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Last summer there was a big kerfuffle about illegal ads on scaffolding. 270 Lafayette Street, above, was often singled out because of the egregiously outsized Pepsi Smash and Helio advertisements. It was Helio on the plywood when the scaffolding collapsed in a wind storm in October. I'm not in the neighborhood that often, but I haven't seen any ads since the scaffolding was rebuilt.
Did you see the story making the rounds yesterday about the guy who had his laptop confiscated by the police because he was using a library's free wifi after hours? They guy was playing online games in his car outside the Palmer, Alaska library, and had been previously chased off library property.
I have a confession.
When I was in Alaska two years ago I leached bandwidth from the same Palmer, Alaska library. I hope they don't come after me.
Of course I had to get a burrito while in San Francisco. There wasn't time to go to the Mission, but through the gastronomical wonder that is Burrito Eater, I found a decent burrito place a few short blocks away from the conference hotel. A few blocks into the Tenderloin that is. If the sight of strung-out, zombiefied people staring into space doesn't upset your appetite, the Pollo B.B.Q. Super Burrito at El Tesoro makes for a good meal.
Since I normally get a carne asada or carnitas burrito I wasn't sure what to expect with barbecued chicken. It was very vinegary, like eastern North Carolina barbecue. In addition to meat, rice, beans and salsa, a super burrito includes cheese, sour cream and guacamole. That, Mexican pop music on the stereo, and a big glass of horchata made for an excellent, inexpensive lunch.
Back here in New York, I went for a walk yesterday afternoon and lost track of time. When I realized it was 4:30 and that I hadn't eaten lunch, I stopped in at the new location of Westville East. The food was dependably good. Not as tasty as the burrito and nearly triple the cost, but I enjoyed the food.
Still, there was something in the restaurant that was bugging me. Something seemed off, and I couldn't place it at first. I heard the Supremes' "Someday We'll be Together" segue into Grand Funk Railroad's "I'm Your Captain" and the transition didn't seem right. Three minutes later, when "I'm Your Captain" moved into "Ramblin' Man" by the Allman Brothers I knew what had been bugging me. "I'm Your Captain" is a ten-minute song. I haven't heard the song in years, since I now mostly listen to WFMU or WNYC, neither of which plays much classic rock, and was looking forward to hearing all of it. "Ramblin' Man", a five minute long song, only lasted about three minutes as well. The Supremes song is only 3.5 minutes, but I'm thinking it must also have been cut short. Very strange. Now I want to go back and time the songs with my iPod's handy stopwatch.
Make My Cake had two shops when I moved to Harlem. One was on Adam Clayton Powell near 139th and the other at 110th and Lenox. The latter closed a couple of years ago to make room for 111th Central Park North, a new luxury condo. More than a year ago I spotted a sign that Make My Cake would be re-opening at 116th and St. Nicholas.
Many months went by and the place looked ready to open last September, when I took the upper photo. I walked by every weekday, yet the shop was always closed. Some mornings I'd notice that something had been moved. A cake appeared on a shelf in mid-December. Nothing happened to that cake for days, but it was a sign that the bakery would be opening soon. They opened just before Christmas.
I waited a few days (to make sure the original cake was gone), before trying their signature red velvet cupcakes. Pretty average I thought. I tried a strawberry cupcake. Very good. I tried a vanilla cupcake with coconut topping. Not so good.
Hoping they would pick up their game I ignored them for a while. Trying for a little variety, I picked up a cinnamon roll a couple of weeks ago. Good.
On Valentine's Day the Times ran a story about the best red velvet cake in New York. Make My Cake's version was one of two that was universally liked by the tasters. Then Daniel posted a picture on Flickr. I had to try again. It was very good. Tasty, moist and not overly crumbly. I prefer a more noticeable cocoa flavor, but this is an excellent cupcake.
I can't share the cupcake itself, I can let you watch it disappear (1 MB animated gif)! If that's not enough cupcake action I recommend Cupcakes Take the Cake.
The former Nation of Islam Temple Seven, where Malcolm X was minister will soon have a new neighbor. A 16-story condo, the Graceline Court Condominiums, is to be completed early next year. The building will cantilever over part of the mosque (via Curbed). The building will permanently alter my summer sunset view.
