#95 - hello brooklyn 4.0.

"new york new york it's a hell of a town. the bronx is up and i'm brooklyn down."

...so said the beastie boys, twenty years ago in their song "hello brooklyn," a short track off of paul's boutique. then in '07, jay-z & lil wayne sampled the song & came out with "hello brooklyn 2.0," part of jay-z's 2007 concept album american gangster, an album inspired by but not actually part of the film american gangster. yesterday, i came across "hello brooklyn 3.0," a remix of the song by someone who's recomposing jay-z songs. i actually prefer it to the first two incarnations. here, i present to you "hello brooklyn 4.0." it ain't a remix of a damn thing.

i've been living in brooklyn for seven plus years now in a couple of different hoods--midwood, kensington & greenwood heights (so fancy sounding!). there's no doubt that brooklyn's hoods each have distinct feels to them, are dominated by specific racial groups & economic levels, have types of businesses & people that make them stand out from the rest. there are the hip hoods--park slope, williamsburg, cobble hill. there are the up-and-coming/gentrifying hoods--bushwick, prospect heights, red hook. there are the hoods i wouldn't walk through at most hours of the day--canarsie, east new york, brownsville.

as i've mentioned before, my neighborhood has a large spanish-speaking population, but twenty and thirty-somethings are moving into the neighborhood in increasing numbers. it's all a part of the gentrification of brooklyn, as us white folk deploy operation snowflake throughout the borough.  still, there are a solid number of spanish-owned & spanish-owned businesses in the hood.

it makes me think of an npr story i heard this past week on talk of the nation, where a maggie anderson, a black woman in oak park (a suburb bordering the west side of chicago) is performing "the empowerment experiment."  as part of it, for the last five months, her & her family have only shopped at black-owned businesses, as a way to point out that there aren't enough black-owned businesses, especially in hoods with large black populations.  it's her hope that in doing so, she'll make folks aware that black-owned businesses empower black communities.  here in new york, it's a little bit better in some neighborhoods, but i can't think of one black-owned business within a ten-block radius of my apartment...mostly spanish and asian-owned businesses. i guess that's because we're west of flatbush ave.

#95 - hello brooklyn 4.0.
snack: chidos chile y limon chicharrones
drink: olde brooklyn greenpoint grape soda



since i was snack shopping in my neighborhood, i picked up a bag of chidos chile y limon chicharrones, a producto mexicano. i'm sorry to report that the best thing about these "chips" is the packaging. those mexican mice on the front of the bag are pretty much the most colorful, excitedly happy cartoon mice i've ever seen. that mouse down in the bottom left corner, with his festive hat & twirly moustache, makes jerry look like droopy for christos' sake.

they're fried flour chips, which is interesting texture & crunchwise, but the flavor is sort of pungent. i tried to muscle through it, but the citrus smell & taste that the lime flavor gives off is reminiscent of a household cleaner. as for the chile flavor, it's no more than a few red colored, slightly noticeable specks scattered about. the worst part about them is that some pieces have, through the frying process, developed a plastic-like strip on the top. if you're like me & prefer to be able to just wolf down one after another of your snacks without having to look down & reject those not fit for consumption, the chicharrones will be rather disappointing.

for my drink, i'm having an olde brooklyn greenpoint grape soda that i picked up at the grocery store the other day. they don't actually come from brooklyn. they're named after brooklyn neighborhoods but made in whitestone, ny, which is the northernmost neighborhood in queens, even further north than shea stadium & laguardia. that's like connecticut, for cryin' out loud.

there's the bay ridge birch beer, the red hook raspberry, the brighton beach black cherry...as for the greenpoint grape, it's named for the neighborhood just north of williamsburg that has a population dominated by both polish folks & hipsters. i guess they drink grape soda there sometimes. my bro lives there, but he's diabetic & has to stick to diet sodas, so he doesn't drink much grape soda. i'm pretty sure there's not much of a market for the diet variety overall.

as to the taste, i drank the entire bottle without noticing, but i have to emphasize the "not noticing" part. the flavor was average.  the carbonation was average.  as a grape soda, it's acceptable, but as it is, i don't really go crazy for grape soda. that's more of an east of flatbush ave sort of thing.  supposedly, they love grape soda over in those parts...that & the olde brooklyn flatbush orange soda.

