Feb
28
lpl redux
Sunday night. My daughter is days shy of 10 months old. New Year’s is quickly approaching and I don’t have to make up excuses anymore for having to be home at 6 pm. Motherhood is bliss. While I can’t dash out to yoga class I can rsvp with a giant no pretty much all the time. It’s like delivering a baby gives you a carte blanche on all social engagements until the baby graduates 8th grade. Hallelujah. Read more
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Filed Under: musings
Dec
19
Mrs. Dalloway
“mrs dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.”
-virginia woolf
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Filed Under: musings
Oct
30
A Subway Story
“The Magna Carta, signed in 1215, provided the basic groundwork for constitutional law as we know it.” Fair enough, I muttered inwardly, the bellowing voice from the other end of the car summoning my attention.
I picked up a few more snippets, some ramblings about habius corpus. Then something about Euclid? He was holding court, a peripatetic professor at rush hour, on a Brooklyn bound D. And I, slouched about 20 seats away, intermittently gazed down the crowded corridor of the subway car, attempting what we all do: to put a face to the mysterious straphanger’s voice.
He continued in this vain until at least Fort Hamilton Parkway, where I exited at the above ground station. He traversed Greek philosophy, French royalty and American political theory. His measured cadence was hypnotic, his subject matter iffy: “The Ancient Greeks were best known for their dry cleaning. The Rutgers campus is home to the world’s most fantastic ancient statutes, visited by millions each year.”
Then came my favorite: “I’ve never met a woman who wasn’t a double agent.”
Through the sea of backpacks and coats, I discovered that the mystifying voice had a body: instead of donning a tweed blazer and khakis, the professor was in threadbare attire, a gray patina covering his skin and clothes. He was wild, mad and shoeless; had any of it been accurate, his lecture would have been on YouTube. But it was his gumption, not his accuracy, that rapt me.
Looking back, I realize that what captivated me most was not what he didn’t know but what he did: the beauty of this town is that everybody has a story. As a writer and teacher, there’s nothing I cherish more than that. So here I am, the double agent, telling his story to the world.
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Filed Under: on the street
Oct
14
Why Obama Will Win
It was almost five in the afternoon on an unusually warm fall day, when I was lugging my Trader Joe’s bag down the street to our Cobble Hill apartment. Having just seen about six Obama supporters, festooned in their most clever urban political garb, my own measly pin barely making the cut, I grinned while passing the young, eager faces in front of Starbucks, “Have a minute for Barack Obama?” (which is a far less difficult question to answer than, “Have a minute for children’s rights? Or for the environment?; at least the wrong answer here just makes you politically backward not morally depraved).I turned to the couple next to me, walking in an embrace as if posing for a Brooklyn tour book; “they’re preaching to the choir”, I hummed. “They should spend their time in a place where it will actually make a difference.”By the time I got to my corner, a whopping two minutes later, I reflected on what I’d just said. The truth is: I have all the time in the world for Barack Obama. And despite the fact that I am:
- contributing already to the Obama campaign
- schlepping a very cumbersome grocery bag while six months pregnant
- fantasizing about the dill pickles I just bought
I still contemplated stopping and seeing what they wanted. Money, I assumed. And why not throw another 10 bucks his way? And this is what makes his campaign so brilliant. I am no economist, as I have said before. But I know a good sales pitch when I see one. The Obama campaign knows that people care more now than they probably ever have. Besides my parents’ generation, who still glance up dreamily when asked about the days of JFK and RFK, most voters today are energized by what enervates them. Myself included.And while some may slow at the finish line, Obama pulls a Michael Johnson. Or a Michael Phelps as it were these days. As a teacher, there are few greater life lessons one can bestow upon her students: tenacity has its reward. It may sound cliché, but let’s be frank here: he’s young, he’s agile, he’s believable and he’s inspiring. Like Jack Nicholson in As Good As It Gets, he makes us want to be better men…and women.
It doesn’t hurt that his campaign is run like the Google Board of Directors were in charge of the German train system. From educators to engineers, he has ingratiated himself with people who run one hell of a campaign. I’m not sure who wants it more these days: him or us.
Which is why a sometimes slightly disenchanted, disheartened, pregnant school teacher who’s lost 1/3 of her scant retirement fund and plans to raise a baby in a one room apartment, indeed has a minute for Obama.
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Filed Under: on the street
In 1979, I was three years old. Carter was President, the winters were snowier and New York City was a magical land just over the GW Bridge. But it wasn’t Disneyland.
