Fall of a once-proud piece of outdoor advertising

NEW YORK, New York - The large outdoor advertising at Madison Square Garden used to be elite advertising space. Usually, high-powered stuff like the latest Harrison Ford movie or the T-Mobile G1 would be on display in these slots.

Now? This is not a Photoshop. Bob's Discount Furniture is peddling their wares in this space. What the hell? We've gone from summer blockbuster films to Bob's Discount Furniture informing us of their new Poughkeepsie location?

A brief tour of Brooklyn espresso joints

NEW YORK, New York - I decided to spend my Sunday morning having a few espressos in Brooklyn. I avoided the places I have visited repeatedly in the past (Gimme Coffee! and Gorilla) in favor of some first-time visits.

My first visit was to a month-old spot featuring Stumptown beans in Cobble Hill. The place may be called Cafe Pedlar or Coffee Pedlar - as you can see in the photo, there's no identification on the outside of the building, no sandwich board, nothing. Some sources say "Peddlar" but I did see it spelled with one "D" inside.

Judging from internet postings this charming-turned-hip-turned-gentrified 'hood needed good espresso, so good for them. They need a couple more tables so I could not photograph the espresso, but it was better than adequate. They use a La Marzocco machine - come on, that's a 2nd string machine nowadays.

I then decided to lose my virginity on a few matters - making my first visit to the Greenpoint neighborhood and riding the G train. The G is the one line that does not enter Manhattan, and when I've spotted it in the past it had like 4 cars instead of 10, and nobody was on it, so I was worried. I figured that G might stand for "gangsta" and that my life might be on the line.

Similarly, I had barely heard of Greenpoint and didn't know if it was a decent 'hood or a shooting gallery. Turns out, it's just another bland Brooklyn far outpost - similar to Red Hook but without an Ikea to create buzz. It's also a Polish enclave - they had Polish bakeries, Polish restaurants, even a Polish credit union!

My espresso hit in Greenpoint was Café Grumpy. They offer products from a variety of roasters and use a Synesso machine. They offered the regular espresso and a "guest" espresso (pile on a few more and they'll be up to the four different espressos offered at Caffé del Doge in Palo Alto).

I went with a regular espresso and it was the best one of the day. Nice and short, dark crema, no bitterness, no aftertaste. Grumpy has a Chelsea location so perhaps I'll incorporate it into my Manhattan trips going forward.



Also of note at Grumpy is the bathroom - they have dozens of Polaroids of people on the walls, a few of which have captions and a few of which have cryptic numbers. There may be some sort of logic to it but I wasn't in the mood to decipher anything.



From Grumpy I strolled in the rain towards Williamsburg. (I seem to be the only person in New York with rain hat and slicker). I stopped for breakfast at Mugs Alehouse on the way, eggs Benedict and an Anchor Steam beer (which the waitress kept referring to as "Anchor Steamer" beer). The bar, of course, had a television with a distorted picture.

I made my way down Bedford Avenue, the hip heart of Williamsburg, passing a Japanese-Malay fusion restaurant and similar atrocities, before arriving at Oslo Coffee Company on Roebling St. I didn't recognize their coffee beans but they did have a Synesso machine.



The demitasse was from Caffé Vita, and it was not the only sign of Seattle in the room; the sink had a bunch of stickers from Seattle affixed. Vita, Bauhaus, Top Pot, a few Ballard stickers, even some less-prominent joints like Herkimer and Tougo were represented.

Seattle beans, Seattle stickers, rain, Seattle espresso machines - I decided to call it a day.

Unsolicited financial advice from New York burger joint

SEATTLE, Washington - I was at Island Burgers & Shakes in Hell's Kitchen last week. If I am not mistaken, they did not used to take credit cards. In a menu insert, they noted that they were now accepting credit card payments, albeit with a transaction fee added to the bill (a perfectly reasonable thing to do).

However, the insert then goes on to tell you that you should not pay with a credit card, even if you don't mind the transaction fee, because "financial experts" advise you not to do so, and better not to add to the "fortunes" of the credit card companies.

I'll make my own decisions on these things, thanks. And Stand has better milkshakes, but I do appreciate the burger variety at Island Burgers & Shakes.

Hopefully not the first Seattle beer appearance in NYC

NEW YORK, New York - I smuggled some beers from Seattle's Baron Brewing to the East Coast to give away as gifts.

