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The latest in a sandwich series from Eater NY's Robert Sietsema

It’s been several months since Eater NY has presented a collection of crazy sandwiches, and gosh have they been piling up in the meantime! Sandwiches have continued to popularize in the last year, and everybody’s making them. In that context, it’s natural that places are creating more beyond-the-pale examples for the purpose of competing with their sandwich-making sisters and brothers. Here are ten more doozies that can be found around the city.

Phi Kappa Slamma — Sounding like some mutant fraternity or sorority, or maybe a form of hazing at one of those institutions, the phi kappa slamma is barbecue-based and served on a hamburger bun. Stoked thereon is the weird combo of sliced brisket, chopped brisket chili, thin and trickly cheese sauce, crushed tortilla chips (which immediately become soggy), and green chile sauce. The sandwich is much better than it sounds! Find it at: Fletcher’s Brooklyn Barbecue, 433 3rd Ave, Brooklyn, (347) 763-2680

Roasted Japanese Yam — The time we sampled this sandwich, there was nothing Japanese about the yam; in fact it was a plain old orange yam. But the vegan sandwich was great anyway, the yam flaunting a roasted flavor that complemented the verdant fluffiness of the chard leaves. Pickled veggies, cilantro, and a chile-soy dressing then brought the whole thing together. Find it at: Num Pang Sandwich Shop, 140 E 41st St (and other locations), (212) 867-8889

Mac and Cheese Sandwich — Certainly someone has done it before: Take creamy mac and cheese, already done to a turn in a casserole, pile it into a sandwich, and then toast it like a toasted cheese. It proves, at least, that there’s almost nothing that more starch and a judicious amount of char won’t improve. Find it at: Mac Shack, 901 Fulton St, Brooklyn, (718) 230-0727

Roast Mushroom Panini — Hot-pressed and grooved, panini have become something of a bar food staple in the last few years. In this vegetarian version, sautéed mushrooms are layered on the ciabatta with caramelized onions, "dirty" potato chips, truffle mayo, and fontina cheese. The result is a gooey and salty mess, leaving the pungent and artificial smell of truffle oil in your nostrils. Find it at: Il Bambino, 48 W 8th St, (212) 228-2466

Mother-In-Law — This fancifully named sandwich assumes that your partner’s mom has a big, big appetite. Because this gut-bomb of a sandwich contains — in addition to huge quantities of thick-sliced, long-braised beef rib — charred broccoli, kimchi, and mayo on a blistered garlic roll. Find it at: Court Street Grocers, 540 LaGuardia Pl, (212)777-9292

Griddled Mortadella — Down South, especially in working-class dining establishments, it’s not unusual to stumble on fried bologna sandwiches, but never has luncheon meat received such effete treatment as the griddled mortadella. This fat-dotted composed roll, bologna’s wealthier relation, has been deployed in griddle-cooked form, dressed with ricotta, nasturtium leaves, and nasturtium pesto, and served on an open-face sandwich. Bologna's greasiness shines through like a headlight. Find it at: Rider, 80 N 6th St, Brooklyn, (718) 210-3152

Sausage and Broccoli Rabe Hero — Sure, broccoli rabe with fennel sausages is a southern Italian classic meal, but it took a sandwich genius to put them in a crusty roll, and then break the mold by also adding cheese. You won’t walk away from this sandwich hungry, and the bitterness of the broccoli rabe sets the whole thing on fire. Find it at: The Grotto, 69 New St, (212) 809-6990

Cheese Chicken Toasted — The picture of this thing on the advertising placard suggested it would be made with actual chicken kebab, but when it arrived, it was stuffed with chicken-based mystery meat. No matter, it was good anyway, the spammy slices grilled and protruding like a human tongue, layered with American cheese, pickle spears, lettuce, and tomato, then sluiced with Russian dressing oddly flavored with thyme. BTW, the sandwich is nominally Turkish. Find it at: Euro Smoothies & Juice Bar, a wooden shack near Macdougal and 3rd streets

Mexican Falafel — Taim in the West Village introduced flavored falafel balls to Manhattan a few years ago to general huzzahs, but now the concept has been carried even further, with cross-cultural falafel sandwiches appearing on the Lower East Side. There’s an Indian falafel, a Greek falafel, and a Jerusalem falafel, but our favorite is the Mexican falafel, outfitted with tomato salsa, jalapeños, and chipotle. Find it at: Moemen, 201 Allen St, (646) 918-6877

Vegetarian Ham Banh Mi — Vietnamese baguette sandwiches present such a chorus of powerful flavors (pickled veggies, cilantro, jalapeños, doctored mayo) that it’s hard to imagine that lack of real meat would make much of a difference. But there’s something wonderful about the fake ham used in this banh mi — greasy, salty, and gelatinous —that actually boosts the flavor of this excellent sandwich. Find it at: Banh Mi Place, 824 Washington Ave, Brooklyn, (718) 552-2660

More in the series:

• New York City's 10 Craziest Sandwiches
• 10 More of the Craziest New York Sandwiches
• A Further Ten of New York's Craziest Sandwiches
• New York's Craziest Sandwiches Strike Back

On the latest Full Frontal, Samantha Bee took us on her quest to rent the costume of the National Rifle Association's esteemed gun safety mascot, Eddie Eagle. But doing so proved to be a surprisingly onerous process—one that required filling out an 18-page application and dealing with the group's mandatory 20-day waiting period before anyone can get their hands on Eddie's gear.

Compare that with the relatively simple task of acquiring a gun, whether online, at your run-of-the-mill gun shop, or at a gun show in New Mexico:

"Are you a felon?" one gun own seller in New Mexico asked a Full Frontal producer.

