++++virtual gdbk++++

Please move on over to www.virtualgdbk.com where I'll be blogging from now on.

2010-11-01T12:34:00.001-07:00

Hello blog readers,

In all liklihood, you are my friend and thus already know that I've finally launched Virtual GDBK (that's a "guidebook" for the new world) and won't be updating this site anymore. This blog was always intended to get me used to internet publishing while developing my own, awesome, much-more-complicated travel guide site. i.e., Virtual GDBK. Head over there for my personal recommendations on what to do it 10 cities (with more coming soon), plus listings guides for those cities, recommended blogs, English-language media guides and much, much more.

Here's a sneak peek:

Hope to see you over there!

America's Least-Known Small Art Town

2010-06-22T09:29:00.000-07:00

Vision, love, commitment, personal passion... these are the qualities necessary to create something truly great.

Even the great group projects—the Internet springs to mind—rely fundamentally on the love and passion and personal commitment of individuals, just, lots and lots of them all tuned to the same spiritual channel. Anytime I stumble across something wonderful, it has been made by an individual, and reflects that person's priorities instead of those of the market, and I'm grateful for it.

This leads me to my favorite small museum in America, the Museum of Russian Icons in Clinton, MA.

Icons, for those who don't know, are Russian religious art, usually painted by anonymous artists on wood panels and used to give orthodox churches their eerie every-surface-painted beauty. You know those onion domes you see in photos of Moscow? The inside of the dome is usually painted with eyes and a face, representing God looking down. Ceilings, walls, etc. are all hung with icons depicting religious stories. The gleaming, dark-painted, cyrillic-emblazed, gilded panels are also used in orthodox homes, where there will be a spiritual "icon corner." And they're given as gifts for important life events such as the birth of a child, in that case, it would be an icon representing the child's name-saint.

Like most religious art, with icons, god is in the details. You need quite a bit of cultural context and narrative to understand and appreciate a panel, and this has always been a problem with how icons are displayed in Russia. I've seen several wonderous collections that are either not explained, or explained by guides with poor English and a grasp only of tourist cliches and apocryphal anecdotes. Under those circumstances, once you've seen a few icons, you've seen them all.

Well, enter the newish Museum of Russian Icons in the sleepy country town of Clinton, Mass. This is a beautiful small museum in a renovated mill building, staffed by amazing docents who hop up and start chatting with you when you enter the room. The museum is enhanced by every modern art educational tool—video, audio, etc. Individual magnifying glasses are mounted with each artwork, allowing the viewer to peer at every tiny jewel-like detail. And unlike every museum I've been to showing icons in Russia, the work here is properly lit.

The project is the idee fixe of a local entrepreneur, who started collecting icons in the 90s, when
Russia was in disarray. This is stuff that definitely wouldn't be allowed out of the country now—that it ever made it across the borders is controversial, and upsetting to Russian art lovers. The entrepreneur is from Clinton, made his icon-collecting money in manufacturing in Clinton, and decided to give back to the town with the museum, despite the fact that this is an utterly weird place to have such an esoteric collection, the largest and best outside of Russia, and the best-presented of anywhere on earth.

I think it's a must-see daytrip for anyone visiting Boston, or in the Boston area. The little town also has a good Italian restaurant and some fun thrift-shopping, if you're into that.

Here's me and Ada here over the winter:

Clubs and bars in St. Petersburg, Russia

2010-06-08T12:00:00.000-07:00

Every time I've gone to St. Petersburg, I've been frustrated by how difficult it is to find good places to go out at night. It's one of those towns that you know has a cool scene. Russian-language reviews mention tantalizing items such as "the fashion of minimal techno and rowdy parties in teahouses on Nevsky. " But such things are almost entirely hidden from tourists. The following list includes a few places I've been myself, and a few that sound good from their listings on trusted Russian-language sources. As usual with things Russian, the websites/ phone answering is slim, and hopefuls will have to make do with optimism and an address. I plan to make it to St. Petersburg this summer, and will be able to make this entry more reliable, but in the meantime, this info will still be better than anything else online in English on the St. Petersburg nightlife scene. If you know to the contrary, please comment (below).

Begamot

12 Sadovaya St, +7 812 925 40 o0
A cafe during the day and possibly a glamtrash bar at night. From the restaurant group that does Mari Vanna in NYC, London and Moscow, as well as many other cool, nouveau-tasteful places in St. Petersburg.

Chinese Pilot (Kitaiskii Lotchik)

7 Pestelya, +7 812 273 74 87
I'm assuming this is a St. Petersburg venture from the owners of Chinese Pilot in Moscow. The Moscow version, way back in the day, was opened by one of the managers of the original Krisis Genre and is still going strong as a music venue, cheap restaurant and late-night drinking venue with a young, bohemian clientele. St. Petersburg version looks to be cut from the same cloth.

Druzhba ("Friendship")

39 Ligovsky Prospekt
Tiny and very cool DJ bar with chilled-out music and backgammon that recently appeared in a cellar under an art gallery. Also serves crispy waffles with condensed milk.

Efir (Ether)

Small Ave. PS 54-56, Friday and Sat only
A big, splashy new venture by many pedigreed Petersburg nightlife folks. Techno music and a kitchen concept—cheap Chinese-inspired— that hopefully is better than it sounds. Translation of Afisha review here.

Et Cetera

9 Belinkskovo; +7 904 551 00 25
Nice design, seems to be affiliated with an experimental theater and may have interesting cultural events.
Translation of Afisha review here.

Fish Fabrique

53 Ligovsky Prospect
The first bar-club in the city, famously located in a squat and to this day a mix of students, local intelligentsia come for the concerts and exhibitions, and tourists. Divey with cheap food.

Club Griboeydov
2a Voronedzhskaya; +7 812 764 43 55
Another very old, casual, underground club and music venue. Listing at the moment is for an acoustic jazz jam.

Papaprotif
22-24 Fontanka Embankment, in the courtyard; +7 812 275 05 20
Russia's violence and homophobia makes any openly gay person or venture an act of resistance. I'm always both nervous and thrilled to see one, especially one with a great name like this. Papa Protif could be roughly translated into 'father is against it.' There maybe be a sexier play like there would be in english with 'daddy against,' or I may be stretching it.

Two Perfect Meals and one Disappointment, NYC: Omen, Red Hook Ballfields, Sripraphai

2010-06-07T17:13:00.001-07:00

Well, I had a near trifecta of perfect meals this weekend, starting on Friday night when meeting Ivan for dinner in Soho.

Soho is not a location I'd ordinarily seek out, but we were going to a party later at 60 Thompson. The problem is that the restaurants haven't changed much since the '90s, when I worked in the neighborhood and got sick of every-thing. Stumped, I checked Salmaland, but didn't find a suggestion right for the moment. Finally I remembered Omen, a place I used to frequent with a friend in yes, the 90s, but always loved. And man, it has only gotten better. The sushi was of higher quality than any I've eaten in NYC in recent memory, including Blue Ribbon, Nobu, Japonica and 15 East. And Omen isn't really even a sushi restaurant, it's a Japanese restaurant that has sushi among a menu of other options. We ordered a tempura and a mushroom and vegetable dish, both of which were divine. The vegetables, served warmish in a puddle of mild broth, were the kind of vegetables like my Canadian friend Jason Logan made one night at a dinner party and I've never forgotten, vegetables more like vegetable-shaped jewels. Vegetables with dense or rich or creamy textures like no vegetable you've ever eaten. Like some elaborate hoax where the vegetable has been sculpted out of hot custard. But no, they are just vegetables, cooked in secret Canadian or Japanese ways.

Omen is also nice because it's a small restaurant with a beautiful interior brick wall and exposed shelving holding an eclectic collection of pretty little Japanese dishes, deployed with flair for matching the food. And the clientele is romantic and subdued in an old New York, almost Woody Allen way. Loved it.

The second stellar success was the Red Hook Ballfields, about which so much ink has been spilled, I need not add any more. Latin American food carts out every Saturday in the summer with the stuffed-tortilla papusas from El Salvador, tacos, slathered-and-spiced grilled corn, horchata, sickly sweet aqua fresca, etc. A great summer day trek from Ikea or pre-Fairway. Probably because I live in Red Hook, I've been less than a convert to this phenomenon. It's way hot over there and the lines are long. However, this weekend, I became a true believer. The lines weren't that bad, and the papusas from the Salvadorian cart were the world's most perfect marriage of flaky-light tortilla, shredded meat and gooey cheese. Also, my picky little papoosa ate an entire one, and was begging for more.

The disappointment was Sripraphai, another super-cult New York place, this time for Thai, and buried deep in Queens. Ivan and I go here pretty regularly, and for a while I have been contending that it doesn't live up to the hype. Yes, it is better than most NYC Thai restaurants. They load on the chilies in real Thai-style, salads have that stinky fish-sauce funk, meats are battened in sugar.... But, it's still restaurant Thai, that is, junky, somehow unwholesome Thai. We are spoiled because we are better Thai cooks than you'd find in any restaurant. But we don't think this restaurant is really worth the long subway ride out to Queens.

Natura Korean Spa L.A., even more of that West Coast decadence, great massage

2010-06-01T16:48:00.000-07:00

Visiting my friends in L.A. is visiting my alternative, better life. In this sunnier existence, it's all about spa-going and parties and shopping and cooking and drinking, and all my friends are lesbians in the film industry or sex educators. To me, this is heaven. In my L.A. home-away-from-home, there is a Meyer Lemon tree in the back yard and a peach tree in the front. And people are inclined to take the day off work, just to hang out with me.

Like, Friday, LD and I went to the Natura Spa which is her favorite Korean spa. She likes it primarily because it has a mugwort bath of the right, hot-but-not-too-scalding temperature, and because most of the clientele is Korean. (Funny: we were surrounded by a group of three Korean women around our age at one point, who were speaking in English about breast-feeding and co-sleeping, and I was like, ha, conversation the same across all cultures!) I love Natura too. It's big, totally clean, gives you free admission when you order a spa treatment (we do scrub and massage), and has a wonderful dry sauna, an aromatic steam room, a large hot pool, the mugwort and an icy plunge pool. There's also a radiant heat floor in the chill out room where people take naps after, or sip hot or iced barley tea. Delicious.

Mugwort, by the way, is supposedly good for the menstrual cycle and uterus, eases aches and pains, and has benefits to digestion.

The scrub, which I highly recommend, is effected on a blue-vinyl table in a room off the main area, by a one of a fleet of Korean women in their black bra and underwear and is excruciatingly painful and takes off probably a pound of skin. It's a mystery to me how something so rough and agonizing can also put a person to sleep, but that's always the end result for me. It's like being intensely beaten into relaxation, which as a New Yorker, I need.

The massages, in these places, are not usually the most trained, but this weekend I had a life-changing one (ask for Jenny). Also heard a woman in the locker room talking about how determined her masseuse had been to get out her knots.

So, that's one of the secrets of my L.A. The spa is in Korea town and makes a good segue into Korean dinner at one of the cool BYO storefronts with delicious tofu or noodles.

Zurich Indie Shopping

2010-05-24T12:34:00.000-07:00

The neighborhood Kreis 4 east of the Sihl River and south of the train tracks in Zurich is supposedly the Red Light district, though we saw no signs of it in the January cold—instead, it looked like a great neighborhood to go on a shopping wander. There was an impressive density of small, indie-designer boutiques, little cafes and yoga centers, and no big-box, big-brand commercialism. I loved it.

Bord
Badenerstrasse 123a,
Mid-century modern furniture and lighting.

Elastique
Grüngasse 19
Mid-century modern furniture, cool objects such as vintage children's cars.

Lazer Zone
Backerstrasse 20
Film-buff heaven DVD shop, lots of obscure German stuff, organization by director.

Lyn May
Schrinerstrasse 42
Lingerie: the local equivalent of Kiki De Montparnasse.

Making Things
Grungasse 20
Local fashion designers, crafty accessories.

Nieves
Ankerstrasse 20
Swiss art-book publisher, lots of cool stuff such as photo book curated by Kim Gordon.

No-be
Ooops, I've lost the contact on this one, but if you see it, it has cute clothes, knitwear.

Sascha's
15 Backerstrasse
Import sneakers.

Saus-Braus
14 Ankerstrasse
Swiss desingers for housewares & hip, modern design.

Secondbag & Stelline
Freyastrasse 21
Girls clothing and local fashion designers.

Street Files Mini Mart
Badenerstrasse 129
Urban stuff, t-shirts.

Suede
Grungasse 10
Local fashion design.

Zwei 25
Zweierstrasse 25, +44 241 02 34
My favorite of the women's fashion labels. Colorful, comfy, chic skirts and dresses.

Location Lit: Paolo Bacigalupi's Bangkok masterpiece, The Windup Girl

2010-05-20T07:31:00.000-07:00

I love to read novels about a place while visiting it, and I'm always looking for good ones. You can enjoy a book about Bangkok without having a mental picture of Sukhumvit, or knowing what a soi is, but the pleasure is amplified when you do.

