My husband has a wonderful family and we all get along swimmingly. His parents own a boat and often invite us on it for a day on the lake and an annual vacation where we boat all day and only return to our rented beachfront to sleep. I am a very lucky daughter in law and sharing the boat is just one example of the loving generosity my in-laws show, with no strings attached. One of my guy's immediate family members will almost like clockwork paddle off twenty feet when we are anchored and swimming to poop in the water. It seems to be a family joke or tradition since the habit started when he was young, but he is now an adult. I adore him, but whenever I see him swim back with that little secretive smile I scramble back on the boat as fast as I can while not bringing attention to myself. Once I know it is there I can't bear to be in the water, even though the water is probably contaminated more than I think.
New Yorkers protest the treatment of carriage horses like Blondie (Photo: Ashley Byrne, PETA)
In case you hadn’t heard enough about horses in the past few weeks…
This morning, PETA protested outside the City Hall trial of a driver who is charged with animal cruelty by depicting a horse “crime scene.” Saverio Colarusso, a horse-drawn carriage driver, was arrested in December 2013 after a police officer noticed that his horse, Blondie, was having a hard time walking.
It was revealed that Blondie had been forced to work for four days with thrush, a painful and potentially lethal hoof infection.
In the protest, a Blondie replica lay on the ground, surrounded by yellow crime scene tape and angry activists fighting for the rights (and removal) of New York City’s carriage horses.
“Cruelty cases such as Blondie’s show that the corrupt, cruel carriage trade has no regard for the law or the well-being of the horses,” said PETA Senior Vice President Dan Mathews.
Just this April, another carriage driver, Frank Luo, was accused of falsifying a hoof ID to pass off an old and ailing 22-year-old horse as a 12-year-old.
“This goes to show that no amount of regulation can protect horses from abuse at the hands of cruel, corrupt drivers,” Ashley Byrne, PETA Campaign Specialist, told the Observer. “It’s time to protect these horses by retiring them to sanctuaries.”
“Blondie” gets carried away (Photo: Esti Jungreis)
When asked about Pumpkin, a carriage horse who got loose and careened straight into a taxi door just last week, Ms. Byrne concluded: “That’s just another example of why it’s dangerous to have sensitive, high-strung animals like horses in the middle of traffic and noise, and it’s only a matter of time before someone gets killed.”
Just this morning, on my way to work, I found out that “Björk” rhymes with “jerk.” My friend told me that he knew this because Björk herself had said it, “I’m Björk. Rhymes with jerk.” After saying that, she probably cartwheeled away, leaving a path of some small, snow-colored (yes, that means white) trail of Nordic flowers blooming in her wake. She’s kind of the best, you know?
But so, because she’s the best, it’s with no small amount of interest that I just read in the New York Observer that it seems like she and husband, artist Matthew Barney, will be moving into a charming Fort Greene wooden house. The couple have lived in Brooklyn Heights since 2009, but appear to be trading in their $4 million-penthouse for a $1.99 million Italianate frame house on South Elliott Place, which the Observer calls “bedraggled” and I call beautiful—it is, after all, only a few houses down from one of our 25 favorite houses in Brooklyn. Admittedly, of course, the house is what you’d call a fixer-upper (what can you get under $2 million that isn’t, right? right?! shit), but it’s also 160 years old! What wouldn’t be a fixer-upper at that stage of the game, you know?
There’s no immediate confirmation that the Matthew Barney who has just purchased this house is the same Matthew Barney that recently showed his River of Fundament* at nearby BAM, but considering that the same real estate attorney was used for this purchase as was used for the Brooklyn Heights home, it seems likely. So, welcome to the neighborhood Matthew and Björk! Hope to see you at BAM sometime soon.
*Initially, this said Cremaster Cycle, which, well, was wrong.
All eyes are on Brazil right now because of the World Cup. But there's another Brazil story that deserves just as much attention — over the last decade, the country has made surprising strides in slowing the destruction of its rainforests.
Deforestation in Brazil's Amazon has dropped 70% since 2005
The deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon was one of the biggest ecological disasters of the 20th century. Starting in the 1960s, farmers and cattle ranchers began clearing and burning wide swaths of Brazil's rainforest for land.
Between 1979 and 2005, Brazil lost more than 200,000 square miles of rainforest, an area the size of Spain. That deforestation was a major factor in the rise of greenhouse-gas emissions that cause global warming (all those trees are no longer around to soak up carbon-dioxide)/
But that's now changing — and dramatically. Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has dropped 70 percent since 2005:
Amazon deforestation in Brazil has fallen 70% since 2005
Nepstad et al, 2014
Between 1996 and 2005, Brazil was losing an average of 7,500 square miles of Amazon rainforest each year. Then deforestation began declining sharply. By 2013, the annual rate of forest loss was down to 2,255 square miles.
Brazil's greenhouse gas emissions have fallen faster than any other country
It's a major environmental success story, and a key reason why Brazil's greenhouse-gas emissions fell 39 percent between 2005 and 2010 — faster than any country on the planet.
Experts tend to credit a few factors here: Brazil has greatly expanded protection for its forests in the last decade. Perhaps more importantly, the country's soybean and cattle industries came under heavy pressure to quit expanding through deforestation. Instead, farmers and ranchers found ways to boost their yields without cutting down forests for land.
Still, it's not all good news. Brazil's gains have been fragile, with deforestation ticking up again in 2013 and 2014. What's more, the clear-cutting of rainforests is still growing outside of Brazil, particularly in Malaysia, Paraguay, Bolivia, Zambia, Angola and especially Indonesia.
How Brazil curtailed deforestation
So why the drop? A recent report from the Union of Concerned Scientists, as well a recent study in Science led by Daniel Nepstad of the Earth Innovation Institute, give credit to a few different factors here.
Conservation measures: Since 2002, Brazil has aggressively expanded its conservation programs, with more than 50 percent of the Brazilian Amazon now under some form of legal protection (see map).
Some of these areas are straightforward parks and wilderness areas. Other regions were handed over to indigenous peoples to manage. Studies have found that logging, rubber extraction, and other activities tend to be done more sustainably — and with fewer deforestation emissions — on indigenous peoples' reserves.
On top of that, the Brazilian government stepped up its enforcement efforts — including stricter monitoring of illegal logging. And, in 2008, Brazil began cutting off access to farm credit for those regions that had particularly high rates of deforestation.
International finance: Brazil has also received a fair bit of international aid for reducing deforestation. Norway has committed some $1 billion in financing under the REDD+ program to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions from forestry. Germany and the United Kingdom have also chipped in with aid.
Changes in the soy and beef industry: The Science paper, meanwhile, argues that shifts in the soybean and beef industry were particularly significant here. Between 1999 and 2004, a boom in soy prices had led to an acceleration in Brazilian farming — which, in turn, drove up deforestation rates rapidly.
