The Holidays Descend

The other day I caught the piney whiff of Christmas trees on Avenue A. Earlier, bad Christmas music blared from my falafel shop's speakers. The fruit-and-vegetable magnificence of the greenmarket in Union Square has been taken over by a mess of booths selling holiday junk no one needs. And on Wednesday, the line at the Trader Joe's wine store was this long:



The holidays are here.

On Wednesday, ventured out post-Dr. appointment to buy the makings for lasagna and a veggie tray for our Thanksgiving potluck. Dr.'s office is at Union Square, so I hit the greenmarket, which teemed with the holidazzled buying vegetables and wreaths and bacon that, at $12 a package, better truly be "the world's best bacon."

I bought kale, since the chard was done for the year, and beets in two colors, and I felt happy and grinned at everyone like a cartoon loon.

Then to Trader Joe's, which is too small here to begin with and always packed. I fended and fought those in the queue just to get cheese and the line took so long by the time I left it was getting dark. Then home, which I was late to, as Sabra had hired a photographer for us. Not hired, exactly - a Craigslist thing. She took our pictures as part of a series on those who are new to New York and someday she's going to make us/we're going to make her famous. We hope. She was a neat girl named Deidre Shoo and she knew what she was doing with a camera. Afterwards we all went to a bar in Brooklyn and drank some free rum punch. We hope to see her again soon.

I never made it to yoga that night, but it didn't matter because I was happy. Adam Rio was there, and we ordered pizza with leeks and sausage and Deidre became our friend, and on the walk home I had talked to my mom, and I felt loved. Later that night people came over and then we all went to see Labyrinth (what, what, Molly!), my childhood favorite, which was as good as I remembered and - as an adult - also hilarious.
It was the best Thanksgiving eve ever.

And then the next day I woke up late and Sabra did too and then I did some online stuff and then we cooked.
And soon it was 5 pm and we scrambled to get out the door and on the subway and over the river and through the hood to Aaron Goodman's place, which is a cottage in Brooklyn that used to be a carriage house. It's a miniature house, and I was enchanted to see it for the first time.

Aaron Goodman made prime rib and sweet potato pie and artichoke dip and pita and Joel made Chilaquiles and Sabra made mashed potatoes and Stovetop stuffing and Eric Alger made a veggie pie and Adam Rio brought a pecan pie and I made lasagna and chopped some veggies and brought hummus, and so we feasted. It was a gay boys' Thanksgiving, plus Sabra and me, and I took two hits of a joint and spent the rest of the night laughing and sleeping, rousing myself when necessary for trivia. I remembered I don't really like to smoke pot. And then we ate more and then it was time to leave.

By then it already felt like we'd been holiday-ing it forever, so yesterday I did a bunch of errands and then people came over and then we went out to a burlesque show. It was great - and only five dollars. No Box , sure, but also easy to get into, down the block and cheap. And then today woke up and was a layabout for hours - listening to music and such. I'm getting into new bands with the help of Last.fm - trying to expand my musical tastes. So far I've discovered I'm a fan of Television, a genre called the "Nouvelle Scene Francaise," and lots of old-school soul and rock 'n roll. I also recently was introduced to Beirut and I absolutely love them. And Aaron made me a soul mix, which he brought over last night, so it's new music extravaganza around here.

Tonight stayed in as was tired and feeling like I'd been doing the weekend thing for days. Caught up on my "New York" magazine and listened to music. Nice sometimes to keep it low-key. Pacing myself, perhaps, for the holiday hurricane to come.

Cold coming

The cold has come and it's apparent to me now what it truly means to live in a pedestrian city. There's no rushing to the car and bathing in the heater's emissions once there; you want something, you bundle up and go get it on foot. I guess some people have the same revelation here with the heat in summer, but I don't mind heat, actually, so this is only now sinking in.

It's been good this week, though, because I've had a reason to venture out each afternoon, and it was brilliantly sunny most of the week, so if I bundled properly I enjoyed it. The venturing was part of a new project -- a food-writing gig chronicling restaurants in downtown and lower Manhattan. My first beat was an area I soon realized was basically Chinatown (East Chinatown, they call it), so the challenge was to pop into every place and figure out what made one Chinese bakery different from the next.

I really enjoyed it at first, and was reveling in all the bargains I learned of (sandwiches for 70 cents! beef and rice for $2!) but as I got deeper into the neighborhood, people became less and less open to talking to me. No matter how friendly and non-threatening I tried to be, at many places employees would clam up suspiciously and become loathe to give me any information about the restaurant. "I'm a reporter," I might say, "there's no charge," but many people would just clam up, tell me the boss wasn't there or that they didn't speak English and their eyes would implore me expectantly to please vanish. It was dramatically different going to the four or five Vietnamese restaurants in the area - these places had reviews from the papers and Yelp and Citysearch posted and seemed happy at the prospect of further press. I soon realized something cultural was going on at the Chinese places, and I had to wonder if it has to do with the lack of a free press in China, and consequently not really having a place from which to relate to what I was doing. At one closet-sized dumpling shop, the woman gave me as much information as she could with limited English, but seemed reluctant. Her coworker then asked whether I was planning to open my own Chinese restaurant! I had to laugh. No, I said, I'm happy just to eat at them.

Sometimes people laughed at me (I never did get the joke), and at one spot a young Chinese-American kid who was ordering takeout was nice enough to translate my requests into Mandarin, and whatever he told the restaurant owner and cooks made them laugh and laugh. I sort of chortled along (the situation was comical), but I never will figure out exactly what was so funny. Somebody who did speak Mandarin would have been better for the gig - I may as well have been trying to report on a foreign country with zero language ability and no translator - but I'll do my best to accurately summarize each place. The menus, though - and my boss wants comprehensive ones - that may be impossible. Many places didn't even have menus posted in English...

At any rate, it's cold and maybe tomorrow - or soon! - I need to go scarf and hat and sweater shopping. Like everyone, I've really pared back on buying things, but this is necessary. Hopefully retail will see a slight spike as people stock up for the winter. It needs it.