#93 - lunchability.

during the work week, as often as i can, i restore my sanity by punching a random, lucky co-worker in the face in my mind (jk! i love you all!) and leaving my office, perched high on the 24th floor (penthouse, bitches!) of the live nation building in times square for a lunchtime break. usually i walk around manhattan aimlessly for twenty minutes or so, for the ridiculous time sq sights, extreme tourist dodging, podcast listening & mile of walking exercise i get out of it. multi-tasking off the clock!

it's an opportunity to clear my head & step away from work & also an opportunity to secure foodstuffs. other than the mcdonalds immediately downstairs, my main lunch spots are the BK across from port authority, a mediterranean joint over on 44th & 10th and the food emporium. i've only hit up a few places other than that. on special days, i give my love to the wendys eight blocks away, down on 34th street.

it's also an opportunity to scout for snacks amongst all the times sq stores, although i haven't even done much of that, as it would mean having to navigate my way through the more heavily-tourist trafficked areas of times sq & i'm trying to restore my sanity, not rake it across the coals. as such, my current main snack procurement destination is the slurpeelicious 7-11 across from port authority, followed by the duane reade on the corner of 8th & 42nd.  i know...yawn.

there's also an auntie annes across the street from duane reade, but i haven't snacked there yet. i probably should try it out, since i'm an official member of the auntie annes pretzel club. i get a monthly newsletter delivered directly to my email inbox every month, with a coupon included. this month, it's for a "free 21-ounce soda or lemonade with the purchase of a new pepperoni pretzel." it's a pretzel with pepperonis affixed to the front of it!  i'm sold. auntie anne, i'll see you next week.

#93 - lunchability.
snack: doritos late night tacos at midnight
drink: sweet leaf sweet tea



without fail, i always end up ravenously hungry by the end of the work day. this past wednesday, i planned ahead & on my walk, stopped by the 7-11 and picked up a snack & drink for when the 5-5:30pm hunger came a callin'. for my snack, i broke all the rules by picking up a bag of doritos late night tacos at midnight IN THE MIDDLE OF THE AFTERNOON. living life on the edge is the only way to go, i tells ya.

i ended up breaking into the bag about an hour after lunch, more out of curiosity than anything. i've been saying this a lot recently, so maybe it's my new catch phrase, but HOLY CRAP. these things taste like the beef tacos of my "dad's cooking tonight" childhood experiences. dad also made good smelts. but the folks at doritos have taken whatever seasoning you use for tacos & fused it with what they learned from the beefy taste of the doritos X-13 chip (photo from my kitchen wall), an ambiguously-named chip labeled with the clue "all-american classic," that tastes like a friggin' big mac. the flavor sort of weirded me out/overwhelmed me & i couldn't eat a ton all at once...so i brought a half bag home with me at the end of the day.

btw...congratulations, doritos. you've created the most bandwidth-sucking, least user-friendly website ever. what is this secret property? is that a friggin' helicopter pad? some sort of xbox 360 fortress? a giant tv that has crashed to the ground & was just left there because well, it's a giant tv? what the f is "snack strong productions?"

ok. after discovering that holding your mouse over stuff on the secret property makes cool things happen, i decided to check out the "flavor lab." i chose it mainly based on the fact that it appears to be many sublevels below the earth, which rules, and partially because it makes the helicopter take off for lands unknown when you hold the mouse over the lair. whoa! they have segways & floating bags of chips down in the flavor lab! actually, it's not as cool as it sounds. you can see what flavors they have down here if you care.

my beverage for the afternoon was a bottle of sweet leaf sweet tea. seriously, this stuff is not good. i've tried two sweet leaf beverages now & both have had an f'd up flavor. like with the taco doritos, i ended up bringing half home with me to finish later that night.  eventually, i finished the whole bottle despite its weird ass taste, but at my own peril.  the odd taste can't be entirely because it's made with cane sugar & black tea, can it? how can i describe it?...it goes well with a chaser.

i feel bad because sweet leaf is from good ol' austin, tx and has that rosy-cheeked granny mascot on the label, but the taste is just too abnormally abnormal to ignore.  since i love baseball & our legal system (both proponents of a three-strike rule), i'm willing to give sweet leaf one more chance...but if granny fails me again, i'm putting her & her slightly-creepy cartoon grin out to pasture.