By Thanksgiving eve of 1980, I was off to my second annual viewing of Macy’s finest helium heroines as they rose to their glory over the course of the evening. Somewhat accidentally, my dad says, is how we ended up watching the floats inflate along the sidelines of the Museum of Natural History. Although seeing the infamous whale inside maintained a certain cache, nothing, including Chinese New Year or Annie (the first time around), could compare to our annual Thanksgiving eve trek to the Upper West Side.
My mother basted her turkey while friends and family helped prepare for the following day’s feast; but my daddy and I were off to watch those grand, looming and colorful characters puff and inflate. I remember those first years quite well. The parade itself was an afterthought; I would wake up to the television, seeking out all the floats I could remember from the night before.
We were two characters ourselves, a Jewish Frick and Frack, Kavalier and Clay, Ross and daughter, shouting for Kermit like the Yanks were barely down in the 9th. The roads weren’t cordoned off then; a few police lingered. We ate pretzels. And meat on a stick. We were travelers who encountered all eventualities: some years hail, others blustering winds. We bought glow in the dark bracelets and I sat on my dad’s shoulders. Kermit’s limbs would sag and then extend, helium, and the small chanting crowd, encouraging him to eek out one more year. Go Kermey. Go Kermey. He was an old float.
Eventually though, Kermit retired. But not us. This past Wednesday, my dad and I celebrated our 27th visit to the floats, missing only one year to the flu (mine, not Kermit’s). Sure, we’ve changed as well. In college, I would invariably cut my Wednesday classes if they weren’t already cancelled, racing down from New Hampshire, cheering on my aging Volvo as I would Kermit. Come on, one more year. You can make it.
The balance shifted. Fewer floats and pretzels, more fancy dinners. First, Union Square. Then Shun Lee. Since then, Le Bernadin, Gramercy Tavern, Montrachet. Yet the main attraction remained the same. It was our tradition.
In 2002, I moved to New York for graduate school. Now I was the savvy city girl, and my dad came to retrieve me in the West Village for our annual date. And in 2005, perhaps our most special dinner yet, I watched as my dad carefully questioned the waiter regarding how they cooked the Dover Sole. It had been only five weeks since a minor heart attack forced him to make major changes. Sure, the cream sauce was good. But being here is better.
2007. I live in Brooklyn now and am planning a wedding. No matter. Flower arrangements and bridal parties can wait. This is our special night. Oops, it just got sappy. So before this turns into Miracle on 34th Street meets Father of the Bride, I’ll switch gears. It turns out it’s not actually our night anymore.
It’s the whole town’s night!
Nice Matin must have been the gastronomic segue to watching the floats. The restaurant is jammed with pre-turkey cheer; wine is flowing and reservations are barely honored. We finish dinner and walk west, along with the madding crowd. Despite seeing the streets busier over the years, somehow 2008 feels like the tipping point. Masses of strollers pound across Columbus Avenue, thousands of policeman monitor the docile, if not affected, crowd. Cheer is in the air but, in the spirit of New York, so is the hum of being in the cool place.
Religion isn’t the opiate of the people. Hulking, cartoon gods are. Shrek. Mutant turtles. Sure, I could be called a Thanksgiving Grinch. Certainly every child should be able to look back on urban youth with larger than life memories of their favorite characters blown up in 3-D. But must everything become a circus? I remember when the crowds were simply a sideshow. Crews of workmen and women on the job through the night. The rest of us just had our nose against the fence.
As New York Magazine wrote, “What was once simply a preparatory stage to the big show has evolved into an event itself with the crowds to prove it.”
Don’t get me wrong, I followed the madding crowd this year. And I’m just as competitive as the next girl on the F train. So please note for the record, that I was there first. Not in 1927 when it began, but close enough. Standing on the shoulders of a giant, when New York wasn’t Disneyland.
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Filed Under: on the street
Whatever happened to a good bargain?So many aphorisms come to mind- the more things change, the more they stay the same. The older I get the smarter my mother becomes. The times they are a changin’. Well, in my childhood days in New Jersey my mother and I would frequent Loehmann’s. It seemed like a smart choice back then; since I now visit the original 7th avenue store and she no longer travels to the Rt 4 outpost in Jersey, I can’t help but wonder: is she indeed getting smarter?
What I do know is that things are surely not staying the same. The onslaught of multiple Century 21’s, express buses to Woodbury Commons, brand labels created exclusively for the outlet stores, lead me to believe that there is simply not enough bargain to go around. I’m no economist, but simple supply and demand tells me that there is a limited supply of overstock, slightly damaged merch and last season’s styles to fill all these “discount” shelves.
