07.12.19

CONSUMED: A PARTIAL LIST.

horses and divorces (bar). joe and i visited our local honky tonk a few weeks ago and spied a poster for a bar that advertised a rosé super soaker as part of its fourth of july party. fellow tonkers told us that it was a burt-reynolds-themed sister joint a few blocks away, and i insisted on stopping by—not because it was the fourth of july (it was not) or because i was interested in being sprayed with rosé, but because i appreciated the terrible audacity of that establishment's plans—on our way home. we encountered and eventually exchanged soulful hugs with both the bouncer (who had shared a ride with joe from manhattan a few hours earlier, and was a buddy of ours from the tonk) and a mancunian olympic judo fighter (who shared our opinion that morrissey must be stopped). i left my phone there after hearing a-ha's "the sun always shines on TV" and demanding to buy the perpetrator a drink,* and when joe went back to williamsburg to retrieve it, he met another mancunian who attempted to take him home. horses and divorces has shag carpet on its ceiling.

los espookys (series). i am, for the most part, no good at watching shows as they air; season-long netflix-ish drops work for me, but i can't be bothered to tune in at the same time every week for series that aren't game of thrones or the handmaid's tale, both of which end/ed up making me feel uncomfortable and, oddly, hungry. enter los espookys, which caught my eye on a bathroom wall because i thought it was a band with an especially good name. i looked it up when i got home, as olds do, and reader! it is the six-part (this season) story of a group of friends in an unnamed latin american country that produces scrappy horror scenarios. it is mostly in spanish, and it is aspirationally absurd. i have rewatched each of the five episodes that have aired. you are much cooler than i am and already know all of this already, but OH MY GOD LOS ESPOOKYS.

trader joe's tofu spring rolls (foodstuff). while i understand that my longstanding amazon boycott is probably ludicrous when one considers all of the big tech and big-box properties i continue to enrich: fuck amazon, fuck it right in the ear.** my grocery shopping became considerably more difficult when amazon bought whole foods, and i was, if i'm being honest, pleased when trader joe's moved into the lower east side. it's been a godsend for styling props for the craft projects i've published over the last year—i'm good at foraging for floral arrangements, but i'm not that good—and though i can mostly ignore its superplastickypackaged treats, these little vegan slugs are A Thing. you've got to drench them in sriracha, but friends. i am trying to roll into my locals, spread my apron, and ask them to fill it with millet, and in the interim i am >75% questionable tofu spring rolls, and content. (con-TENT, not CON-tent.)

*it was the bartender, and i sketched him out, of course. "THIS WAS THE FIRST TAPE I EVER OWNED AND I BOUGHT IT WITH QUARTERS FROM MY ALLOWANCE!" "to...[clink] the eighties?"

**this was a problem last year, as i'd been doing a brisk business in lifestyle shopping roundups, and one of my biggest writing outlets transitioned to affiliated stories. i miss that money.

12.11.16

BERLIN ENDORSEMENTS {part I}

berliner dom (cathedral, mitte). climb to the top of the dome for a 360-degree bird's-eye view of the city; pause on the way up to take a seat and listen to early-evening choral selections; be sure to get down to the crypt for some outstanding sarcophagi. the dom is the best thing on museum island, and there are a lot of excellent things on museum island (which is a UNESCO world heritage site).

the bird express (restaurant, mitte). you will need cheese fries after climbing all the way to the top of berliner dom; get them a few blocks away at the bird express (a barbecue joint helmed by an expat from staten island and his angelic german shepherd, charlie, who sits patiently underneath a wall-mounted painting of a german shepherd [no relation]). ask for all of the fixings, including three kinds of house-made hot sauces; use them liberally, then congratulate yourself for conjuring english-kebab-van-style chips and cheese in germany.

chapel (bar, friedrichshain). we just learned that odd, the delightful norwegian bartender who made impeccable drink after impeccable drink and performed magic tricks with barware for us after i remarked on how he'd name-checked tommy's on his menu, will be returning to oslo in the new year; that said, the bar he leaves behind is a wonderful one. i sincerely hope he's training his replacement.