Soy and beef farmers found ways to boost yields without deforestation
By 2005, however, the business model was shifting (aided by a drop in soy profitability). Both the soy and beef industries come under heavy pressure from groups like Greenpeace, which put out a series of reports on the companies' culpability for deforestation.
In 2006, many of the world's largest soy buyers agreed only to buy soy that was grown on existing farmland — pushing the industry not to cut down any more forests to clear new land. A similar agreement for cattle followed a few years later.
The result? Both the soy and beef industries were forced to find ways to use existing farmland more productively. And they did. Both soy and beef production have soared even though deforestation has dropped:
Beef and soy production have grown, deforestation hasn't
Nepstad et al 2014
The Science paper notes, for instance, that Brazil's soybean production soared 50 percent between 2006 and 2013 — but that increase occurred entirely on land that had already been cleared before 2006.
Still, it's not certain deforestation in Brazil will keep falling...
Aerial view of the Amazon Rainforest, near Manaus, the capital of the Brazilian state of Amazonas. Neil Palmer (CIAT)/Flickr
That all said, there's not guarantee that deforestation in Brazil will keep dropping — indeed, it appeared to tick up in 2013 and is likely to go up again in 2014.
Ultimately, farmland is a finite resource
Ultimately, farmland is a finite resource. If Brazil's soy and beef production is going to keep growing, then farmers and ranchers will either have to squeeze more out of their existing lands or cut down forests for new land. The Science paper suggests that beef yields could well keep rising and make further space for soybean crops — but this is far from certain.
There are lots of other variables at play here, too. How much outside pressure will soy purchasers and other companies face to distance themselves from deforestation? How strictly will the Brazilian government continue to crack down on clear-cutting? What sorts of incentives might convince farmers and ranchers to conserve forests rather than cut them down?
Despite the successes of the last decade, no one has the answers to all of these questions just yet.
...and rainforests are still dwindling outside of Brazil
Change in global forest cover between 2000 and 2012. Green shows forest cover that hasn't changed at all. Black shows non-forest. Red shows forest loss. Blue shows forest gain. Magenta shows areas that are regrowing. Hansen et al 2013.
It's also worth emphasizing that Brazil is only one country. The drop in Brazilian deforestation since 2000 has been more than offset by increasing forest loss in Malaysia, Paraguay, Bolivia, Zambia, Angola and especially Indonesia.
Indonesia has lost the most forest area since 2000
That's according to a separate recent study in Science by a team of researchers from the University of Maryland, who used Google Maps technology to provide the most detailed maps yet of deforestation.
That team found, among other things, that the world had lost roughly 580,000 square miles of forest between 2000 and 2011 — an area the size of Western Europe.
And deforestation is currently increasing in the tropical regions. Here's a stark animation of what that looks like on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, which has lost half of its rainforest cover in the past three decades:
Unlike in Brazil, policies to halt deforestation in Indonesia have been woefully ineffective, the study found. After the government imposed a moratorium on new logging licenses in 2011, the rate of deforestation actually increased over the next two years.
Which is only to say that there are lot of underrated success stories on rainforests — and there's an excellent rundown of those stories in this Union of Concerned Scientists report. But the world is still far from ending tropical deforestation altogether.
OK so testing out the Bookmarklet. Glad it's here, not a fan of how it's a two-step process.
Pic courtesy of Reddit user RadioCat
Wake up, sheeple! While you were busy freaking out over That One Character We All Totally Thought Would Be In This Week’s Episode But Wasn’t, Reddit was quietly exposing the biggest, most earth-shattering Game Of Thrones conspiracy theory of them all: What if Stannis Baratheon was not only the One True King of Westeros, but also a praying mantis? Like, a literal giant insect in disguise?
The “facts” would indicate that the r/StannisTheMantis subreddit is a spinoff of the “Stannis The Mannis” meme, which celebrates the middle Baratheon for his stoicism, gravitas, and being an all-around badass. But that’s exactly the type of simple, wordplay-based explanation THEY would want you to believe. Consider instead these unprovable, and therefore incontrovertible, theories:
Stannis has never been injured in battle because his exoskeleton protects him from injury. His preferred strategy of ambushing his enemies is also very insect-like.
Stannis’ lack of sexual interest in his wife is not due to the infernal sorcery of the Red Priestess, but because he doesn’t want her to bite his head off afterwards.
His daughter Shireen’s “greyscale” is actually just cover for mutations caused by her hybrid human/mantis DNA. She was also born in spring, “when insects swarm.”
Stannis has a habit of grinding his teeth because he’s trying to conceal the fact that he’s munching on winged insects all the time.
Sure, it sounds crazy. But every good conspiracy theorist knows that “evidence” and “proof” are nothing but Illuminati smoke screens designed to keep the people from waking up to the true reptilian shape-shifting nature of their government overlords. Right, David Icke?
Screenshot of The New York Times’ Netflix sponsored content
The New York Times posted a lengthy, interactive story this morning about how the prison system fails to meet the needs of female inmates. The piece was well-reported. It included quotes from advocates of prison reform, former inmates, statistics about incarceration rates and links to related stories from the Times archive. There were illustrations, infographics and an audio component.
But it was more notable for what it wasn’t, which is a product of The New York Times editorial department.
The story was sponsored content, paid for by Netflix to promote Orange is the New Black, and produced by T Brand Studio, the Times‘ in-house custom content division of the advertising department. Melanie Deziel, the Times‘ editor and social media strategist for branded content, had the byline.
And there was no chance of mistaking it for editorial content. The story proclaimed its sponsored content-ness at every turn. A blue overline highlighted the fact that it was a paid post, both in the carousel on the Times homepage and on the story itself, where it and logos for T Brand Studio and Netflix remained stationary, affixed at the top while scrolling through the story.
At the bottom, beneath a banner ad for the Netflix show, small type, highlighted in what we will now call “branded blue,” reiterated the nature of the piece: “This page was produced by the T Brand Studio, a unit of the advertising department of The New York Times, in collaboration with Netflix. The news and editorial staffs of The New York Times had no role in its preparation,” it read.
At a time when every outlet is looking to figure out how to approach branded content, the reaction on Twitter to this Times approach has been largely positive, both inside and outside the Times.
“Orange is the new black, and sponsored content is the new Snow Fall,” Nieman Lab director Joshua Benton wrote on Twitter.
“All brand-sponsored journalism does not suck. Witness this peach by @mdeziel on women in prison. From Netflix, natch,” Times reporter David Carr tweeted.
“Hanna [sic] Horvath eat your heart out. How to do sponsored content right,” tweeted Linda Zebian, the director of corporate communications for Times digital products.
Piper Kerman, the author of Orange is the New Black, the memoir on which the show is based, and an advocate for prison reform, promoted the content:
While this approach to sponsored content will most likely become a model for future attempts, we can’t imagine it will be that easy to replicate. Not every sponsor is Netflix, and not every product lends itself to this as well as Orange Is the New Black.