Bangkok travelers, or people following the story of the political unrest there, will enjoy, then, the American short-story writer Paolo Bacigalupi's brilliant first novel, The Windup Girl. You could call it science fiction, but really it falls into the new category of smart, speculative literary fiction that's increasingly making un-sense of the category.

As does your first arrival in Bangkok, the novel starts with overwhelming sun, sweat, a cotton-dampening bath of hot, humid air, and teeming, melty-asphalt streets crowded with vendors of every kind of tropical fruit. That's really what it's like today, but in Bacigalupi's world, set unspecified years in the future, the protagonist is a corporate spy from a big agribusiness company, come to Bangkok to discover the secrets to the Thai Kingdom's outlaw-genetic-code foods.

The action is set in a post-oil world, post-global warming, post-"contraction" when globalization fell apart, a world where power, and the computers and phones and cars that depend on them, is something even the rich and the governments have in preciously small quantities. From there, you plunge into Thai politics, the worlds of spys, slums, refugees and genetically engineered Japanese "wind up" people designed as soldiers or sex toys.

Laying out the premises could make the book sound didactic, but the information takes its sweet, disorienting time to come clear. This was a great book on the level of prose, and also for twisted & surprising views on our hot-button topics. It has a very light touch in terms of references to today's Bangkok, which makes the locations the reader recognizes or suspects might be familiar, more psychologically effective. The genius is in how this transformed, futuristic, barely recognizable Bangkok feels just like the real thing. Read it by the pool at the Oriental, while meditating on the joys of ice and air-conditioning.

Also, there's a Bacigalupi short story online at Pyr books, here. And, people who like the Location Lit concept are directed to the Rough Guides, which have great "Context" sections in the back, recommending destination specific books and movies.

Hype-o-meter on the Breslin at the Ace Hotel

2010-05-06T09:24:00.000-07:00

I went to The Breslin in the Ace Hotel last night and was pleasantly surprised that it was easy to get a table. This is the second walk-in score in a row, since Buttermilk Channel, shockingly, had tables at 8pm on Tuesday. Both of these restaurants are notoriously packed, so either the NYC dining scene has moved on and I haven't found out where yet (a possibility, I admit), or even the rich people are finally running out of money. Ivan says the latter.

Other things that have dribbled out: April Bloomfield and the locavore whole-animal trend. The crowd at the Breslin was square. There were no good-looking girls. If you are a good-looking girl looking for an older guy in a suit, you may have been happy. The decor is the ironic and overwrought version of the old pub, and I like old pubs, so I sort of liked it, but I also felt like I was at T.G.I. Fridays. If the menu had been ok, I could have gone with it. And the menu, at first, looks ok, or wildly creative, or something, until you realize that there's nothing on there people would actually want to eat. It seemed to be composed entirely of things that the Scottish middle-class outgrew in the '50s. Peanuts boiled in lard and thrice-fried chips and scary terrines and Stilton pie. The people sitting next to us both ordered the lamb burger because it was the only user-friendly thing on the list. Ivan and I debated the $125 steak for two, but I decided to test them on their home ground and have the beef tongue and oxtail in broth. Ivan had the vinegared poussin, which he felt was too vinegary. The broth for the tongue & oxtail was truly divine, but the cuts of meat were both suspect. It was a delicious tongue, but cut way too thick... you don't want the tongue bouncing back at you as you chew it, no matter what the flavor. And the oxtail hadn't totally melted out the fat and connective tissue the way I would have liked. Oh, and the "Garden" gin and tonic, their specialty drink, was bitter and unpalatable. I left with the impression that maybe it would have been fun to go there and drink a ton of beer and then eat the unhealthy fried food in a drunken stupor. Which, really, is what a pub is good for, gastro or no.

My favorite contemporary science fiction novels

2010-04-26T07:56:00.000-07:00

Not what I should be doing with my Monday morning. At all. But I'm about to make a list of my favorite contemporary science fiction writers for a friend, and thought I'd put it somewhere publicly accessible. Using "contemporary" a little loosely and mixing some steampunk and new weird in with hard sci-fi.

Octavia Butler, Lillith's Brood
Humanity is sexually absorbed into an alien race. Somewhat unwillingly. Might be my favorite trilogy of all time. Takes place on primordial, post-apocalypse earth and on the alien generations ship. (Please overlook the terrible cover they slapped on there because a woman wrote the book.)

Richard K. Morgan, Altered Carbon, (& the other Kovacs novels, but not the rest of his work)
Awesome cyberpunk ex-cop thrillers on a galactic scale, working off the premise that human consciousness can be downloaded into different "sleeves" (bodies). Sex, drugs and the possibility of being tortured to death—over and over again.

Alastair Reynolds, Chasm City, Revelation Space, Absolution Gap
An actual European Space Agency rocket scientist who spent 20 years in the Netherlands peering through telescopes and writing these brilliant, nerdy, violent, cerebral hard-space odysseys. Oddly enough, I discovered Reynolds through an Art Forum "best of the year" list.

Iain Banks, Excession, Look to Windward, The Player of Games, any & all of the Culture novels
Elaborate adventures in a high-tech, far-futuristic and somewhat alien culture known as the Culture, a society devoted to enjoyment. Banks is a wonderful writer on the sentence level and nasty and apt about our own society in all sorts of unexpected ways. Depending on the book, these can be spectacularly violent. I also like Inversions, the Banks treatment in a semi-medieval world.

M. John Harrison, The Luck in the Head
I'm sorry, but you have to buy Jeff & Ann VanDerMeer's New Weird anthology purely for M. John Harrison's short story, The Luck in the Head, which is the most perfect piece of steampunk ever written. In its weirdness and beauty and gore, a new and disturbing format born. Go. Buy it. Now. Please.

Geoff Ryman, Air
Speculative fiction about the time when we go online straight from our brains, set in a tiny village on the apron between China and the 'stans. Female protagonist. Fairly real, quite literary.

China Mieville, Perdido Street Station
The best work by a steampunk pioneer. Set in the disturbing and fantastical city of New Crobuzon. Raunchy sex with an insect-headed mistress. A de-winged bird man. A work of casual brutality and stunning imagination.

Kim Stanley Robinson, Red Mars
For the enthusiast, the exhaustive story of how humanity colonizes Mars. An amazing work of science and speculation. When you finish the first 900 page opus and discover that it's a trilogy, you might cry, though.

Museums in St. Petersburg, Russia

2010-04-19T09:10:00.000-07:00

Yet another of my beautiful, partial, plot-damaged novel fragments is set in a futuristic St. Petersburg, an ill-conceived work inspired by cold and euphoria while wandering alone for a day in the city center, approached only by scammers and charltans, drunk on cold silver vistas and wet leaves and ghosts. It was a mood, more than a novel, but I remember that day every time I think about St. Petersburg, city of the aristocrats and the damned, such a mad, gray, sinister, ornate, spectral, rotted, impossible place. I hope this isn't making it sound bad. To me, it's one of the most different, exotic, particular destinations there is, the place you go if you want your mind blown, or if you want to go back in time or into an alternate reality. The failed novel fragment was science-fiction, only appropriate for St. Petersburg, though it's actually a pretty low-tech place.

This post, however, is about the art. But before I start talking about it, I will make one more note of a practical nature: Check the forecast before you go. Bring warmer clothes than you think you're going to need. Plan seriously on footwear that will keep you dry.

Regarding the art, visiting St. Petersburg is like going to Florence or Venice in terms of density of museums and landmarks, but, in my opinion, the rightful fame and importance of the Hermitage obscures the position of the equally worthy Russian Museum. Here's the thing: The Hermitage is an impressive, massive European-style palace, former home to the tsars, turned into a rambling and quirkily organized museum full of treasures of international art. There's a Leonardo Da Vinci, a haunting Rembrandt room, a sweeping collection of Matisses and French Impressionists, and my favorite Titian—of Zeus impregnating Danae disguised as a cloud of golden coins. This is all wonderful stuff, but it's not necessarily Russian, and it doesn't occupy that sweet spot of early 20th Century Russian art when the Maleviches and Mashkovs and Filonovs were redefining painting. This is the era of painting that the Russian Museum specializes in—big, powerful, vibrant, beautiful canvases that are possible to "like" and even understand without knowing anything about art history. I don't say they're as crowd-pleasing as the Monets, but they might be close, and you will never see art by any of these painters outside of Russia.

Perhaps I am more naieve than most, but I can't tell you how many times I've gone to the Tretyakov gallery in Moscow, sort of hoping to see some Kandinskys (the Tretyakov collection ends at Kandinsky; for the modernists, you need the New Tretyakov). I spent three days in the Hermitage in 2007 with an art-loving friend who has since become an art historian, and we felt we'd done St. Petersburg justice. We didn't even know about the Russian Museum. Well, now I do. And since there seem to be very limited options about it in English online, next post will be some notes on the floorplan.

What we're looking for when we're looking to travel

2010-03-29T06:15:00.000-07:00

I'm full of hatred for the travel industry this morning--probably because I'm writing pitches for certain Travel Media, feeling depressed by the commodification of experience and the relentless pace of "new, undiscovered, un-touristy." There was a great essay on World Hum last week by Eric Weiner on "Why Tourism is not a Four Letter Word" that summed up some of these feelings. Weiner identified the Travel Snob as just that person who is, in point of fact, a tourist like everyone else, but puts on airs about it.

Weiner says the most loathsome tourist the tourist who considers themselves not a tourist. Well, it's irritating I agree. But then I recall that time my dad made me take a tour bus to the Tower of Pisa and we had to squeeze into the very last two seats *and the tour was arranged so that there was no time to go up the tower* and....let's just rest on the idea that tourists and Travel Snobs each inhabit their own circle of hell. And then also, on the other hand, let's not take it too seriously, we're all on vacation, folks.

So what am I upset about? I understand why all of this "new, different, gimmicky," etc. coverage has to exist. News organizations are not in the business of telling you about things that are not new. Unless, there's something new about it being old, like "New Orleans, still kinda the same!" (a very nice story in Travel + Leisure). But in the aggregate it creates a....fundamental lack of gratitude for the places as they are. I've been researching Jamaica and found in the New York Times two stories from the past few years about the quieter, alternative destinations of Port Antonio and Treasure Beach. They sound nice, they probably are, and they'd probably suit me better than Negril, since I don't care so much about seeing live Reggae and smoking dope, but....sometimes the obvious destination is the magical one. My husband Ivan and his good friend Kay are huge world travelers, and they tend to love the semi-obvious. Bali. Belize. Negril. I find that wholesome. Negril is gorgeous, that's where all the music is, and these places became huge, obvious destinations for a reason, and often they aren't "ruined" by being so.

Anyway, I'm off to create news, because that's what they pay me for, but I'm always excited to see stories that take a step back in some ways. Like this New York Magazine piece on "Do Almost Nothing in Culebra." That felt different to me, and fresh, and like what a real vacation would feel like, instead of a continued desperate quest to do the right thing, set onesself apart, continue striving....

How to choose a hotel in Bangkok

2010-03-12T07:54:00.000-08:00

When I'm choosing a hotel, I'm usually trying to find the most "real" neighborhood—I like to stay where I'd live, if I lived in the city I'm visiting. That means out of the tourist ghetto, not as close as possible to the local Gucci store, away from anything labeled Marriot, and so on.

Except in Bangkok. In Bangkok I—and you, if you are taking my advice—want to stay in one of the insane luxury towers on the Chao Phraya River. The towers are close to some major temples, the little streets surrounding them are stuffed with Thai Silk stores, jewelers, one-hour photos, tailors copying clothes, and every other tourist amenity. Any taxi that picks you up around here can take you to Kao San Road, no problem. (That's the backpacker mecca immortalized in the movie The Beach; more on how difficult it is to communicate with cab drivers and get around Bangkok, later). When I was in my 20s, these hotels—The Oriental, the Shangri-La, among others—were the most luxurious places I'd ever been able to afford to stay. Rooms these days are around $350 a night, maybe less depending on how/when you book. These are perfect, gleaming, travel-magazine-porn-shot hotels. Silk carpets and enormous air-conditioned lobbies and uniformed porters and people in livery handing you orchids when you walk in, rooms with marble shower stalls and beds with bolsters and a concierge on every floor to greet you and hustle down the hall to open your room door for you. They're really, really nice. And the view—of the slow, gray, churning river far below, of boat traffic and bridge traffic and other luxury hotel-high rises, and the enormous city all around you—is probably not what you'd be looking at every day if you lived in Bangkok, but it's so wonderful, I don't care.

Also, I find arriving Bangkok from NYC to be overwhelming, and I like to hide out in an oasis like the Oriental and acclimatize to the heat and humidity and time difference for a little while.