"No," she replied.

"Okay."

Another gun secured! As the episode went on, Bee and her team were able to add to their arsenal with frightening ease, all while being repeatedly denied an elusive Eddie Eagle costume.

I don’t believe I’ve posted these covers here yet! Covers 3-8 of Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur. Issue 6 is up next! I’m co-writing with Brandon Montclare, and I’m drawing covers. Natacha Bustos is killing it on interior art, with brilliant colors by Tamra Bonvillain! I feel lucky to be working with this group!

Adult coloring books are all the rage, and appropriately comics publishers have taken notice and are capitalizing on the trend. Recently DC Comics had a month long coloring book-themed variant cover initiative, and now Archaia is going one step further, publishing the Mouse Guard Coloring Book --- and we’ve got an exclusive preview of some of the illustrations by series creator David Petersen.

Continue reading…

The purchasers of the all four Blu-ray volumes of the 12th PreCure TV series Go! Princess PreCure will be able to receive a special illustration colored paper newly drawn by the anime's character designer Yukiko Nakatani. The illustration featuring the main characters is revealed to Japanese media today.

Go! Princess PreCure was aired in Japan for 50 episodes from February 2015 to January 2016, and has been considered as one of the most critically acclaimed series in the 12-year-old anime franchise. The fourth volume containing its 37th to 50th episode will be available at the reference price of 24,840 yen (about 230 US dollars) on April 20. To receive the illustration paper, the purchasers need to send the four coupons came with the Blu-rays by May 20.

Special illustration by the character designer Yukiko Nakatani 

【ニュース】BD『Ｇｏ！プリンセスプリキュア』全巻購入特典より「中谷友紀子イラスト色紙」画像公開！　気になる応募方法は？ https://t.co/l7sdaaeUQA pic.twitter.com/avXeY63kho

— アニメイトTV公式 (@animate_tv) April 12, 2016

Blu-ray 4th volume jacket illustration

1st volume

2nd volume

3rd volume

via: Animate.TV

© ABC/Toei Animation

Seanan McGuire’s new book Every Heart a Doorway explores how to deal with real life once the portal to your own personal magical world has closed. It also gives readers a rough guideline for how all of these different portal worlds–like Narnia, Oz, Wonderland, and so on–relate to each other. From the book:

Here in the so-called “real world” you have north, south, east, and west, right? Those don’t work for the most of the portal worlds we’ve been able to catalog. So we use other words. Nonsense, Logic, Wickedness, and Virtue. There are smaller sub-directions, little branches, but those four are the big ones. Most worlds are either high Nonsense OR high Logic, and then they have some degree of Wickedness or Virtue built into their foundations from there. A surprising number of Nonsense worlds are Virtuous. It’s like they can’t work up the attention span necessary for anything more vicious than a little mild naughtiness.

We saw that and wondered…could we use Every Heart‘s guidelines to map ALL of the different portal worlds in fiction into a single multiverse?

It took some doing. “Portal worlds” are only as knowable as their author/creator allows them to be and the aspects of some of them change over the course of the story in which they are featured. In addition, the four main axes–nonsense, logic, wickedness, and virtue–are themselves subjective on a personal and cultural level: One person’s estimation of High Virtue can easily be another person’s estimation of Wickedness.

Thankfully, McGuire’s Every Heart gives us a few different portal worlds that serve as examples of various degrees of the aspects known as nonsense, logic, wickedness, and virtue. With these in hand, we were able to form subjective gradations that could encompass all of the guidelines and examples presented by McGuire, allowing us to place all magical portal worlds into a precise grid (our “multiverse”) while remaining generalized enough to allow those worlds to move around the grid without conflict.

Here’s How The Grid Works:

y axis = Virtue 3, 2, 1, 0, 1, 2, 3 Wickedness
x axis = Nonsense 3, 2, 1, 0, 1, 2, 3 Logic

The below grid has two axes based on the four Aspects noted in Every Heart.

The y axis (up and down) starts in the north with High Virtue. Worlds become less virtuous the further south on the axis you go, until they’re High Wicked. There are three gradations of Virtue and three gradations of Wicked, with a null (zero) state in between them. This means our portal world multiverse is 7 rows tall.

The x axis (right and left) starts in the west with High Nonsense. Worlds become more logical as you head east, until they’re High Logic. There are three gradations of Nonsense and three gradations of Logic with a null (zero) state in between them. This means our portal world multiverse is 7 columns wide.

How Nonsense Is Your Favorite World?

It’s one thing to say that Eleanor’s portal world in Every Heart is “Nonsense 2” but what does that mean? Here’s how we’re defining the three gradations of every Aspect:

• Nonsense 3 = Environment completely pliable and redefinable. Change motivated by personal whim. Near-chaos. Examples include: The Dreaming from Neil Gaiman’s Sandman.
• Nonsense 2 = World on the tipping point between fantastical chaos and realistic environments. Examples include: Oz.
• Nonsense 1 = Reality is pliable through wish fulfillment, but cause and effect actions are still most effective. Examples include: Neverland from the Peter Pan tales.
• Nonsense/Logic 0 = Stasis, no change occurs in world.
• Logic 1 = Most things follow rules of cause-and-effect but there is still doubt as to how many things follow rules. Examples include: Lyra’s world from The Golden Compass.
• Logic 2 = Everything can be explained eventually, but there will always be unique exceptions. Examples include: Our own world!
• Logic 3 = Everything can be explained, no exceptions to rules. Examples include: Narnia, and most any other world where its god/creator has a direct influence.

How Virtuous Is Your Favorite World?