To say the 1995 movie The Net is a classic would be…an overstatement. The Irwin Winkler film starring Sandra Bullock, Jeremy Northam, and Dennis Miller didn’t have the best reception when it came out, and over time it’s gotten a reputation as a very schlocky paranoid thriller (in reality, it’s probably become more realistic as the net’s reach has expanded).
Today, the movie’s technology is one of its most unique aspects—early web interfaces and fantastic webpages abound. We found every screenshot—webpage or otherwise—and captured it forfans of The Net around the world. We’ve got the info in the caption—click to see the high resolution shot and page through the gallery.
The screens are below, but first, some of the most important trivia about The Net (for a more technical overview, check out this security-minded post).
Angela orders a large 20″ pizza from Pizza.net with regular crust, anchovies, garlic, and extra cheese.
In the beginning of the movie, she plays an early Apple version of Wolfenstein 3D.
She books her economy class plane tickets from “link.ias.com.”
Though Angela uses the net extensively, she and her employer correspond through Fed-Exed floppy disks.
The band whose website is a backdoor to the entire Internet is called Mozart’s Ghost.
Angela lives at 407 Finley Street, Venice, CA. Her phone number? 310-853-3472. The real house is located here.
Angela works at 2102 Montgomery St., San Franciso, CA (which, unfortunately, isn’t a real address).
Angela uses Mac products (Mac and Powerbook) in the movie, but the interfaces show a mix of operating systems including the Mac OS, Windows 3.1, and others.
Angela Bennett plays Wolfenstein 3D in The Net
Pizza.net’s introduction
More of Pizza.net
Pizza.net’s confirmation page- cash only payment
A digital fireplace Angela uses to feel cozier
Cyber chats- where Angela and other hackers spend their time
A selection of cyber buddies
A screenshot from the cyberchat
Another screenshot from the cyberchat
Angela eats pizza and cyberchats about her life
The airline booking system
Mozart’s Ghost, the hottest band with a secret
Fed Ex tracking circa 1995 (in the movie)
The infamous Pi sign
A hacked airline computer
The Atomic Energy Commission’s hacked site
A hacked plane schedule
The Krystal Cancun’s Hotel booking system
The LAPD’s duped profile of Ruth Marx
The Swiss Internet
The US Naval Hospital’s webpage
Print Match Pro 2.1
The fire control system at Cathedral Software in The Net
The Cathedral Intranet
The backdoor to the entire internet
IP Lookup
Emailing the FBI
Attaching files via disk
When a virus is loaded, the screen dissolves
More screens dissolving
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The times they are a-changin’ in Bushwick. Just yesterday, we reported that another set of high rise apartments may come to the area, and now we’ve learned that after 10 years, Kings County Bar is leaving its 286 Seigel Street location and heading for Knickerbocker Avenue following a major rent hike.
The good news here is that the beloved bar isn’t totally closing, a fate which has recently befallen places like Mini Mini Market and Verb Café, but rather moving a few blocks west to 1 Knickerbocker Avenue, DNAinfo reports.
Owner Jesse Levitt declined to disclose the exact amount of the rent increase, but he did say that if the bar stayed where it was, he’d be paying nearly triple the amount he paid when he took ownership of the bar in 2007. At 1 Knickerbocker, Levitt won’t face rent hikes because he owns the building.
And for those of you who love Kings County because of its dive bar qualities, this new version will be decidedly more upscale, featuring a small kitchen and functioning plumbing and electricity. But the new bar won’t be so fancy that the bar’s annual Smallest Penis in Brooklyn pageant can’t go on. So, there’s that.
Levitt & Co. will close the Seigel Street location on July 13, and the new Kings County is expected to open soon after.
Interesting. Is this such a faux pas? Can we chalk it up to the head of the moment or is he emotionally misguided?
Beating Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in the Virginia Republican primary yesterday was "the happiest moment, obviously, of my life," said Dave Brat, a married father of two.
Eleven major PR firms have signed a pledge not to surreptitiously edit their clients' Wikipedia pages. Countless lesser PR firms have promised no such thing.
Next time you're out buying seafood, consider getting the lobster. A Guardian report reveals that shrimp sold across the U.S. and U.K. are produced in part by slaves off the coast of Thailand who endure unimaginable violence and abuse.
“Men Who Knit & the Dogs Who Love Them: 30 Great-Great Looking Designs for Man & His Best Friend”
Modessit and Emborsky
2007
Submitter: This book appeals to a worldwide audience of maybe five people: namely dudes who are into knitting matching man/dog Rasta hats.
Thankfully there are tons of full-page pictures featuring inexplicably euphoric men posing next to dogs that look itchy, confused, and more than a little annoyed.
In the introduction, the author writes, “I love men – and I adore dogs, too.” And that giving a dog one of these sweaters “generally results in an orgy of tail wagging, so be warned!” She concludes with, “Happy knitting, all you cool men out there!”
I think this book should have been called, “Men Who Knit & the Dogs Who Hate Them : 30 Wardrobe Fails for ‘Man’ and his Dejected Bondservant.”
Holly: Men who knit are dead sexy, but this is an odd collection of pictures and patterns. It’s almost like adding a dog makes it more manly to be knitting; like dudes can’t just knit sweaters and hats for themselves because they want to. The matchy-matchy man and dog bit feels like a gimmick. Knit on, fellas. With or without your dog.
@谷大白话: Brazilian Handsome Guy Becomes Korean After 10 Plastic Surgeries — 25-year-old Brazilian young man Max was originally a blond-haired, green-eyed handsome guy. After studying abroad in Korea, he fell deeply in love with the local culture. Max not only changed his name to Xiahn Nishi, he even determined to thoroughly change his head and face, to become a true Korean. He stitched the inner corner of his eyes, injected hyaluronan, went through ten cosmetic surgeries, and finally achieved the appearance of his dreams. In an interview, he said: I now look much handsomer! {Below: Before and after.]
I want the blond-haired, green-eyed Brazilian handsome boy back!!
juzihepaocaijiaotang：
[People from] every race have their own unique facial features. There are handsome Korean people, but there are also ugly ones.
倾城微微一笑–：
He used to be so fucking handsome, and now he looks just like a retard.
海底天蝎：
Thanks for letting me know how foreigners think a typical Korean guy looks!
TAOLuhanBaekexo：
Looks exactly like [those creatures in the movie] Avatar.
永远支持爆炸的一只：
How did he change his eye balls [color]?
Wierzbowsk：
I don’t even dare to pierce my ears, [I can’t image] how painful this must have been [to have so many surgeries]. Secondly, it doesn’t really matter if you are good looking or not. After all, everyone has different [aesthetic] tastes. I feel this guy is actually just a masochist.
木字旁的黑叔叔：
Like MJ [Michael Jackson] now.