dunmore cave (bar, kreuzberg). upon learning that we'd be in germany for a week, our friend edwin—a member of joe's darts team at our local when we lived in hell's kitchen—announced that he would meet us there to play darts. he actually did (dive bar friendships, i salute you), and after a dirndlful dinner at hofbräu münchen in alexanderplatz, we set off in search of a darts bar (odd told us a few nights earlier that they were plentiful and everywhere). boards are everywhere, or are at least easy to find, but most of them are electronic, alas. the glorious exception to that rule, on landwehr canal, is dunmore cave, a well-established, mostly-locals scottish bar with two boards in their own room. we got some gentle heckling from the germans beside us ("ah, phil taylor!"). it was just what we wanted.

eiszeit kino (cinema, kreuzberg). i have felt strongly about movie theaters in foreign countries since we saw snakes on a plane at a quiet theater in belfast on our honeymoon. berlin happened to be hosting a short film festival (more on that in part II) while we were in town, and the sci-fi program was showing at a local indie theater not too far from our hotel. we talked american-youth movies with the young french photographer behind the bar (we recommended heaven knows what, she and joe were both shocked that i had never seen kids, we all liked american honey), she disparaged instagram, and we took a couple of complicated german beers into our space movies. eiszeit kino (lineups chalked on the wall, homemade cake at concessions, international indie programming) feels like sunshine's german cousin, and i loved it.

gute falafel (restaurant, kreuzberg). naming your restaurant "gute falafel" is like naming your bar band "happy hour," and while i have an intense sensory memory of the world-altering wrap i ordered three times in my six days in berlin and can picture the storefront's location, i cannot use the internet to send you there. it's sort of across a half-plaza from angry fried chicken ("so so angry!")? it's kind of near oranienstraße? that wrap's pickled veggies and mysterious sauces (there was a slight mango situation, and a note of...mayonnaise?) are the most effective falafel-support team i've ever met. i pine for you, team gute.

12.07.16

my friend melissa invited me to something called church of the infinite you, held in the basement beneath union hall (a park slope bar with bocce courts and a fireplace), this past sunday. she'd heard about it from john hodgman. "nondenominational," the tag line read, "...only motivational." "we invite you to SAVE YOURSELF." i was reminded of an oxford house party i attended with a couple of friends that turned out to be some sort of cult recruitment meeting; it took us nearly an hour to leave once we figured out what was going on, as their plan to ensnare us involved hiding our shoes. this was more of an uplifting variety show about the importance of self-care, helmed by jean grae, a hip hop artist, writer, actress, and ferociously charismatic person. she told a story about going to puerto rico and shopping and cooking dinner for an old woman in a bikini who was probably dead; she led a surprisingly effective guided meditation (i have an extremely low tolerance for guided meditations, which tend to make me feel like the little prince) accompanied by a guy playing radiohead's "everything in its right place" on the keyboard. after talking about reports that a muslim woman was attacked on the subway (and that no one helped her), she chatted with the most athletic member of her choir about her women and trans kickboxing class, how it had gone from like six people before the election to about 35 now, and how you should hit people in the eyes, kidneys, and crotch with your elbows and knees, not your fists. it sounded like someone in the row behind us was crying pretty hard. and let the church say FUCK YEAH, she bade us. melissa and i agreed that we'd come back for the next session in two weeks, and that we'd try to find a krav maga class together.

10.24.11



back from san francisco and little sis's nuptials; stay tuned for additional reports of kilts and vuvuzelas, of feats of strength and sororal piety. i spied this at the post-wedding get-together at zeitgeist, one of our old haunts down by the spca. i do, sticker, and i will.

i finished the magicians on the plane ride out to california and have been taking notes for ye olde post-halloween book chat (do stop by!). i'm thinking, to quote sis's wedding invite, black tie optional, party pants mandatory.