#92 - leery of denis.

it's no secret that this past year, i've been doing my share of tv watching & have declared my undying love for a number of fx series--damages, it's always sunny..., sons of anarchy, the shield--but until recently, i've held out on rescue me. i have a love/hate relationship with denis leary. back in college, i chose to read no cure for cancer as part of my american humor class. it's pretty funny, but the shtick bores me & sometimes annoys me. i decided to give the show a shot regardless. i took in the first season over the last few weeks, but yesterday, i barreled through the second season & um, HOLY CRAP.  the shtick doesn't bother me at all.             

i really like it. the show focuses on a firehouse in manhattan just after 9/11. peeps are having all sorts of issues exacerbated by the 9/11 baggage. leary's character is in a marriage that's fallen apart & he starts getting it on with his cousin's widow (via 9/11). the other members of the crew include a guy who starts writing poetry, a guy who falls for the only female member of the crew, the chief, whose son is a gay firefighter in boston & whose wife is suffering from alzheimers, a guy who falls for a "fat chick" (a girl who i definitely saw in my hood this weekend) & a guy who perpetuallly wanders through hookups. there are a number of other stories going on at all times, told through reality, religion, ghosts, hallucinations & dreams. it has a manly feel, but gets into the feelings of men.  for those interested in men, um, hot firefighters talking about their feelings.

my dad's father was a fire chief in chelsea, mass, just north of boston & logan. he definitely saw people die in the line of duty & his loyalty to the people he worked with is evident in the stories he tells. i've gone down the white collar tract, but there isn't a month that passes where i don't wonder what it'd be like to know a trade--welding, firefighting, anything in construction--instead of spending my weekly 10-6 in an office. to be honest, i didn't really consider my grandfather' profession until i started watching the show, but damn...the shit these characters on a tv show deal with, i'd be a mess.

luckily, i have two and a half more seasons to keep me busy, because i'm hooked. it's funny & smart & stupid and when it tiptoes into sentimentality, it's usually in a good way. my mom's mom died after a bout with alzheimer's, so by the end of the eighth episode of the second season, at the end of a bbq for his son's boyfriend, when the chief is accepting of the circumstances & dancing with his wife and his son & boyfriend are dancing beside them & all the crazy shit that alzheimers thrusts upon families is set aside for the moment, i totally broke down. oh the crumbling human body & oh to grow old with someone.

#92 - leery of denis.
snack: madhouse munchies fire sweet mesquite bbq chips
drink: anchor steam summer beer


how friggin coincidentally perfect that the only snack left in my cupboard saturday night was a bag of madhouse munchies fire sweet mesquite bbq chips. it's got "fire" & "madhouse" in the name, so that's rescue me in a nutshell. i'm usually skeptical of anything mesquite, but these had an appealing sweetness to them & were actually pretty good. they're kettle cooked, which seems to be the way to go these days.  it gives the chips ten times the crunch of a lame lays potato chip.

a bonus: these chips aren't all greasy & smeared with flavor like some other kettle chips.  this is slightly weird to me, given that they're made in colchester, vt & most of the people i know from that area are wicked greasy & smeared with flavor.  jk vermont!  lol!  one thing i do know about colchester...winooski broke away from it back in 1922.  those crazy secessionist winooskians.  go spartans!

as for tonight's beverage, the anchor steam summer beer, it's not as firefighting related as i'd have hoped for, but it's out of san fran, a city which, given the attention that the show pays to male identity & the way it deals with homosexuality, it seems perfect anyhow.  it's a wheat beer that has a light, summery taste & a smidgen of flavor to it.  i could definitely drink a few of these on a hot summer day...perfect for both the gay & non-gay beer drinker.

luckily, it's almost summer & it's going to get so hot out here in the nyc any day now that things will start bursting into flames right on the streets...& firefighters will be there.  down in lower manhattan, at ground zero, there will still be a hole in the ground, but you will be able to get a t-shirt that shows you what used to be there.  you can probably get a bootleg FDNY cap there too.  final destination of proceeds is unknown.

