Days Off

I did a marvelous thing recently. Rather, I did two marvelous things recently: I took two days off. Yes, I, freelancing workaholic robot woman of the Western Hemisphere, scheduled myself time to tell the rest of the world to fuck off. And, if I do say so myself, I did so to great effect.

I went out to San Francisco over Memorial Day weekend to photograph a wedding and stayed with AS for a few days. Tuesday she returned to work and I resolved to do nothing but sit in Golden Gate Park and read my new book: John Waters’s Role Models, purchased at the city’s beloved independent bookseller Green Apple Books. I didn’t know the last time I took a day off, and it started to take a toll on my work. I didn’t care about anything anymore and I felt like I was just going through the motions. I hoped even one day away from the computer would make me care again.

Waking up and answering a few emails (old habits die hard), I took myself out to an early lunch at Nopalito, the little sister restaurant to the impossible-to-get-into Nopa. Nopalito’s dinner rush is a similar experience, I was told, but I figured for a lunch right after they open the doors, it might be a little easier to get into. I was not wrong, and was immediately seated outside at one of their long green tables. The food, of the gourmet Mexican variety, was delicious but not filling--I spoiled myself by spending more than I normally would on two plates because, fuck it, it’s my day off and I’m (sort of, kind of) on vacation. The Mole Enchiladas are deliciously creamy, spiced but not spicy, and I practically lick the plate. The Calabacitas quesadilla is made of a hand-rolled blue corn tortilla with summer squash and jack cheese that gets interestingly chewy but not melty. Everything looks and tastes clean and fresh.

And then I walk to the park and read my book for hours and hours, sitting in the grass of two unused ball fields. The sun is bright and the sky is clear blue but there’s just enough of a chill in the air to keep my leopard cardigan on. I go back and forth to the park all day, eating up Waters’s words and then a coffee; more of his words and then an avocado sandwich from the local health food store. I almost want to go to the vegan restaurant in the neighborhood AS says is run by a cult, but I don’t feel like getting wrapped up in anyone’s dogma but my own today. As I sit and read of John Waters’s love for Rei Kawakubo and local Baltimore burlesque dancers, I wonder when the last time I sat and read a book anywhere that wasn’t the subway. I don’t know if I have an answer.

By the time I return to New York, my wherewithal to power ahead is significantly revived. The battery percentage that was once dwindling in the single digits has increased, enough that I know when I take my next day off in a few weeks, I may even be fully recharged.

*

Initially the plan was to go to Brighton Beach and sit in the sun reading all the copies of New York Magazine that had been piling up on my desk, begging to be read. I proceeded accordingly, but arrived on the beach in 68-degree weather to swirling, whipping winds that made what should have been a delightful temperature feel like something perhaps 20 degrees lower. I tried to brave it for a while--this was my day off! I wanted to go to the beach!--but I realized it was perhaps futile. I needed to go someplace that had some kind of enclosure around it, so I would be warm but not wind-slapped. Prospect Park was the next best thing, I resolved, and I boarded the Q train accordingly.

Cool enough for a hot coffee, I procured myself a cafe au lait at Hungry Ghost and walked to the park, through the faux Arc de Triomphe at Grand Army Plaza (it always tickles me to think about arriving in Paris last year and seeing the real one, joking to myself, “Hey, we got one of those in Brooklyn!”). I stop and pet a small floofy Pomeranian named Coco who doesn’t so much walk but toddle, and I stare at him much more than I should as I cross into the park. The sun is still shining brightly with a cool, this time refreshing, breeze as I set up camp in the middle of the park, encircled in a giant field by endless trees and green grass. There is something even more wonderful about taking a day off in New York when everyone else is working, knowing that you’ve carved out a space for yourself in this bustling city at a time when comparatively few others have. In a place that’s usually significantly more crowded, no less. I read issue after issue after issue of New York Magazine until I just can’t read anymore and start looking for places nearby to eat.

Puerto Viejo is a Dominican restaurant in Prospect Heights, and I sidle up to the restaurant and sit at what perhaps was once a student’s desk and has been transformed into a two-seated table. I order Pernil (roast pork) with yuca and maduros (sweet plantains). Complimentary banana chips with a delicious garlic dipping sauce arrive first and I make my way through them--I didn’t realize how hungry I was, but admittedly at one point I’m just using the chips as a vehicle for the creamy, savory, heavenly garlic sauce. But then my food arrives and dear sweet Jesus I have not had a meal that good in a very, very, very long time. The juiciest pork is utterly decadent, dripping with flavor. The yuca is boiled and soft, almost cake-like, topped with pickled onions that pop. And the maduros are practically caramel, melting soft in my mouth. I almost sit there agape for five minutes afterward. It’s lucky I live so far away otherwise I’d be there all the time and gain 9,000 pounds.

