kottke.org posts about NYC
An outpost of Philly Slim’s, a restaurant specializing in Philly cheesesteaks, recently opened up near our apartment. In the weeks since its opening, the place has been near-empty every time I’ve walked past it. Without proper intel (i.e. a recommendation from friends or perhaps New York magazine), no one in the neighborhood wants to make the first move; when people wander by to glance at the menu, they take its emptiness as a sign that the food’s bad and head somewhere else for a meal. It’s a real catch-22 situation.
Last week, we were in the mood for some serious comfort food, so we tried out Philly Slim’s. And surprise of surprises, it was good. Really good. I tend to be disappointed by most steak sandwiches — the meat is usually thick, tough, and looks like it’s been boiled for weeks — but Philly Slim’s steak has a nice flavor and is sliced/chopped thin. The roll is nice & soft and doesn’t overwhelm the rest of the sandwich. The rest is pretty straightforward…Cheez Whiz, BBQ sauce, mayo, pickles, bacon, onions, mushrooms, tomatoes, and lettuce are among the toppings you can get on your sandwich. Add a Philadelphia-area soda, some onion rings, and a Tastykake for dessert, and you’re golden.
Bottom line: if you’re in the Union Square area and hungry, check out Philly Slim’s on University between 12th and 13th Streets. Ignore the lack of line and head on in.
The Come Out and Play Festival looks awesome. “Come Out & Play is a festival dedicated to street games. It is three days of play, talks, and celebration, all focused on new types of games and play.” Takes place in NYC, Septmeber 22-24.
The web site for the Marianne Boesky Gallery is a bit behind the times, so it doesn’t yet have the information for Barnaby Furnas’ upcoming show of his work from September 15 to October 14. The show will include his recent “flood” paintings; here’s a representative piece from the Saatchi Gallery:
Furnas’ huge flood paintings are created using a technique called “the pour”, detailed in a New Yorker article from earlier this year:
Furnas started at the high end of the canvas, not pouring but slathering on water-based Mars Black with sweeps of a wide brush. He switched to a dark red, laying it down quickly, and sometimes flinging it out in Pollock-like arcs. Sarah and Jared went into action with plastic spritz bottles, spraying water on the paint to make it spread and flow down the inclined plane. Boesky, equipped with a bottle of her own, followed their lead. The canvas began to look like a river of blood, dark and murky at the bottom, shading to a brighter and more lurid red in the middle. It was happening very fast, and changing from one second to the next-streaks of different red combining and separating, and running down to the lower end, where they dripped off the canvas into pails and other receptacles. After fifteen minutes, the whole midsection of the canvas was covered.
His Hamburger Hill piece at the 2004 Whitney Biennial was one of my favorites there, so I’ll definitely be checking out this new show.
From the August 2006 issue of enRoute magazine:
Middle of Nowhere isn’t a physical location. Not anymore. In this era, when we have Google Mapped every corner of the earth (and some other planets), almost no place is so remote it’s truly nowhere.
No, we think the Middle of Nowhere is a state of mind. It’s the satisfied pleasure-tinged-with-insider’s-delight that you feel when you discover something pretty great in a place where you didn’t know it thrived. So that when you experience this thing, whether it’s in the middle of a major city or a cornfield, you think, This? Is here? I had no idea!
I encountered this sensation in Minneapolis last week with the Mill City Museum, a place I didn’t know existed in a location I was intimately familiar with. It happens all the time in NYC too…there’s always some great little spot you haven’t discovered in Central Park, a shop in Chinatown selling who knows what, or even a place just around the corner from the apartment that you’ve lived in for three years that, unbeknownst to you, has served fantastic pot stickers all this time. (via moon river)
I Like Killing Flies is a 2004 documentary about Shopsin’s, a unique NYC eatery. Playing at NYC’s Cinema Village this coming weekend. See also Shopsin’s menu design and Calvin Trillin’s classic NYer piece.
A West Village family built a porch and garden on top of their six floor apartment building. The photos are surreal. “The depth [of the soil] was kept consistent because Mr. Puchkoff had the foresight to collect two dozen chopsticks from Sushi on Hudson, a Japanese restaurant in the neighborhood, and mark them at seven inches.”
Are large cities, both culturally and economically, turning into their own countries? “The most important place to London is New York and to New York is London and Tokyo. London belongs to a country composed of itself and New York.” Like many residents, it often seems like NYC isn’t a part of the rest of the US.