• Virtue 3 = Pure and providential, world provides everything you need. Is in an “ideal” state. Examples include: Narnia once Aslan’s control is restored.
• Virtue 2 = Overriding harmony in world, active championing of human/being rights, but still threatened. Examples include: L. Frank Baum’s Oz, after the Wicked Witch and Wizard are taken out of power.
• Virtue 1 = World provides for its denizens but in a limited capacity, passive promotion of human/being rights. Could be seen as only slightly better than our own world. Examples include: UnLunDun, from China Mieville’s book of the same name.
• Virtue/Wicked 0 = Balance between virtuous and wicked desires, but not harmony. Examples include: The Dreaming from Neil Gaiman’s Sandman.
• Wicked 1 = Unbalanced. Passive or secondary limiting of human/being rights. Examples include: Our own world!
• Wicked 2 = Overriding disharmony. Active limiting of its denizens. “Crapsack World” but livable. Examples include: Narnia when the White Witch is in power.
• Wicked 3 = Actively malevolent, apocalyptic, near-unredeemable, near-unlivable. Examples include: The Dark Tower.

OMG Just Let Me See the Grid Already

Here you go! Design credit goes to Jamie Stafford-Hill.

Hey You Have Narnia On There Twice

That’s because we discovered something really interesting when plotting out this portal world multiverse. Worlds move over time. They slide into Wickedness or correct into Virtue. Check it out:

This means that worlds in a multiverse don’t just have spatial “x, y” coordinates, they have an additional “t” coordinate for the moment in time that you’re measuring them within! Magical worlds float, drift, move…they have vectors, velocity, they insist on being fourth-dimensional! Portal worlds–those magical places we are drawn into–fizz around us like soda pop.

Interestingly, the worlds we chose to depict on the grid only move along the y axis, between Virtue and Wickedness. We couldn’t think of a world that moved along the x axis, which suggests that the Aspects along that axis are more intrinsic to the definition of a world, comprising the core of their reality’s structure.

You’ll also notice that fictional worlds tend to group in certain quadrants and gradations. Worlds don’t really like being in that High Virtue / High Logic space, for example, but that’s probably because we don’t like telling stories about those kinds of worlds. Perfect, happy places where everything is tended to and everything makes sense are a goal, they’re not a story.

Hey You’re Missing…

Oh yes. We stuck to sci-fi/fantasy books mostly, because the multiverse is VAST and full of terrors and we couldn’t make an infographic big enough to contain everything we’ve read. (There are hundreds of portal worlds in comic books alone!)

Really, we can only show you the way.

It is time, perhaps, to chart your own journey through your favorite magical worlds…

(A printable PDF version is available here.)

Chris Lough is the Content Director of Tor.com. Jamie Stafford-Hill is a Senior Designer at Tor Books. The map of portal worlds was created with the help of Tor.com staffers Bridget McGovern, Emily Asher-Perrin, Natalie Zutter, Leah Schnelbach, Sarah Tolf, and Tor.com Publishing staff Carl Engle-Laird, Katharine Duckett, and Mordicai Knode. It was a true team effort, is what we’re trying to convey here.

By Maggie Mallon

If you've ever spent a night out on the town, odds are you've used the immensely popular Uber app to get from point A to point B and, like most customers, had an efficient and safe experience.

However, recent allegations against the ride-sharing app reveal that it might not be as risk-free as once believed — especially for women. In February, a former San Diego Uber driver was accused of raping an intoxicated female passenger. In March, BuzzFeed obtained internal information from Uber's customer support platform documenting thousands of complaints of sexual assault and rape over a period spanning December 2012 to August 2015. And more recently, the company agreed to pay up to $25 million to its California customers over accusations that Uber deliberately misled users about the thoroughness of driver background checks and the overall safety of the service.

Kind of makes you think twice about ordering your next Uber, no? But, luckily enough, there's a new ride-sharing app launching later this month that will provide reliable transportation without compromising safety.

Chariot for Women was founded by former Uber driver Michael Pelletz. After a fairly routine year of picking up and dropping off passengers, one disoriented, belligerent customer revealed to Pelletz how unsafe the service could be. He thought of his own wife and daughters and how their safety could be compromised by an agitated passenger like the one riding in his car. Wanting to prevent such a scenario from ever happening, he decided to create his own ride-sharing service—one that would be for women by women.

"We're doing this because there is such inequality when it comes to security that afflicts driver and rider due to gender," Pelletz told TechCrunch. "Women are across the world the ones being harassed and assaulted by male drivers. In my eight months as an Uber driver, I didn't hear any negative feedback from men."

The premise behind Chariot for Women is simple: Like most ride-sharing apps, users can submit a request for a ride and will then be matched with a driver. However, unlike other services, Chariot for Women features a patent-pending technology that will provide both users and drivers with a code after a request is made that will need to be verified upon starting the ride. In addition to this extra safety measures, drivers are screened using Safer Places, a service that uses the most rigorous background checks for potential drivers.

Even better, 2 percent of every fare will be donated to women-focused charities (an idea implemented by Pelletz's wife, Kelly, who serves as president of Chariot for Women).

The app officially launches on April 19, and will serve women and children over the age of 13 located in the Boston area. Though its initial release is limited, we can't imagine it will be long before these Chariots for Women are rolling across the entire country.

More From Glamour:
• PSA Challenges Men
• Domestic Violence Secret
• Uber Recruits More Women
• #YesAllWomen Tweets

Photo Credit: Getty Images

They call her the child marriage terminator.

Theresa Kachindamoto is a female chief making strides in her community in central Malawi having annulled reportedly more than 300 child marriages in June alone, and close to 850 child marriages over the past three years.