I better give them as gifts, because I suspect it'd be illegal to drink them in Mike Bloomberg's NYC - there's no calorie count on the label. Mayor Mike would probably make these beers illegal because there's no warning about the dangers of smoking on them.

Toiletries with an attitude

SEATTLE, Washington - All the toiletries at my hotel in New York last week used the imperative form, which sometimes led to contradictory instructions:

Hayden Planetarium at night

NEW YORK CITY, New York - just across from my hotel this week

The Gideon Bible isn't good enough any more?

NEW YORK CITY, New York - My hotel room in New York came with two books on the end table - an autobiography by British television personality Richard Hammond and an issue of Alaska Quarterly Review from 1998.

Both books still have the price tag on them.

Harrison Ford's Billboard of Dorian Gray at Madison Square Garden

NEW YORK, New York - To whom have you sold your soul, Mr Ford?

The sensual pleasure of crackling AM radio

NEW YORK, New York - While I'm on the topic of sensuality: I happen to be in New York City this week just as the baseball season has ended and the Mets have narrowly missed the playoffs for the second straight year. I've been listening to the tragicomic catharsis of the Mets fans on WFAN's evening call-in shows.

I'm not getting great reception in the hotel so the signal has a bit of a crackle to it, and I like it this way. I grew up with the buzz of mediocre AM signals and for me it's part of the experience.

WFAN now streams their programming and I do listen when there's big sports news, such as the trade for Brett Favre ("I wuz so excited... I heard the news just after midnight, right away I called my muddah...."), but it's not the same. Listening to Ed in Kew Gardens or Jerry in Bay Ridge vent about the Mets at 1am sounds so much more right on AM radio than on a 16 Kbps stream.

Perhaps I should work on a media player that will add some static to streaming radio.

Giada says Mario Batali is not "romantic or sensual"

SEATTLE, Washington - Apparently Giada de Laurentiis thinks she's the only person who brings sensuality into the kitchen. In an upcoming interview in the New York Post Sunday magazine, Giada takes a crack at the pride of Seattle, Mario Batali:

I mean, I love Lidia [Bastianich], but [she’s] kind of boring. And Mario Batali [I] love to death... but he’s not romantic or sensual. Those are the things I bring to the table.

Batali is very sensual. In fact, virtually every driven successful chef has a good dose of sensuality to them.

I would suggest Giada head over to Otto and try the Fennel & Bottarga pizza and re-evaluate her comments.

IKEA - transforming more than just Renton

NEW YORK, New York - It was only a few short months ago that I blasted Red Hook, Brooklyn as being an isolated, dumpy neighborhood. Now, not only is it getting some West Coast coffee roasting love from Stumptown, but I can't talk to anyone at the office for five minutes without them mentioning the new Ikea in Red Hook.

It's not just that people want to buy Ikea stuff, but that Ikea has instantly made Red Hook un-isolated with a good, old-fashioned, almost libertarian private suite of transportation options:

Transportation options include free shuttles every 15 minutes from three Brooklyn subway stations — the Smith and Ninth stop on the F and G line, the Fourth and Ninth stop on the R, and Borough Hall — between 10 a.m. and 10 p.m. daily... and a free water taxi from Pier 11 in Lower Manhattan, running every 40 minutes daily from 10 a.m. to 8:20 p.m.

It's good to see private transportation options like this (and, as another example, the private bus service Google operates for employees in the Bay Area) popping up.

Seattle invades New York the only way it can - coffee beans

NEW YORK, New York - When I moved to New York three years ago, I was stunned at how hard it was to find A-list espresso; I assumed everything about urban life in New York was by definition better than urban life anywhere else. Greenwich Village coffee houses may have hosted groundbreaking intellectual conversation 40 or 50 years ago, but all they have now is poseurs and bad espresso.

Help is on the way from Seattle; the New York Times is reporting on the blossoming New York espresso roasting scene, including the migration to Brooklyn of Stumptown Coffee Roasters owner Duane Sorenson.

The article has the now-obligatory reference to roasting locally to leave a "less intrusive footprint."

One California cafe owner seems to have taken a swipe at the alleged "politics" of the coffee scene in other places, presumably Seattle?