Still, people who want the same level of luxury for less $$ could try any of the big hotels that aren't on the river. My brother once got a great deal at Le Meridian, and he felt that it compared favorably to the Oriental and didn't cost as much. At some point, it's all so luxurious, what's one orchid or view or slightly more favorable location for a pool more, or less?

The Fairway Review

2010-02-23T18:09:00.000-08:00

Well, a little off-topic, though Fairway Red Hook is a legit tourist destination...

[For tourists: The café in the Red Hook branch of this famous NYC family supermarket has an incredible view of the water, blue infinity, big industrial ships, tugboats, water taxis, bridges, Jersey, the horizon. A trip to Red Hook, window shopping on Van Brunt St and having a lobster roll at the Fairway café is a great New York afternoon.]

But the real reason I'm writing this is because I shop at this Fairway almost every day and wish to praise some of its products and pan others. To wit:

Unusually good Fairway-specialty food items:

•The roast beef at the deli counter.
•The lobster salad at the deli counter.
•The aged Manchego, the rosemary-crusted Manchego, the Humboldt Fog, the Livarot, the Moon Madness, the Grafton cheddar in black wax,
•The fresh-made basil pesto--the bright green one--that you can sometimes find on the shelf by the home-made pastas.
•All of the fresh cheese products: Ben's cream cheese, the ricotta cheese, the pot cheese, sold by weight at the cheese counter and in the case next to it. Absolutely superior to any packaged dairy.
•The fresh-ground honey-roasted peanut butter and fresh-ground almond butter. (Machine in the organic section).
•The dark-chocolate-covered graham crackers. (Found across the aisle from the fish counter; you will hate me for introducing you to these.)
•Green's & Blacks dark chocolate bars. (Doorway of the organic section. Imported from England and so yummy.)
•Packaged cashews, slivered almonds, walnuts...all the Fairway-packaged nuts are fresh and delicious.
•Dried cranberry-and-cherry mix. Hard to find and great for fresh cranberry sauce around Thanksgiving.
•The Australian, organic, grass-fed beef, I forget the brand, is, I hear from a reporter who met the farmer, made from real animals, eating only grass, living normal, cruelty-free animal lives outdoors. Anything imported from Australia is bad for the environment, but this is the only Fairway meat I can really vouch for.
•Imported beer. "Duchy Originals" is the Prince of Wales' brand. Also Chimay and Lambics with fruit, if you like those. I think they're fun for specialty events.
•From the bakery: The baguettes, the bagels and flagels and bialys, the sourdough rolls, the raisin walnut rolls, pretty much everything in the self-serve bread area.
•From the dessert counter: the madelines.
•I'm not going to talk about the Fage yogurt and the Wallaby and the kombucha, etc., because that stuff is available everywhere, but Fairway does have a good selection.
•Last, but oh so not least: Ciao Bella sorbet. The Blackberry Cabernet. The Dark Chocolate. The Blood Orange, the Passionfruit....

Things that are bad at Fairway:
•Most of the produce isn't all that.
•Most of the prepared deli-foods are inedible.
•The Fairway soups.
•The fresh salsa and guac remind me of that New Yorker article about the company that imparts flavor to a "tasteless nutrient slurry".
•The rotisserie chicken. It has a good flavor and sometimes is so overdone it's pleasantly chewy and falling apart, but the breasts are too dry.
•The hummus & tahinis (see "tasteless slurry").
•The fresh pastas and gnocchi are not great, and some of the ravioli is downright disgusting (pumpkin).
•Bacon and sausages. Why is the selection so bad?
•Any of those puff-dried vegetables, as well as the big plastic boxes of "veggie chips."
•The bulk coffee ranges from terrible to undrinkable. We replaced our coffee maker twice before catching on.
•Everything at the café, with the exception of the lobster roll is execrable. Including the service. World's worst sandwiches and pizza. I would say that the ham-and-Gruyere croissant sandwich is the closest thing to semi-edible the Fairway cafe produces, but that's nearly as fattening as the lobster roll.
•Fairway does not bake good loaves of bread.
•Fairway does not make good cakes, cheesecakes, cookies, fancy desserts, brownies, etc.

Would love to see comments from other Fairway shoppers!

Bangkok becomes ever more amazing

2010-02-22T18:49:00.000-08:00

So, it doesn't happen with every destination, but I sometimes start researching a place and find so many great bloggers and cool beta-test websites and interesting literary people talking about the language or the culture that it's really quite exciting. It doesn't happen with every city--and sometimes not with the ones you'd expect (Paris? Why not Paris, people?), or even with most cities, but it turns out that Bangkok is one of the happy few. Maybe eventually I'll get a feel for what kind of cities sponsor lively and loving coverage, and which don't but so far it's always a not-surprising surprise.

Not surprising because Bangkok has always seemed like a place I could almost live. You know that travel thing where you start imagining what your life would be like in every new place? I've sort of dreamed of Bangkok days with the cool arts people I would meet and the jaded Aussies and even the awful spectacle of the sex tourists, these terrible lone men like dinosaurs or deep-sea creatures, pale and wattled...I've seen them in hotels. Anyway, a lot of blabber to say that from the online profile, one, it seems like there are a lot of cool people speaking English in Bangkok and two, it seems like the hotels and the bars and the restaurants are creative, fascinating, very Thai but also accessible to tourists. I'm looking forward to going again.

And, in the meantime, before my city page is up, check out this great blog by Marcel Barang, a translator of important Thai literary works into English and French. It's called "the written wor(l)d en deux langues" and you could live your cool Thai life just by following in his footsteps.

Zurich Indie Shopping

2010-01-29T08:43:00.000-08:00

Where to Ski in Austria, Lech-Zug am Arlberg, Zurs, Stuben, St. Anton

2010-01-20T08:57:00.001-08:00

As usual, the price of all this free content is limited resources.... I can only tell you about what I did/ saw. I don't have a team of reporters out scouring the country, so the expertise of this entry concerns the Arlberg cluster of Austrian resorts near the Swiss border.

We started with the plan of skiing in Austria because British high-end tour operator Scott Dunn (we love Scott Dunn) has chalets there. Our friends stayed at his place in Zermatt when we were there a few years ago, and we were quite jealous of their accommodation, especially the private spa-floor in the chalet, and the cool private chef who cooked breakfast and dinner every evening. Our much-less-nice hotel wasn't much cheaper. Our friends were sharing the chalet with strangers, who turned out to be some rich, young, childless Brits of around the same age as we were. If I remember correctly, I was not the only person at the table to have written and published a novel—interesting dinner companions. Anyway, our friends have also stayed at a Scott Dunn property in St. Anton. We considered it for this trip but it didn't work out $$$-wise for our dates. And that turned out to be very much for the best.

St. Anton is the biggest, most party-oriented, most English-touristy of the cluster of resorts in the Arlberg area. It has the jock-reputation because of a face—I could look up the name, but hey, this is a blog, Valluga, maybe?—that's very extreme, must be skiied with a guide, etc. Awesome, if you are the kind of extreme skiier who can appreciate the terrain, but probably not necessary for most of us. We didn't ski there, but we went into the town one evening, and felt like we were descending from village to big city after mellow Lech and tiny Zug. It was much busier, more English-speaking, the crowds seemed younger.....

It's so difficult when you're wading through ski guides to understand which of a million resorts to choose from, what the terrain is really like, etc. In terms of Arlberg, the resorts of St. Anton and St. Christoph are connected by lifts, forming basically one area; a separate area is the resorts of Lech, Zug, Zurs and Oberlech. It's possible to ski with a guide from the St. Anton area all the way to the Lech area, and might be a fun day-long venture. As seems to be usual with these European mountains, most of the on-piste terrain in the Lech-etc. lift group is pretty easy blue (beginner) runs, with a few pockets of red (advanced) and one or two blacks (extreme). There are a lot of flats, making it difficult for snowboarding. The joy of the Lech area is skiing what's known as a "ronde,"—a round—of the "White Ring." You can pick up a map of "der Wise Ring" at the bottom of the Stubenbach gondola. The idea is that you traverse the terrain in an enormous circle, peak after peak, spectacular view after spectacular view. This, as we discovered, is a great way to spend the day, providing that sort of relaxtion-with-a-purpose that the modern workaholic really needs on vacation. It's like a bar crawl or any other party where certain "goals" have been set. And speaking of bar crawling.... plenty of stops for champagne or schnapps around Der Wise Ring. Oh yes.

Now, would you choose to stay in Zurs, Lech, on the mountain at Oberlech, or Zug? Lech is small and very pretty, but still the only "town" of the cluster, with a main street with lots of open-air apres ski action at night. We would have been perfectly happy staying there. (See hotel recs.) Oberlech is a stop on the mountain known for having all the various venues connected by underground tunnel; Zurs supposedly has the highest-end accomodation but our local friend described it as "a truck stop on the way to Lech." Didn't look that bad to me. Also, the way the lifts are set up, you can only go in one direction around the ring, and, in my opinion, the best terrain was closest to the Zurs lifts. So really, nothing wrong with Zurs either.

And then there was our darling little Zug, which was basically a cluster of hotels with restaurants and one charming cafe. This was a magical Alpine experience, totally quiet, surrounded by gorgous peaks, only one lift going up and one run coming down, the rest of it untrammled mountains, a mountain stream, a walking path through the forest for the 2km trek down to Lech, a cross-country skiing loop. For us, who did our partying with our ski-boots still on and then were home for dinner and an early bedtime, the lack of nightlife here was no problem. Also, there are free buses that run every 20 min, so even if you do want leave Zug, it's easy to get around. Getting back down to Zug at the end of the day was a bit of a pain—the return runs are either expert off-piste or a long, switchbacked riverbed-run with a lot of flats and a 300 meter hoof at the end. However, starting the day from Zug is awesome, since the Zug lift leads to the best restaurant on the mountain, the Balmalp, where we stopped in first thing for a shot of the Rote Williams.....

Hotel Helvetia, Zurich: Cheap boutique, great location

2010-01-18T17:52:00.000-08:00

The category of "no-frills boutique hotel" tempts me to digress on the topic of style verses substance. But then sometimes I'm not sure that "no-frills luxury" is a bad thing. Maybe providing chic rooms to design lovers at a comparatively low price point is a mitzvah. People on a budget want to enjoy Moooi lights and stripey, graphic wallpaper, too. And, the young don't really care if there's room service or a bellhop or the lightbulbs are burned out. So, that was the Hotel Helvetia. It's nice-looking, even better than the website suggests, and the rooms have comfortable beds with the fresh, white duvets instead of comforters—the modern boutique signifier ne plus ultra. But there's not even properly a lobby, just a desk in the restaurant, the Internet didn't work in our room, no room service, unacceptably dim lighting, burner in the kitchenette on the fritz, etc. Still, we are very finicky and high-maintenance when it comes to hotels, and I think lots of people would like this place. It has a cool restaurant, a great look, low prices ($220 for a double) and the location could not possibly be more convenient for people who want to explore both the old town and the fashionable Kries 4/ Zuri-West. It's also right on a big tram line, which is great in a city where cabs cost more per ounce than caviar.

Hip, delicious, restaurants in Zurich, avoiding the beer halls and spatzle

2010-01-18T09:46:00.001-08:00

Zurich is in the German-speaking part of Switzerland, near the Austrian border, and the combination of all the money, the liberal society, and the influence of the sensual and decadent Austrians means that this is a great town for pleasure. I, as a respectable married woman, did not get to visit the Red Light District, nor did I figure out how to buy the semi-legal marijuana, but I did eat well. Since our guidebook was abysmal (thanks for nothing, Lonely Planet) I'm writing listings for everything I saw and researched, regardless of if I ate there or not. My personal Zurich shortlist is: Volkhaus, Mauri's La Rocca and La Salle.

Volkshaus
Stauffacherstrasse 60, Kries 4, +41 (0)44 242 11 55

Volkshaus was our most spectacular find in all of Zurich. It's a huge hall on Stauffacherstrasse that used to be/still is a "people's center" with public baths and meeting rooms and other functions. The part we saw is the first floor, where there's a great, hip cafe and restaurant, done up in adorable plaid table-cloths and velvet-flocked walls and vintage deco lamps and so on. Here is a photo of Adeline sitting in the wooden, cane-bottomed high-chair they had. (They also had a box of toys and didn't seem annoyed when she spread out on the floor with them—we were there during an off-hour. Another miracle: In Zurich, finding lunch after 2pm).

The hipster-retro-traditional menu was in German, which was unfortunate since the waiter really couldn't translate. Duck liver terrine, sausage salad (this was a local specialty that I never tried, assume it makes more sense than it sounds like it would), spinach spaetzle, ravioli with pecorino. There was also an artisanal cocktail menu in the new style. And when Ivan asked for schnapps, they rolled out the following trolley:

Overall, beautiful vibe, great food, friendly service and a lively, thriving place for lunch, dinner, sitting with coffee, etc.