JUSTWELY：
Honestly, I think they [Koreans] all look pretty much the same…
x_anan：
Cloud Atlas, a real-life version of Cloud Atlas!
喜欢杨顺的白菜帮子：
Fuck, there are actually people who stitch up their double eyelids? He’s definitely going to regret it.
Sunnyside has always been one of my favorite neighborhoods in the city, with its makeup represented by quite an interesting mashup of peoples and cultures, none of them dominant. In recent years, many Tibetans and Nepalese have been moving in, and this has resulted in a few dining options. Two weeks ago, another Tibetan place has opened in a modest storefront mid-block on 47th Avenue.
Walking into the long space is a surprise from what it looks like outside, but there is plenty of room for groups and gatherings. In fact, the name of the restaurant translates as "happy gathering" and we can only assume the area's Himalayan communities will indeed have such events here. A TV in the back of the space plays Bollywood musicals, and beyond that is the kitchen. When I sat down here on a Monday at noon, the place was empty but the sounds of a busy kitchen were in the air. Takeout customers came in periodically.
While the Dalai Lama smiled down on me from the back of the room, I was enticed by the Bhutanese dish aima dhatse ($6, below), which I chose to have with chicken. This national dish of Bhutan can be found on a few menus in Queens, and always attracts my attention. I now have a new favorite rendition as the one here is simply beautiful. The server returned a couple minutes after taking my order to ask if I wanted it spicy, as I think the chef was worried about me. What arrived was indeed spicy, the real deal from what I have read about the dish in its native environment. This plate was less cheesy and less soupy than other versions, but was delicious. Killer peppers were littering the plate, and I ate them all up as I could tell both the server and chef were sneaking glances at me to see how I was holding up. As my eyes watered and my forehead started sweating, I smiled in bliss.
I have a real memory lapse every time I eat at a Himalayan restaurant and order bhoejha ($1, below), a salty butter tea even though I know I don't like it. It just seems so typically traditional that I have to try again each time.
I was also trying to waste a little time and gain more stomach space to go for a second meal. After 30 minutes of break or so, I ordered the vegetable thenthuk ($6, below), a Tibetan soup made of sliced noodles.
The noodles are similar to "peel noodles" in some Chinese places, and are obviously homemade here. For a vegetable soup, it is amazing that a broth can be so hearty and rich, the dish is comfort food at its best. A little jar of chili paste is brought out with it to "personalize" your spice level.
I will enjoy returning to this spot when I can, and it completely holds its own against the good spots in Jackson Heights. Sunnyside just keeps on getting better.
If you want to see eight Steve Keene originals, come to my bedroom.
(All photos: Kirsten O’Regan)
Steve Keene actively distances himself from the world of fine art, but that hasn’t stopped the Greenpoint-based painter from being named Brooklyn Public Library’s Artist-in-Residence for Summer 2014. Keene, best known for his astounding productivity (he claims to have sold or given away more than 250,000 paintings over his career) and art for the likes of Pavement (the cover of Wowee Zowee) and Soul Coughing, has always been something of a maverick.
Having graduated with an MFA from Yale, Keene quickly became disillusioned with the traditional choices available to artists. “It seemed like you were either going to get famous or maybe teach,” he recalls. Inspired by the bands he came into contact with while working at a college radio station, he went rogue. “In a way I turned myself into a folk artist—someone not dependent on any organized structure,” he says. His strategy? To mass-produce multiple almost-identical hand-painted canvases at great speed, and make them available at very low prices.
“My favorite piece of work is the system I have structured for myself,” he says, referring to this kinetic process. “I hate working on one painting at once.” He’d rather line up 40 canvases and attack them with a paintbrush simultaneously. One of the reasons he was so drawn to music initially was the immediacy and physicality of the medium. “It’s very different from being an artist in a studio. Musicians depended on other people’s response to their art.” In search of this connection, Keene began to paint in public—and enjoyed the way the meaning of the work unfolded in the process.
Now, as part of his residency, he’ll be painting three days a week in front of the Central Library. Although he’ll be making Brooklyn-focused artworks in deference to the institution hosting him, he doesn’t generally worry about subject matter. “I’m the equivalent of a restaurant,” he says. “I need to perfect my craft and ensure my workstation is ideal—but it’s not about being inspired. It just kind of thrills me that I can paint in front of people and not freak out.”
Far from waiting for inspired transformation to strike, Keene generally makes a conscious effort not to change, because he likes the idea of making an identifiable product. He recently started creating large “tattooed plywood” works, which are etched by a machine, in an attempt to catch up with the computerized modern world (several of them will be on display during his residency). Otherwise, his oeuvre has remained remarkably static, which clearly does not deter customers. “I’ve been doing this a long time, and what’s cool is that young people are still buying my stuff,” he says. “It’s like the sort of thing you hang in your dorm.”
This makes sense, because Keene originals go for great prices. Incoming freshmen can look forward to outfitting their new rooms for fall semester with items freshly painted during his Brooklyn residency. “I was convinced to jack up the price to $10,” says Keene grudgingly. “I liked $5 because you can’t buy anything for $5 anymore. There’s something mystical about $5. But I guess if I don’t want to lose money, I have to charge $10.”
Steve Keene’s Brooklyn Experience will be on display in Central Library’s grand lobby from June 12 to August 29. Keene will paint live in Grand Army Plaza (outside the library) every Thursday, Friday and Saturday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., weather permitting, between June 19 - August 16
While looking for a different event featuring food from another continent, I happened on a street festival sponsored by a Bangladeshi communications company. During the warmer months, similar single-block events pop up all over the city. Even when word is published in advance, often it's difficult to find out about the organizer, the entertainment, the vendors, or anything more than the time and place.
At midday a stage was being set up at one end of the block for musical performances; tented stalls lined both sides of the street, almost all of them draped with South Asian apparel and fabrics. Just one stall sold food, and though primed for bulky but mild European fare, I bought a serving of black chick peas ($3) to tide me over. Mustard oil, evidenced by the thin stripe at the edge of the bowl, pointed my palate in a different direction.
Emoticons have come a long way since the days of :-)
Thanks to emojis (the name means “picture character” in Japanese), we can express far more complex emotions and ideas. But what exactly are we choosing to convey? To find out, Matthew Rothenberg created a code for counting the number of emojis used on Twitter. In real-time.
The project is all the more exciting because the tweets ratcheting up the emoji count are in Arabic, English, Russian, Greek, Mandarin and other languages. So the results look like a motherboard of online expression that traverses linguistic divides.
On Thursday morning, we pulled the top 100 emojis used so far on Twitter. Here’s some of what we noticed:
“Hearts” tops the list by a mile. With more than 342 million tweets, hearts account for 10 percent of all emoji uses in the top 100. But love, in general, is prominent, too. Hearts appear in 14 of top 100 emojis (including No. 4, “Heart Eyes,” and No. 87, “Heart Eyes Cat”).