Furthermore, with my mother’s New Jersey twang ringing in my head, (which, when I imitate her, sounds strikingly like my Mike Bloomberg rendition as well as my mother-in-law to be’s Boca-isms), I ask “this is such a bah-gain?!?!” when grabbing some Marc Jacobs schmata, still priced in the triple digits. Last time I checked, ruffles, mismatched buttons and small tears were passe, no?
A few examples:
I enter the Space outlet at Woodbury- how is an orange Prada bag at $600.00 any more of a bargain than one in black at $900.00?
Tory Burch flats at the eponymously named “discount” shop- only about 10% cheaper than at Bloomies or Saks? The gasoline to the outlets is worth more than this bargain.
At Bloomingdales, I notice a Theory blazer on sale. With the store’s marked down price, and my coupon, it’s cheaper than any outlet. And they have every size imaginable. Come to think of it, it’s quite comforting to find everything I’m looking for– the right color, multiple sizes, no damaged goods. Is the world changing? Or am I just growing up? Maybe my mother is right– sometimes, you just want what you want.
Perhaps it’s me. I once considered myself a panopticon in the discount hunters’ universe. Am I crashing the wrong party? Do I need to visit the garment district? Chinatown? Foreign Markets? Is discount the new rip-off? Is my mother Einstein?
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Filed Under: in the store
Jul
25
Kleinfeld’s Sample Sale
I didn’t go for the story, I went for the dress. I really mean it. But in a city of cosmic shopping uncertainties, I left the Kleinfeld’s sample sale with everything I hadn’t come looking for and without that one elusive thing every girl dreams of: the perfect gown.
Although I think it’s a silly word, perfect, and a silly concept, perfection, the betrothed say that it truly exists: a wedding dress that makes you forget about cellulite, stretch marks, your rent check and all the bitter ways marriage can end. That there is a moment when you look in the mirror and say “I do.” As in, I DO look drop dead stunning in this gown. I will shout Hava Nagila from the top of my lungs and I will turn heads. So me of little faith decided that she would mosey on over to the Kleinfeld’s annual sample sale; it started at 5 pm, it’s a breezy summer Tuesday in the city, and I am on vacation. As I walked south on 6th avenue, I paused at 20th st. Left or right? Just east of 6th or just west? I suppose the blinding bling should have directed me; as I turned west, at around 3 pm, there stood, and sat, about 60 women, brides and brides’ little helpers: mothers, friends, sisters.
There was a silent aggression in the air- first, you do the requisite subtle stare: engagement ring. Then, assess her style. Assess her size. Will she be competition? Can I take her? As I retrieve my number, 39 (not so bad), I walk to the back of the line, watching and being watched. There’s a quiet aggression, like drunk people at a country club. As I take my place behind the last girl, the sun ducks behind a building and my cell phone vibrates. It’s a text message from my fiance: “good luck, baby. And if anyone fights you for a dress, go for their knees.” No matter how many jokes people make about the infamous Friends gown shopping episode, I know there’s some truth in this message: use all my private school savvy, and fight like hell. But two hours later, I was leaving, carrying out only a pair of sandals that I bought earlier uptown.
There were cameramen flocking the line, interviewing girl #1, after all, being the first person in line at the Kleinfeld’s sample sale must make you some kind of New York wonder. They also swarmed around friendly faces, absurd conversations, generous talkers. As a writer and consummate New Yorker, I am embarrassed to confess that I didn’t realize the enormity of such an event; the press was out. So it was sotto voce that I discussed bikini waxes, with my neighbor on line. On a rare afternoon when nobody in my life could accompany me on such a journey, I found myself awash in conversation with my bridal buddies. In fact, I spent about a hour and a half talking incessantly with the loveliest young woman, a makeup artist-soon-to-be-teacher named Lisa Rothenberg (she does weddings!) and her warm, generous mother who provided chocolate covered almonds for all the parched, exhausted brides in her sight. All we needed was a lemonade stand. This was the highlight of the day and the almonds were moist and decadent. People who camp out together for such events will always share a special bond, like those together at summer camp, a blackout, the LSATs.