04.05.11

i have reached a point in my life at which i no longer feel that i need to find the cheapest accommodation possible. i got my fill of big-city hostels full of snoring germans in my twenties, son; i don't need personal attendants or a levitating bed, but i work hard to find good deals on appealing digs (cf. our private patio at the ace in palm springs, hotel st. paul in montreal) and then save for them. or save after them. pennies are pinched at some point. i happened upon an exceedingly fine rate at reykjavik's hotel borg - a restored art deco joint which hosted both the king of norway and marlene dietrich, presumably on separate lines of the guestbook though one never knows, now does one - and that is where we rested our heads.













appealing digs are also terribly handy when one decides to skip the superexpensive rúntur (a television tuned to some log-splitting contest beckoned to us from a bar on the way home friday night - i am all for log-splitting contests - but shouty late-night weekend pub crawls do not blow our hair back), don a hotel bathrobe, and tuck into one's aged guatemalan rum (thanks, duty-free!). i am perfectly comfortable being the guy who flies to the arctic circle and stays in with "easy lover."

imaginary reading group discussion questions

01 do you think the fates have woven a night in a youth hostel into your future at some point, or are you at the end of that thread?

02 what is with those germans?

03 your most expensive hotel room ever: what was the damage? (not you, johnny depp.)

04 pub crawls: yea or nay?

05 did any of you believe those were my feet up there?

04.04.11



i think we all knew this iceland-telling would take a long time, given the cumulative effect of my tendency to digress, my working in an office on non-iceland-related matters, and my deep and abiding fondness for talking about iceland (it will probably get worse rather than better now that i've actually been there), but in the interest of full disclosure: it will be a haul.

on friday afternoon (that is, day two) we went to kaffibarinn, 1% of which was initially owned by damon "face that launched a thousand pairs of knickers" albarn. it was britpopsterless that day, but it did boast freya, a friendly icelandic sheepdog mix; admiring her led us to her owner, (a different) damon, an equally friendly icelandic guy who'd spent ten years in london. at one point he asked me to mind freya and dashed out of the bar, returning ten minutes later with a massive sheet of adhesive moustaches (which he then distributed around the room). "it's moustache march." well, obviously. we were then overtaken by a pod of men in tuxedoes, in for a pint before a choir performance. "it's the handsomest choir in iceland," they said. damon introduced us to jonas, a tuxedonaut who worked at the foreign ministry; he and joe talked shop while damon explained why we needed to break into the sculpture garden next to hallgrímskirkja ("just hop the fence, god will protect you"). jonas then extricated himself with apologies, explaining that he had to warm up before the performance. ah! they were the choir. exeunt tuxedoes to the room upstairs.

02.13.11: texts

1 {5:32pm}: Leaving flushing for the gaf soon, hoss.
2 {5:33pm}: Awaiting sushi. Will leave once I finish eating.
1 {5:33pm}: Sushi waiter.
2 {5:35pm}: Flushing queen.

05.30.10



i never did get back to talking about our wanderings at lesley's cocktail classic a few weekends ago, and that's a damn shame, as it was an especially good weekend for mezcal. in case i haven't bored you to death with my mezcal speech lately, let me summarize by saying we don't drink the kitschy, face-melty stuff packaged with a worm; i refuse beverages with pickled creatures in them, for one thing, and i'm also not a fan of cheap agave spirits. i'm actually not a fan of most fancy agave spirits (sorry, tequila), but single village mezcal is a thing of beauty: it's smoky, robust, and wonderfully phenolic. gives you a fine spreading chest-warmth, like a good scotch will. it's the ultimate slow beverage (in many villages, both the palenqueros and the horses turning their agave-heart-grinding wheels were born nearby), but it's affable and unpretentious. i feel strongly about it.