I leave Puerto Viejo in a perfect haze of sun-soaked warm skin and full tummy, trotting myself back to the subway, batteries recharged.

Top Great Moments I Didn't Write About But Should Have: 2017 Edition

As ever, my list of my favorite moments I wanted to write about but didn't in 2017.

Work It
There was so much work I did that I was proud of this year, including but not limited to launching Miss Manhattan Hangs Out, which taught and continues to teach me how exciting and beautiful people are, whether you are watching them perform standup comedy in a park, rehearse on a piano, or play with their dogs.

I was excited to write for several dream publications like Vogue, Vanity Fair, Town & Country, and Billboard (one of which resulted in a tweet from RuPaul) as well as become a contributing writer at Cools; the Copy Editor and Staff Writer at Treats!; Copy Editor at The Unseasonal; to continue to work on stories I'm proud of for Vice like those I did on Peche Di, Joel Kim Booster, Cole Escola, Village Grannies, and Brooklyn Drag. I was also ecstatic to write a story about airline La Compagnie for Men's Journal, which took me to Paris; to photograph the LGBTQ Anti-Prom at the New York Public Library for Racked, which taught me that the kids will be alright; interview legendary documentary director Errol Morris for Tablet; and write a story that took me to Green-Wood Cemetery for The Village Voice's print edition before it went fully digital.

I also appeared on my first radio show, Young Person's Radio with Colby Smith, on Radio Free Brooklyn; hosted a panel at the Miami Book Fair and attended their gorgeous after-party at The Standard Hotel in Miami; spoke to undergraduates at my university about careers in the humanities; was invited by a gallery to a dinner with its artists; and attended a cocktail party where I talked to Ted Allen for 20 minutes without fangirling.

If You Want to Destroy My Sweater...
SE and I went to see a Weezer cover band called The Sweater Songs at Mercury Lounge. Originally, we thought it would just be a kitschy, weird time, and it definitely was, but the band was also incredible and totally rockin' (especially their bassist Oscar Rodriguez, who we both later decided we had a crush on). Everyone got a free pair of Rivers Cuomo-style glasses, too.

Elliot Erwitt

I've loved Elliott Erwitt's photography since I first saw it in college, especially the way he found the humor in everything (which I think makes his work even more beautiful). A photographer with legendary agency Magnum, he was in attendance at the opening of the International Center of Photography's Magnum exhibition earlier last year. So was I. I went over to him to say hello and say thank you so much for his work. He said, "Okay." We took a selfie, which seems grotesque to ask of a photographer of his caliber, but...it is what it is. 

Nailess
The week of SD's bachelorette party, we decided to go get manicures--nail art, specifically. But the place we decided to go had an hour-long wait. The next place had no appointments available...nor did the next, or the next or the next. We Googled venues in our phones to see if there was someplace we could go, eventually just wandering all the way up from Canal Street to 14th Street in hopes of stumbling on one. We never found anything, but we laughed the whole way and settled instead to have a glass of wine at Feast, followed by ramen burgers at Yonekichi in the East Village, and dessert tapas at Spot on St. Marks Place. Things didn't go exactly as we planned, but it was one of those nights I'm happy to have shared with her before her big day. She got married in October in a beautiful wedding in Pennsylvania, and I wish her and her husband a lifetime of happiness. 

Spatchcock

For some reason in the ferocious summer heat, SJT and I decided to cook. And not just cook, but spatchcock a chicken, roasting it in his apartment that had only a small fan in the kitchen. We were sweating while salting and spicing, and SJT taught me how to chiffonade herbs. While the chicken roasted, we sat in his heavily air-conditioned bedroom with SE and L sipping Georgian wine. He did a marvelous job seasoning the chicken, and it was juicy and wonderful. After dinner, we all went back to his room to eat rice pudding and jam. Spending time with friends is one thing, but cooking with them is somehow even better.