In 20th place, the first emoji to appear that isn’t gender neutral is a woman (great!). But according to the emoji cheat sheet, she’s titled “Information Desk Person” (not so great). The only character who appears to be a man is “Walking,” the 91st most tweeted emoji.
Emoji users are discerning. Note the subtle difference between “Cry” (No. 39) and “Disappointed Relieved” (No. 75). Only the eyebrows change direction, and yet “Cry” has been used more than twice as often.
I’m surprised “Poop” has only been used 7 million times. Maybe Twitter isn’t such a pessimistic place after all.
Tradesman
222 Bushwick Ave.
Bushwick
718-386-5300
Facebook
Website
What it is: Immediately off the Montrose stop, this bar with walls lined with tools serves up great beers and cocktails with a slammin’ happy hour.
Why we love it: This bar is really a great part of the emerging Montrose stop scene. We love its rotating food and drinks (once… there were jello shots, like classy jello shots, which do exist) which you can stay updated on by following them on Facebook.
Who to bring: It’s casual enough to just stop in by yourself after work but has the ability to supply the ambience to grab a drink with a date. It’s really a super comfortable and inviting bar.
What to order: Tradesman carries a bunch of local beers so ask the bartender to recommend one of their nearby brews.
Fun Fact: Tradesman host a bunch of ever changing events like pizza trivia, special DJ nights and rotating happy hours. Follow… Read More
A new, longer trailer for The Giver has less Taylor Swift, but so much more Meryl Streep. Which is great, because she looks mean. "When people have the power to choose, they choose wrong," she says. (And if Meryl tells you to choose something, you freaking choose it.)
Serious Eats World Headquarters is located on the edge of Manhattan's Chinatown. On my daily commute, I'd walk past no fewer than six bakeries and wonder: which ones were worth my time, and what should I get there?
Over a few weeks, the Serious Eats staff and I found out, hitting the streets to taste over a hundred pastries, buns, and tarts. This guide focuses on Chinese sweets, but we couldn't leave out a few savory items that are a quintessential part of the Chinese bakery line up. The results are below, but first let's take a quick look at what you'll find in a Chinese bakery.
Chinese Bakery 101
Chinese bakeries focus on single-serving pastries: small tarts, slices of Swiss roll cake, and buns with fillings like red bean, roast pork, taro, cream, salted egg yolk, and beyond. Most of them are are baked, but a few buns also come steamed, and some non-bread-based sweets like sesame balls are fried. Buns and cakes go for light, puffy textures with neat crumbs and a cake-like creaminess. They're less sweet than Western desserts and usually don't have icing or super-sweet fillings.
There's one all-important rule for Chinese bakeries: freshness matters above everything else. All these sweets taste best fresh from the oven, and a fresh-but-poorly-made pineapple bun will probably taste better than a several-hours-old version from a better bakery.
Most bakeries bake once a day in the morning, so the best time to visit is around 9 or 10 a.m., though larger operations like Tai Pan and Fay Da bake throughout the day whenever their supply runs low. Steamed buns, which are stored in steamers or steamed to order, hold up much better than baked ones, so those and tart-like pastries are your best bets in the afternoon. And take note that bakeries usually close in the early evening, so if you want a post-dinner sweet bite, you may be out of luck.
The second all-important rule? Don't judge a bakery by its looks. Those pristine-looking layer cakes you see? Usually not worth your time. That said, there are a few critical warning signs to watch out for, like dry or pale-looking buns or sesame balls with sunken spots. A quick squeeze of your bun with the provided tongs will give you a sense of freshness.
Lastly, don't expect great customer service from most bakeries in Chinatown (even if you're Chinese). Most servers speak limited English and will respond brusquely to any requests. The one exception we found was Manna House Bakery on Mott Street, where the warm staff traded jokes with us and gave us the most pleasant customer service experience in the neighborhood.
The Best Bakeries Overall
Our two favorite bakeries were, some what unsurprisingly, the largest: chains Tai Pan and Fay Da, with dozens of locations around the city. The Chinatown storefronts bake their buns onsite, and almost all of the sweets we tried from both ranked high, if not exceptional. They also bake throughout the day, so even though we timed our bakery runs for the morning, their freshness stood out.
If you're only going to visit one or two bakeries in the neighborhood, there you have it. For the run down on our favorite sweets from all over, read on.
The pineapple bun, a barely sweet baked bun topped with a crackly, crumbly mix of flour, sugar, and egg yolk, is the quintessential Chinese bakery sweet. (The crackly shell kind of looks like a pineapple, which is where it gets its name.)
M & W's pineapple bun.
Lung Moon had our favorite pineapple topping: sweet, crunchy, and crumbly, and once the bun was gone we found ourselves scraping the bottom of the bag for all the chunks of crust that fell off. The best bread came from M & W Bakery, where the topping was less crunchy and sweet but adhered nicely to the bread, which had the perfect texture: tender with a little chew. Get these warm if you can; a little heat takes them to great heights.
Tai Pan won this category with ease; literally all the other buns we tried were dry and stale. Though you'd assume one bakery's plain bun dough would be the same regardless of filling, we found this not to be the case in practice. Inconsistent quality may be one answer.
The red bean filling here is flavorful but not too beany, and its freshness made for an easy win. Note that these usually come prepackaged in plastic sacks, so you can check if your bun is still soft. with a light squeze.
It's time for some real talk: we don't care for any of the baked roast pork buns in Chinatown. These baked buns glazed with syrup and filled with sweet and porky char siu, barbecue roast pork, should be a crowd pleaser, but almost every version in Chinatown falls short of truly satisfying. Yes, we tried Mei Li Wah's famous rendition and all the other crowd favorites, but too often we found gooey-sweet filling, gross gobs of fat, or stringy meat in stale bread.
The least objectionable we tried came from Dragon Land where the filling was pleasantly oniony and the bread was a good foil for the meaty filling. But our dream pork bun? Take the moist-but-not-too-fatty chunks of roast pork from Tai Pan, add the flavorful barbecue sauce from Golden Steamer, and bake it all in the impressively moist bread from Hop Shing.
The success of Fay Da's bun lies in the balanced contrast of meaty hot dog and mildly sweet bread. Most of the other variations we tried featured slimy sausages or candy-sweet bun that clashed unpleasantly with the meat. This restrained version carried the day.
The bright purple taro bun at Fay Da. [Photograph: Robyn Lee]
Taro buns, filled with a sweetened filling of mashed taro (lavender-colored) or ube (dark purple, also known as purple yam), are a rare sight in Chinatown but worth seeking out. Fay Da's is bright purple and sweetened like frosting, encased inside a moist bread with a tight crumb. Grand 1 takes a more naturalistic approach with barely sweetened mashed taro (that really does taste like taro) and a lighter bread. We love them both.