Upon entering, I was herded to the back, asked to turn in my number, and then the debriefing began; the woman’s tight bun and long face wiggled as she directed me: three dresses at a time, take them off the rack yourself, place them over there, she points to a man, one of the only in the place, and he will help you get a room. I roamed around for about 10 minutes, taking this much more lightly then one should, I suppose. Others zoomed and zipped while I slowly stuck my hands in the plastic covering the gowns; milky whites, washed out lemons, dirtied puffs of clouds, drifted into my fingers. The racks with dresses under $800.00 must have all been snatched up by numbers 1-38. And, in my humble opinion, anything over $800.00 should really be decided upon with your mother. I’m all about a great deal. And I never need perfection. But no returns, no more than three dresses at a time, no alterations and no personal dressing room? It simply wasn’t worth it to me today.
In short, water at the bodega: $2. Tasti-Delite on the walk there: $3. Finding a fabulous make-up artist for my wedding, while standing on line: $300. Not having a list of rules while trying on wedding gowns: priceless.
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Filed Under: in the store
Jul
19
Po Brooklyn
My fiance was born and raised in Brooklyn. But he is the first one to proclaim how our (formerly his) Cobble Hill apartment is so vastly different from the outer Brooklyn of his youth, which resembled less desirable suburban towns rather than funky urban enclaves. Still, his Brooklyn pride runs deep. And, as they say, you can take the boy out of Brooklyn, but…you know the rest of the story. So, when I glow with glee over Manhattan transfers, claiming how so many of Brooklyn’s finest institutions first began just west of us, I am met with accusations of not recognizing the outer borough’s sheer wonder in its own right. And he has some good points, but I like to think that Brooklyn Fish Camp, Joe’s Pizza, Cube 63 and Frankie’s give me a few points as well.
Well, we could volley with the ‘whose borough is better game’ all day, ad infinitum, or we could spend a little time talking about one such migration that I would visit even if it settled a third time in Staten Island (well, that was slightly hyperbolic but still…). I’m choosing the latter.
We ate at Po last week, and I can’t seem to get the computer to put the little accent over the ‘o’, so please excuse this glaring omission. As many of you probably know, Po began on Cornelia Street in the West Village (which happens to be the shortest street in Manhattan), dishing out delicious, moderately priced Northern Italian cuisine. Now, in the tradition of borough hopping, Po Brooklyn has so graciously arrived on our doorstep, festooning the already well-decorated Smith Street. Yum.
Really, yum. Do: go early or call for a table. Try to sit in the window. Though we were virtually on top of our neighbors, it made for a lovely evening of chatting and dining, much in the spirit of our friendly, family oriented neighborhood (the couple next to us was our parents’ age; they told us that, after visiting with their daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren, they go out on the town before heading back to New Jersey- one for the Brooklyn team, my fiancé shouts from the stands!).
The portabella salad was lovely-a beautifully marinated mushroom with deliciously fresh greens. The goat cheese starter was less memorable but that’s ok because the cod and tagliarini were a fight to the death-meaning that we fought over every last bite on the plate. True, it’s hard to do anything bad with truffles, and who would want to, but it wasn’t just the pasta with white truffle oil that danced in our mouths. The cod was flaky and…yum. I’m out of descriptors. Go there and it will be yums all around.
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Filed Under: at the table
Sure, Neda is one of Cobble Hill’s most well dressed boutiques. The small store is filled with racks of beautiful clothes- fine lines, nice fabrics, great colors. It’s quite sophisticated actually and surpasses most of its not-so-shabby neighbors. And they have a remarkable shoe selection for a small store as well as fun bags that range in price from the absolutely cheap to the still affordable. But I can’t bring myself to buying a thing there. Perhaps it’s because, the older I get, and the more I write about shopping, the more attuned I am to the personality behind the shop. Or perhaps it’s because they’re located a skip away from my yoga studio and, on my walk home after class, I expect the world to greet me with the same om like generosity that has recently restored my spirit. Or maybe it’s simpler than that: they’re just rude.
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Filed Under: in the store
There are only a few things I love to do more than shop. Some of those things include eating and yoga (usually not at the same time). The rest I’ll leave to your imagination.
It’s been a joy to receive such positive feedback about the little pink list. And for those who know me well, I’m so inspired by your encouragement and enthusiasm as well as your noodging about expanding this site.
So last week I decided that shopping alone would not suffice. I indeed had some things to say about eating in New York as well as living a New York life both on and off the yoga mat.
At first, I envisioned “little pink menu” and “little pink yoga”. And then I realized how silly it all sounded. So I added two new categories, and rolled shopping into one. They’re still living under the big umbrella of little pink list-
same list, still pink, just not as little.
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Filed Under: at the table, in the store, off the mat
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