DiscoverHERE
DiscoverHERE is a program developed by theatre artist Nate Bertone, who I had the pleasure of meeting this past summer. I instantly liked his genuine nature, his kindness, his belief in his work. DiscoverHERE is meant to remind what it means to be "here," to remember the present. I attended a version of one of these events at the beginning of fall, just cold enough to wear a jacket and wrap it tightly around you as it gets colder. I listened to people share about their lives with honesty and vulnerability I don't know that I've seen before or since, and I even shared something of myself. I listened more at first--I didn't know if I wanted to share, if I trusted the people sitting in a circle around me, but the more they talked, the more I understood they were coming from a genuine place, so I could too. While Nate is traveling for work for a while, the program had been run in Lululemon's Chelsea space and I hope will continue once he comes back. It takes a lot to make a person, let alone a New Yorker, feel comfortable in a group of strangers, but somehow Nate and co. have developed the formula to be able to do it.

Bushwig
Bushwig, the independent Brooklyn drag festival hosted by Horrorchata, just completed its fifth year and despite my love of all things drag, I only attended for the first time this year while working on the aforementioned article. It was a weekend of extraordinary indoor and outdoor performances with a punk rock sensibility, massive heels, impossibly high wigs, glitter on top of glitter on top of glitter and gender-bending gorgeousness I will not soon forget...and I will definitely be back next year.

"Bougie, but nice"
Mag, AR, M, and I left a gallery opening crowded with people in search of hamburgers. But not just any hamburgers, ones that were like, you know, a little more interesting. Ones that, I made the mistake of saying, were "bougie. but nice." I meant "bougie. but cheap," because none of us felt like paying our rent for an interesting hamburger. But just like a strange cheese, maybe a weird bread, some unusual mustard...you know the deal. So we wandered over to Whitmans in the East Village for our inexpensive treats, and I do not remember a second where we weren't laughing, telling jokes and weird stories, then hopping down to another restaurant for wine and tiramisu. It was cold out, but the company was warm.

Lobster on a Budget
I've written before about this thing that HanOre and I do called a high-low evening, where we do something like go eat borscht then have a fancy cocktail. But then I spotted $14 lobsters at Fairway. I texted her a picture of these mythical creatures and suggested our next evening was in order. Her home would be the venue, with pan-roasted cauliflower, sushi, Cabernet Sauvignon, Prosecco, and Frank Sinatra. We cracked our lobsters and dipped their innards in butter, later cracking open New York magazine's 50th Anniversary book and dipping our fingers into a black and white cookie from Agata & Valentina. We may have outdone ourselves.

The Pink Spiders
Back when I was a young aspiring punk who occasionally shopped at Hot Topic (oh man, I can't believe I just started a sentence that way), my favorite band was a band called The Pink Spiders. They were like if the Ramones and the early Beatles had a love child that was raised in Nashville, and I loved them. I physically own every CD (yes, CD!) every album they ever made, and I know all of their songs by heart. But I only had the opportunity to see them one time, many moons ago in college, and I accidentally only saw part of their set because they started earlier than I thought. But this time, after years apart, they had gotten back together--or rather, the lead singer reassembled the band with new members--and they would be playing in Brooklyn. So I topped all of my pleases with whipped cream and a cherry on top for SE to please come with me to this show late on a "school night" and he did. And it was amazing. There are so few concerts I go to where I know every word to every song a band plays, but I did that night (except for their two new ones) and I shook and shook and shook my body to the shredding of their guitars, the beating of their drums in a way that the me of 15 years ago always wanted to.

Festival of Lights

How interesting that on the first night of Hanukkah I would do a post about Christmas lights, but we are what we are.

I hadn't even heard of Dyker Heights when AR brought it up in conversation a few weeks ago. Apparently, he said, there are Christmas light decorations in this Brooklyn neighborhood that are totally bananas, like devastate-your-electric-bill levels of bananas, and I was all for it. When are we going?

On Sunday night, we made an evening of it, stopping first for wildly delicious (and inexpensive) Chinese food at Hand Pull Noodle and Dumpling House in Bensonhurst, then a cannoli at bakery Villabate Alba not far away. While gazing at the marzipan Christmas scenes in the bakery window, a woman from the area started chatting with us about how good the cannolis were there, how gorgeous the cakes were, and how she used to go to the Italian discos in the area during the 1970s--they always had the best music, she said, because they were run by the mob.

Our cannolis wrapped up tight in a white cardboard box tied with white string, we made our way to Dyker Heights, about a 20-minute walk away from both our location and any subway. Once there, we decided, we would eat them in celebration of having arrived. It was in the mid-low 30s that night, and when we got to the first house we sat on a short stone wall to dig into the pastries. I took off my gloves to eat the cannoli, it was so deliciously creamy and crunchy I forgot about the temperature of my hands completely.

