caveat lector + the county of queens, part one

It seems fair to warn any readers who might happen upon this blog not to expect anything in the way of enlightenment, entertainment, or consistency. No, for now at least, this is merely a means to organize my links in one place, play around with blogger code, and perhaps ramble on about something that strikes my fancy once in a while. In other words, to procrastinate.

And since I have so very many other delightful means of procrastination, I'll probably be too busy tending to those distractions to pay this one much heed. So if you find something that pleases you, well, that's a felicitous accident, and you shouldn't count on it happening again any time soon.

With those disclaimers firmly in mind, then, on to the first (and perhaps the last) post. This is as good a time as any to start, I suppose, because my weekend was so eminently blog-o-licious (except for the fact that I didn't have a camera with me, so all of the photos you see below have been shamelessly stolen from somebody else. Copyleft, anyone? Hopefully this problem will be remedied very soon, once I start using the camera that Sari so kindly lent me while she's in Berlin.)

The weekend began, as all my best ones do, with a medium-sized iced coffee from Gorilla. For the highest quality java, New York coffeegeeks may go to Gimme Coffee, in Williamsburg, or Joe, in the Village--both of which serve wonderful coffee and are also great places to see real latte art--but for my morning cup of iced coffee Gorilla does the trick just fine. While their normal hot coffee tends to be a bit overroasted, I find it's just right over ice. Plus, not only is it two blocks from my apartment, but it's also all organic and fair trade certified. This makes Gorilla one of the very few all-organic, all-fair trade cafes in New York. Another is Grounded Coffee, on Jane St. between W. 4th St. and Greenwich Ave., where I used to work. Grounded gets most of their beans from the excellent Dean's Beans, run by the maverick coffee importer Dean Cycon. At my suggestion, they also get some from the Zapatista Mut Vitz cooperative. If you (imaginary reader) fnd yourself in the West Village, please do stop by and pay them a visit. They've got great coffee and delicious food served up in a lovely sunlit space.

So I had planned to spend the weekend excavating my bedroom from beneath mouldering mounds of old New Yorkers, ridding the refrigerator of cheese that's gone from "good moldy" to "bad moldy", and maybe sorting my socks, but Saturday turned out to be such an unbearably gorgeous day--one of those handful of truly perfect ones we are blessed with a few times a year--that I jettisoned those plans in favor of meeting up with Emily and Matt in the park instead.


While the three (and one-half) mammals pictured above are not us, this image does illustrate one of my favorite features of Prospect Park: Dog Beach! Some people dream of swimming with dolphins; I want to swim with the dogs.

After sitting in the shade for a couple of hours decrying the paltry advances that academic presses pay their authors, wondering whether our old scratch-and-sniff books still work, and speculating about the marketability of a proposed Dolph Lundgren workout book, we decided to move on.


Dolph-uh-cize!

Having access to a set of wheels, we suppressed thoughts of the imminent Peak Oil-induced apocalypse and drove out to Astoria, where we met Michael & Co. at the Bohemian Hall and Beer Garden for the eponymous beer (and kielbasa and pierogis). My kielbasa + fries combo looked a whole lot like this, and tasted even better. Yet, although there's something great about a parking lot-sized biergarten in New York City, it started getting increasingly crowded and rowdy back there, so we decided to move on. Just in the nick of time, too. On the way out, we actually spotted a couple of cops trying to keep order among the fratboys at the gates.

Feeling rather bloated, we decided that it would be a good idea to cleanse our palates with some icies from the Lemon Ice King of Corona. Michael's friend Deirdre made us promise to each try to eat at least six to eight icies apiece, and to be sure not to miss the peanut butter ice. We mumbled our assent, a bit skeptical about the idea of peanut ice.


Don't even think about trying to "exchange" your shitty backwash peasant ice for the King's ice.

We wended our way over to Corona in a state of typical Queens-driving-induced discombobulation, and eventually made it to the Ice King. Like the Bohemian Hall, the Ice King is one of those well-known Queens destinations that Manhattanites love to shlep out to for a frisson of Outer Borough street cred, whilst the chowhounds look down their snouts. While LIKC is a lot of fun, it doesn't hold a lemon to Mario's on Taylor Street in Chicago and isn't even vastly superior to the noxious Dummer-driving, Uncle Luigi (though it's true--the King's peanut ice does kick ass). No, as "alpha dog" Jim Leff helpfully suggests, if you want real italian ice you need to go to "Ralph's in Staten Island. Or, better yet (but summers only), J&W's ices in back of J&W's bagels on amboy road at hugeneot ave. Or best of all, Rex's Ice (run by an extremely eccentric high school principle, random days summertime only), opposite Patsy's Pizza at 1st and 117 (skip strawberry!)"

This is, of course, vintage (and maddening and beautiful) Leff: breathless rumors of an eccentric and unpredictable purveyor of the best food in the city, located at an address so ambiguous it's not even clear what borough it's in, and with the great likelihood that, after trekking to the address in question, or, at least, what you think is the address, you will return home hungry and frustrated, yet more determined than ever. Remember: skip strawberry!

It's street food qua Holy Grail, and it's exactly the sort of pointless and generally futile quest that I'm helpless to resist.

To be continued...