La Salle
Schiffbaustrasse 4, Zuri-West, +41 (0) 44 258 70 71
The glamor of Zurich is private-bank glamor, the glamor of vaults and strings of numbers and impassive Swiss faces.... Zurich is money, crime behind a facade of industry. The first thrilling scenes of the Bourne Identity, when Matt Damon goes to investigate the account number he found on the chip implanted in his hip, are set in snow-covered, winter Zurich. La Salle, probably my favorite restaurant of the trip, channels that...conservative avant garde, if you'll allow me the oxymoron. The menu is a high-end, modern but essentially traditional fusion of French, Italian and Swiss—we had the only interesting spaetzle of our trip here. Ingredients are perfect, the carpaccio is so thin it may have been painted on the plate, the cocktails are impeccable. Yet the restaurant is located in the Schiffbau complex, an enormous converted-warehouse with a jazz club and glass-cube bar on top (Nietturm), in trendy Zuri-West. The industrial glass-and-girders room glows with champagne light like a French bistro and is hung with an enormous, pink Venetian crystal chandelier. A lovely, sexy, exotic evening.

Muggenbuhl Gastuben
Muggenbuhlstrasse 15, +41 (0)44 482 11 45
I found this restaurant on a list of most-interesting openings of 2009, and though it's a little out of the city center, it was open New Year's day, so we tried it. This was a very odd experience indeed, a restaurant in a freestanding house next to the highway, with a bowling alley in the basement and four or five brightly lit dining rooms hung with cheap, stiff lace curtains and lined with banquettes in cheery-synthetic yellow fabric. Again, menu only in German. The very nice chef was rolled out to help explain to us what to eat, and all best dishes seemed to be hunks of meat breaded and fried etc. I didn't take notes but I think I ate some veal breaded and fried and wrapped around cheese and a piece of ham.... a Cordon Bleu? The subtlety of why this was on a best-openings list eludes me.

Mauri's La Rocca
Limmatstrasse 273, Zuri-West, +41 44 271 02 77
This restaurant is right across from the Lowenbrau center (contemporary art museums and galleries in a former brewery in Zuri-West) and we happened to stumble in for lunch, to our great delight. A beautiful crowd—glamorous tall girls in glasses and their blond Italian boyfriends.... An art dealer? An owner of a small motorcycle company? lingering over light, refined Italian dishes. The menu, again, was German to us. I ordered at random and ended up with a meatball-and-eggplant dish in crimson-red sauce, accompanied by silk handkerchiefs of hand-cut pasta so sublime it could have been dessert. Absolutely worth it to understand the flavors of the city, despite that Italian in Switzerland is not the obvious call. The restaurant design was intimate and casual, with blow-up black-and-white 70s film stills printed straight on the walls and exquisite Deco details. This was the butter dish (and you can see how good that home-made bread ws from the photo):

Also, there was a lunch special for 22 CHF (the exchange rate with dollars is basically 1 to 1), a fantastic deal in expensive Switzerland.

Si O No
Ankerstrasse 6, Kreis 4, +41 (0)44 241 0301
An casual, somewhat distressed wine bar in Kries 4 that's obviously a beloved neighborhood laptop cafe during the daytime. Smoky, alternative.

Kroenhalle
Rämistrasse 4, +41 44 262 99 00
Didn't try this one but am including it because it was recommended several times as the most famous restaurant in Zurich. Probably a tourist place, probably very expensive, but at least one friend has been and liked it. There's also a bar next door that supposedly lets you get the experience without having to pay to actually dine here.

Steinfels
Heinrichstrasse 267, Zuri-West, +41 (0)44 271 1030
A mod-looking brewery serving Asian food. Don't know, but it was on my list to try.

Caduff's Wine Loft
Kanzleistrass 126, +41 44 240 2255
A foodie place that gets some play in media about Zurich. I didn't try it, as it has gotten mixed reviews (none of them particularly trustworthy, so it's a real toss-up) and is slightly outside the city center. There is some rigamarole surrounding the enormous wine cellars that could be fun for the enthusiast.

Veltlinerkeller
Schlusselgasse 8, Old Town, +41 (0)44 225 4040
Again, I'm only including my vague rumors because the English info on Zurich is so poor. This is a restaurant right on the main square where St. Peter's cathedral is, supposedly in a historic house and serving Swiss food. I would only go here if I were desperately slogging around the Old Town, wondering which expensive touristy restaurant might also be edible. Looks nice but stodgy from the photo.

Alpenrose
Fabrikstrasse 12, Zuri-West, +41 (0)44 271 3919
Claims to be a seasonal organic restaurant serving Swiss specialties. We went, but it was closed for lunch on Tuesdays and looked somewhat weird from the outside. However, anyone else tempted by the promise of Swiss seasonal organic, could check it out, and if the inside looks equally dubious, it's a short walk from Mauri's La Rocca and at least one other nice-looking Italian restaurant whose name I didn't note.

SomTam
Backerstrasse 19, Kries 4, +41 (0)43 317 9919
Nowhere are the insane high prices more evident than in restaurants you'd expect to be selling cheap take-away cuisine. SomTam is a new, minimalist-decor Thai place that has an authentic sounding menu. We didn't try it, but after days of rich continental food in Austria and Switzerland, we wanted to. Don't know what the dinner scene is like, but it's in indie Kreis 4. To the American mindset, paying $21.50 for a Thai soup is almost inconceivable, but as we saw in Zurich, such prices are not on the highest end.

Blue Monkey
Stussihofstatt 3, +41 (0)44 261 76 18
This restaurant was listed in the english-language Zurich Guide we picked up, and one night we ordered take-out to our hotel from here. (Baby sleeping; sick of room service.) Well, we did not save any money, as I realized mid-order that the pad thai was $36. I only bring the place up because the so-called Thai food was bland and disgusting....like someone dumped a can of coconut milk on some chicken, basically, for every dish. Also, it may have been a fusion thing, but that $36 pad thai? Made with spaghetti noodles!

Mosi
+41 (0)44 433 1414
Last but not least, anyone else crazy enough to want to order delivery food can go to thid website, which has dozens of restaurants delivering by neighborhood.

Traveling with an iPhone and other necessary Europe-hacks

2010-01-18T09:01:00.000-08:00

I know I should have been blogging live from my latest trip—Zurich, then Lech-Zug-am-Arlberg in Austria, but it seems that no amount of foreign travel experience prevents the slew of technical difficulties that accompanies each trip. My problems this time were a combination of a) everything in Europe being closed on Sundays and holidays b) mountains and c) iPhone.

I'll start with c. I did some online research on how to travel with an iPhone without breaking the bank, and was directed to sign up for a data roaming package; the smallest amount is for 20 MB for around $20. I signed up for this online with AT&T, and off to Europe I went. Well, the data roaming package was not applied to my account, which, I discovered later, seems to be because I also needed to sign up for an additional $5 for the international dialing plan. They aren't linked on the website, but it seems you can't use the data plan withough the dialing. I did all the other things recommended: reset your usage so you know how much bandwith you've sucked since going abroad; turn data roaming on only sparingly, manually check e-mail, but still got hit with about $20 in unexpected charges for text messaging while abroad. I sent and recieved maybe 4 text messages but have been charged for 38 at a shocking rate.....I'm sure there's an explanation & it won't be in my favor. I eventually called customer service and got the phone working, and with very sparing usage for about a 10 days, squeaked in under the 20MB limit.

a & b, well.... at this point I think of wireless internet as a basic human right, but obviously hoteliers do not concur. I am going to start asking hotels if they have WiFi in the rooms, and if I get my money back if it doesn't work, as so often seems to be the case. Both of our hotels on this trip claimed to have it, but didn't work in our rooms. It's either 'cause you're on a high floor or the thickness of the walls or always some bullshit. In the case of the Zurich hotel, the Helvetia, we arrived New Year's Eve, went to a party, and when we woke up New Year's Day and tried to use the Internet for the first time, discovered that our Internet didn't work and there was no way to fix it because the hotel was closed and the staff was gone for the holiday. No one appeared till January 2, when essential services like coffee was restored, but nothing else--no food, no bread, no Internet. This, I suppose, is the wage of European quasi-socialism. Laborers have more rights and are higher paid, so people just don't have to work as much. Sounds great, but it means the cities shut down entirely on Sundays and holidays and sorta on Mondays as well, and it can be a real pain-in-the-ass to the American traveler, who isn't used to it. Remind me, next time, not to expect to be able to DO anything on New Year's Day, and to avoid the continent on Sundays.

NYC Restaurants: Momofuku, Spotted Pig, Prime Meats, Calexico

2009-12-28T18:12:00.001-08:00

The Christmas of Everyone Being Supposed to be Somewhere Else is behind us now, in all its craziness, and I will report on my successes and failures as a last-minute hostess to two friends from Moscow and their 18-month-old baby. Our friends were supposed to be connecting through New York to Miami--the Ritz Carlton Palm Beach was left to languish without them--and were one of the last flights to land at JFK, thanks to Saturday's big snowstorm. Imagine their surprise when they discovered that not only was the connecting flight canceled, they were stuck in NYC through Thursday. Well, the Ritz Carlton Palm Beach's loss was my gain.....

These friends are something of bon vivants (clearly!) and we've never hung out extensively in NYC, so I was inspired to provide them with the latest in terms of dining.

Arrival night, in the strange lavender swirl of snow, we ordered Mexican from Calexico, that new place on Union St in Red Hook. Sadly, Viva, the much better Mexican on Sullivan St., has closed. Calexico is ridiculously overpriced for what you get, the menu is very limited, and it's really more of a lunch place. Edible but disappointing. (Oh, and if you're thinking Bon Vivant? Ordered Mexican? Really? Be aware that neither delivery nor Mexican is available in Moscow at all, and we have many friends from all backgrounds who (used to) beg us to order Viva when they came over. R.I.P. )

Day two, after sledding in Prospect Park we took the babies in their snowsuits and stopped at Prime Meats, which I expected to be trendy and unfriendly. Well.... maybe it was the holidays, but they were great. We got a booth right away, the hostess produced two booster seats, and the food was fantastic. The little girls stuffed themselves with spaetzle mac-and-cheese; the sides--sweet, melting braised cabbage; soft pretzel with mustard were delicious, simple, original. In both atmosphere and food it was a great, mellow, casual New York bohemian-type dining experience. As the Russians would say, 'democratic.'

Day three, it worked out that we were by the Spotted Pig shopping right at noon, so I thought I would ride the wave of trendy places being friendly and pleasant. Also had good memories from the Spotted Pig from years ago. Big mistake! Have since heard, and agree, that the kitchen has fallen off dramatically. The liver crostini was still delicious and the Bloody Mary perfectly bitter, but some fish chowder was grossly rich and overly salted, and the artichoke heart salad overdressed and misconceived. Also, the service really irritated my friend by not having mayo for the fries and *refusing* to bring onions for his burger. Just not ok guys, no matter how important you think your chef's opinon is. Tacky.

However, New York City and I redeemed ourselves splendidly Monday night at Momofuku Saam Bar. Ah, Momofuku. Your hype is deserved. We ate oysters. We ate crispy brussel sprouts in a delicate ricey broth. We had pork buns and pickled honeycrisp apples and drank rose wine and then had some duck. We were jammed across from each other at a big communal table and still managed to have a wonderful conversation and everyone's bag was hanging on everyone else's hook and no one minded. My friend was thrilled, and I was thrilled too, that we'd managed to pull off something really special and only in NYC. Even if we were all supposed to be somewhere else.

My Favorite NYC Restaurants

2009-12-11T12:04:00.001-08:00

Someone just asked me what my favorite NYC restaurants are and the question, or at least my response to it, suprised me. I'm sick of restaurants. This is crazy, because I love to eat and drink and talk and smoke cigarettes and generally subject my body to all the pleasure and abuse I can make time for. Eating out is one of my favorite things in the world. All those size 12s in my closet? A testament to immoderate enjoyment, ordering dessert and eating all of it, drunkeness, the bread basket....

What I'm tired of is the cult of the restaurant in New York City. My friend just tried to organize a birthday party at the private-dining-room Airstream trailer in back of Marlowe & Sons in Williamsburg, and, after days of back-and-forth, they told her they wouldn't be able to do it. When your day includes a rejection from a private-dining Airstream trailer in Williamsburg, things have gotten silly. People take food seriously, which has many wonderful consequences, but maybe too seriously? Don't we have better things to do with our time than spend hours trying to figure out what restaurant to go to? I'm not kidding, in New York, this can take a solid chunk of a Thursday afternoon. Chefs and restaurateurs are caught in a bind, too. To make money, your restaurant needs to be a hot place, but once you're in the white-hot eye of exposure, you're mainly in the business of turning people away, not feeding them. So, that's the long version of my answer. I don't even know anymore about restaurants. It's too much of a pain in the ass to stay on top of it.

The short answer is this classic list, some new, mainly old, all delicious, in no order, but all more-or-less places where you should be able to get a table at little or no notice and eat and drink and relax in a glowing, noisy room amongst friends.