It's dense, even heavy, and especially sweet, but a great pastry: Fay Da uses the same bright purple filling from their taro bun and wraps it in flaky pastry, which mostly serves as delivery device for the payload. That filling has subtle notes of vanilla and coconut, which has us craving an ice cream version.
Plain Bun (Steamed): Golden Steamer and Manna House
Plain buns from Manna House.
Not all steamed buns are filled; some come plain. Golden Steamer's reputation for top-notch buns holds true in this category, but we also found some stellar ones at Manna House Bakery just down the street. The plain bun there is pure white and ethereally light, moist but not too chewy.
Red Bean Bun (Steamed): Golden Steamer and Manna House
Red bean bun at Manna House.
As with the plain steamed buns, Golden Steamer and Manna House were the clear winners, with the latter beating the former by a hair. At Golden Steamer, the buns featured fluffy bread and a smooth, almost smoky filling. By contrast, Manna House intersperses whole beans in their filling, but take note: they're not always available.
Roast Pork Bun (Steamed): Golden Steamer and Delicious Bakery
Golden Steamer's roast pork bun.
We had better success finding steamed roast pork buns than baked versions, with two solid renditions. The bun at Golden Steamer is a good pick, like the rest of their offerings, with moist meat and a sauce that has impressive depth of flavor.
Delicious Bakery's roast pork bun.
Delicious Bakery also made a strong showing with a nicely textured bread and a savory minced filling. Our only complaints: more fat than we'd like and not enough big hunks of pork to sink our teeth into. While both these buns get the job done, we think you can do better with Chinatown's other sweets.
Golden Steamer's pillowy pumpkin bun. [Photograph: Robyn Lee]
The mashed pumpkin in these steamed buns isn't anything like pumpkin pie filling; expect milder mashed squash, perhaps brightened with condensed milk, but not a spiced eggy custard. Great Bakery makes the only baked version we could find, filled with squash enhanced by just a touch of sugar. On the sweeter end is Golden Steamer's excellent steamed version, which hews closer to dessert than afternoon snack.
One of Golden Steamer's most unique offerings is also one of their best: a sweet bun filled with grated salted egg yolk custard. The salty-sweet goo has a slightly gritty texture and rich, eggy flavor. We're addicted to this bun.
Sweet, nutty and rich lotus bean paste brings to mind peanut butter with less stickiness. It's common in mooncakes but rare in steamed buns, though Mei Li Wah offers one with a mellow nutty filling. The bun itself is more dense than we'd like, but hot out of the steamer it's still worth a look.
The Hong Kong-style dan tat, or egg custard tart, is a single-serving tart in a flaky crust with a yolk-heavy custard filling. The best are silky smooth with a slightly wiggly, creamy, rich (but not too rich) texture and a fairly strong eggy flavor. Our favorite in the neighborhood? Bread Talk, as Robyn discovered a few years back.
Portuguese custard tarts have a looser custard and less eggy flavor than the Hong Kong style, with notes of vanilla and a signature burnished topping. The version at Tai Pan Bakery is just wonderful: sweet and delicately eggy custard with a buttery, shatteringly flaky crust, all in good balance and spotted a pleasant brown. As this Tai Pan location bakes throughout the day, you have a higher chance of scoring a warm fresh from the oven, and let me tell you, there's nothing like a warm egg custard tart.
Sponge Cake: Kam Hing Coffee Shop, Yummy Yummy Bakery, and Golden Steamer
Yummy Yummy Bakery's giant sponge cake.
We've already written extensively about our favorite sponge cake at the Kam Hing Coffee Shop, which is delightfully light, airy, barely sweet, and nicely eggy, always warm whenever you order it.
For this project we gave some other bakeries a try, and while we found it's hard to make a bad sponge cake, a few do stand above the rest. The sponge cake at Yummy Yummy Bakery is the largest we saw on our hunt, and though its batter was a little overworked, the end result was still plush and light. At steamed bun specialist Golden Steamer, the cakes are cupcake-sized and come several to a bag. They're pleasantly eggy and make a great base for a simple dessert.
Roll Cake: Pie Pie Q, Tai Pan, Fay Da, and Manna House
Pie Pie Q's roll cake tastes like homemade.
Roll cakes are like sponge cakes with a denser batter that's baked into a flat sheet and then rolled up with a slightly salty cream filling, usually made of shortening. Almost all bakeries make the plain variety, but if you're lucky, you can find some more interesting flavors: coffee, mango, and green tea. Chinatown is full of bad roll cakes—stale cake or too-sweet greasy frosting—but there were a few clear winners.
Tai Pan's sweeter roll cake.
Pie Pie Q's was the freshest of the bunch, with a nice homemade flavor to boot. The frosting tasted of dairy and the cake was velvety, with just enough sweetness to counter the ample salt in the filling. If you don't like the idea of a salty cream filling, Tai Pan's sweeter version is just the thing, with soft cake and a buttery filling. (Fay Da also made a strong showing in this category.)
The coffee roll cake at Manna House.
For a flavored cake, try the coffee version at Manna House Bakery. The frosting here is more shortening-heavy, but the salty filling takes a backseat to the light coffee flavor of the cake itself. Avoid the plain roll cakes here, but if you like cafe au lait sweets, this is perfect.
The perfect example of a Chinese sweet, this pastry eschews tooth-aching sweetness for a subtle, sticky-chewy wintermelon filling that has a taste and texture reminiscent of mashed sticky rice. Traditionally, the flaky pastry surrounding the filling is made with lard, but some bakeries use shortening or butter instead, which, to be honest, is our preference.
New York Mart's wife cake.
The best we tried by far came from Double Crispy Bakery, even though it's smaller than most and has its off days. The pastry (with just a hint of lard) is crisp and flaky, and the filling is tender, not overly gummy. A dark horse favorite came from New York Mart, where the cakes are big enough to share and have a good balance of crust and filling. The wintermelon is just a little sticky but not treacly.
Mooncakes are dense, pudgy pucks of enriched dough stuffed with fillings like bean paste, lotus seed, and salted egg. They're typically only eaten during the Mid-Autumn Festival and are more scarce in Chinatown the rest of the year. But the lotus-bean-filled versions at Lung Moon are tasty enough to eat year-round: the crust is tender and thin, supple enough to protect the smooth, dense, and rich filling. Even a small mooncake is enough to share with a friend; a tiny slice will fill you up.
Chinese mochi come in myriad flavors but share the same basic structure: a ball of soft, sticky rice dough with a sweet filling and a coating of crushed peanut or grated coconut. A few flavors: taro, mango, green tea, peanut, black sesame, and red bean.
Fay Da's standout taro mochi.
Tai Pan's mango mochi ranks as one of the best sweets across this entire tasting. The little blobs are creamy and taste precisely of fresh, ripe mango.Fay Da's taro mochi were also good, but less so than their winning taro puff, as this rice ball was a little too uniformly starchy.
