December 2007 Archives
For someone who's naturally shy, it's challenging. But it's also the only way to make New York feel more like home.
There are plenty of things about this city that are different enough from L.A. to make me wish I hadn't left: the cutthroat competition, the bustle, the noise, the traffic, the public transportation that does away with the need for a car.
It's hard to make friends, but on the upside, it's exceedingly easy to meet people. So long as your good sense and sense of curiosity and adventure are intact, it's possible to have a whole series of random experiences and new discoveries. And perhaps that has been the best part of being here.
From accidentally catching sight of magnificent architectural details on a miserably humid day to incidentally wandering into warm, tiny bars during a frigid evening, this year has been one of little moments of discovery that have made me smile during hard times and made the foreign feel familiar.
The most surprising thing is the number of people I've chanced to meet because I dared to rouse myself from the comfort of home and see who else might be out there just, you know, taking things in.
About 1,000 geeks like me gathered at the historic New Yorker Hotel for a free "unconference" on podcasting. Among the attendees were the smart, the arty, the desperate and the Web famous, and all of them would answer any questions put their way.
Designer Toni Hacker and partner Ben Harnett were very gracious during the opening of their shop in Green Point, Brooklyn. (Check out their winter sale going on 'til Jan. 14.)
In a bar, where so many New Yorkers seem to be when they're not working, I met my first — and so far only — honest to goodness modelizer.
When a dear friend in L.A. invited me to the San Francisco Bay to Breakers run, I figured, why the heck not, and met the harried but fun-loving parents of a vivacious little girl.
The author Calvin Trillin was a bit blank during the reading of his paean to his beloved wife, Alice, at the Strand Bookstore, which was somewhat unexpected.
A businessman, a guitarist and I talked shop while sharing a cab during a strike. Afterward, a friend and I marveled at the views and laughed at the exhibitionist bathrooms in the so hip it's pretentious Hotel on Rivington.
A transplant from Europe talked about how he got here, and where he hoped to go.
Marvelous cheeses were mine for the eating, served up by a friendly staff at a restaurant whose featured dish still causes embarrassed giggling.
After watching a college basketball game with a group of strangers, the actuary I sat next to went Dutch with me at a Moroccan restaurant, leading to an interesting discussion about insurance, unions and the ways in which universities change.
To close out the year, a man I met during an errand took me to the neighborhood Cuban-Mexican joint, where he introduced me to chili-powder and parmesan cheese-covered grilled corn and a hyperspicy masa dish called "tlacoyo de Tres Marias."
Though there's so much of the city that's still unknown to me, I've been lucky to have been around for a lot. And how did any of this start? With a question that led to conversation and a willingness to try new things. Terry Gross had it right.
Play "Mannasound New Year's Break Mix"
from Lushlife Project
Meanwhile, the New York Times has run a column about doing a year-end review with a pretty useful method that's sort of an offline exercise in creating tag clouds.
The columnist, Michael Melcher, makes a good point about why it's useful to take the "step back and assess" approach:
Goals are more meaningful when they result from your taking stock of where you actually are, which requires you to think about how your life has developed over the past year.
The other point is resolutions often get left by the wayside. But concrete, recorded goals are usually the ones we reach.
For those thinking about New Year's resolutions when that niggling feeling that you know they'll be abandoned, try Melcher's method.
Missing Persons got it wrong in the '80s, and it hasn't gotten much better since.
My colleague Eric Hiss, a native Angeleno, set out to show people that L.A. is indeed walkable, with his 50-card pack of "City Walks: Los Angeles" released by Chronicle Books earlier this year. (Amazon|BN|Powell's)
On Nov. 28 (this Wednesday), Eric will be at Traveler's Bookcase in L.A. for a book (deck?) signing. Stop by, say hi and celebrate strolls through the City of Angels.
If you dig the idea, join him for a walk through Little India on Dec. 16. For the $25 fee you'll get a feel for the neighborhood, have a little lunch at a local restaurant, and hear from one of the coolest writers I know.
Update: If you can't make the book signing but want to do the tour, call Traveler's Bookcase at 323.655.0575 and reserve your spot.
I've officially celebrated my one-year anniversary in New York. It's hard to believe 'cause the time has gone by so fast.
Like every year, I've been doing the year-end assessment, figuring out where I've been and thinking about how I'd like next year to go.
New York has been a lot of things so far: the land of possibilities, if you can suss them out and keep up the energy to explore them all; the striver imagining and inventing new and cool in a place where old is the order of the day; the rich relation who dares you not to follow along and go broke in the process, not that that's her problem; the hot guy at the bar who gives you the come-on only to brush you off and leave with someone prettier, readier, richer or better connected.
It has not been easy to make a home here, but living is all about trying to make the most of what you've got right now. I still miss the people and places I left behind.
Luckily, the people still talk to me regularly, despite their earlier admonishments that only the insane and the investment bankers go to New York, and the places have not slid into the ocean or succumbed to a wrecking ball.
I've been fortunate enough to return and be reminded that friendship and all that goes with it transcends place so long as the gardeners constantly tend it.
But I've also noticed that what New Yorkers have told me is right: It takes at least a year before a newcomer can feel like they can stake a claim to the city.
So far, my experiences have been mostly about realizing New York's buildings are different but its shops are all the same: even the so-called center of the universe isn't immune to the homogenization of commercial culture.
What has been unique are the restaurants, though there's even a sameness to the cuisine, dominated by Italian and French, or falafel and takeout.