One of the first reviews Ruth Reichl wrote as the New York Times food critic was of Le Cirque, a fancy French restaurant in midtown Manhattan. In the now-famous piece, immortalied in her memoir, Garlic and Sapphires, Reichl compares the service she receives at the restaurant as a welcomed reviewer with that as an average Jane. From the review:
Over the course of five months I ate five meals at the restaurant; it was not until the fourth that the owner, Sirio Maccioni, figured out who I was. When I was discovered, the change was startling. Everything improved: the seating, the service, the size of the portions. We had already reached dessert, but our little plate of petit fours was whisked away to be replaced by a larger, more ostentatious one. An avalanche of sweets descended upon the table, and I was fascinated to note that the raspberries on the new desserts were three times the size of those on the old ones.
Thirteen years later, current food critic Frank Bruni reviews the newest incarnation of Le Cirque in today’s Times and echoing Reichl’s technique, finds that little has changed:
I also experienced Le Cirque’s famously split personality, half dismissive and half pampering, depending on who you are. On my first visit, when a companion and I arrived before the two other members of our party, a host let us know we should wait in the bar area not by asking or telling us to go there but by gesturing silently in that direction with his head. Most of the seats were occupied, so we stood. Over the next 10 minutes, no one asked us if we wanted a drink or anything else.
After we were taken to our table, servers seemed to figure out who I was and offered to move us to prime real estate with better sightlines. (We declined.)
So on a subsequent visit I sent three friends in ahead of me. One sat at the bar for 15 minutes without getting a server’s attention, and a bartender quarreled with the two others when they asked that the charges for their Champagne be transferred to the table. At a place as self-consciously posh as Le Cirque, such a request should be granted instantly.
But I was treated like royalty when I showed up, and on another night, when I dined with a filmmaker whom the staff also knew, soft-shell crabs, which weren’t on the menu, appeared almost as soon as she mentioned an appetite for them. They were fantastic: crunchy, meaty, sweet.
I can’t imagine wanting to go someplace like that when there’s so many other places with food as good or better and where the service is friendly, helpful, and accommodating for everybody. I guess that’s the side of New York I don’t like.
Here it is, the awful truth. After sampling In-N-Out Burger twice this past weekend (a cheeseburger with raw onion and, 4 days later, a Double Double w/ no onions) and having had several Shack Burgers this year (my most recent one was a couple of weeks ago), an adequate comparison between the two can be made. The verdict?
The Shake Shack burger wins in a landslide. It’s more flavorful, features a better balance of ingredients, and a yummier bun. On the french fries front, In-N-Out’s fresh-cut fries get the nod.
Courtesy of Mena, something to keep in mind: a cheeseburger at In-N-Out is $1.85 while a similarly appointed Shack Burger is $4.38, almost 2.5 times as much. SS french fries are nearly twice the price of In-N-Out fries. The burger comparison is an unfair one because, despite its location and style, Shake Shack is a restaurant and In-N-Out is a fast food joint. That the burgers are even close enough to compare — and make no mistake, I still love the In-N-Out burger — says a great deal about In-N-Out.
Kevin Kelly on an intriguing concept called The Big Here:
You live in the big here. Wherever you live, your tiny spot is deeply intertwined within a larger place, imbedded fractal-like into a whole system called a watershed, which is itself integrated with other watersheds into a tightly interdependent biome. At the ultimate level, your home is a cell in an organism called a planet. All these levels interconnect. What do you know about the dynamics of this larger system around you? Most of us are ignorant of this matrix. But it is the biggest interactive game there is. Hacking it is both fun and vital.
Accompanying his post is a 30-question (plus 5 bonus questions) quiz that determines how closely you’re connected to the place in which you live. Taking the quiz as he suggests (without Googling) and then researching the actual answers using the recommendations left by previous quiz takers is a useful, humbling, and instructive exercise.
Even though I live in Manhattan, a place where so much of the surroundings are unnatural and the inhabitants are effectively disconnected from nature, I decided to tackle the quiz and expected to do poorly. And so I did. Here are my results, with commentary. (There are some spoilers below, so if you don’t want to be swayed in your answers, take the quiz first, then come back.)
Answered correctly
1) Point north.
Easy with Manhattan’s grid, although you have to remember that the avenues don’t run directly N/S.
3) Trace the water you drink from rainfall to your tap.
Comes from upstate NY via various aqueducts and tunnels. I’ve seen parts of the old Croton Aqueduct in northern Manhattan.
5) How many feet above sea level are you?
I guessed 30 feet, Google Earth says it’s 36 feet.
9) Before your tribe lived here, what did the previous inhabitants eat and how did they sustain themselves?
A somewhat complicated question — by previous tribe, does it mean the English, the Dutch, the Indians, or the printing company that owned the building I currently live in? — but I basically know how all of those groups lived, more or less.
11) From what direction do storms generally come?
18) Which (if any) geological features in your watershed are, or were, especially respected by your community, or considered sacred, now or in the past?
