A Year In New York

I drove around Los Angeles today, doing research for a magazine story I am writing about trash. In addition to getting a tan, I gleaned an insight into how living in New York is changing my opinions about California’s two city-states, San Francisco and Los Angeles.
So you New Yorkers can make sense of it, let [...]

[Read more →]

Today Joo introduced me to her favorite tree. A Seattle native, she had beat me to the West Coast by a few days and by the time I arrived she had already settled into its green, sap-scented vibe. I was irritable on the drive out to Anacortes, jogging my foot against the floorboards, still in [...]

[Read more →]

On my first night in San Francisco I wait at a taco joint, and while people in line watch the cook sizzle up some carne asada, I watch the people. I turn to my friend Sherm.
“You know what it is about Californians?” I said to him.

[Read more →]

Before arriving here, I discovered a reliable way to flabbergast my fellow Californians. All I had to do was announce my plans to commute by bike around Manhattan.
“What?” that Californian would sputter, nearly spilling his Chardonnay into the koi pond. “Are you crazy?”
I might as well have said I would bike through the streets of [...]

[Read more →]

Sometimes on the curb, when the light turns green and the white “WALK” guy appears, I hesitate and watch for the trucks. I guess I don’t entirely trust them.
When I say “truck” I don’t mean a Toyota Tacoma or a Ford Explorer but the big trucks, the 10,000-pound beasts that haul freight, gravel or regular [...]

[Read more →]

In  California, the knish is the only well-known cuisine of New York that no one tries to sell you. Bakeries like Noah’s purport to make New York bagels and corner pizzerias make New-York-style pies, but until today I had never even laid eyes on a knish.
What I did know is that knishes are Jewish, so [...]

[Read more →]

This afternoon I went to check out Olafur Eliasson’s “New York City Waterfalls.” They have the art critics as excited as kids dancing around a Harlem fire hydrant, but frankly they just made me homesick for the real thing.
All four of the installations can be seen from the tip of Pier 17. I stood against [...]

[Read more →]

Something about the way Paul opened the door told me he didn’t particularly enjoy having guests. We’d made a Craigslist connection – he had a coffee table and I needed one – and now here I was, an interloper in his 500-square-foot kingdom, looking over his stuff, saying hello to his wife, who was at [...]

[Read more →]

I have been dismayed by the prices of the Food Emporium across the street, so I took my canvas bags six blocks south to Gristede’s. I had only seen Gristede’s from across the six lanes of 1st Ave. and presumed it would prove that the $10 six-packs and cramped quarters of Food Emporium were an [...]

[Read more →]

Seeing as I don’t yet have any Jewish friends in New York, I airlifted my Jewish friends Ariel and Seth from Portland, Oregon, to give me some quick tips. Lounging on the couch they taught me some Yiddish, like “schvitz” (which means “sweat”) and “schmate” (which means rag ), and then this morning they introduced [...]

[Read more →]