The Christmas lights, a joyous/horrific/hilarious love letter to American splendor/excess and capitalism, did not disappoint either. Ridiculous McMansions ran throughout the neighborhood with opulent to the point of tacky staircases and statues--we saw several lions, tigers, and Venus de Milos--and almost all of them were covered, often roof to yard, in lights. Blue, green, white, red, you name it. One house had its own Parthenon (year-round, I might add) that featured an enormous animatronic Santa. Another was covered in zooming, flashing neon lights; another was dotted with giant nutcrackers. With all the jolly faces and sparkling lights, it felt equal parts like being in a candy-covered fantasyland and dystopian, David Lynchian nightmare. And either way, it was endlessly amusing and we had an amazing time. Check out some photos below.

A Good Man Sunday

If I learned nothing from 30 Rock, it’s that a trip to Ikea can make nails scratch against the chalkboard of a relationship. 

It turns out it’s actually true: apparently the stress of buying large items or even confronting the possibility of what a future might look like can drive some couples to tear at each other’s throats (literally or figuratively, I’m not sure). So when SE told me he wanted to go to Ikea, I said sure, thinking ‘What a fun thing to do on a Saturday!’ all the while keeping Liz Lemon and Criss in the back of my mind. SE hadn't watched too much 30 Rock, so he didn't know. 

But we didn’t fight, surprisingly. While SE would be happier in a room that looks more like Don Draper’s apartment and I would be pleased as punch to be in a place that looks like the Madonna Inn in California, we began to find things we liked that overlapped and made each other happy. And all SE really wanted to get there was a knife. I did find that being in there made me extremely tired—I noticed that the setup is not unlike a casino in Vegas, where there are no windows or clocks so you cannot quickly comprehend the passage of time and force yourself to leave quicker. By the time we had lunch after finishing the top floor (meatballs and ligonberries, of course), I was half in the bag, but continued to make my way through the marketplace, even procuring some cute, colorful plates and bowls and plastic Tupperware-esque containers along the way. I passed out for a hot minute in the ‘As-Is’ section after grumbling about the probably poorly behaved children who left their footprints all over some furniture that was perfectly good aside from the occasional scratch. 

We then decided to explore Red Hook a bit, walking down Beard Street to some of the piers. Growing up in Brooklyn, Red Hook was not ever a place you went for anything on purpose, SE told me. Nevertheless, it was this gorgeous, crisp, bright blue, cloudless day and for a while we just stood on the pier. This was not before going to a place called Nobletree Coffee, however. I wanted some coffee, and Google Maps said it was close by, so I decided to go. Now, having been there, I can say that Nobletree is undoubtedly one of these places that people who hate gentrification also despise—a place with a wooden bar and cold brew coffee on draft, its baristas with mustaches and suspenders not so much for irony but for quirky enjoyment, flavor profiles listed for each coffee they sell. These people love coffee, take coffee super seriously and, I hoped, would not snarl at you if you wanted to add some fake sugar to your latte like I did. You walk up to the bar and order from a barista in no particular order, perhaps the same way you might at a bar that did not serve coffee. You just catch the barista’s eye and order, much to the confusion of people who tried waiting in a line and were then thrown off when people just kept walking up to the bar past them. I ordered a latte, was asked if I wanted to open a tab (????), declined, and paid for my beverahhhhge. I am not a regular coffee drinker, so I don’t normally have an opinion about the flavor of the stuff, much less know anything about what a good cup of coffee tastes like. There was a place near Grand Army Plaza I used to love because their coffee tasted like fudge, but they closed and since I hadn’t actually been able to drink coffee for a long time. But I had been feeling better these days, so I decided to go for it. And let me tell you—it’s one of the best made cups of coffee I think I’ve ever had. It was the kind of cup of coffee that makes you understand what coffee is supposed to taste like, simultaneously nutty and fruity and creamy with no bitter aftertaste. What sorcery was this? Even SE, who can drink coffee but hates it, tried it and said “I still don’t like coffee, but that’s the best cup of coffee I’ve ever had.” What higher praise can someone ask for? I felt like a gentrifying gentrifier, but damn that’s some good coffee. 

