Red Sauce

Rising Like An Ugly Loft & Maya, Yo

Sweating at 6:30 a.m on an Upper West Side sidewalk, I turned and looked down at the back of my left arm and then lifted my right hand so I could give the fuckhead who sprayed me with his watering hose a high-held Fuck You middle finger. “What the fuck? Fat little motherfucker. You fucking sprayed me!” Yep, I said that out loud this morning to no one as I traversed in my colorful, slightly snug Rampage skirt on West 68th Street. Then I quickly felt the twinge in my hip that made my leg oddly shutter as I became the crazy, angry, sad woman muttering to herself on the street, alone, shiny and tired.
Good morning, New York City!
On the Upper West Side, buildings with doormen get a nice watering in the morning. The cigarette butts, the coins, the dog piss, all gets washed down into the street.
In my uber hip ‘hood, no such thing occurs. I woke up with too little sleep and a bit of anger in my step and kicked the old lady who lives next to me’s fucking Daily News down the three steps that lead to my rent stabilized building. And I stopped and looked up to get a look at my surroundings. There is a mammoth windowed behemoth across the street overlooking “the park.” For fun, and for link purposes, I looked up the building—“Avalon on the Park.” And on this web site there is this nifty mortgage calculator. For a $549,000, one bedroom loft apartment I would have to pay up to $2,425.28 in mortgage payments a month with a 20 percent down payment.
Down the block, Judes and I went to go look at this grossness that was filled with yuppies, babies, a fucking DJ (at the Open House) and insane prices for butcher block-like apartments.

I Refuse to Smell the Roses

A trip to Trader Joe’s last night made me think that of the two kinds of people, those that like to make a "connection" or small talk with the people that they are making a transaction with (waiters, cashiers, salespeople) and those that would rather just make the transaction and move on, we need more of the latter.
First of all, I have never truly understood the appeal of Trader Joe’s. I know, it’s cheap, organic and they have containers of cookies for cheap and there is some cutesy shit going on like specials marked on chalkboards with clever slightly politically seeming messages. There is a cult surrounding this grocery store chain that I will never ever understand. There is even a web site that actually taste tests and rates its bottled sauces.
Since it’s peach season, and I am something of a peach fanatic (me and Ruth both, by the way), I don’t appreciate having to inspect my peaches through a dark shield. The peaches ("ripened") at Trader Joe’s, were in a plastic container with dark blue mesh over them. It’s hard to really see what you are buying. Why does Trader Joe’s not want you to see their produce? Instead it’s shrink wrapped or covered up. I gave up on the peaches finally.
At the 14th Street branch, the lines are always long and the shelves are bare. But isn’t that the case at every Trader Joe’s? And there are lots of NYU students standing agape at the shelves. And there are annoying couples deciding, arguing, cajoling, figuring what to put in their cart. And there are women in line making chit chat with each other. Ugh, it’s suburbia. I tore myself away from that years ago. I am cranky, always have been, never suited for the small talk unless I am shopping here, in my mom’s grocery store in Michigan.
Anyhow, this all brings me to William Grimes, former New York Times restaurant critic. When describing Bill Buford’s new book “Heat,” Grimes writes, “...he succumbs to what might be called the New Yorker fallacy, the belief that absolutely anything, if reported on in exhaustive detail and presented in glossy prose, will fascinate.”

Like a Virgin All Randy and Ready to Go

New York is in grocery store madness. It really looks like a collective mental illness. The new mega grocery stores are packed. People stand in lines for 20 minutes with their little cartons of food.

The days leading up to the opening of Trader Joe’s were anticipated as much as a middle aged virgin anticipates the first time. Web sites devoted themselves to counting down the days.

   On Saturday, a day after it opened, the place was packed, the shelves were bare and angry, ashen-faced people, mostly women, stood in line, grim-mugged with their ten things in their little carts, grumbling and dealing with every little shove with a tiny shove back.

    We left and went to Whole Foods which was irritating and packed but the line didn’t reach outside, as it eventually did when we walked back past Trader Joe’s.

     Grocery stores, the culmination of real estate and food.

Short Rib Ragu Step Aside! Hello Crack Den!

I actually said this the other day: "Real estate is the new food."
I am grateful to the people who smiled and nodded after I said it but I am horrified. What has happened to me? How did that ever come through my lips?
I even meant it. I am worried. Next week I may be saying something like those "gouchos really look good on you" and mean it. There could be no limit.

Speaking of real estate, I gathered Judy (who's the boo?)  and made her go look at this building in Williamsburg. It was described as a "shell of a building" by what turned out to be a tall Big Gulp type woman who may have been a member of the Swedish Volleyball team. She slithered out of a red Volvo and grinned as she should. We shook her hand as we should.   
    We proceeded past the bacon on the stairs and checked out the place that was going for nearly $900,000. It was filled with dead pigeon parts and was covered about two feet high with rotting mattresses, broken pieces of wood and parts of the roof were strewn about.
    When a former crack den is priced at nearly $1 million it can make you think that real estate may be the new food. But I won't say it again even though I kind of like saying it. For a second, I was one of those blown out women on the Today show talkin' trends with Katie or maybe even discussing "Walkerooni" with Ann Currie during commercial breaks.