The original building was dynamited after Malcolm X's assassination in 1965. Before it was a mosque, the building was the Lenox Casino. The casino was built in 1905 and was home to many sporting and entertainment events.
The police raided the Lenox Casino on Monday, January 15th, 1912 because the casino was, well, let's see what the Times had to say:
Yes, the Lenox Casino was being used as what must have been one of the first porn movie theaters. It was also reported that within the casino was a "crowd of fully a thousand men, among whom, they (the detectives) alleged, they recognized prominent local politicians".
After standing in line for four hours there's nothing like a microwaved Stefano Foods The Big Bite Cheese Pizza to satisfy a hunger. The best I can say is the pizza contained a lot of chewy dough.
I'm back from a busy week in San Francisco. It was mostly work so there aren't many pictures, but I did manage to steal away for an hour at the Farmer's Market at the Ferry Building. In addition to button accordian player extraordinaire Renée de la Prade of Culann's Hounds, they'll be in the Bronx at the end of March, there was plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables. More on those later.
Getting to San Francisco was quite a chore. I flew out last Wednesday, the nasty weather day.
I'll skip the details, but suffice it to say the monorail at Newark Airport wasn't working. That meant taking a bus on unplowed access roads from the train to the terminal. Apparently the airport only has one bus for such emergencies. By the time I got to the terminal I was told it would be speedier if I used curbside check-in. The curbside line went quick, but it was too close to departure time to check bags at curbside. The line in the terminal took a couple of hours, so I missed my flight. The re-accomodation line took another hour but I got on the next flight.
The delay itself wouldn't have been so bad, but the way the airport handled the monorail situation and the way Continental handled their long lines is troublesome. Weather emergencies happen a few times a year and you'd think that they would have trained for expected emergencies. In both cases passengers weren't informed about what was happening and no employee took control of either situation. It is scary to think about what would happen if an unexpected emergency were to arise.
Once I got on the plane all went well. It didn't hurt that I had several hours of Jean Shepherd broadcasts on my iPod. I've been listening to a lot of Jean Shepherd lately. His 45 minute shows are perfect for the bus ride to work and are available as podcasts.
More from the Saturday walk.
At 3500 feet the main span of the George Washington Bridge was the longest suspension bridge in the world when completed in 1931. That record lasted six years. The Golden Gate Bridge, at 4200 feet long, surpassed the GWB in 1937. Weather permitting, I'm flying to San Francisco tomorrow. I don't know if I'll get to see the Golden Gate Bridge. The longest suspension bridge in the world is the Akashi-Kaikyo Bridge in Japan with a span of 6529 feet.
This winter has been mild. It's only been in the last couple of weeks that the temperature has stayed below freezing long enough for ice to start building on the Hudson. On Friday afternoon a thin layer of ice covered much of the river. The winds and tides wiped most of that ice away by the time I took my walk on Saturday. By then the ice was restricted to more sheltered locations near shore. The posts in the river in the second photograph are there to break up the ice before it crashes into the North River Wastewater Treatment Plant, aka the sewage plant on top of which Riverbank State Park was built.
Did you ever start doing something specific only to lose track of time and distance? I intended to go for a short walk along the Hudson Saturday afternoon but was so enjoying myself that I just kept walking and walking. Oh, make no mistake it was cold and windy by the river and I was freezing my patootie off. Despite that it was a lovely day for a walk.
I'm glad I kept walking because just north of the George Washington Bridge, where the trail heads up away from the river, there's a tiny cove. In that cove were three shipwrecked boats frozen in the ice. The boat with the graffiti is 50-60 feet long. My guess is the boats broke away from the marina at the Hudson end of Dyckman Street. I wonder how long they have been there, and if their owner's know their boats are no longer at the marina?
Speaking of breaking away... Remember that retaining wall in Washington Heights that collapsed in a landslide a couple of years ago? There was a gaping void, parked cars were crushed, and a lane of the Henry Hudson Parkway was closed. Castle Village, the apartment complex where the landslide occurred, is above the shipwreck site. The new wall is almost complete:
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