We walked along the waterfront a little bit, then hopped on the Water Taxi back to Manhattan (fun fact: the ferry to and from Ikea is free on the weekends, and also picks you up from Van Brunt street in Red Hook), the sky beginning to glow orange as the first inklings of sunset twinkled across the sky. Arriving back in Manhattan, we walk from Pier 11 at Wall Street back to the train, passing the building that doubles as The Continental, the assassins’ hotel in one of SE’s favorite movies, John Wick. I take pictures of him in front of it so he can send to a friend who’s equally obsessed with the film. We head back uptown and for no good reason eat Chocolate Chip Cookies at Insomnia Cookies, the warm, gooey chocolate a perfect counter for the chilly night. SE likes the outside of the cookies and I like the inside, so he peels off the edges for himself and gives the wobbly, chocolatey centers to me. It’s a perfect appetizer before we head downtown to the barbecue spot Blue Smoke, where every Sunday they have 50 cent wings. The wings are grilled then tossed in what they call their Alabama white sauce, creamy and savory and tangy and oh my goodness. Every bite is juicy and flavorful, a wing worth writing home about. 

SE planned us a gorgeous day (my only addition was the coffee), and we couldn’t have asked for better weather. Give me some furniture, some cookies, some wings, and my good man on a Sunday and I’ll be just fine. 

Clam Strips and Magazines

Having planned our outing weeks in advance, I made my way to the Cape House in Bushwick, where HanOre and I had decided to read magazines and eat clam strips. New Yorkers are perhaps some of the busiest people you’ll ever meet, so time to sit and do (almost) nothing has to be thought out ahead of time. 

“Can you do next Wednesday?” I might ask a friend.

“Agh, no, maybe the following Sunday?” 

That’s really how it goes. I think to some extent the city is filled with people who are constantly doing, and to make plans at the last minute often really isn’t an option unless you know someone really well. And even then it’s not a guarantee. 

So I was looking forward to this day where I would not only get to sit and tackle the giant stack of magazines that had been building up on my dresser, but to share them with my friend who appreciates nothing if not the finely worded phrases, beautifully designed layouts, chic photography, and lush wardrobes associated with what becomes monthly-assembled and bound printed pages. 

I stuffed the stack of magazines in my red backpack, tied a leopard scarf around a bun on my head, swept on a splash of red lipstick, and made my way to Brooklyn. 

The Cape House is a lovely yet idiosyncratic spot just off the Morgan stop on the L, its white wooden walls and sailboat decor featuring a nautical kitsch not shared by its industrial surroundings. Freight trucks rumble past us in the Saturday summer sun as we sit outside on wooden benches cordoned off by more white wooden walls from aged warehouses still in use. 

HanOre jokes that today we have both dressed very much like the embodiment of ourselves, me in a tacky button-down top printed with storybook scenes and red shorts, she in loafers and a Juicy Couture sweatsuit, an item she is perhaps singlehandedly, shamelessly bringing back into vogue. I make a joke about my eyes bleeding. Understanding this is how I show I care about people, she laughs. Secretly (although I guess not so much as of right now), I love how she loves what she loves without apology. 

Thank RuPaul for people like her, I think to myself. People who get it, who get me. Who get any of us. That there’s some cross-breeze in the universe that deposits people at our doorstep who either love the things that we love or understand us for everything that we are or both, no explanation required. 

My friendship with HanOre started over our love of magazines, an inexplicable love we still have despite what we’re told is a dying age of print media. Who else before her had I met in the world who understood the beauty of the newsstand at a bookstore, the glamour of a masthead, the excitement of a September issue, who would understand why I kept every issue of ElleGirl ever published? It was like finding a friend who spoke a language I thought nobody else knew. 

So to be able to sit and read magazines with my friend for an entire day felt not just like a luxury, but a gift. 

Ultimately, we decide on clam bellies as our snack of choice instead. “You’ve never had them so let’s get them,” HanOre says. Growing up in New England, she is a relative expert on the stuff. They arrive and they’re crispy, meaty, with a taste of iron and sand (but like, in a good way). Topped with a squirt of lemon, they mash gently against my teeth with sprightly acidic pops. 

In between bites, we gasp at the gorgeousness of font choices, the smoothness of papers in our hands, the creative headline choices that made us bubble in appreciation and joy. We are, by definition, nerds: single-minded in what is perhaps a niche field and totally unapologetic about it. And goodness, it’s a beautiful feeling. 

We sit there for hours with a giant stack of magazines: T, Vanity Fair, Elle, V, others.

“It looks like a work project,” says a man passing by our table, trying to make conversation with us. 

“No,” HanOre says, polite but curt, from behind black cat-eye glasses. “It’s for fun.”