The Good Fork
My Red Hook, Brooklyn local. I have been eating here a few times a month for three years and each time is still a treat. Great wines by the glass. Husband-and-wife maitre 'd/ chef team, lots of walk-in tables, food that balances perfectly between comfort and sophistication, local-fresh-ingredients yadda yadda. I particularly love the steak-and-eggs with kimchee rice (I have tofu instead of steak) or the wild boar ragu. It's a small, quirky, glowy, casual room that the owners designed and built themselves. In the summer there's classic NYC junkyard garden seating out back. The epitome of the kind of laid-back, somewhat scruffy foodie dining that NYC invented.

Dok Suni
119 First Ave between 6th and 7th Sts; (212) 477-9506
No reservations, always packed (but the tables move), pitch-black, poky-elbow-crowded East Village date place with various challenging features like surly service, tiny, hidden bathroom and difficult to manouver metal chopsticks. To me, this gets an A for NYC atmosphere. People say it's not authentic Korean but it's family-owned by some Korean girls and their mom, so who is to say what's authentic? I get the rice wine (?) with the little bits of cucumber floating in it, spreads of kimchee, shrimp dumplings, and always the hot bibimbop, a searing-hot iron pot of crusty-bottomed rice, pickles, vegetables, egg and tart plum sauce (and steak if you so opt).

The Oyster Bar
Like everyone else, I used to for lunch with the coworker I was secretly sleeping with. It's really a lunch and after-work place; it's simply too huge to stay rollicking all night long, but during the day or for an early dinner, I love the Oyster Bar. Eat at the counter. Look no further than a flight of oysters, a bowl of chowder and consume plenty of Bloody Marys on the side. (For the out-of-towners among us, this is a NYC institution in Grand Central Station, which is itself a beautiful city landmark that remains in everyday use, a secular cathedral, warrens of subterraean passages, various strata of heating and humidity, an ebb and flow of people like the tides, quintessential New York....)

Will be a few more, but I'm also tired of looking at last week's post atop my blog, so here goes....

Vice Mag goes to Mecca

2009-12-04T10:31:00.000-08:00

This is one of the craziest travel docs I've ever seen:

Paris Bargain Hotel: Hotel Marceau Bastille

2009-12-04T08:49:00.000-08:00

There is, for me, a type of hotel that exists in the perfect middle-ground... the type of hotel that is trying to be a boutique hotel, but is the bargain version. What do I need, at the end of the day, in a hotel? I need a nice, comfortable bed with bedding that doesn't make me feel paranoid, in a bright, attractive room. It can be simple, but usually I find the corporate-business-hotel version of simple to be depressing. Anyplace that uses poly comforters or any other comforter that may not have been washed is depressing. Carpet is often depressing. Recently renovated helps a lot in terms of freshness and brightness. Cheaper, new furnishings are often better than well-used high quality ones. I, personally, don't need to stay someplace that has the world's most cutting-edge renovation or design...the jackass-award winner, you know what I mean. Sometimes those hotels are beautiful, and I've certainly stayed in plenty of them. Often it's even easier to find a hotel in the trendy category than the kind I'm talking about, which offers the same basic amenities--clean, modern design; nice bedding; freshness--without the prices/attitude/goofy mustachioed bellhop.

So, thus, voila, the Hotel Marceau Bastille in Paris. http://www.hotelmarceaubastille.com/en/ . I offer the enormous caveat that I haven't stayed here since 2006, but I love this hotel. I just did a search, and for one of the nicer "ecolo" rooms (which I highly recommend), at short notice in December, it's 150 Euros ($225) for 2 people for a night. For this time of year, at these exchange rates, that is a great deal. This hotel is in the humbler Bastille neighborhood, a short walk from the trendy-hip Marais, and doesn't have room service, but it's always been just right for me. It's not a "destination hotel," but who wants their hotel to be the 'destination' in Paris!

New York over Christmas

2009-12-02T07:48:00.000-08:00

So, I've been working on a few epic New York ideas, one is my own personal hotel-guide, since, working for Time Out New York and then living abroad for years, I've stayed in a lot more NYC hotels than the average New Yorker. But what occurs to me at the moment would be most useful is some guidelines on things to do in NYC over the holidays, if you're visiting, since, I'm sorry, but this is the world's worst time to be in New York. If you want to go to one of the big museums, it's going to be hectic. New York is COLD over the holidays, and to go to MoMA, for example, you'll have to stand in a long line for admission outside, and then more to check your coat inside, and then it will be so crowded you'll barely be able to see the art. When I lived in Moscow, I'd arrive home for the holidays with big plans of art I wanted to see, and then would train it up to midtown all mellow and delighted, and then....would see the lines and get upset and just go back to Brooklyn. I realize locals are always more indignant to see things they *expect* to be quick and easy overrun, and for art fans who really want to see the Met or the MoMA, of course it may be worth it. But....I wonder if people would be interested in making their NYC visit less touristy by totally avoiding Midtown, Macys, the Empire State Building and Central Park. I'm going to do a few posts on this in the coming weeks, but the first suggestion is: The Lower East Side.

Even when the rest of the city is overrun, the Lower East Side, during the day, is pretty relaxed. You have to be open to grunge, to some extent, but there are lots of restaurants and little galleries and to me, this kind of grubby-deli, old-school, street-level New York is what New York is all about, anyway. Unfortunately the new New Musuem (http://www.newmuseum.org/) space on the Bowery has a very hot, hot, hot show right now, Urs Fischer: Marguerite De Ponty (through Feb 7), and is overrun, at least, I can testify, on the weekends. If you did happen to go by there midday and it was possible to get in, I'd hit it, but wouldn't stand in line for 20 min. There's also a cute, hip place to have lunch around the corner, Freeman's Alley (http://www.freemansrestaurant.com/Directions.html), but that's also jammed when the crowds are out. If you keep walking several blocks on Rivington Street, away from the New Museum, you'll cross a cool old park (Chrystie St) that I really recommend a wander through the community garden there (The M'Finda Kalunga Community Garden!), and eventually come across 'inoteca (http://www.inotecanyc.com/contactDirections.html) at the corner of Ludlow, which is a hip, delicious Italian restaurant that is often crowded at night but open for lunch every day and has great service and a surprisingly friendly, non-snobby attitude, considering the location. Other galleries in the LES: 11 Rivington (http://newyork.timeout.com/events/galleries/314672/volker-hueller). And a list here: http://tinyurl.com/ybsbrwe. Though, the art down here tends to be a bit too fashionable, if you know what I mean, it can provide a nice structure for a wander through a neighborhood that's all bars and restaurants and indie boutiques.....

Also, here's this article in Time Out New York on "top 10 out-of-the-way galleries". I would say these are lesser-known even to New Yorkers, so might be a bit far afield for tourists, but FYI.
http://newyork.timeout.com/articles/art/72897/top-ten-out-of-the-way-venues-for-art-in-new-york-city

Photos from the Ukraine

2009-11-11T15:27:00.001-08:00

Photos from the Ukraine

2009-11-11T15:21:00.001-08:00

Photos from the Ukraine

2009-11-11T15:12:00.000-08:00

'eh rebyata

2009-11-06T12:10:00.000-08:00

I can't stop listening to this:

Tree, Bosier_Ракеты полетели

Tree, Bosier | MySpace Video

The band is called Derevo, Bo'je in Russian and they're from a town called Khabarovsky, a town whose location inside Russia near the Chinese border all but guarantees that it is a terrifying place. I found the band though a blog called Far From Moscow (www.moscow.ucla.edu), hosted by the department of Slavic Languages and Literature and controlled by this lean fellow with the piercing gaze:

I want to know what he has to say about music, don't you? Finding his project reminds me of the year (or two or three) that my online procrastination at work consisted almost exclusively of listening to Akvarium on headphones while following along to the translated lyrics on the Bohdisattvas of Babylon website. Sorry, editors of Time Out New York. There is so much amazing new music in Russia and most of the rest of us will never, ever hear it. Until now, thanks to UCLA. The site is broken down into categories like folk and ambient and has postings on Russian rock royalty as well, such as Akvarium and Mumiy Troll....

Why Chelsea Galleries are for Everyone, Despite What Maybe the People who Work There Think

2009-10-28T09:03:00.000-07:00

I love Chelsea, and I want everyone else to love it too. I think it's one of the great examples of the multicultural, democratic, high-low mishmash that is New York City. And, it's a relatively contained and easy-to-navigate neighborhood that's conducive to walking, wandering & stumbling on weird stuff, which is also a quintessentially NYC activity that every visitor should experience.

The Chelsea I'm talking about is the gallery area, which runs from roughly, 14th Street to 26th Street, west of 10th Avenue to the water, with the highest concentration being between 22nd Street and 26th Street. This is a neighborhood of old warehouses that in the 90s became the place for cutting-edge contemporary art galleries. The real-estate was cheap, the old brick buildings were generally single-story, with incredible, looming, industrial skylights and you could--and still can--get away with doing weird stuff like digging a enormous hole through the gallery floor into the dirt below. Not that everyone would consider that to be art or enjoy looking at it.

Which brings us to my primary point about why I like Chelsea so much. The layout of the galleries fosters a you-be-the-judge experience. There are so many galleries, on street level, and they're usually just one room, so you can walk in, take a look, and if you think it's boring or ugly or offensively stupid or you don't like it or just don't get it, you walk right back out. No gallery requires a commitment in terms of time or money, like a museum would (admission is 100-percent free, everywhere, and yes I'm aware that free does not need the modifier 100-percent, 'cause either it's free or it ain't, but just for fun, indulge me....), and there's not that pressure to stand respectfully in front of a masterpiece. You spend the day walking around outside, enjoying the fresh air and sunshine, and looking at artworks, one or two of which might speak to you. You can regroup at a tapas bar or an Irish pub afterwards and ask your companion, "Did you like anything?" and "Why?" and "What do you think it meant?" And your guess will probably be as good as anyone's.

I find the art world to be largely stifling and full of shit, but Chelsea, itself, is freeing. And that thought gets me all teary on how I think New York City is the center of the free world (despite the fact that previous US presidents made 'freedom' a dirty word), but that is a matter for a different posting. Try it.

Devi Cafe, Moscow:Possibly the best Indian resaurant outside of India at the Institute of International People's Friendship

2009-10-25T06:55:00.001-07:00

Three years after moving away from Moscow, this is the only restaurant that I actively miss. (And ok, sometimes the Noev Kovcheg for hangover delivery food. That will occasion its own writeup someday, I promise.) So, the place is Devi Cafe, and it is at 21 Mikluka Miklaya. The address is only half the story, though, as the place is very hard to find. As with so many Moscow venues, it's hidden in the basement of one of many poorly marked buildings in a courtyard. You have to walk past a schlagbaum or step over a little chain to even get into the courtyard, so the journey feels wrong from the inception. We've been to Devi Cafe a dozen times and we still sometimes get lost and have to wander around the wonderfully weird environs of the International Uni, looking for it. This is the only place in Moscow (all of Russia?) that's truly ethnically mixed up, and on nice days there will be brilliant groups of black Africans and Asians and other sort of diffident and lost-looking young people playing badminton on the walkways, hanging out, smoking, selling CDs, etc. It is bizarre and I love it. The uni's full name is something like The Institute of International People's Friendship Named After Patrice Lumumba and I guess it's a good, cheap option for students without a lot of money whose home countries don't have good schooling options. But what must these enterprising young people from warm, friendly places make of the hideous post-industrial sprawl on the outskirts of Moscow? Not to mention the weather and the virulent racism? Wow. Also this restaurant is a 20 minute walk from Ug-Zapadnaya Metro, at the end of the red line. I hesitate to recommend trying to find it to any but the most experienced travelers.....

But onward! Find it if you can. It's down a flight of stairs past an Indian grocery. The telly will be blaring Bollywood or obscure sporting events, the waiters speak good English and every single dish is sublime. The raita comes in a tall copper vessel and is thick with various vegetables & laced with cucumber and dill. I've never seen it like that anywhere else before. Otherwise can't remember specific dishes but I think it may be impossible to go wrong.

So you're curious about the difference between Russian perfective and imperfective verbs, are you?

2009-10-23T12:32:00.001-07:00

The following is my work of mad genius on a topic I have contemplated for way, way too long: Perfective and Imperfective verbs in Russian.

I was confused for years about when to use perfective v. imperfective, despite the fact that I of course do it correctly in English all day long...I just don't know I'm doing it. (Or I didn't know I was doing it, until learning Russian. That's one of the great things about picking up a second or third language; insights into the languages you already speak.)

So, as you probably already know, or will learn soon, each Russian verb comes as a perfective-imperfective pair. (Verbs of motion in Russian sort of have this too, but are much more complicated, so best to forget about them for this discussion.) Every time you learn a verb, you need to memorize both forms.