our cocktail classic weekend began with a three-thousand-person gala at the public library and ended upstairs at mayahuel in the east village. it was a long afternoon: andy seymour greeted us with glasses as we walked in, and we were served three more cocktails and five wee clay cups of mezcal in the course of the presentation (joe and i were the only civilians present, i think: everyone else was a bartender, importer, or restauranteur of some sort, and i now have a small, impressive collection of acutely festive business cards). far be it from me to go all creepy evangelist on you - i have zero stake in the rest of the world appreciating mezcal, unless it's to lay the groundwork for me to discover it in friends' liquor cabinets at parties in years to come - but internet, seek it on drink menus and shell out for some if you discover it near you (del maguey is unimpeachable, and los danzantes is also good). it's excellent neat, and the four cocktails we had at mayahuel (below) were all good; the very last one, the oaxacan punch, is the best damn cocktail i've had in years. it wins THUNDERTIPPLE hands down.

salsa verde (by andy seymour, aka wine geek)

1-3/4 oz. del maguey vida mezcal
1-1/4 oz. fresh cucumber juice
1/2 oz. fresh lemon juice
1/2 oz. agave nectar
fresh cilantro

put 6 cilantro leaves in a mixing glass; add remaining ingredients and fill with ice. shake hard and strain over crushed ice in a highball glass. garnish with fresh cilantro leaves.


el zachilla (by john lermayer, the florida room at the delano, miami)

1-1/4 oz. el tesoro reposado
3/4 oz. del maguey chichicapa mezcal
3/4 oz. benedictine
4 dashes grapefruit bitters
squeeze of lime juice

combine all ingredients in a mixing glass over ice. stir to chill and strain into a coupe cocktail glass.


division bell (by phil ward, mayahuel)

1 oz. del maguey chichicapa mezcal
3/4 oz. aperol
3/4 oz. luxardo maraschino liqueur
3/4 oz. lime juice

combine all ingredients in a mixing glass; fill with ice and shake. strain into a coupe cocktail glass and garnish with a grapefruit peel.


oaxacan milk punch (by danny valdez, cocktailian nola, new orleans)

1-1/4 oz. del maguey crema de mezcal
1 oz. vsop cognac
2 oz. handmade horchata
fresh grated nutmeg

combine all ingredients in a mixing glass. shake vigorously and strain over crushed ice in a rocks glass. garnish with fresh nutmeg.

imaginary reading group discussion questions

01 had any fantastically good (or fantastically awful) cocktails lately?

02 what'd you drink over the long weekend, alcoholic or otherwise?

03 if you were to teach the world to drink, what sort of booze would you promote?

09.28.09

04.23.09: PA redux



alright: philadelphia. as i tweeted (and said about four thousand times, i'm told), it's pinchably cute. we had the good fortune to be in town for dazzling weather - breezy sunshine straight through - and the flowering trees had just started to shed their early spring blossoms, so everything was covered with petals. revolving doors and air conditioned shops would kick up little white eddies. it was like wandering around in a snow globe.

our pre-trip research was far more fruitful than i'd expected it to be: tripadvisor led me to the independent hotel [nb 2016: now the independent philadelphia hotel], a little boutique place in rittenhouse square, and travelzoo hooked us up there; we paid $119 for a room with a pressed tin ceiling in the bath.* design*sponge's city guide did us several solids, too: in fact, most of our random decisions worked out so well that i started to expect a stroke of bad luck just to balance things out. i'm used to special occasion doom, you see.



doomless occasions are so nice, internets. as we sipped pints and peoplewatched by the windows at mcgillin's,** joe's blackberry beeped: an anniversary note from his parents saying how happy they are that i'm their daughter.

imaginary vacation awards

best bar: national mechanics (22 south 3rd st. @ market). i didn't even try to blend like a local when i got a good look at the interior of this place: it was designed so well that i needed at least a dozen pictures immediately. the apothecary jar terraria! the lamps made of pharmaceutical bottles and whippets! the bill cosby pint glasses!*** if you find yourself in philly, find this place immediately.

best use of artichoke: three-way tie, osteria (alla giudia), amada (on flatbread with wild mushrooms, black truffles, and manchego), and tria (in salad with grilled asparagus, white beans, tomato-onion relish and pine nuts). inspired by joe's dad and his all-haggis scottish adventure, i tried to have an all-artichoke weekend. an excellent decision, if i do say so myself.

best use of al gore: this room.

imaginary reading group discussion questions

01 if you were to eat one foodstuff at every meal for a whole trip, what would it be?