Kachindamoto has the blood of Malawi chiefs running through her veins. She left her long-time secretary job at a city college in southern Malawi to become the senior chief to more than 900,000 people in the Dedza district of central Malawi.

But as the district's new chief, Kachindamoto became upset seeing 12 year olds being served up as child brides and bound by newborns on their hips.

"Whether you like it or not, I want these marriages to be terminated," she told members in her community.

According to a 2012 United Nations survey more than half of Malawi's girls were married before the age of 18. The survey also ranked Malawi 8th out of 20 countries believed to have the highest child-marriage rates in the world. 

In 2015 Malawi's parliament passed a law forbidding marriage before the age of 18.

But the law falls on the deaf ears of some parents. According to a recent Al Jazeera report, many poor parents in the Dedza district believe it is better to marry off their young daughters to ease financial burden. On the human development index, Malawi is considered one of the world's poorest places, ranking 160th out of 182 nations. And customary law still permits Malawian children to marry with parental consent.

Sexual initiation camps have also been found in Malawi to function as bridges to child marriage. According to the UN Children's Fund, UNICEF one in five Malawian girls is a victim of sexual violence.

Today, Kachindamoto is taking the law into her own hands. She got 50 sub-chiefs to sign an agreement to end child marriage under customary law, and annul any child or early marriages in the area she governs.

And she fired four male chiefs permissive of child marriage in surrounding areas. Kachindamoto re-hired the male chiefs only until she could prove that they abolished the unions.

Now every girl Kachindamoto releases from a child marriage is sent back to school no matter what. The fierce chief either pays for the girl's schooling or finds a sponsor to do so. She even keeps a secret network to check in on whether parents are sending their daughters to school.

"If they are educated, they can be and have whatever they want," she said in an interview.

NEXT: 4 Stories of Young Girls in Asia Beating the Odds Against Child Marriage »

Related Stories:
• Pat Schroeder: Violence Against Women Act
• Alice Walker: Going to Africa

Photo Credit: QueensOfAfrica/Twitter

Think Coffee is a pretty standard New York City chain, but to many visitors from South Korea, it's the ultimate destination. The Times explains that this is because of a show called Infinite Challenge, which ran an episode in 2009 about the challenge of ordering an espresso drink in perfect English. South Koreans now flock to the Mercer Street location, specifically — often in groups of 50. And, as a result, Think's owner sold the license to a company called Seoul Food, which has opened three locations in the city, and counting.

[NYT]

Read more posts by Sierra Tishgart

Filed Under: coffee talk, new york, new york city, think coffee

To promote the broadcast premiered last Wednesday, 2 meter tall posters featuring the characters from the Bungo Stray Dogs TV anime are now displayed in the central passage of The JR Ikebukuro station in Tokyo for one week from today. The 12-episode first season of the TV anime premiered in Japan on April 6, and its first episode has also streamed on Crunchyroll for members worldwide except for Asia.

Osamu Dazai & Atsushi Nakajima

TV anime main visual

Other poster visuals: 

Doppo Kunikida, Rampo Edogawa, and Junichiro Tanizaki/Kenji Miyazawa, Kyouka Izumi, Akiko Yosano

Cyuya Nakahara & Ryunisuke Akutagawa/Yukichi Fukuzawa & Ougai Mori

Latest CM for the TV anime DVD/Blu-ray

Source: Kadokawa press release

© 2016 Kafka Asagiri, Sango Harukawa/KADOKAWA/"Bungo Stray Dogs" Production Committee

Hajime Isayama’s Attack On Titan has been one of the biggest crossover hits in modern manga, with a successful anime series, movies, video games and more spinning off from the original manga. The series is set in a post-apocalyptic world where society lives behind giant walls to keep the monstrous Titans at bay, and follows members of the military who seek to keep their cities safe from the Titan threat.

This October, Kodansha Comics USA will release an Attack On Titan Anthology, featuring some of the best creators from the worlds of manga and western comics, and we’ve got exclusive pages from the likes of Michael Avon Oeming, Evan Dorkin, and the Batgirl team of Brenden Fletcher, Cameron Stewart and Babs Tarr.

Continue reading…

By Jillian Kramer

A 9-year-old girl has put us all to shame when it comes to showing initiative and passion for our professions.

Hilde Kate Lysiak runs her own newspaper and website, Orange Street News, and reports on the happenings of Selinsgrove, Pa. And this weekend, the young girl single-handedly broke the story of a murder in her hometown — this is the sort of hustle you need to make it in journalism.

Acting on a tip from a source, Lysiak hit the streets and got the scoop — breaking the story before the local newspaper even caught wind there was a possible homicide in the town, according to The Washington Post. Her headline read, "Exclusive: Murder on Ninth Street!"

Lysiak and her father — a former New York Daily News reporter who often took his daughter on assignments with him — took serious heat from online commenters questioning whether a young girl really has a place at a crime scene.

The Washington Post reports that one commenter on the Orange Street News' Facebook page wrote, "I think this is appalling that [you] would do a story like this when all the facts are not in yet," while another said, "Does no one realize that this is a 9 year old reporting this type of graphic information! I mean, what parents are encouraging this type of behavior! (The comments have since been deleted from the thread.)

All the bitter vitriol didn't discourage Lysiak. She took to her site and posted a video of her reading and responding to several mean comments. "If you want me to stop covering news, then you get off your computers and do something about the news," she says in the post. "There, is that cute enough for you?"

Later, she told the newspaper, "People thought I should be like playing tea parties or doing something other than being at the crime scene. Because of my work, I was able to inform the people that there's a terrible murder, hours before my competition even got to the scene. In fact some of the adult-run newspapers were reporting the wrong news, or no news at all." Many small towns and even some cities have lost most of their local press to budget cuts and mergers, so Lysiak's work is much more important than a more "age-appropriate" hobby.