nosh nook #45 - friday, may 15, 2009

vancouver mayor pays up after lost hockey bet to chicago counterpart (link)
05.14.09 - vancouver sun - by gerry bellett

yesterday was a sad day for my hometown boston bruins, as they exited the playoffs after losing to the carolina hurricanes in game 7, in overtime, with the winning goal scored by the same guy who had sucker punched a bruins player just two games earlier, possibly breaking a bone in his face. on monday night, the vancouver canucks suffered a similar fate, as they were bounced from the playoffs by the chicago blackhawks, 7-5.

as gerry bellett reports, yesterday, his hometown mayor--gregor robertson--made good on a bet he had with chicago mayor richard m. daley, where the mayor of the losing city had to send a package of local food & drink to the mayor of the winning city. robertson shipped daley "cases of beer from molson’s, granville island brewery and storm brewing; musqueam first nations smoked salmon; dried morel mushrooms from pacific rim mushrooms; chocolates from bad girl and purdy’s; que pasa hand-cut organic tortilla chips; vegetarian blueberry sauce from thai princess and a couple of cartons of the mayor’s own happy planet fruit juices." HOLY CRAP. you can leave that molson's junk up in canada, but i would eat the hell out of everything else in that gift bag. daley's sending robertson a consolation prize--chicago beer & sausages.  sorry chicago, but i'd much rather have the vancouver stuff.

it makes me chuckle a little bit. to an outsider like myself, robertson & daley seem to be from two completely different planets. robertson presides over the most marijuana friendly city in canada, gets to oversee the city during the 2010 olympic games & is the co-founder of happy planet, an organic food & drink company. daley is chicago irish & the son of the notorious richard daley. he's also a year-and-a-half away from beating his father out of the title of longest-serving mayor in chicago history. he's trying to get the 2016 olympic games, may be the most powerful mayor in the country & is definitely no stranger to controversy...a totally different planet--the daley planet.

nosh nook #43 - wednesday, may 13, 2009

when ‘local’ makes it big (link)
05.12.09 - the ny times - by kim severson

if there's one thing that big business likes doing, it's co-opting stuff. as long as you can be one of the first to cash in on the latest trend, even if it's with a mediocre facsimile, you're golden, much like a pair of arches. take the grunge look. that is so not cool any more. the fashion industry wore that out quicklike. on a related note, for every nirvana, there were ten candleboxes. anyway, now, since we americans are so fickle, buying organic foods has moved out of the spotlight & being a locavore (buying locally) has stepped in to become the hip new food trend. it doesn't hurt that the word "locavore" sounds wolflike or at the very least, something with fangs. the big food corporations are already lining up to cash in.

kim severson really breaks it down quite well for the ny times in her story. yesterday, the NYSE had five potato farmers ring the bell in lockstep with a lays (frito lay/pepsi) marketing campaign aimed at promoting the localness of their potato chips. basically, they're airing spots in each of the five farmers' home states, explaining how they grow potatoes there & lays makes potato chips there, so it's local. then the ads go national soon after, promoting the idea to the entire country. apparently frito-lay has a "sustainability program" also...how quaint. hunts (conagra) has also jumped on board, promoting the proximity of their tomato farms to their cali processing plants. if they can promote that to local consumers, there's a good chance they'll buy, since they have a clear picture of the distribution chain.  it's all about how you spin it.

i am all for locally grown food, co-ops getting veggies & whatnot from local farms...our little socialist colonies. i've seen king corn & i'm hip to the evils of the huge, guvment sponsored, commodity crop farms. i'm assuming that guvment money has something to do with pepsi wanting to merge with frito-lay in the first place. hell, i'd get in bed for what's probably trickling down to them.

the spread of the locavore mentality isn't all evil. as severson explains, in central cali, there's a "grow & buy local" initiative, which is taking part of a county grant & urging farmers to replace commodity crops with grocery crops, which can fill local needs & farm stands. trickle-down!  she spoke with the director of guv relations for the virginia farm bureau, who said, "if promoting local agriculture will help america to become food independent, that’s what we want."  i agree.  as a non-practicing locavore, other than the freshness of my foods, shifting dependence to local sources is the main reason i have for wishing i bought entirely locally.  all i can say is, hopefully there's a potato farmer in my state so i can get me some local lays real soon.