A-Wah's mochi-like tang yuan.
Our third favorite is really a tang yuan, a rice flour dumpling, from the restaurant A-Wah. The dumplings are filled with black sesame paste and usually served in hot, sweetened water, but at A-Wah you can request them without the broth. The dumplings, coated in crusted peanuts, have a warm sesame filling that oozes with every bite.
Sachima are a little like rice crispie treats made of fried rice noodles formed into a brick and held together with honey-flavored syrup. They're a common find in grocery stores, but we had high hopes that samples from bakeries would be more fresh, as the ideal sachima should be soft with a faint crunch from the fried noodles and sweet with the slightest whiff of "fried" flavor.
As it turned out, most of the bakery versions tasted primarily of fryer oil, but Lung Moon's were just like what I remember from childhood. Neither stale nor overly oily, these have crispy noodles and a sticky chew from the honey syrup coating them. Sesame seeds scattered throughout are a welcome addition, lending a light toasted flavor.
Cooking doesn't get much simpler than this: steamed flounder seasoned with black pepper, ginger, cilantro, soy sauce, and lime juice. The preparation is minimal, but the flavors are fresh and bold. This is how Laotian-born chef Jeannie Ongkeo cooks her fish, and when she does, the fans come out of the woodwork.
Food like hers is rare in the U.S. outside a few small cities like Des Moines, where Lao communities have slowly grown since the 1970s and 1980s. In New York City, the only place to find homestyle Lao cooking is when Ongkeo helms the kitchen of her brother's restaurant Mangez Avec Moi, a modest Asian fusion spot in Tribeca that mostly caters to office lunchers.
Lao or stew, a light vegetable braise of eggplant, mushrooms, chicken, and pork rinds.
But the action really begins at night, when Ongkeo serves a semi-secret Lao menu at dinner that draws serious Southeast Asian food fanatics from across the city (and the attention of some critics). She started doing so in 2012, when a young food blogger's request for real Lao home cooking suggested she had an audience for the food from her home country.
We spent an evening with her during a crowded dinner service, watching her cook family recipes by sight and feel. Wearing an apron adorned with teddy bears and sporting sweatbands around both wrists, she looked tough but maternal as she maneuvered through Mangez Avec Moi's tiny kitchen, marshaling ingredients and dispatching them into bowls and pots.
Here's what Lao cuisine looks like through her eyes.
Food in Laos overlaps with its neighbors—Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, and China—and bears traces of its French colonial influence. But it remains distinct. While many Thai dishes are dominated by fiercely hot chilies and the marriage of sweet and sour flavors, Lao cooking focuses more on the interplay of fresh herbs and mildly funky undertones.
Ingredients for or stew: mushrooms, chicken breast, pork rinds, and eggplant, plus aromatic ginger and chilies.
Take the ubiquitous papaya salad. Thai som tum combines tart lime juice, sugar, garlic, and chilies, but the Lao version (called tom mak hook) adds in padaek, a special Lao fish "sauce" with a salty, unapologetically funky edge. It's that funk—and the deft subtlety with which it's employed—that's won Ongkeo her followers.
Her favorite dish—one she often makes at home in Elmhurst, Queens—is or stew (also known as or lam). It arrives at the table brimming with green vegetables, savory mushrooms, tender bites of chicken and pork rinds, and earthy Kermit eggplants cooked to the verge of disintegration. The thick broth, girded with a slurry of glutinous rice flour, blends fresh dill, garlic, and salty-funky padaek with floral hints of lemongrass and makrut lime leaves and just enough chilies to leave your mouth gently humming with heat.
Ongkeo's homemade padaek.
Each cook's or stew is different. "I do my own style," Ongkeo declared, brandishing a bottle of her homemade padaek and adding careful squirts to her stew. She makes a new batch of padaek every month or so, fermenting raw fish with Thai fish sauce, spices, and her own special touch: melon rind or pineapple skin to temper the sauce's intense fishiness and aggressive aroma.
It's an essential ingredient in Lao dishes—especially or stew. A single generous spoonful of Ongkeo's padaek left to simmer with vegetables, fresh herbs, chicken breast, and pork rind yields a deeply flavorful broth that's complex yet perfectly balanced.
Nam kao, a salad made of smashed fried rice balls.
At the opposite end of the Lao culinary spectrum is nam kao, a popular rice salad in Laos. Ongkeo starts by mixing cooked rice with ground pork, red onion, shredded coconut, Thai fish sauce, and red curry paste. She tosses it thoroughly—until her hands hurt—then adds an egg and forms small cylinders, which are then deep-fried into the Lao equivalent of Italian arancini.
The fried rice balls.
The cooled rice balls—golden-crisp outside, soft within—are broken up and tossed with scallion, cilantro, lime juice, ground red chili, more fish sauce, and bits of som moo, a sour Lao pork sausage that's fermented with rice and chilies and eaten raw. (Ongkeo used to make her own som moo before it was commercially available here. These days she procures it from a specialty Lao food distributor in Fairfield, Connecticut.)
Scooped onto a lettuce leaf and popped down the hatch in a bite or two, nam kao is at once refreshing and funky, with an appealing light crunch. It goes down exceptionally well with a bottle of Beerlao, the smooth, malty local beer of choice in Laos.
The salad, ready for tossing.
These days, Ongkeo, who is now 64, looks forward less and less to the long hours she has to spend in the kitchen. She unwinds after 10-hour kitchen shifts with Lao soap operas and Indian classical music, and is considering taking time off to travel—but not just yet.
"I don't want to work at all, but I love to eat," she says. "If I don't cook, I won't get my food."
Essentials of the Lao Kitchen
Looking to try your own hand at Lao cooking? Here are the essential ingredients you'll need, and how they're used.
In mountainous, land-locked Laos, freshwater fish (from the Mekong River), pork, water buffalo, and plenty of vegetables—especially leafy greens, bamboo shoots, long beans, and several dozen varieties of eggplant—are in frequent meal-time rotation.
Garlic, chilies (fresh and dried), lime, scallion, and fresh herbs—like dill, makrut lime leaves, cilantro, lemongrass, and galangal (ginger's spicier cousin)—are all vital to Lao cooking, adding bright flavors to counteract fatty pork, subtle fish, and funky fish sauces.
That fish sauce, which comes in several varieties, also gives food its salty edge. Lao cooks rely on padaek to bring a funky, savory, and salty depth to their food. Made from slowly fermented fish paste, padaek is thicker and stronger-smelling than typical Asian fish sauces.
Chinese immigrants in Laos introduced cooking oil and frying techniques, but Lao cooks still rely heavily on steaming, grilling, and stewing. Raw vegetable dishes and glutinous sticky rice (serving as both carb and eating utensil to scoop up sauces) are also integral parts of most Lao meals.