The skyscrapers of midtown Manhattan wouldn’t be possible without all that bedrock underneath.
19) How many days is the growing season here (from frost to frost)?
180 days. (180 is in the ballpark, but it’s probably a little more given the proximity to the ocean.)
22) Where does the pollution in your air come from?
Cars.
31) What species once found here are known to have gone extinct?
Passenger pigeons?
Partial credit
2) What time is sunset today?
Within 15 minutes of the actual time.
7) How far do you have to travel before you reach a different watershed? Can you draw the boundaries of yours?
Across the river to New Jersey. (Locate your watershed.) I don’t know enough detail to draw it.
8) Is the soil under your feet, more clay, sand, rock or silt?
I guessed bedrock, but Manhattan’s bedrock comes to the surface near midtown and points north of there, not further south where I live.
13) How many people live in your watershed?
10 million. (Actual answer is 9.1 million.)
15) Point to where the sun sets on the equinox. How about sunrise on the summer solstice?
20) Name five birds that live here. Which are migratory and which stay put?
Pigeons, hawks, falcons, ducks, sparrows. Ducks migrate. (Turns out that falcons and hawks migrate too.)
21) What was the total rainfall here last year?
50 inches. Average is ~48 inches and last years precip was ~56 inches.
24) What primary geological processes or events shaped the land here?
Glaciers
32) What other cities or landscape features on the planet share your latitude?
Portland, OR; Rome, Tokyo.
Correctness unknown
10) Name five native edible plants in your neighborhood and the season(s) they are available.
Are there plants still native to Greenwich Village? Marijuana? We grow tomatoes in our apartment, does that count?
17) Right here, how deep do you have to drill before you reach water?
500 feet? (Now that I think about it, it’s probably a lot less.)
34) Name two places on different continents that have similar sunshine/rainfall/wind and temperature patterns to here.
East coast of Japan? East coasts of southern Africa or South America?
Absolutely wrong / no clue
4) When you flush, where do the solids go? What happens to the waste water?
6) What spring wildflower is consistently among the first to bloom here?
12) Where does your garbage go?
On the curb?
14) Who uses the paper/plastic you recycle from your neighborhood?
16) Where is the nearest earthquake fault? When did it last move?
23) If you live near the ocean, when is high tide today?
25) Name three wild species that were not found here 500 years ago. Name one exotic species that has appeared in the last 5 years.
I’m assuming Williamsburg hipster, Chelsea queer, and PR flack are not the answers they’re looking for here.
26) What minerals are found in the ground here that are (or were) economically valuable?
27) Where does your electric power come from and how is it generated?
28) After the rain runs off your roof, where does it go?
29) Where is the nearest wilderness? When was the last time a fire burned through it?
30) How many days till the moon is full?
Turns out it was just full.
33) What was the dominant land cover plant here 10,000 years ago?
——-
I answered 9/35 correctly and 9/35 for partial credit. I wonder if I would have done any better if I still lived in rural Wisconsin.
Update: Matt Jones is interested in building a Big Here Tricorder:
What I immediately imagined was the extension of this quiz into the fabric of the near-future mobile and it’s sensors - location (GPS, CellID), orientation (accelerometers or other tilt sensors), light (camera), heat (Nokia 5140’s have thermometers…), signal strength, local interactions with other devices (Bluetooth, uPnP, NFC/RFID) and of course, a connection to the net.
The near-future mobile could become a ‘tricorder’ for the Big Here - a daemon that challenges or channels your actions in accordance and harmony to the systems immediately around you and the ripples they raise at larger scales.
It could be possible (but probably with some help from my friends) to rapidly-prototype a Big Here Tricorder using s60 python, a bluetooth GPS module, some of these scripts, some judicious scraping of open GIS data and perhaps a map-service API or two.
From a Guardian review of Heat, Bill Buford’s new book on, in part, celebrity chef Mario Batali:
Batali would play Bob Marley songs on the sound system, knowing the New York Times restaurant critic was a fan. He would berate staff who failed to recognise celebrities, who must be served first and given special treatment. To make a humble fish soup called cioppino, he would rummage through bins and chopping boards, collecting left overs (tomato pulp, carrot tops, onion skins), then price the dish at $29 and tell the waiters to sell the hell out of it or be fired. Short ribs prepared in advance, wrapped so tightly in plastic wrap and foil that they wouldn’t spurt sauce if stepped on, would keep in the walk-in fridge for up to a week.
Maybe that’s why a recent trip to Babbo was not the top-shelf experience we expected.
Photos of the IKEA Everyday Fabulous! Exhibit, featuring IKEA products improving daily life on the streets of Manhattan, including comfy couches at bus stops, picture frames for lost cat photos, stools near payphones, and blankets for every seat at the movies.