For his part, Matthew Lysiak is immensely proud of his daughter. "She's really motivated," he told The Washington Post, adding "she has been in the housing projects in the Bronx with me. She doesn't have a lot of fear. She just wants to get the stories out. And she really wants to report real news."

Despite journalism's often self-described dire future, Lysiak says she wants to be a reporter until she retires. "I just like letting people know all the information," she says. "It's just what I really want to do. And crime is definitely my favorite."

More From Glamour:
• Katie Couric Talks
• Would You Risk Your Life for Your Job
• Four Courageous Women
• Help a Girl Get an Education

Photo Credit: Orange Street News

Sad news today from the Wall Street Journal. Among CEOs of big companies, stock-based pay was up 7 percent last year and cash pay was up 2 percent. But thanks to slower growth of CEO pensions, overall compensation was down 4 percent.

But perhaps CEOs will be mollified by the broader picture, which you can see in the chart on the right. CEO pay is up about 44 percent since 2007 in nominal terms, and up about 38 percent when you account for inflation. For ordinary workers, pay has decreased 5 percent since 2007 when you account for inflation.

For anyone wondering why Bernie Sanders has struck such a chord with the electorate, this pretty much tells the story. The Great Recession sure didn't affect everyone equally, did it? Ordinary schlubs paid a high price, but the folks with the most lavish pay to begin with just shrugged it off like it never happened. If the rich wonder why calls to tax high incomes at 90 percent sound pretty good to a lot of people, this should clue them in.

On Tuesday, Mississippi legalized a business's right to refuse service to gay and trans people if the owner feels religiously or morally obligated to do so, and (huge shocker) lots of restaurateurs immediately started sweating the fallout for the service industry and tourism in their state. The law will clearly rally some restaurants to discriminate even more boldly than they already were, but the Mississippi Hospitality & Restaurant Association is trying to get out ahead of this and neutralize the public's blowback now by making it very easy to distinguish an establishment that plans to avail itself of this new right from establishments that consider it an egregious injustice.

The industry group says it's going to hand out free door decals that read "Everyone's Welcome Here" to restaurants and other hospitality businesses that want to convey a message of inclusivity. "While we may not be able to manage the image and brand of the entire state," the group's executive director, Mike Cashion, says in a press release, "we can affect the image of our restaurants, hotels and other hospitality businesses." The association says it will assume all costs for designing, printing, and distributing the decals; all interested parties have to do is ask for one.

The MHRA adds it's also going to put the names of participants in an online directory so that people can search through it. "Our industry serves a diverse customer base and we want to make sure all customers are appreciated and welcomed," Cashion explains. "We have a very clear and strong message to convey. Mississippi's restaurant industry is open for everyone's business."

The campaign kicks off later this month. The law goes into effect on July 1, although it's ripe for a legal challenge between now and then.

[MHRA]

Read more posts by Clint Rainey

Filed Under: gay rights, discrimination, mississippi, mississippi hospitality & restaurant association

Plus: an all you can eat breakfast this weekend

— Del Posto is doubling down on the upscale aspects of the restaurant. They bought new white leather chairs, servers now wear new suits, and diners receive warm hand towels before their meal that are "suffused with rosemary oil." "We want you to feel kind of coddled in here," says general manager Jeff Katz.

— Pommes Frites' eventual reopening moved forward this week after the Landmarks Preservation Commission approved the popular french fry restaurant's storefront design, which includes wooden signage. The restaurant, which lost its longtime East Village location to gas explosion, has been trying to reopen at 128 MacDougal St. in Greenwich Village. Owner Omer Shorshi last said they're aiming to debut this month.

— A pie shop called Daly Pie is opening in Prospect Heights on Vanderbilt Avenue. The bakery, which started as an online shop, offers seasonal fruit pies, savory pies, and more.

— The trial over the teen who slashed a busboy at Greenwich Village restaurant Silver Spurs is still going on. Most recently, court papers showed that 16-year-old Domincio Howington said he pulled out a knife to show that he's "not a p--sy." Silver Spurs employee Bobby Bardot needed 130 stitches on his chin. Howington's attorney says he acted in self-defense.

— A Queens soup kitchen that was displaced by a luxury rental building has now found a new home. Masbia Soup Kitchen Network in Rego Park, which offers groceries and hot meals, will be reopening in Forest Hills in a 3,800-square-foot space at 105-49 64th Road.

— Tasting room Humboldt & Jackson is offering a $9.99 breakfast buffet this Sunday, by chef Paul Heiler. Options include soft scrambled eggs with creme fraiche and chives, house beet-cured gravlax with smoked tarragon, and Belgian waffles.

— A fight at Tribeca nightclub Haus left a 26-year-old party promoter with a bloody gash on his head. The attacker punched him, put him in a headlock, and bit his stomach. It's unclear what provoked the situation.

— Ligaya Mishan visits Bushwick Pakistani grilled meat restaurant BK Jani in the latest Hungry City. She declares that BK Jani serves one of the city's best burgers, but she's impressed by all the meats on the menu, from the seekh kebabs to the chicken tikka. "You could throw a dart at the menu blindfolded and still be happy," she writes.

— The owner of the shuttered Rockaway Taco is planning to open a surf museum with a bakery in the Rockaways. David Selig and surf instructor Fernando Pires hope that the bakery and surfboard rentals will help support the museum, which will be dedicated to surf culture.

— Eater's own Robert Sietsema is doing a book signing tonight for "New York in a Dozen Dishes," which was nominated for an International Association of Culinary Professionals award this year. He will be at the Brooklyn Museum from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.