Laos is small—about the size of Utah—so regional differences in cooking are minor, though food in northern Laos is usually spicier than in the south. (For instance, sakhan, an indigenous woody vine that has a numbing effect similar to Sichuan peppercorns, is only used in northern Lao cooking.)
About the authors:Anne Noyes Saini edits economics books and covers food culture and immigration in NYC. She has contributed to Narratively, The New York Times, and WNYC-FM, and is features editor of Real Cheap Eats. Follow her on Twitter @CitySpoonful.
Mark Rinaldi writes about global cuisine and culture over at his blog, Cooked Earth, where he is cooking and documenting a meal from every country on Earth, alphabetically. He likes hot chilies, cold beer, and death metal.
This is a from a report on Fox 5 San Diego about local crews beginning the process of dismembering and removing that 57-foot dead whale that washed up on shore a little while ago. You can watch the report here. It is goddamn unbelievable. And not just because of the thing where a gross smelly beached whale has apparently become a tourist attraction that people are bringing their children to. There’s another reason. Look at this screencap:
fox 5
WHALE GUTS. EVERYWHERE. ON YOUR TV. ON THE NEWS. AT DINNER TIME.
Crews began the process Thursday of removing a 57-foot dead fin whale that reappeared on San Diego County’s shoreline after being towed out to sea.
Crews used heavy machinery to tear into the whale’s body. It’s not a pretty sight — but it’s an exciting opportunity for scientists.
Well they definitely wouldn’t show footage of the heavy machinery ripping through the whale carcass, right?
fox 5
Jesus. Well, look, I suppose it has scientific value of some sort to see how they’re disposing of this beached whale, even if it is a little gross. It’s not like they’re just blatantly throwing discarded whale innards into the background of interviews or anythi-…
FOX 5
“Okay, so I’m gonna need you to over here for your interview. No, a little to the right … a little more … little more … perfect. Gotta make sure the sun hits those whale guts just right.”
Amazing. And disgusting. But mostly amazing. And I haven’t even mentioned the part where they talk about the horrifying smell, or the guy who poo-poos it by telling the news — THE NEWS — that he grew up on a farm and dead pigs smell worse than dead whales. Good to know!
Anyway, the whole thing reminded me of one of my favorite news stories ever. No, not the famous one about the town that tried to blow up a beached whale and ended up raining whale parts on everyone. The other one. This one:
Residents of Tainan learned a lesson in whale biology after the decomposing remains of a 60-ton sperm whale exploded on a busy street, showering nearby cars and shops with blood and organs and stopping traffic for hours.
The 56-foot-long whale had been on a truck headed for a necropsy by researchers, when gases from internal decay caused its entrails to explode in the southern city of Tainan.
Residents and shop owners wore masks while trying to clean up the spilt blood and entrails. [NBC News]
That’s why they’re taking this whale apart at the beach. Because it could blow at any moment. Science!
"If, however, the woman is fat and seemingly dropsical, let us mix cow dung with very good wine and with such a mixture we afterward anoint her. Then let her enter a steambath up to the neck, which steambath should be very hot from a fire made of elder [wood], and in it, while she is covered, let her emit a lot of sweat... We also treat fat men in another way. We make for them a grave next to the shore of the sea in the sand, and in the described manner you will anoint them, and when the heat is very great we place them halfway into the grave, halfway covered with hot sand poured over. And there we make them sweat very much. And afterward we wash them very well with the water of the previous bath."
The Trotula (12th century)
You're planning a trip to the seashore, but you're feeling a bit dropsical. No problem: this manure wrap will help you achieve your beach body in no time. And if that isn't enough, you can always bury yourself in the sand.
This is what human beings look like when they’re interacting. (Photo via SFgate)
This week, we heard about the just-opened Bushwick dive Left Hand Path’s idea to install USB ports and outlets into the bar so that patrons can charge their phones. This came as incredibly joyous news to some. But it kind of sounds like a nightmare to me.
Lest you write me off as your average whiny wearer of a proud Luddite badge, I can assure you that I have the utmost enthusiasm for my iPhone, which is bright pink and contains embarrassingly high scores on both 2048 and Candy Crush as well as an embarrassing amount of terrible photos. So I know that as much as anyone that a dead battery sucks. (How else will we know for sure exactly what minute it will start raining? By looking outside? What?) But there are moments in life when batteries need not be juiced up all the way to 100%, practically shattering our phones with the convulsive energy of maximum capacity. And these moments pretty much all take place during mealtimes, and also, I’d argue—during drink-times.
Much like coffee shops have become little more than beacons of free WiFi (to the point where if one doesn’t allow electronics, people absolutely lose their shit, even though it’s completely understandable that a cafe wouldn’t want to encourage lone laptop robots from posting up for five hours at a two-top that could’ve been occupied by paying, sociable customers, but that’s beside the point), the restaurant table has become an increasingly acceptable place to leave one’s phone during meals. We all do it, perhaps without realizing how insanely off-putting it is, or rather, not caring how off-putting it is.
When I worked as a hostess at a fancy restaurant in Tribeca, the people that would ask us at the stand to charge our phones were a generally decent sort; sometimes they’d leave a tip, or, you know, a smile. At least, the bulk of them understood that it was a favor they were asking of us, to be able to use the only tiny area that we had to ourselves to take care of their stuff. Sure, it wasn’t a huge hassle, but it certainly came with a palpable side of entitlement. We, the hostesses, weren’t even allowed to keep our own phones on the floor—a perfectly logical rule, I think, that might do well applying to patrons.
But it takes a certain kind of person to ask that their phone be looked after and recharged by a stranger without having a defendable reason for it—similar to the kind of person who asks you for Ibuprofen one too many times and never thinks to bring a bottle themselves. In other words, there’s an element of selfishness when it comes to our phones. As they become increasingly more important extensions of ourselves and of our own private matters—those 20,000 emails, that dating app, those sexy selfies—the presence of a cell phone has never been more okayed by others, with the understanding that if someone else is attending to something that doesn’t concern you on their phone, it’s not impolite to be engrossed in your own. But it is. It’s incredibly impolite. And it’s incredibly selfish. Because why are you even together in the first place? Why did you come to this bar? Why did you go outside at all?
Put down your phone. Look into somebody’s eyes, and if you can’t, look at the people around you. Look out the window, stare at the ceiling. Talk to the bartender and smile at the waiter. And when there are awkward silences, feel them, be fascinated by them. Resist the urge to diddle on a screen. What did you come here for? You came here to be out in the world. Be here, and live in it.
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This makes sense, because Keene originals go for great prices. Incoming freshmen can look forward to outfitting their new rooms for fall semester with items freshly painted during his Brooklyn residency. “I was convinced to jack up the price to $10,” says Keene grudgingly. “I liked $5 because you can’t buy anything for $5 anymore. There’s something mystical about $5. But I guess if I don’t want to lose money, I have to charge $10.”