People tend to get bogged down here in a few ways. There are some kinda-rules about forming the perfectives. Also sometimes perfectives are made just by adding a prefix to the imperfective form, so you might think, Ah, There is a Method to This Madness. Trust me, it's not that helpful in the beginning. It is best to let knowledge about those rules & prefixes to accumulate as it may without trying to make too much sense of it. Ditto, the meaning of the prefixes. This will only confuse you when you're trying to choose a verb tense. As you get more sophisticated, you'll enjoy knowing the meaning, but you don't need it to use the verbs correctly. Also, just don't worry about the rare cases when your teacher tells you that there's no perfective, or no imperfective, or that it isn't really used or whatever. People tend to fixate on stuff like that, like "ahhh, it's even more confusing". Forget about it.

Here is how to do it:

When you are using a verb in the present tense, always use the imperfective. There is no present-perfect, so this is easy.

When you need to say something in the past or the future, your default verb is the perfective. This is your simple, "I did X or Y", "I'm gonna do X or Y" form. I've told this to Russian teachers and they all scream and say, no, it's not really more common or simple, etc., but for me thinking of it this way has been a godsend in terms of picking the right verb. Yesterday, I scheduled a meeting. (perfective) Yesterday, I gave X a gift (perfective). Tomorrow, I'm going to wash my face and read the newspaper (perfective). And so on.

The only time you want to use the past imperfective, or the future imperfective, is when you're saying something imperfective. That's anything that in English you would use a verb tense like, "I had been reading" "I will have been reading" "I was reading my book when X happened"...i.e. to indicate a continuing action. I'm sure your Russian teacher will tell you at length, better than I can, what "imperfective" means.... An uncompleted action, any action that you are speaking about in general, that you are specifying that you do every day or as a matter of habit, or for a specific duration of time.

I often got confused about this because, say, I was going to say, "Tomorrow I'll get up and wash my face." I would think, "well, that's something I do every day, thus it's habitual, etc., maybe I should use imperfective." No. You use the perfective, unless you are *specifying* that the action is either a) usual, or b) in the process of going on.

Yow. Ok. Well I hope that might help. In my experience with learning Russian, I'd spend years struggling to really grasp a point of grammar, and then once I did, I'd find a really easy way of organizing it mentally so I wouldn't forget it. Then I'd wish the teacher had just told me that easy way in the beginning. But I'm not sure, actually, that anyone gets to skip the lengthy-confusion period. !

Probably you aren't going to Pakistan, but....

2009-10-23T09:26:00.000-07:00

I don't have a Pakistan destination page, and I'm unlikely to be starting one anytime soon, though since I know a few journalists and war-photographers, I may have more of a line on the place than I think I do. However, if I did have a Pakistan destination page, I would put this album and video on it.

The artist is a Swedish folkie named Victoria Bergsman, who was a singer for The Concretes before launching her solo project, Taken by Trees. For her second album, East of Eden, she went to Pakistan and did some gonzo recording with local musicans playing traditional middle eastern instruments. National Geographic also did a brief docu-film on the trip, which might show up below if I've done my coding right. If not, you can see it here: http://billions.com/news/news/video-national-geographic-mini-documentary-on-taken-by-trees/

Locanda Verde in the new De Niro hotel, NYC

2009-10-06T07:13:00.000-07:00

In my 20s, I never went to nightclubs partially because I couldn't get my head around a plan for the evening that involved Maybe Not Getting In. In hindsight, it seems like it should have been pretty simple to try it and then move on, but especially in NYC the club would be somewhere inconvenient on the West Side and you'd be trying to meet friends and my prime potential-clubgoing years were pre-cell-phone.... Anyway, I never set foot in any of those places, the Tunnel, the Limelight, the Roxy (? was that even the name?) unless some better-connected friend had put me on the list.

I bring this up because nowadays I have a similar attitude about getting a table at a hot restaurant. I can almost never get excited about showing up at a place that might make you wait for an hour--and even then might not seat you, when, you know, you're hungry and it's loud and crowded by the bar, if there is even a bar to wait at, etc. This, is, however, I guess how the zillions of people without restaurant-world-pull try these places. Also not that into dining at 5:30 or 10:30. Last night, however, I did manage to dine at Locanda Verde, which is the new restaurant from the chef Andrew Carmellini in Robert De Niro's Greenwich Hotel, and it was both delicious and seemed not-that-impossible to get in. I called same-day got a table for two at 8:30 (it was a monday, but still). We showed up at 7:30, hoping that the table might free up earlier, and they told us that the wait for walk-ins was about an hour. There was a big bar there to wait at/ by and two cute places across the street where one could also drink and wait. Probably should be talking more about the food than the logistics but, what do you want, a place like this with such great buzz and such a wonderful chef is going to be, and was, delicious. We had a great time--celebrating a big professional milestone for Ivan--and thought it was a perfect New York evening.

Toska b mine 4ever

2009-10-04T07:56:00.000-07:00

Traveling a lot has made me into an opera fan—somehow, it becomes the kind of thing you do when you're in a foreign city that's known for opera and you aren't sure what else to do. If that makes sense. Like, the same way I've ended up at random classical music concerts in St. Petersburg and Vienna.....

In Moscow especially, it's easy to get great, last-minute seats at the Bolshoi, and the programs offer both English and Russian libretto, which is often just-possible to read in the dim light. (Making this one of the few original-language entertainments that is also semi-doable for tourists.) What you want in Moscow is a Russian opera deep off the shelf--Ivan Susanin, Mazepa, some impenetrable stuff about wars between Russia and Poland that no one has ever heard of, full of big, whirligig set pieces of apple-cheeked singing peasants. What's to like about this? Maybe that....the Bolshoi hasn't been rationalized? The financial pressures that cause opera companies (along with every other form of modern entertainment) to cater to the wallet of the audience haven't penetrated the deepest cultural corners of Post-Soviet Russia, allowing the Bolshoi to continue to mount these moldering, fabulous, ancient productions. Cultural treasures of a vanished world.

In London, I saw a hyper-modern, monochromatic Macbeth once, alone, and drank pink champagne at intermission & marveled at the Brits' sophisticated opera house and superior design sense. But the voices were like drills to the skull.

New York is warmer. The talent is the best in the world (like London, unlike Moscow), the Met's staging of Eugene Onegin is my favorite ever, but....I tend to find the performances distancing. Don Juan, The Barber of Seville, it's all slick & virtuoso and the music is great but I've never had an emotional connection to the show itself. Opera as art for this world, has never been an issue. Until! Funnily, yesterday, at the critically panned new staging of Tosca. There's been a lot of flap about Tosca getting boos, and people have found the new performance unnecessarily idol-bashing, accused the director of adding stuff that shouldn't be there, etc. I went with dread. I'd dragged my poor father down from Boston to go to a matinee. And you know, braced for the worst is always the best way to be blown away by something. This was the first time I cried at an opera, the first time that I felt the humanity of the characters and found some today's-reality in an opera theme. The story is about a painter (Caravadocci) and his singer-lover (Tosca) who because of love and an old friendship with a political rebel, run afoul of their corrupt and brutal government (manifested by the evil police chief Scarpia). Arts & humanity verses power and corruption is a very relevant theme for today's world, for me, at least; individuality and goodness against faceless systemic evil should resonate with all of us.

The sets, loudly complained about, reference prison, concentration camp, brutalist architecture and I found them to be absolutely necessary to bring in the sense of evil, power and corruption that Tosca and her lover, and the music itself, as a thing of surpassing human beauty, are reacting against. I don't know what Puccini would have intended, since his music is so warm & lovely & baroque, but against the death that the director created onstage, this music became a benediction and a lament, luscious, impossible, like Tosca the heroine herself was intended to be, all passion and frailty. Yum. Anyway. This was a brave thing to do, and is such an exciting sign for the new director and the Met. I cannot wait to see what else Peter Gelb comes up with.

Hotels with a nice view in NYC

2009-09-14T05:02:00.000-07:00

(this is the view from the Hotel on Rivington)

A friend is asking for Manhattan hotels with a nice view in an interesting neighborhood for some visiting Russians.

One note is to tell the friends to wherever they end up staying, ask for a room with a view, because in this tall city most hotels will have some rooms with nice views.

$$$$$
There's that Mandarin Oriental in the Time Warner Center right on Central Park, which I assume has Batman views. I've been to the top once for the restaurant, and it was great. That's on the Upper West Side, which is neighborhood-y old New York, has Lincoln Center, Central Park, close to shopping in Midtown....the real NYC deal. Where John Lennon was shot, Rosemary's Baby was filmed, Woody Allen's NYC.

$$$$
The most fashionable room right now is in a brand new hotel called The Standard, which is one of those open-book designs like they have on the new Arbat, standing on legs---very Moscow, actually. It has incredible views of the Hudson River and the city, and is in a downtown neighborhood called "the Meatpacking District" which was recently revitalized by the speculative architecture of the bubble economy & is now all bars & restaurants and high-end shopping. Cobblestone streets are a sea of partying people at nights. I wouldn't want to live there, but it's pretty cool to visit. And it's basically in the West Village, which is very charming little winding streets and old buildings. Also, there's this new city park called 'the High Line' which has been built on an abandoned elevated train tracks, & the Standard looks out onto that.

Also similar price (maybe less?) and fashionable scene is The Bowery Hotel, which is very tall in a neighborhood of shorter buildings, so probably has the views. This is between the Village, the East Village, and the Lower East Side, which is where I used to live/hang out in the 90s. Sort of grungy/hip neighborhood with lots of bars & thrift store shopping & cute boutiques. Plus lower Broadway is near there that has all the H&M, Old Navy, chain-store stuff, and the world-famous Soho shopping district, which used to be warehouses & then became artists lofts and is now very pricey.

Even further on the Lower East Side is the Hotel on Rivington, which I might not say was in the ideal location for visiting Russians, but I mention it because it's an amazing glass tower--your room will be a glass box overlooking the city, and some of the rooms have balconies. http://www.hotelonrivington.com/. This is where Ivan and I stayed when we flew in from Moscow to get married, but it has that too-cool attitude where the bellhop has a silly mustache and can't answer any of your questions......

$$$
Maybe more reasonably priced is the W Hotel in Union Square; it's tall and may have views. (Maybe not though!) This is a W Hotel Chain (you know this chain? Maybe only American) which is like 'packaged creativity', like the Starbucks chain is a faux neighborhood coffee-shop. There's all kinds of silly 'W' 'Wonderland' branding--the concierge is the 'whatever-whenever' desk, which I find maddening-- and the rooms are small & the halls usually dark as a nightclub, but the beds & bedding are awesome. You can stay there and not suffer. The Union Square location is not amazing on its own, but is incredibly central, between downtown and midtown, all the trains stop there, and it does have the city's biggest farmer's market, four days a week. This market is probably my favorite thing in all of New York City.

But anyway, all of this assumes that you can spend at the very least $350 a night.

"It's always cold on Labor Day"

2009-09-04T08:49:00.001-07:00

That's what the woman at the Springs Corner Store told me this morning. "It's like nature just knows the summer is over."

One summer of obsessing about the traffic

2009-09-03T07:55:00.000-07:00

Okay if you don't drive you won't care, and maybe not all drivers will care, but I can't drive anywhere in the city without obsessing about what the fastest route is going to be. (Hamptons is included in 'city,' for these purposes.) When is the best time to get to the Hamptons?, you ask. Is the traffic that terrible? Do people really sometimes spend 4 hours on the LIE? Does it create a slow death of the soul and ruin the sense of relaxation provided by a weekend at the beach?

Would love to know what others think but so far, I've found that it hasn't been that much of a problem. I'm driving from the Atlantic Ave entrance on the BQE, through Queens to 495, and then picking up 27 from Exit 68, which seems to be the classic way. I have left at 8:15 on a Thursday night and gotten to Amagansett in 2 hours and 15 minutes. Same with leaving at 8:00a.m. on a Sunday morning, to return trip. Last night I left at 8 and stopped for gas, got a traffic ticket and stopped at the 7/11 in Yaphunk (how could I resist?), and it took 2 hours and 45 min. The profile seems to be that there's traffic getting out of the city and around to exit 35 on the LIE, then it's fine, then it takes anywhere from 30 min with no traffic or an hour or more with it once 27 becomes one lane. More often than not city is the real hangup, not the Hamptons, so what you need to consider is almost less the commuter rush to the Hamptons on a Friday, but the ordinary commuter movements of the city.

I say this now, but am sure 27 will be back-to-back all weekend. I have been wanting to go to the Flavin exhibit all summer but haven't made it because it involves driving to Bridgehampton on a weekend. Also, two weekends ago our friend George was unable to even stop for coffee because all the shops were so crowded!