Andrew Barnett, who owns Ecco Caffè in Sonoma County, California, was in New York recently, scouting real estate for a roastery and cafe he hopes to open in the next 12 months.

“This is a great place to run a small roastery,” he said. “I feel like there is a very strong barista community, without the politics and divisions of other places.”

Final insult as Mariners leave New York

NEW YORK, New York - Looks like Newsday was sufficiently bitter about the Mariners winning two games against the Mets that they referred to the Mariners as the "Pirates" in the writeup of Wednesday's game.

Pirates and Mariners both sail the seas but that's where the similarities end.

Nannytastic New York menu labeling rules - even at the ballpark

NEW YORK, New York - New York's pathetic rules regarding "chain" restaurants being required to list calorie counts on their menus have taken effect, and you can't even get a sausage & peppers sandwich at the ballpark without being confronted with calorie counts.

I picked the wrong night to go to Shea Stadium

NEW YORK, New York - I'm not much inclined to go to baseball games but seeing that Your Seattle Mariners won their first two games against the Mets, and listening to the subsequent anguish on New York sports talk radio afterwards, I decided to go to the last game of the series. I was prepared to gloat about another Mariners victory - not like a loud sports-fan idiot, but silent gloating, a silent sense of conquest.

This is the last season for Shea Stadium, which was another reason to visit. (The replacement for Shea is in the background below.)

Things did not work out, as the Mariners were bludgeoned and the Mets fans (many in my section wearing yarmulkes, not something you see much at Safeco) were in their full belligerent glory.

I left in the third inning, just as Miguel Batista was leaving, out of a sense of solidarity.

George Washington probably didn't see Seattle coming

NEW YORK, New York - This statue of George Washington (thankfully not sporting his Masonic apron and spatula) is at the Federal Hall National Memorial in lower Manhattan, the location of the original capitol of the United States.

Washington's first inauguration was in 1789, when Seattle was not even a twinkle in anyone's eye - in fact what is now Washington was still in the possession of Spain per a papal bull issued in 1493. Sixty-one years after Washington's inauguration, in 1851, the Denny party landed on Alki, and it was more than a decade after that that the first Mercer Maids arrived, allowing the Denny party to reproduce.

The Loser Express a.k.a. Staten Island Ferry

NEW YORK, New York - There's a way to suffer the costs of living in New York City (e.g. the ~4% city income tax) without getting any of the benefits - live on Staten Island. This is the ferry leaving Manhattan in the morning, so it's empty. In the afternoon, it's full of loser commuters that live on Staten Island.

Some Midtown pics

NEW YORK, New York - Some pics from the 46th floor workout room of my hotel, midtown Manhattan. The building with the radio tower is the Condé Nast Building.

Salty Caramel is the new Mango

SEATTLE, Washington - First it was the Sweet and Salty cake in Brooklyn...

then The Stranger started going gaga over a Salty Caramel treat at Fran's (in which they also mention a Salted Caramel ice cream at Molly Moon's)....

then last week I was eating at Mario Batali's Otto in New York City and my beloved Ricotta gelato was pulled from the menu, replaced with a Salty Caramel gelato offering...

and tonight, while making my semiweekly raid on a supermarket ice cream freezer, I see a new Häagen-Dazs flavor piled high with caramel, with a touch of French sea salt for good measure. The Häagen-Dazs website recommends shoveling the ice cream onto oyster shells.

Mara kept shoveling vodka down my throat

SEATTLE, Washington - One of my dinners in NYC last week was at Mara's Homemade, a mom-n-pop Cajun place in the East Village that I had been to a couple times when I lived in the city. I should be angry at Mara - I've asked to get off the email list a couple times since moving away, without success - but I was in the mood for fish.

I didn't order drinks on my previous visits, but this time I ordered a Cajun Martini (just vodka and Tabasco, it seems.) Mara brings out the glass and the shaker, pours the drink, and then tells me to tilt my head back. I get a shot poured right down my gullet. I swallow and she says there's more. I tilt back and take a second one. She says to tilt back again - I said why not just get bigger glasses? She said "he's a generous man." Hopefully she meant her husband David, mixing the drinks. So I took a third shot, finally emptying the shaker. I was lit up real good before even touching my martini.

Two young ladies at the next table also ordered drinks (one saw me getting served) and they each only got one shot down their throat. I don't know if David puts extra in the shaker for men or if it was just luck.