A weblog about finding a decent lunch meal in midtown Manhattan. My suggestions: Mendy’s deli in Grand Central (great chicken salad on rye), any Hale & Hearty for soup, and Little Italy on (I think 43rd) for pizza by the slice. Oh, and isn’t there a Daisy May’s cart on Park Avenue? (via tmn)
Summer reading list of photography books. It’s not on the list, but I picked up New Yorkers: As Seen by Magnum Photographers at a friend’s house this weekend and found it well worth my time. (via rb)
Dear Mr. Pollan,
I am writing to you in the hopes that you can offer some assistance to me regarding a troubling household situation. My wife has been reading your recent book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and has allowed herself to become carried away with your admittedly persuasive argument about eating more locally and ethically raised food.
At first it was just little stuff, like buying local produce and banning foodstuffs made with high fructose corn syrup. But then there was the fist-fight at the greenmarket about the sausage that Meg suspected was not humanely made because the woman selling it did not know the names of the pigs that supplied the meat. “Just one name, you heartless bitch!” she screamed as security escorted her from Union Square. The restraining order prevents Meg’s further presence at the market and I am barely tolerated in her stead.
Lately though, Mr. Pollan, the situation has become much worse. Meg has completely forsaken her marital duties, turning her evening attentions elsewhere. It took me a few weeks to discover what she was up to, but she finally admitted to tending a hayfield in an empty lot in Queens. Oh, didn’t I tell you? Meg has purchased a cow. I don’t know where this cow is located, but his name is Arthur. She’s taking me to meet him before he’s humanely slaughtered so that, and I quote precisely, “you know where your food comes from for a change”.
After the cow news became widely known in our household, Meg turned our extra bedroom into a hay mow, which mow is the subject of our building’s co-op board meeting next month. An eighth floor resident complained about the conveyor belt chucking bales into the building’s alley and the straw situation in the elevator was getting on everyone’s nerves. I dare not add to the register of complaints by mentioning my acute hay-fever at this point.
The loss of the bedroom was tolerable, but Meg has also planted a garden that takes up half of our living room. One day she just took out the hardwood flooring and replacing it with freshly turned soil. Did you know that you can buy a roto-tiller in Manhattan, Mr. Pollan? Well, I do know, and you can definitely buy a roto-tiller at the Home Depot on 23rd Street in Chelsea for a sum close to what your wife might get at a pawn shop for your wristwatch.
So you can see the predicament I’m in here, Mr. Pollan. Any advice you can offer to this sneezing, watchless, beleaguered soul would be greatly appreciated.
Yours very sincerely,
Jason Kottke
P.S. I hope this letter reaches you in a timely manner. Meg has determined that the USPS uses ethanol-based gasoline in their trucks, so this letter is “speeding” its way to you via grass-fed horseback. Pray for me.
The Mannahatta Project is constructing maps of what Manhattan was like in 1609, before its “discovery” by Henry Hudson. “The Mannahatta Project will help us to understand, down to the level of one city block, where in Manhattan streams once flowed or where American Chestnuts may have grown, where black bears once marked territories, and where the Lenape fished and hunted.” See also The Viele Map of Manhattan.
New York City named the most courteous city in the world. Since I’ve lived here, I’ve noticed that New Yorkers aren’t rude, they’re just busy and dislike having their time wasted. (via mr)
Nice piece about Stephen Kilnisan, the self-appointed historian of NYC’s diamond district, the block-long diamond capital of the US. “One of them pulls out a pouch containing hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of diamonds. They haggle for a while, then the handshake. Deals are still made on handshakes here.”
Michael Frumin tried to get some NYC subway data from the New York City Transit Authority through Freedom Of Information Legislation for a project he wanted to do, but they denied his requests. “Given a database of anonymized Metrocard ‘swipes’ over some small period of time, Frumin imagined that a multitude of explorations could be embarked upon. Below is a concept sketch for one specific project idea — a visualization, for each station in the system, of the range of locations in the city that people travel to from that area.” Nice Minard-esque prototype map.
The Viele Map of Manhattan was made in 1865 and shows the original boundaries and waterways of the city. Here’s a thumbnail view (with prints for sale) and the David Rumsey Map Collection has a zoomable version that you can explore. (thx, meg)
Update: Took me forever this morning, but I cobbled together a high-res version of the Viele map from the PITA Java applet on the Rumsey site. Warning: the image is quite large (9859 x 3115, 8.6 Mb) so it might crash your browser if you attempt to look at it…better to save it to a local drive and open it up in an image viewer.
Update: Here’s a simple zoomable/scrollable version (a la Google Maps) of the high-res image that I whipped up with Zoomify. Thanks to Aaron for the suggestion.
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