La Fondita also of acceptable delicousness

2009-08-26T11:00:00.000-07:00

La Fondita is a fairly fabulous destination, despite that it's a Mexican lunch counter, so I was skeptical about the food but, happy surprise, it's good. The portions are small, but the tacos and specials and so on are sophisticated, flavorful & made from nice, fresh ingredients. And the whole vibe is fun, with loud music, an outdoor garden to eat in, bronzed & fabulous vacationers.

sexy-trashy-money and good fish at Sen in Sag Harbor

2009-08-26T10:41:00.000-07:00

The Long Island edition of the NY Times recently did a story recommending six restaurants out here that don't suck (a very tall order, as I've discovered) and last night I tried another one, Sen, a sushi place in Sag Harbor. We arrived at 8:15 with no reservation and got a table for two by 8:45. Service was good, and the sushi was a B+, which, in a no-grade-inflation world (my world!) means it was very good. I'm reserving an A+ for sushi I haven't yet tried, probably in Japan, and an A for sushi in L.A. Sen gets wild rave reviews out here , which it would deserve not just "for Sag Harbor" but anywhere. Also, if you are into the sexy-trashy-money scene, it was good for that. A hot, tall man in fashion track pants taking out model-y girl in a vintage fringe top and skinny jeans. Two sexy Italian girls dining outside (one with the brastrap-showing look; good look!) with a companion in white loafers and a navy sweater over the shoulders, etc. Everyone looking tanner in the dark. It was loud, people seemed drunk, the food was good and the wait had barely died down by the time we left at 10pm........ I liked it

Status safari: expensive, amusing jackassery at Mary's Marvelous in Amagansett

2009-08-25T06:40:00.001-07:00

I still love the food at Marty's (especially for the prices) but will admit that Mary's Marvelous wins big in the people-watching department. We saw Alec Baldwin there last month. As Ivan noted, he was wearing *pants that unzipped at the knees to become shorts*. (Ivy, mind blown: "Where does a guy like that even get such a garment!?" I'm sure he's going to rush out and buy some). So we were there for breakfast the day before yesterday and, looming out of the pre-caffinated chaos I saw a guy, or rather I saw a watch. Lately Ivan has been schooling me in the secret language of watches, and this one was gold and shiny with a leather band and I thought that a person who could read the code would have a lot to say about this door-knocker. Turns out the watch was a Panerai, and the guy was wearing a matching promotional cap for the watch. He also had a keychain sticking half out of his pocket so that everyone could see it was a keychain for a Maserati. Otherwise the outfit was classic prep: a braided belt, cargo shorts, tucked in white buttondown with a blue check. Now, an innocent like me would probably be impressed, but Ivan says that 1. it's only a grand a month to lease a Maserati, an option available to many wanna-bes and 2. the watch is a sucker purchase. An expensive watch can be an investment; there's a hot resale market and they hold their value well. But Panerai brand is sort of a fake. It was a military watch in the 40s and then fell into obscurity until recently being revived by a big ad campaign as a luxury brand. Its value hasn't held & grown over time; the ads have created a perception of a tradition of value but not the reality. Also, it's neither fish nor fowl, because it was a steel bracelet utilitarian thing that's now been tricked out in gold. Sort of silly. But deliciously silly!

"lobster roll" hate it; American Hotel in Sag Harbor, love it

2009-08-25T06:04:00.000-07:00

So there are all those fish frys on the way to Montauk, one called Cyril's, one just called "lobster roll," and driving past them you know that they're going to be tourist traps, but still they're so perfect looking, and fried fish or a lobster roll is such the quintessential food for Montauk, that you want to stop. Well, I suppose the food is edible, but neither is that good and they're both painfully overpriced. I had the lobster roll at "lobster roll" yesterday and it was slightly too mayo-y and totally chock-full of celery, which feels like a cheat at $20 for a sandwich on a hot-dog bun. Both the lobster roll I had last weekend in Wellfleet and the Fairway lobster roll are much better. Sorry the pic is unappetizing. That's $56 for lunch for two, not including tip.

Also too bad, I don't have a pic of the GOOD restaurant, the American Hotel in Sag Harbor. I saved the Times article about how all the restos out here suck with a few execeptions, the American Hotel being one of the exceptions. So far, this jibes with my experience. And, yes, it was truly delicious. The hotel looks stodgy when you first walk in, but the dining rooms are very cozy, rich, welcoming. It's like a little warren in there with gold-framed paintings and cool wallpaper and moose heads, all a bit eerie and Ancient-Mariner.....sort of the authentic thing that all these modernist interiors with the antlers and white-on-white brocade wallpaper are trying to strip down and imitate. We had the spectacular seafood plate of oysters, clams, mussles, and shrimp. I didn't know until the end that the mustard sauce was for the clams, but that's my fault. The experience was otherwise splendid, some of the freshest shrimp I've ever tasted, sublime local oysters, mussels were great.... Ivan's scallop risotto was also wonderful, as was the clam chowder. The desserts and the bar offerings are old-school, as would be expected, and the wine list is as thick as a September Vogue. Ivan was impressed that they had two pages of Spanish reds (his thing) in tiny type. I think dinner for two was $165 or so, so that's obviously very expensive, but....you know, skip the "lobster roll" and breakfast at the Golden Pear and you'll make up for it.

Summerhouse: What I've learned

2009-08-21T07:49:00.000-07:00

Probably the best summer innovation comes from Jeff Howe, who discovered that this hippo-shaped baby pool can be turned into an adult flotation device. The mouth provides shade on a sunny day and the pool part keeps you comfortably immersed in the water, without the trouble of having to swim. The shape also catches the breeze at night, causing the hippo to endlessly cruise the pool, casting shadows on the wall of the studio.

The other stuff I've learned all falls into the less idyllic category, and is mainly about how hard it is to be hosts every weekend all summer long. I've always associated summer chilling with effortlessness, and I love to host, cook, dress tables & plan menus and all that. Even though it's work, it's never seemed like work until this summer, when you add endless washing of sheets and towels, general house hassle for two houses, scheduling guests, giving directions and so on. It's basically been a two-month-long dinner party, plus child care and I do feel somewhat like I haven't had the chance to relax and enjoy it. So what have we really learned? Maybe that we need a housekeeper from 5 to 9 every night (not practical, I know!), maybe that we need fewer weeks and fewer guests. Or maybe in some happy alternative universe we'd get really good at the grill, quickie but delicious summer sides, blender drinks and so on, so we could accomplish the same pleasant environments with less chaos. Maybe.

White Crest Beach, Cape Cod stunningly gorgeous, questionable water

2009-08-20T07:47:00.000-07:00

When I saw this beach I felt like I'd seen it before in a dream, or like it was the kind of place that someone might have described to me, late at night in a bar somewhere while I said, 'I have to see that, I have to go', with real yearning. You can't quite get it from the picture, but to get to the beach you go down a steep hill of sand. So it's like a beach that's also a mountain, or at least the side of a mountain. I found it to be very magical. Unfortunately, the water was brown and full of seaweed and smelly. I'm curious if this was an unlucky day or if it's always like that.

Hatch's Fish Market, Wellfleet, MA

2009-08-16T16:12:00.001-07:00

Wildly overpriced but cult market in Wellfleet, Hatch's fish market. The t-shirts are kind of cute and at $15 are a comparative steal .

More East Hampton beach info

2009-08-16T16:07:00.000-07:00

I've refined my understanding of the East Hampton beach parking situation. Not all the beaches have pay parking during the week. I've now discovered that Indian Wells does NOT, but Main Beach and Atlantic Beach do. Also, this just in from Hither Hills on the way to Montauk:

Maybe you already know about this, but Jon found this great state park beach that's only seven dollars a day to park, you can pay park on weekends, and has all the capitalist beach accouterments you need (food shack, deli, bathing suit shack, showers). It's part of a camp ground, so it's not the fashionable Hamptons scene, but there's so much empty beach on either side that it doesn't feel like you are stuck with yahoos, and there were no radios on the beach or anything. We had a really peerless day at the beach today, just GORGEOUS. Although the water practically was carribean warm! but still sparkly and refreshing.

Forgotten Boston childhood treat: Emack and Bolio's

2009-08-16T15:25:00.001-07:00

When Emack & Bolio's ice cream shop arrived in Wellesley when I was a kid the whole venture seemed exotic....the weird name, the tall chalkboard wall with all the little hand-lettered signs, the unheard of flavors. My favorite flavor was key lime pie, which was tart, barely sweet and had delicious textural swirls of graham cracker crust. Well, Emacks hasn't spread to the rest of the country like Ben & Jerry's, and that's both too bad and kind of nice since it remains a special local thing. We stopped at the one in Wellfleet this weekend, and I must say that the ice cream has stood the test of time & then some. It's Ciao-Bella-like in its light perfection and bright flavors. The flavors are everything-but-the-kitchen-sink (wonder if this was where Ben & Jerry got it?) if you like that, which I do, and use really great chocolate & other high quality ingredients.

Here's the sign out front. An entry in the time-honored tradition of cheesy small-town signage---two others: The Chocolate Sparrow, Puppies and Pickles

Beware the Carriage House! Love the Meyer lemon and tarragon martini

2009-08-15T10:26:00.001-07:00

These little Cape Cod towns are picturesque but full of lurking dangers....the bad food, the terrible room at the inn, etc. We're here for a wedding and had a few near misses. Our first rooms at the Duck Creeke Inn (C3 and C4 in the carriage house) were dark and smelled worrisomely organic. Fortunately, we were able to switch to quaint rose-and-lace rooms in the main house. No A.C. but still an improvement. My dad read some internet reviews of this place before we came and said that many people commented that the room quality really varies. So, beware the carriage house!

We also went so far as to sit down at the Lighthouse restaurant on Main Street before the lack of other clientele and fried-bar-food menu made us think twice. Ended up at the delicious Bookstore & Restaurant on Kendrick Ave by the harbor. Not everything stood out, but the special of local clams in butter and the lobster roll were both fantastic (lobster fresh, not too much mayo), perfect, seaside, cape-town fare. The place also had great specialty drinks... a meyer lemon and tarragon martini, a lemoncello and iced tea drink! The used bookstore out back was cool but ridiculously overpriced. I bought a pamphlet about crops in the Soviet Union for $5. Who else would ever want that?, you ask. Good question! They should have paid me to take it.

London hotel recommendations, cozy, classy, British

2009-08-12T15:28:00.000-07:00

A friend asked for some recommnedations this morning.....

The Knightsbridge
My favorite hotel in London, located on a lovely mews next to Harrods, expensive but worth it, if you can afford it. I love it so much because it feels homey but still glamorous, designed but not trendy. My favorite room with the red poppy curtains is on the first floor directly over the entrance portico and if memory serves, you can step out on the roof. One of the Firmdale hotel chainlet, in my opinion its best.

The Zetter
This is that obvious kind of hip retro boutique hotel but is still pretty fun. The rooms are decorated with awesome, funky textiles, vintage books and a hot water bottle with a chunky knitted cover. The "studio" room on the top floor is like a little apartment (no kitchen). And it's in Clerkenwell, so if you want to spend time in Hoxton/East London it's a good location. There might be deals on price, it's varied quite a bit the different times we've stayed.

The Vancouver Studios
This is where I stay when I'm on my own and pretending I'm in my 20s. It's dirt cheap (L50 night?), the kind of hotel with a kitchenette in the tiny room, but it's in one of those charming old London buildings and it's clean and the beds and linens are ok. I usually get flowers, put out my books and throw a scarf over the bed and voila, quaint. Also, it's on Prince's square near Queensway, the park, and Notting Hill, which is just where you want to be, unless you have a strong reason for needing to be near another neighborhood.

A few other things we've tried: a site called home away that rents out flats. It is a pain to search through their listings and the place we found was tiny, but perfectly acceptable. And there is Guesthouse West in Notting Hill, which is small and too party-central for us, but cheap for a boutique hotel and located just where you want it to be.

Marty's Old Stone Market, Mary's Marvelous, Golden Pear Cafe / Breakfast and Lunch in East Hampton

2009-08-08T08:06:00.000-07:00

(Photo is of the Golden Pear, see below)

Marty's market on Old Stone Highway, maybe 5 minutes by car north of Amagansett, is the best breakfast/lunch place I've found so far, probably no accident that it's off the main highway. Seating is either outdoors with a view of a parking lot or there's a long table stuffed into the aisles, last I saw it piled with stuff & not looking very appealing as a place to sit, but never mind that. Prices are reasonable and the sandwiches are made-to-order and delicious. Yesterday had a cubano with pickles and mayo, a brisket bbq, and a fresh mozzarella amongst our group and everyone thought they were great. They also make all kinds of deli take-out lasagnas, roasted banana cake, rice pudding, spinach pie, cakes and cobblers to order. Overall there's an authentic home-made, small-town vibe, which is what I'm looking for when in the countryside.