— And finally, here's how to make Babu Ji's Jesse Singh makes a curry base:

On February 11, Peter Liang became a rare statistic: He was the first New York City police officer in more than a decade to be found guilty of shooting and killing a citizen while on duty. Liang, who is Chinese American, was convicted of second-degree manslaughter and one count of official misconduct for the shooting of Akai Gurley, a 28-year-old black man and father, during an encounter in a Brooklyn housing project. In the post-Ferguson era, the case has added another twist to the intense ongoing debate about race and accountability in policing.

On the night of November 20, 2014, Gurley and a friend had just entered an unlit stairwell on the seventh floor of their building. Liang, a 28-year-old rookie cop, was on the stairwell landing above with his partner, on a "vertical patrol" assignment. Liang had his gun drawn, his attorneys told jurors, because the stairwell was dark and police are trained that can be dangerous—for New York cops on vertical patrol, lack of lighting is commonly perceived as a sign of criminal activity. When Liang heard a noise come from below, he testified, he was startled and pulled the trigger of his gun by accident. The bullet ricocheted off of a wall along the landing below where Gurley stood, mortally wounding him. Liang told jurors he did not realize he had shot anyone until he went down the stairs looking for the bullet. Liang said that when he discovered Gurley bleeding on the ground, "I was panicking. I was in shock, in disbelief that someone was actually hit."

In the aftermath, New York Police commissioner William Bratton told reporters that the shooting appeared "to be an accidental discharge, with no intention to strike anybody." But during the trial, prosecutors zeroed in on evidence that Liang failed to administer immediate medical aid as Gurley lay bleeding to death, instead arguing with his partner over whether to call their supervisor. Gurley's friend attempted to give him CPR after receiving instructions from a 911 dispatcher. Liang testified that he tried to request an ambulance over the radio. Transcripts from radio calls, however, did not show him calling for one.

Liang, whose sentencing is scheduled for April 14, was fired from the department and initially faced up to 15 years in prison. In late March, however, Brooklyn District Attorney Ken Thompson announced that he would not seek prison time for Liang. Thompson instead recommended five years of probation, including six months of home confinement, citing "the unique circumstances" of the case. On Tuesday, Liang's lawyers asked a judge to throw out Liang's conviction, alleging jury misconduct.

In the view of his supporters and some former prosecutors, Liang's conviction is a glaring anomaly among cops who have killed unarmed civilians, the vast majority of whom don't face criminal charges. Kenneth Montgomery, a former assistant prosecutor in Brooklyn and now a defense attorney, found the conviction somewhat surprising. "When you look at the spectrum of police shooting cases, this seemed to be—I want to be careful because all of these cases are of public concern—less egregious than Anthony Baez, Amadou Diallo," he says. "It seemed to me that the defense had a lot to work with."

Many believe Liang's race was a factor. On February 20, in the wake of Liang's guilty verdict, thousands of people—many of them Asian American—gathered in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Washington, D.C., to protest. Demonstrators charged that Liang was not afforded the same protections as other officers because of the color of his skin. Former New York City Comptroller John Liu echoed this sentiment in a speech to the crowd: "Shocking! This is not manslaughter...We kind of had a sense in our hearts that this was going to be the result, because for 150 years, there has been a common phrase in America. This phrase is called, 'Not a Chinaman's chance.'" As the writer Jay Caspian Kang noted in a New York Times essay, the Liang protests marked "the most pivotal moment in the Asian American community since the Rodney King riots."

Some of Liang's supporters compared him to past Asian American victims of police brutality, and even went so far as to suggest that both Liang and Gurley were victims of the same kind of oppression. That rhetoric quickly drew heat from Black Lives Matter activists and supporters—including many Asian Americans—who found it offensive and misguided. "[I don't care] how many "black lives matter" signs were flying at the Peter Liang protest," organizer Johnetta Elzie tweeted. "That's rooted in anti-blackness + supporting white supremacy." Kang described the reactions from some Asian Americans as "the stunted language of a people who do not yet know how to talk about injustice":

The protesters who took to the streets on Saturday are trying, in their way, to create a new political language for Asian Americans, but this language comes without any edifying history—no amount of nuance or qualification or appeal to Martin Luther King will change the fact that the first massive, nationwide Asian American protest in years was held in defense of a police officer who shot and killed an innocent black man....And yet it would be catastrophic to ignore the protesters' concerns altogether.

Liang's conviction is indeed rare for cops. "Ten years ago, he wouldn't have been prosecuted," Stephen Saltzburg, a George Washington University law professor, told The Atlantic. "And if he was, they would have acquitted him."

One germane example comes from January 2004, when NYPD officer Richard Neri shot and killed a 19-year-old black man. Timothy Stansbury and two friends were walking up a dark stairwell to the top floor of a Brooklyn housing project while Neri was patrolling the building with another officer in the dark, their guns drawn. Neri and Stansbury arrived on opposite sides of a stairwell landing door and reached simultaneously for the handle. When the door opened Neri fired a single shot, fatally striking Stansbury in the chest. The next day, then New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly told reporters that the shooting appeared to be unjustified. Neri was suspended for 30 days and stripped of his gun, but the grand jury declined to indict him.

Critics called it a "cold-blooded killing" and demanded the NYPD review its policy allowing officers to patrol with their weapons drawn. But the policy remained intact. After Gurley's shooting, Bratton said the NYPD would review the policy but maintained that vertical patrols were "an essential part of policing."