02 have you been to philly? how was it?

03 when joe and i finally buy an apartment, should our bathroom have a tin ceiling or a little chandelier?**** (both would be overkill even for me).

*which strikes me as kind of brilliant, as it'd be so much easier to clean than the painted ceilings i've always had (no weird condensation-mold!). note to self: install pressed tin in bathroom.

**cheers for that tip, anonymous commenter!

***i don't have a picture of those, but...ask me about them sometime.

****i was skeptical at first, too, but they're surprisingly pleasing.

04.21.09: vapour trail



we're in the last throes of getting the ladymag's june issue out into the world, so the epic poem about our trip will have to wait. the faux haiku version: philadelphia / is goddamn adorable. / we will be back soon.

clicking the mcgillin's photo will take you to my whole foreigntouristastic set, which features joe recovering from the mutter museum, fake steak, and deeply questionable rocky tributes. not bad for 38 hours.

04.16.09: again with the treacle and the cherry blossoms



on a double-time errand run over my lunch break this afternoon, a patch of excellence! as they assembled a construction site in front of an urban outfitters,* someone wove the nearby trees through their scaffolding.** the fixtures plus the flora reminded me of the park (a chelsea bar that looks like architectural digest guest edited by miss havisham - so-so drinks, but a wonderful place to explore). can one build an apartment around a tree? i'd quite like that.

*yeah, i went to urban outfitters. i wanted to celebrate our apartment's long-awaited unpacking with new pillowcases (his and hers), but i neglected to notice that they were online only. alas!

**trees are this spring's big medium, i think: a few weeks ago someone was adding false foliage to the ones in front of the time warner center.

07.10.08

the dirty dozen, part 1: back from CA for a week, still catching up on work (hooray!)

01 my new favorite thing about ikea (admittedly, not a hotly contested thing): free shuttles to the new red hook location (where people camped out for several days to score free sofas*) are filling up with non-shoppers. according to gothamist,

The free coach style shuttle buses that deliver riders from two Brooklyn subway stops to the new Red Hook IKEA are filling up with passengers who never set foot inside the Swedish retailer. "I'd say before one o'clock, about half the riders from Smith and Ninth Street don't even go into IKEA," one bus driver told the Daily News, adding that many riders are going to a local methodone [sic] clinic for treatment. And, as predicted, freeloaders are pulling the same move with the free Water Taxi between IKEA and lower Manhattan, an area also renowned for its methadone.

02 while it is not my custom to think highly of bars that think highly of themselves, i did fancy s bar, one of the stops on our one-night-only los angeles bar crawl with little sis and her boyfriend. the s probably stands for (philippe) starck, as he designed the place, but in practice it stands for satan in a most excellent way: the bar is lit by dozens of elegant, mismatched table lamps, suspended upside down from the ceiling. the effect is ever so slightly fucked up - how one would imagine a possessed room might look (the bathrooms give the same vibe: each stall is lit by silent movies playing from televisions embedded in the ceiling). old scratch appears on the menu and a few wall murals, so the devil thing is literal too, but it's really all about the lamps. they (and, okay, the fact that we got past the velvet rope even though joe was wearing his "support the right to keep and arm bears" tee shirt) are the reason i didn't break a bottle and start a bar fight when asked to pay like $16 for souped-up hard lemonade.**