Still, as I was sitting outside on a 30-degree, gray afternoon by the locally hailed Shake Shack, it occurred to me that the city's beginning to feel less alien, even if I still sound like a little like I'm from SoCal (or a Canada, as a colleague guessed).
So this is it, I thought, munching my juicy Shack burger, trying to find my way past a thick melted marshmallow to rich hot chocolate, and watching a crane hoist I-beams up yet another skyscraper while office workers dodged last-minute shoppers and tourists on holiday.
This is my Manhattan.
(The timing was serendipitous: New York magazine's cover feature this week is Reasons to Love New York.)
It makes me want to curl up under the covers and hibernate until spring, but I didn't come all the way across the country to hide in my bed.
In an act of fashion disobedience, I went out in my non-black down coat (locals call them sleeping bag coats cause that's what they look like) and tromped around the city, daring the sidewalks to wipe me out with their near-invisible sheets of ice.
The newest Apple store opened on the border between Chelsea and the Meatpacking district. I went to go see. The building still had that new structure smell. But while more spacious than other Apple stores, the products were all the same. What is new, however, is the Pro Lab series of hands-on photo, video and audio workshops that start in January. As far as I could tell, they were all booked up.
Across the street are a row of restaurants including the quaintly named Old Homestead. I've passed by it several times. On this rainy, cold evening, I finally ventured in, not knowing what to expect.
My first mistake was walking in alone. My second was not dressing up. But only the clientele stared and sniffed. The servers, if they took notice, didn't let on. Instead, they handed me the wine list and the menu and gave me some time to settle in.
Old Homestead may be a countrified name, but it's a big-city steakhouse with big-city prices. Like Lawry's in Beverly Hills, you order by the dish: appetizer, salad, entree, sides are separate. Unlike Lawry's, the atmosphere is intimate — not-too-bright lighting illuminates hand-tinted photos of old New York hanging on dark wood walls topped by a whitewashed, hand-pressed tin ceiling.
Brian, the first of a flurry of servers, tells me the restaurant is in what once was a trading post, back in the day when only river and shore existed west of 8th Avenue. The restaurant itself has only changed hands once since it opened in the 1800s, lost by the original family during the Great Depression.
The French onion soup was so-so, but it's cold out and the soup is hot. I order the smallest steak on the menu — a 10-ounce filet mignon that takes a while to come out of the kitchen. No matter: The baseball-sized lump arrives precariously perched on a tuna can-sized potato cake and it's delicious.
Feeling ambitious I order the cheesecake.
Egad.
I look at the server. "You guys don't kid around do you?" I joke.
He shakes his head, grins. "This isn't a California spa. We're a New York steak house. We serve New York portions."
I nod, push my eyes back into my head and take a few bites before relenting. Looks like I'm having dairy for breakfast tomorrow.
NYT restaurant critic Frank Bruni has a nice piece defending the entree as non-boring food.
The trend at new restaurants tends toward the miniature and microscopic, the kind of thing that make you think you just add water to get a full-sized meal.
The goal is for the diner to order a whole assortment of these little bites, all the more to delight the senses with the new. But Bruni protests:
A too-long sequence or too-broad collection of too-small plates is like being tickled and tickled and never flat-out hugged. It keeps you alert and leaves you impressed, but it doesn’t always leave you sated. It doesn’t necessarily leave you feeling fed.
How perfect a summation, especially since we probably remember what it's like to get into a tickle fight with someone and be hugged afterward. At least I hope we do.
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The menu offered the usual sushi dishes, but also had fried chicken on the menu. Feeling somewhat nostalgic for home, I was very excited about finding a restaurant that offered Japanese friend chicken. Blue Ribbon went to the top of my list.
The first time I stepped in, the only seats available right away were at the sushi bar. To order fried chicken at the bar felt like it'd be a grave insult to the four chefs and four assistants behind the glass display case, so I went the other way instead, entrusting myself to the chef with a request to "Omakase onigaishimasu."
The server suggested I go for better quality, rather than more pieces. For those with an open mind and palate, do what the server asks. I ate fish I'd never had before, artfully placed on a plate decorated with the fish skeleton, head still on, pinned to look as though the fish was preparing to leap out of water.
Though the server was careful to point out every type of fish on the tray, I can't remember the names — most of them, named in Japanese and English, I'd never heard before.
Suffice it to say that salmon was not on the plate. The only slices of tuna were otoro, the fattiest cut of tuna belly that melted on the tongue. Several slices of one fish still had the skin on, but there was not a scale on it, and the skin was perfectly intact.
As with most good sushi places in New York, Blue Ribbon is not cheap. And it's probably made more expensive for being inside a Thompson Hotel. But some things are worth it.
However, do not have the fried chicken. It only made me long for the juicy, tempura battered pieces of boneless dark meat I could get for about $7 a box at the Mitsuwa Marketplaces in L.A.
The wing, thigh, leg and breast pieces (bone in, which is fine) were wrapped in a spicy breaded coating rather than a batter (I prefer batter) and disappointed with a flavorless, unsalted — and in the case of the breast, very dry — chicken inside. The order comes with a small dish of wasabi honey, which I'm guessing is made with slightly watered down honey mixed with wasabi powder. For those who like wasabi, this is the highlight of the dish.
The staff on both occasions was very attentive, efficient and friendly. If you're on the Upper West Side with a hankering for raw fish, Blue Ribbon Sushi is worth a stop. For the Japanese fried chicken of my L.A. years, though, I'm looking elsewhere.