Several media reports have pointed out the parallels between  the Neri and Liang cases. But a key difference between them, Montgomery explains, is that Neri made the unusual choice to testify before the grand jury. Neri told the jurors that he had his gun pointed down and his finger on the side of the barrel, in compliance with his training. When the stairwell door opened, he said, he had been startled and had not intended to fire. He said he couldn't recall raising his arm and moving his finger to the trigger. Another key difference, Montgomery says, was that Neri's defense showed that Neri attempted to give CPR to Stansbury.

Liang's own choice not to testify to the grand jury may also have made a difference, according to Montgomery. "Who's to say what would have happened if Liang went in there and was emotional?" He also noted the sway that prosecutors have in grand jury hearings, and that Thompson had a track record for successfully prosecuting officers involved in fatal shootings.

Liang's partner during the incident, Shaun Landau, was granted immunity after he agreed to testify in the closed-door proceedings. Later, during the trial, Landau testified that he and Liang didn't immediately realize that the gunshot had struck Gurley. He also told jurors that he'd received inadequate CPR training at the academy—and that he thought that Gurley's friend was better qualified to perform CPR at the scene. Liang and Landau both testified at trial that the CPR training they received was shoddy, prompting an internal affairs investigation that resulted in the stripping of their CPR instructor's of badge and gun.

Notably, Liang's case appeared to lack the police union support that usually comes in the wake of officer-involved shootings. Some stories have pointed out the relative absence during Liang's trial of the Patrolmen's Benevolence Association, whose head Patrick Lynch has long been regarded as a controversial figure for coming to the defense of police officers accused of committing crimes—including the NYPD's Daniel Pantaleo, who a grand jury declined to indict for choking Eric Garner to death in July 2014. The national controversy over policing may not have helped Liang, either: His case came at a time when public confidence in police had reached its lowest point in two decades.

Arte (アルテ) by Kei Ohkubo

The free online offerings of Comic Zenon are going strong. Each series has its own unique hook and look. Arte is a historical manga set in 16th century Europe about a noble woman who wants to become a professional painter. Kei Ohkubo’s deft line work and exquisite attention to detail bring the period setting to beautiful life.

Arte is determined to become a professional artist despite her family’s wishes. When she begins looking for a studio to apprentice at, all doors slam in her face until she meets disagreeable, but open-minded, Master Leo.

Arte starts off the series as a dreamer but quickly becomes embroiled in the realities of what it means to work as an artist. She faces losing her family, or worse to her, crawling back with her head bowed. The art world is not interested in her talent, seeing only her gender, which leads her to taking on impossible tasks just to gain a modicum of respect. Then there’s the physically hard work, long hours, and rigorous training of an apprentice which would be the same whether she was a girl or not.

Arte’s serendipitous meeting with Master Leo is sort of the last bit of dumb luck she is willing to accept. The series does a great job of depicting her strength and determination. Sometimes it comes at the detriment of her recognizing the kindness of others. But the kindness of men in a world where women have limited options is something Arte isn’t interested in; she knows she can’t grow or gain respect by relying on it.

I’m continually impressed by Arte and the subtle ways she and the series goes against the grain when it comes to her progress in the world. I do have a nagging fear that love will become a larger part of this story (mostly because Arte has been warned so vehemently against it if she wants to make her own path) but I have hopes that she will put it aside and focus on what she wants her life to be, just as she has so far in the story.

• Read it for free!

~ kate

The option to disable copyrighted music in a major video game would have been unthinkable or at least seemed irrelevant years ago. Now it’s in a major Xbox One release like Quantum Break, as seen here. This will likely become increasingly common as game makers want gamers to be able to stream without fear of overly aggressive music copyright hawks. Imagine this for Grand Theft Auto VI!

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Ahead of Emerald City Comiccon, Image held its annual gathering of creators to announce a new slate of titles coming from the publisher in 2016 and beyond. The 2016 Image Expo brought with it wealth of information about the publisher's plans, including new books from the former Batgirl creative team of Babs Tarr, Cameron Stewart and Brenden Fletcher; crime comic mainstays Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips; a new OGN from Leila del Duca; Jen Van Meter and Rick Burchett's ballerina crime caper; and a number of other promising projects.

Continue reading…

The annual barbecue festival experienced some hiccups but will return for the 14th year.

The 14th annual Big Apple Barbecue Block Party (BABBP) will take place over the weekend of June 11 in and around Madison Square Park. The BABBP is a charity event benefiting the Madison Square Park Conservancy that was founded and run by Danny Meyer's Union Square Hospitality Group until last year, when chef Tim Love and a Texas based event company purchased it. Word on the barbecue grapevine is that the event did not meet expectations and that it was "donated back" to the Conservancy, which sounds like a euphemism for "we didn't make any money."

Fortunately for the barbecue-loving public, and indeed for the park itself, the Conservatory will be running the BABBP themselves this year, insuring that NYC will once again host one of the nation's premier barbecue events. The list of attendees is still being finalized but representatives for the Conservancy say it will be confirmed within two weeks. The BABBP has traditionally brought as many as 17 different pitmasters from across the nation and attracted as many as 125,000 visitors. Whether this year will be quite as ambitious remains to be seen. Stay tuned for more details.

Mobile-ordering apps are convenient, but Domino's recently learned its was so badly designed that it offered unlimited free pizza to savvy hackers. Earlier this week, Paul Price, a computer-security researcher in the U.K., blogged that he'd discovered this glitch three whole years ago while poking around the Android app's source code just for kicks (as hackers do). Price quickly realized Domino's engineers were guilty of a "very bad practice" that left payment processing vulnerable to serious exploitation, so naturally he exploited it. He input an obviously fake Visa card number (4111111111111111), rewrote the error message that came up so the transaction would read "Accepted" instead of "Declined," and successfully ordered a pepperoni-mushroom-pineapple pie, chicken strips, and ice cream without a valid payment method.