03 two months after deadline, i finally made headway on one of the most infuriating items on my 101 in 1001 list (089 frame my college diploma). my dad's garage was the very last place the wily diploma could have picked as a hiding spot, and it wasn't looking good - until i mentioned that it had been wrapped in some kind of blanket, which turned out to be as significant as the "jesus was a carpenter" line from indiana jones and the last crusade. "oh," said dad, "like this!" - and there, right in a cabinet by the door, it was. thank god, as The University wanted $50 for a replacement diploma that 1) wouldn't have the all-important gerhard casper signature and 2) would say COPY at the bottom (assholes). now i have to frame the thing, which is a new problem: should my frame be identical to joe's? i kind of want to go my own way, but i worry that getting something other than the ol' alma mater special will look weird, since they'll be hanging next to each other. then again, he has a white mat and mine would be black (the design changed a bit over the past few years), so we'd have the spy vs spy effect to offset the cheesiness. hmm.

imaginary reading group discussion questions

01 what's your relationship with ikea? harvard friends told me years ago that in their circles, thrift store hodgepodge was considered wildly unhip and ye olde mass swedish design was much more acceptable (then again, most of them were tech guys); i'm at the other end of the spectrum, obviously, though i'm also extra-mean about big box stores.

02 would you feel guilty about freeloading on the swedish bus?

03 do those of you in long-term relationships find it weird to hang out at It Bars?

04 what did you do with your college diploma?

*the most horrifying of those was a woman who told a local news crew that she didn't really want the sofa but had "never camped out for anything before."

**which is TOTALLY RIDICULOUS, i acknowledge, but worth it for the one-time design inspiration. my drinks usually cost about $3, so it all evens out in the end.

08.22.06

101 in 1001: 015 drink a pint of ale in oxford for my grandfather [completed 08.20.06]
matrimony accomplished! i think it will be some time before i'm able to recall sunday properly - it's true that a bride remembers her wedding day in weird flashes at first, if at all, though i do have a memory of saying something about luggage in my speech - but i can say that we can't be happier with how things turned out, and we're shocked and thrilled that we pulled it off. that's thanks in no small part to jen, who nominated herself as our wedding stage manager and could have a long and illustrious career producing badass nuptials if she so chose, to magnificent stephanie of the stanford house, and to friends and fam who stepped up fantastically to be part of our plans. i'm loath to blog an academy awards speech, so i'll leave it at that for now, but our readings are up at ye olde lauren and joe wedding site if you choose to peruse.

we walked from the turf tavern (mid-celebration drinks in honor of my grandfather) to freud (the reception site) instead of taking cabs with our guests, and it was the nicest stroll i've ever taken. i'd thrown my denim motorcycle jacket over my wedding dress and had a book bag and a cigarette along with my bouquet, but i looked bridely enough (what with the dapper joe in his suit and matching buttonhole) that we were recognized and applauded (loudly, with english brio) all through oxford; a couple even asked if they could take a picture with us (hell yeah they could). i might throw my dress on once a week or so for the rest of my life; being congratulated by kebab vans was a singular joy.

i'm joe's wife! holy shit!

05.23.06

it's been a giveth and taketh away couple of days in these parts. the boys and i followed the trail of free shit down to design week kickoff events in the meatpacking on saturday, where pretty ladies gave me complimentary sangria and we flinched at the surprisingly hardcore victorian porn films at wonderland beauty parlor's wallpaper exhibit. joe found an amusing ratty old canvas at the local housing works thrift shop; i'll post a picture tomorrow for a rousing game of "outsider art: which way is up?". we also met the indescribably comfortable argo chair at karkula, which is where my money would go if i wanted to drop $4250 on something for my butt.

on saturday night i became the very last wannabe hipster to discover the backroom, a latter-day speakeasy (funded by tim robbins, of all people) hidden behind a mysterious gate on the lower east side. i didn't get the chunky-necklace-and-victorian-shirt memo, so i hid in a corner with my teacup of diet coke and tried to hide my bad pedicure and target flip-flops. is it normal to feel like a square old fart at twenty-seven?

yesterday was a lovely crunch day, as i wrote three wee pieces for the next issue of the magazine and was asked to take over a regular page. i was feeling like a very together young lady right up until i poured a pint of chili into my purse. well played, new york monday. well played.