in, um, Norman, my parents’ Norwich terrier, and I had the best time with a writer friend walking him, and his spaniel Spike, around town. My Norman marked almost every fire hydrant and parking meter on Court Street, and if I’d had plastic baggies, I would have cleaned up after him, too. I was even surprised to find myself doing those annoying puppy-talk voices. Some things just didn’t work; narrating that your dog is checking out someone else’s dog’s tush and apologizing for it is pretty awkward.
I was tickled to read accounts of how some other participants acted. One reported the police threatened to ticket her for not cleaning up after her Pomeranian, but let her off with a warning.
Participants collectively found that strangers were excited, frustrated, curious, appalled, and everything in between, and our favorite run-ins were with people who were eager to play along.
The toughest in a group of three kitchen workers taking a smoke break looked leery as I approached, then all of a sudden acted as though Norman had jumped up to say hello to him, and he picked him up! I could barely keep up with the leash and assured him Norman was very friendly and loved the attention he was getting. Similarly, a gruff cafe owner stood with his arms folded at his door and told passerbys, “No dogs allowed!” –then broke into a toothy grin every time.
Children were fantastic, and so were their parents. One mom approached me with her 4 or 5 year-old son and told him it was okay to pet my dog, he wouldn’t bite. “See? He’s friendly!” she said, taking the words right out of my mouth. A mom pulled up to a stop light in her minivan with kids in the back and rolled her window down to ask where we got our dogs. My friend answered of Spike, “I rescued him from a shelter!” Hilarious.
I was actually kind of disappointed to return Norman to nonexistence at the end of the afternoon. Friends have heard me say repeatedly that as soon as my lifestyle allows for it, and reality TV production does not allow for it, I’m rescuing a dog. My lifestyle did allow for a couple of hours with an invisible dog, though, and today, it was just the trick.
View Agent Nicholson’s amazing photos from the day
Watch Improv Everywhere’s videos and read about their missions
Follow ImprovEvery on Twitter
I don’t normally keep track of this sort of thing, but New York City and I celebrated our six month anniversary on Friday.
Read the rest of this entry »
Apparently, a 3rd Avenue restaurant is serving up a taste of Malay goodness. I think it’s fair to say we’re an acquired taste. Brace yourself…
Dynamite some rats? Not exactly. Take in some contemporary art? Exactly. And yes, I believe that would be the work of Banksy.
Photo credit: Chaidizai
On a rainy day in June –pick one, it rained every day– there came a point when I asked myself how hard it would be to make a spicy margarita at home. I believe that point came when I was going through receipts, balancing my budget, and realizing stock in General Motors was a better investment than where my money had been going.
This time last year, I began to write up my notes from my May-June trip to the Dalmatian Coast with my mom — I posted what I had so far, but it was an incomplete account of the adventures we had, which included but weren’t limited to a giant squid, a rescue plan for a capsized boat, inappropriate flirting, supermodels, secret cliff-top bars, wild animals hunting at night, and bottomless pits of despair.* Today, I still have my notebook, the photos, and Lonely Planet as my guide, and my memories are mostly intact, if not more humorous and condensed (which is how these “blog” things are supposed to be, right?). This may come as a shock to you, but this actually started out as a travel blog. So enjoy.
Click-through for Opatija, Plitvice Lakes, Trogir, Split, Korcula, and Dubrovnik, Croatia, and Kotor, Montenegro. Plitvice and Korcula are funnier than the other ones.