Not believing his luck, he got his pizza half an hour later. "My first thought: awesome," he writes of what went through his head. "My second thought: shit." (He adds he's a hacker who's got principles, so he insisted the baffled pizza guy take cash for the £26 order the store said he'd already paid for.)

Rod Brooks, Domino's head of IT, tells Fortune the chain already discovered the flaw last year "during one of our frequent reviews," adding, "We are pleased to say it was resolved very quickly." The only reason Price ran his post is because Domino's fixed the bug, but it's anybody's guess as to how many other "meddling users" packed on a few free pounds after discovering it.

[Fortune]

Read more posts by Clint Rainey

Filed Under: the chain gang, domino's, hackers, mobile payments

Global soccer may be embroiled in yet another corruption crisis after Swiss police raided the offices of UEFA, the sport's European governing body, on Wednesday. The raid came days after Gianni Infantino, UEFA's former chief and the newly installed president of FIFA, appeared in the massive Panama Papers leak, which exposed the complex offshore banking arrangements of some of the world's most powerful people.

According to the Guardian, those documents show that Infantino co-signed a UEFA broadcast rights deal in 2006 with two Argentinian businessmen, Hugo and Marino Jinkis, who are now under indictment as part of the United States' global soccer corruption investigation. The men immediately resold the rights to Ecuador's TV station Teleamazonas at a steep markup, and the documents potentially tie Infantino to both that deal and other illicit acts by the Jinkis'.

Infantino was UEFA's director of legal services at the time, and he said in a statement yesterday that the contract was awarded properly and that he had no direct dealings with either of the two men or their company. "There is no indication whatsoever for any wrongdoings from neither UEFA nor myself in this matter," he said.

Infantino was only elected FIFA president in February, following months of scandal during which the US and Swiss authorities arrested a string of FIFA officials and the organization banned its former president, Sepp Blatter, from any soccer-related activities for six years.

At the time, Infantino promised to turn the page on FIFA's corruption problems and implement badly needed reforms. "We will restore the image of FIFA and the respect of FIFA, and everyone in the world will applaud us," he said after his election.

On Tuesday, San Francisco became the first US city to require that all new parents—mothers, fathers, and same-sex partners—get fully paid parental leave for six weeks after giving birth or adopting a child. The new law follows the efforts by tech companies in the area, including Amazon, Apple, Google, and Twitter, to offer employees robust parental leave policies in an effort to increase work-life balance. 

California is one of only five states that already offers some form of parental leave, but this new city-wide law is one of the most generous in the country. Workers in the Golden State now get six weeks off, but they receive just 55 percent of their pay. New Jersey and Rhode Island have similar laws, and Washington state recently passed a parental leave law that has not taken effect. In March, the New York legislature approved a parental leave policy that will cover 12 weeks of paid time off, though the law will go into effect in 2018 and will initially cover only 50 percent of average pay.

The United States, which guarantees up to 12 weeks of unpaid parental leave, is the only developed country that does not guarantee all new parents paid parental leave. Expectant mothers get 18 weeks of paid leave in Australia, 39 weeks in the United Kingdom, and 480 days in Sweden. 

For workers in both California and New York, paid parental leave was one of two victories this week. Governors in both states also signed legislation Monday that will increase the minimum wage in each state to $15 an hour, to be phased in over about seven years. The higher wages, which are more than double the federal minimum wage, will affect roughly 60 million Americans. President Barack Obama responded to the wage increases by asking Congress to follow suit.

"Since I first called on Congress to increase the federal minimum wage in 2013, 18 states and more than 40 cities and counties have acted on their own—thanks to the strong leadership of elected officials, businesses, and workers who organized and fought so hard for the economic security families deserve," he said in a statement. "Now Congress needs to act to raise the federal minimum wage and expand access to paid leave for all Americans."

Grab some hot mustard, some sauce, and a pair of headphones! A tasty new anime is coming to Crunchyroll in the form of Tonkatsu DJ Agetaro, based on the Shonen Jump+ digital manga.

Tonkatsu DJ Agetaro is set to begin streaming Sunday, April 10th, at 8:45 PST and is available to members in the U.S.A., Canada, United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Iceland, Netherlands, Latin America (Central and South America including Caribbean), Germany and German Speaking Europe.

Akitaro Daichi's (DD Fist of the North Star, Fruits Basket) is the director of Tonkatsu DJ Agetaro, based on Ipyao and Yujirou Koyama's 2014 manga about a young tonkatsu cook who discovers a love and aptitude for DJing club music. Studio DEEN is producing with MU-STARS's Daisuke Fujiwara handling the music.

The 3rd generation owner of a pork cutlet store Agetaro Katsumata discovers a similarity between pork cutlet stores and DJs in clubs. Discovering the similarity of the completely different two, he aims to become the master of both a DJ and a pork cutlet store! The anime depicts pork cutlets, club culture, DJs and the urban life of Shibuya! The animation directed by Akitaro Daichi a gag expert and music done by the rising new star in the DJ world MU-STAR GROUP! With the extreme detail in both picture and music, the anime shows it’s “COOL”.

CHARACTERS AND CAST

Agetaro Katsumata - Daiki Yamashita 

Agesaku Katsumata - Kouji Ishii 

Shugo Oshibori - Kenjiro Tsuda 

DJ Oily - Keiji Fujiwara

Sonoko Hattori - M.A.O 

Gorō Mizokuro - Takashi Matsuyama (Takeo Saeki in The Grudge(

DJ Big Master Fly - Chafurin (Case Closed' Inspector Megure)

 PROMO VIDEO 1

PROMO VIDEO 2