The other two local cult breakfast/lunch places I've heard of around here are Mary's Marvelous in Amagansett and the Golden Pear, a chain with an outpost in East Hampton. Mary's is more sophisticated, looks more like a baked-goods shop, has a full espresso bar (unlike Marty's) and some deli stuff. I tried a $10 quart of pea soup that was quite good and had a nice muffin from there as well, but there's no grill and the sandwiches appear to be pre-made. Jury is still out. Tried the Golden Pear this morning and.....found the high prices to be exploitative feeling (a $14 waffle), the vibe soulless and the aroma of hazelnut coffee unpleasant, but the food wasn't too bad. It looked worse than it tasted. Sort of reminded me of Sarabeth's kitchen, which once seemed gourmet and exciting and now hasn't really kept up with the changing, ever more sophisticated palate of American diners. The omelet of the day was spinach, tomato and goat cheese, for example, which feels kind of 80s.

Blue Parrot East Hampton in fact rotten

2009-08-07T06:00:00.000-07:00

Not worth saying much about, but we went to the Blue Parrot, supposedly a hot opening in East Hampton village. It was Thursday at lunch & there were plenty of tables and the service wasn't overtaxed, which is what I'd been worried about....but there may have been a reason for that. The first bad sign was that the lime that came with the Dos Equis was slumped over the mouth of the bottle like a Dali clock, slimy and rotten. We should have cut our losses and fled. You can tell when a culture of lack-of-care has its grip on a place, and the food will never be good under those conditions. And it wasn't. I could smell my fish sandwich as it approached the table. The quesadilla used Chedder cheese (which melts too greasy for a quesadilla....you need Mexican cheeses) the overdressed side salads didn't even try to be "mexican influenced." Killer Mexican indeed.

The BBC List, improved

2009-08-06T07:13:00.000-07:00

I've been tagged on Facebook again with this fake BBC book list. The conceit is that these are great books that everyone should have read and most people have only read 6. Probably anyone participating has read more than that, and thus gets to feel well-read, which might account for the success of the meme, but the list is a maddening mishmash of pop trash and classics, wih sort of seems to focus on British literature but then doesn't really, includes 'Hamlet' twice, etc. I am hereby amending it to be a better list of must-reads, including books by Brits and their subjects (Australia! Canada!). Caveat that I'm working off the original list, so it's not really MY 100 top reads, but my interpretation of what their British popular classics should have been. And I'm tweaking it a bit to make it more vacation-read friendly, to go with the theme of the blog.

Original list (with my x's indicating what I've read, below my list).

THE BBC LIST, RANDOM BUT SLIGHTLY IMPROVED

1. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
2. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen (original list had many Austen; I love her, but one represents just fine)
3. Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy (ditto Hardy)
4. Dracula, Bram Stoker
5. Middlemarch, George Eliot
6. Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte
7. Vilette, Charlotte Bronte
8. Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
9. The Bible (this was on the original list and I'm not going to remove it, though it doesn't much seem to fit)
10. A Midsummer Night's Dream, William Shakespeare (complete works was on the other list; I'm making it easier to check that box & picking my favorite play.)
11. Hamlet, William Shakespeare
12. The Woman in White, Wilkie Collins
13. Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
14. Ulysses, James Joyce
15. The Inferno, Dante
16. Swallows and Amazons, Arthur Ransome
17. Germinal, Emile Zola
18. Vanity Fair, William Makepeace Thackeray
19. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
20. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
21. Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
22. The Three Musketeers, Alexandre Dumas
23. Les Miserables, Victor Hugo
24. Under the Volcano, Malcom Lowry (Replacing Madame Bovary, since there shouldn't be any Frenchies on a British list!)
25. A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry (I haven't read this but it was on the original list)
26. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier (I haven't read this but it was on the original list)
27. Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck (have cut out most Americans but, at random, left a few)
28. Collected Stories, Flannery O'Connor (to replace To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee)
29. Moby Dick, Herman Melville
30. Notes From A Small Island, Bill Bryson
31. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Annie Dillard
32. Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger
33. Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon
34. Catch 22, Joseph Heller
35. The Regeneration Trilogy, Pat Barker
36. Gaudy Night, Dorothy Sayers
37. Down and Out in Paris and London, George Orwell (1984 and Animal Farm were on the original list)
38. Burmese Days, George Orwell
39. Goodbye to All That, Robert Graves
40. I, Claudius, Robert Graves
41. The Sea, The Sea, Iris Murdoch
42. The Magus, John Fowles
43. A Maggot, John Fowles
44. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
45. The Talented Mr. Ripley, Patricia Highsmith
46. The Moviegoer, Walker Percy (to replace A Confederacy of Dunces; John Kennedy Toole)
47. A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute (?)
48. A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess
49. Lady Chatterly's Lover, D.H. Lawrence
50. Of Human Bondage, Somerset Maugham
51. The Return of Jeeves, P.G. Wodehouse
52. Birdsong, Sebastian Faulk
53. The Swimming Pool Library, Alan Hollinghurst
54. One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
55. The World According to Garp, John Irving
56. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
57. Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons (haven't read this)
58. A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
59. The Buddha of Suburbia, Hanif Kureshi
60. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon (haven't read this)
61. Bridget Jones’s Diary, Helen Fielding (this was on the original list!)
62. The Secret History, Donna Tartt
63. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
64. Arlington Park, Rachel Cusk
65. Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie
66. The Wasp Factory, Iain Banks
67. Disgrace, J.M. Coetzee
68. Shantaram, Gregory David Roberts
69. Ken Follett, Pillars of the Earth
70. Possession, AS Byatt (also a dubious stet from original list); possible replace with Night Watch by Sarah Waters
71. Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell
72. In the Place of Fallen Leaves, Tim Pears
73. The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro
74. Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
75. Atonement, Ian McEwan
76. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
77. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
78. Crime and Punishment, Fydor Dostoevsky
79. Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
80.(Ok, because they included some Russians, I'm going to do my Russian must-read list, starting here): The Brothers Karamazov, Fydor Dostoevsky
81. Pale Fire, Vladimir Nabokov
82. Evgeny Onegin, Alexsander Pushkin
83. Collected Stories, Nikolai Gogol
84. The Compromise, Sergei Dovlatov
85. Moscow to Petushki, Venedikt Erofeev
86. Heart of a Dog, Mikhail Bulgakov
87. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien (original list had this huge children's section)
88. His Dark Materials, Phillip Pullman
89. The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
90. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
91. A Grief Observed, CS Lewis (Substituting for the Chronicles of Narnia, which really fall apart towards the end)
92. Anne of Green Gables, LM Montgomery
93. Lord of the Flies, William Golding
94. Dune, Frank Herbert
95. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
96. Farenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
97. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl
98. Watership Down, Richard Adams
99. Charlotte’s Web, EB White
100. The Dark is Rising, Susan Cooper

ORIGINAL LIST

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen - x
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien x
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte -x
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee -x
6 The Bible - x
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte - x
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell -x
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman x
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens-x
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott -x
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy x
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare - x
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien x
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk x
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger -x
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot (Augie March, and it was a real drag!) x
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell x
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald - x
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens x
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy - x
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams - x
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky x
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck - x
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll - x
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy - x
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens x
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis x
34 Emma- Jane Austen-x
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen-x
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis - x
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini - X (seriously? jesus!)
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres x
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden -
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne -
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell - x
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez - x
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving x
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery - x
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy -x
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood -x
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding -x
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan - x
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert x
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen-x
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley x
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez -x
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck - x
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov -x
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt x
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold _ x
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac -x
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy- x
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding x
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker x
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett - x
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce x
76 The Inferno – Dante - x
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt-x
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell x
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker - x
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert x
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White - x
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad -x
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery -x
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks x
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams - x
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole -x
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare - x
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl - x
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

"What if I lived here?"

2009-08-05T07:38:00.000-07:00

Just because you're on vacation doesn't mean you can't look at real estate:

This house at 364 Old Stone Highway has one of those "the owner is crazy" signs in the front yard saying it is for sale. When I stopped to take a picture, I saw a curtain in the window move, and hot-footed it away quickly.

There was an open house at 450 Old Stone Highway from Hampton Realty on a somewhat exposed & uncharming plot of land, that looked like it might be a vintage farmhouse, no pic.

No. 284 Old Stone Highway had an open house sign from Prudential Douglas Elliman, though it wasn't clear if it was the front house or the back which was for sale, since both were vacant. In front was a tiny, cheap-but-clean redo of an original farmhouse, keeping some original detail and adding some fun touches like a back wall off the kitchen that opened entirely up to the pool area and would be great for grilling & parties. In the front yard was a stand of the beautiful, twisted, inclement-climate trees that grow around here. The back house looked to be either new or gutted, probably new, with a fancy white granite island other status symbols of modern design-living.

Here are the trees:

This is the house in the front, you can see the open wall detail. The next pic is the house in back, followed by two details from the interior of the house in front. You can see one of those steep staircases like they had in old farmhouses.

Worst Grilled Cheese/Best Mac-n-Cheese at Atlantic Beach, East Hampton

2009-08-04T14:53:00.000-07:00

I'm not proud that I've eaten my way through the menu at the beach shack at Atlantic Beach but......so it is. I've now had the veggie burger, the 'beach burger' with russian dressing, bacon and fixins, the PB&J, the grilled cheese, the mac n' cheese, the lemonade and probably some things I'm not thinking of. (All drinks come in styrofoam cups so enormous you could use them to quarantine the head of a dog who's recently had surgery. Yay, environment.) The grilled cheese was, as my friend Karren said, probably the worst grilled cheese ever made, even on the scale of bad beach grilled cheeses. The classic of the genre is made with slices of orange American cheese, the kind that goes rubbery instead of melting, and butter-pasted Wonder Bread fried golden and crispy. That's a humble meal, a classic combination of semi-chemical flavors, but it can be delicious at the right moment. The grilled cheeses at Atlantic Beach use the orange glue-cheese and the cheap bread but were limp & barely browned. File under the category of things I didn't know could be fked up. The mac and cheese, on the other hand, costs $3 for a styrofoam cup of it & may have come from outer space, but it's pretty good. If anyone wants my critique of the burger or veggie burger, feel free to ask.

Children on the Deck of the Summerhouse

2009-08-03T18:05:00.000-07:00

Content of relevance to no one, testing the image-post capabilities.

Hamptons Parking Update

2009-08-03T17:09:00.000-07:00

There is a whole cult of hype around the parking permits here and how difficult it is to park by the beaches and if it's even worth it to get a house if you are not a permanent resident, a situation creating a miasma of fear and belonging--or fear of not belonging--made worse by the fact that the rules have just changed.

Well, I just learned that you can park at any of these supposed exclusive beaches on the ocean during the week for around $20 a day, and during the weekend you can take cabs. So, though it's pay to play here as always, it's very possible to enjoy your vacation without a permanent resident pass. And, frankly, on the weekends when the parking lots are crazy-crammed, taking a taxi starts to look smart option.

Scrappy East Hampton Springs is better than "South of the Highway"

2009-08-03T16:35:00.000-07:00

My Hamptons philosophy has always been to be anti- the anti-Hamptons people. The East End of Long Island is fking gorgeous and has long, wide beaches with tall waves and the ice-cold water that puts the sublime chill in a summer day, one dip and you're cool and comfortable on the beach for hours, so who really cares if the people here are too fashionable or too trashy or too sceney or what? If you don't like them, ignore them. And if you do, then there's lots of fun to be had.....

I've always come here to visit a particular college friend (whose parents have an amazing house, a pool and a membership to the Maidstone Club) and we never went out at all, just trundled from beach to pool to sitting around on the deck with wine, being in our 20s talking about who and when we might get married and what we'd become in our lives, and smoking cigarettes and being perfectly happy.

Fast-forward 10 years to trying to find a house here. My Central Park South dentist recommended Devlin McNiff real estate and insisted that we live "South of the Highway,"---which is very nice mansion-land if you can and want to live like the Pasha of Pashminaville (to flash a best forgotten 90s status symbol). And then there are the people who are like "Oh the Bay, the Bay, the Bay is so much cooler" and you think, "Yeah, but it's flat and it smells like fish."

Here is what I have concluded: You need a car anyway, so if you want a semi-rural experience with tiny saltbox cottages and yards with tumbledown sheds and country stores, a neighborhood where it's nice to walk around peeking at houses that look like they're lived in by locals--the heart of the place, the bones, that which made it cool in the first place, the Hamptons lived in by Jackson Pollack and Sylvia Plath (that last one I don't know really where she lived with Ted Hughes baking cakes just like Gwynnie in a movie but it should have been here), the the Springs is for you. It will not be significantly inconvenient for beach-going.

Also, apparently the Bennett family was one of the first to settle the East End and in these parts, on Neck Path and Old Stone Highway up to Louse Point (Rouse Point?) you see lots of mailboxes that say Bennett.

****++++virtual gdbk++++****

Please move on over to www.virtualgdbk.com where I'll be blogging from now on.

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Children on the Deck of the Summerhouse

Hamptons Parking Update

Scrappy East Hampton Springs is better than "South of the Highway"

++++virtual gdbk++++