I holed up at a Cape Cod-inspired clam shack in Bushwick with @missmanhattanny so we could read approximately 15 pounds of magazines each — a perfect Saturday.

A post shared by Hannah Orenstein (@hannahorens) on Aug 5, 2017 at 3:34pm PDT

Pizza My Heart

Despite New York being considered one of the hubs of great pizza in the U.S., I can’t say with any conviction that I’m…especially interested. Perhaps like most people in college, I tired of pizza my freshman year, when every welcome event featured the circular treats as a means of luring in new faces. I thereby can’t say with any certainty that I have a favorite slice of pizza in New York. I thought I once did, but I really hadn't had one that truly made me understand why pizza is so beloved, argued about, and dare I say fetishized across our nation. 

On the day of the Mermaid Parade in Coney Island, however, all of that changed. My dear SE, who grew up close enough to that beach to walk there, had been telling me about a mythical pizza joint in the area for about a year and a half. It was his favorite not just growing up but has been consistently throughout his three decades. L & B Spumoni Gardens it was called, and according to him they had the world’s best pizza, a square, Sicilian slice that had no peer. The restaurant had been open since 1939, so they were obviously doing something right. Yet having heard many different answers to the “What’s your favorite New York pizza?” question in my nearly seven years here (and, at one point even having an answer of my own), and love him though I do, I took it with a grain of salt. It was, after all, possible for there to be several different kinds of amazing, world’s-best-quality pizza in myriad styles, each appealing in their own way.

I truly had no expectations when SE, AG, and I walked from the beach to catch the B3 bus to Bensonhurst, hopping off just a block from L & B’s grouping of red tables outside of a brown brick building with two lines of people in front: one for those getting slices, and one for those getting pies. SE got what’s called a half tray, a pie of twelve slices (instead of a whole tray which, if my English-major-level math is correct, would of course be 24 slices) while AG and I staked out a table. 

Soon the box arrived, and I almost didn’t know what I was looking at when I first saw it, this gorgeous fluffy bread positively swimming with deep red sauce and tiny flakes of Pecorino Romano cheese. At L & B, you see, what would normally be the pizza’s cheesy topping, the thing that differentiates the stuff from just being “sauce bread,” is underneath the sauce, baked into the bread. There were three edges of crust and one without so some slice had just no crust at all. Each slice was about the size of a CD case, a giant square I could only imagine holding with two hands—but alas, I am not a native New Yorker and have been told by several natives that one simply does not eat pizza with two hands; rather, one folds it in half. This just seems silly to me. Why sandwich something when you could enjoy more of it for longer by just holding it flat? But I digress. 

Was there a way I was supposed to eat this, a way a native New Yorker would know how to attack this particular pie that I, a mere transplant, would never know? I asked.

“Well,” SE said. “Do you like crust?”

“No,” I said. On the rare occasion that we would get pizza, I always left the hard bits for him to crunch on. 

“Then don’t eat the crust,” he said. 

Oh. 

So I went for the middle slices, the warm sauce almost spilling over the edges of the perfectly square, almost cake-like pizza. I picked it up and took a bite. And suddenly, I understood pizza. Not just this pizza, but all pizza. It was as if I was standing in a tornado of olive oil and tomatoes and mozzarella and herbs and dough, complex mathematical equations flying past me in circles while the secrets of the universe revealed themselves to me. This was it! This is what pizza was supposed to taste like! I didn’t understand for so long because nothing had compared. Nothing was as simultaneously crunchy on the bottom and fluffy, cheesy, gooey in the middle; no sauce was as sweet yet tart and savory. I had never eaten anything like this in my life, so it’s no wonder I never cared about pizza until now. I imagine there are some people who feel about all pizza the way I feel about this one from L & B, who rejoice in all sauce-dough-cheese combinations in one form or another. I found myself lapping up fallen bits of sauce, yelping in despair when I thought I had dropped a loose corner (it was safe), feeling a heaving sense of sadness when the half tray was gone as if I had lost a dear friend because I had to eat him.

I even had a slight pang of jealousy—this was SE’s local pizza place growing up, the place that, if he wanted to order a pizza, would shortly deliver to his home close by. But with a distance over an hour from my house, such a delivery for me would never be. Even now, a few weeks later, I can still taste the cheesy, saucy slices. But it is still summer, after all, and many a slice can still be consumed close to the beach. But what will I do in the winter? 

Mermaids V

As ever, some sights and scenes from the annual Mermaid Parade on Coney Island.