Ice Capades

Why I don’t trust the student protesters.

In the United States, news of the Hamas attack on Israel arrived in the afternoon of October 7th or later. Generally, the current crop of student protesters were silent or, in a few cases, elated. Calls for ceasefire only began once Israel responded, even before the disproportionate scale of its response became apparent. Gazans were the third victims chronologically of this tragedy after Israelis dead and Israelis kidnapped, but most protesters were only aroused by their plight. Cf. https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/1654384

 

Saturday, May 4, 2024

If you spend any time on the Internet, you are besieged by unwanted ads. Sometimes they assume an authoritative guise, but when did the television show “Shark Tank” become the clearinghouse for medical breakthroughs?

Sunday, May 5, 2024

My sympathy is with the parents of teenagers. "The so-called Ivy-Plus schools — the eight members of the Ivy League plus M.I.T., Duke, Chicago and Stanford — collectively received about 175,000 applications in 2002. In 2022, the most recent year for which totals are available, they got more than 590,000, with only a few thousand more available spots."   https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/01/opinion/college-admissions-applications.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=highlightShare

.  .  .

The telephone rang just before 9 o’clock last night. The screen said No Caller ID, so I cut the call off. When the telephone rang again a minute later, a familiar name appeared. It was Billy Spiro, another of my hockey ticket benefactors, a must answer. “Two extra tickets to the playoff game on Sunday. Interested?”

 

Sam Fuchs, Stuyvesant High School graduate and US Navy veteran, met me in front of Macy’s before the game at Madison Square Garden. In spite of the generations separating us, our enthusiasm was about equal. We were rewarded by a 4-3 victory in an electrically charged atmosphere. We also got a pretty good T-shirt.

 

After the game, we walked down the street to Rowdy Rooster, 130 West 32nd Street, advertising Indian fried chicken. It occupies a small space, holding four tiny, round two-tops, four stools and a bench against the wall. I ordered the Signature Fried Chicken Rice Bowl, very crispy chicken strips, basmati rice, peas, carrots, onion, broccoli, cucumbers and tomatoes, moderately spiced ($16), a tasty end to a happy evening.

 

Tuesday, May 7, 2024

It seems that I wasn’t the only one who wanted to get home in time for the start of the Rangers playoff game. Sala Thai, 307 Amsterdam Avenue, was full at 6 o’clock. I had ample time to eat chicken satay, four thin slabs of grilled white meat chicken, a bit dry, but accompanied by a delicious peanut sauce ($14). Then, I dug into Yum Ped, described as crispy duck salad although the duck was roasted not fried ($18). Additionally, the salad had pineapple, cashews, cherry tomatoes, red onion and greens in a sweet and tangy dressing. We were home by seven for a game that ended at 11:15. Rangers won, of course.

 

Wednesday, May 8, 2024

“RFK Jr. says worm ‘got into my brain and ate a portion of it’”  https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/08/politics/rfk-jr-mercury-poisoning-brain-parasite?cid=ios_app

 

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene says that she has nothing to worry about.

.  .  .

 

The Boyz Club gathered at 456 Shanghai Cuisine, 69 Mott Street, on a very warm day. This is a successor to a restaurant on Chatham Square a couple of decades ago. Almost empty when we walked in at 12:20, people were waiting on the sidewalk to get in one hour later. The six of us ate beef wrapped in scallion pancakes, “Wontons in spicy flavor,” beef with scallions, spicy orange chicken and shrimp fried rice. The $18 cost per person belied the high quality of the food. Nothing disappointed, everything pleased.

 

Thursday, May 9, 2024

Kossar’s Bagels & Bialys, 367 Grand Street, started in 1936, properly known as Kossar’s Bialystoker Kuchen Bakery for Bialystok, Poland where bialys were born. Everyone knows what a bialy is, right? Okay.

Well, Kossar’s opened its third branch at 250 West 72nd Street today and Jeffrey Heller and I were among the first customers, customers for lunch, that is, because it opens its doors at 6 AM if you really want hot stuff. Jeffrey, as you should know, is a devoted advocate for immigrants, vocationally and avocationally. He has just paused his latest long distance bike ride for human rights for needed bicycle repairs.

 

By the way, immigrant Bialystokers formed a congregation on the Lower East Side in 1865, later established formally as a synagogue. A pogrom in Bialystok added to its membership and it purchased a former church in 1905, located on what is now 7-13 Bialystoker Place, where it still operates.  http://www.bialystoker.org/

 

Also, when we moved to Queens in the 1950s, there was a commercial bakery, now long gone, on Jamaica Avenue around 102nd Street that sold bialys and pizza dough, essentially the same thing.

 

About a dozen people were in line ahead of us to get in and they kept coming after us. In fact, the crowd attracted Congressman Jerry Nadler out for a stroll, giving Jeffrey the opportunity to buttonhole him on a couple of issues.

One bialy costs $1.75 and one bagel $1.90. For no good reason, you can get bagels in a baker’s dozen, but bialys only by the dozen. I ate whitefish salad on an onion bialy (garlic also available) with tomato ($15.75). The whitefish salad was very good, not extended with celery or onions, but too much mayonnaise. It was not better than the version at Zucker’s Bagels & Smoked Fish, 273 Columbus Avenue, which is a couple of bucks cheaper. Along with my lunch, I bought two beautiful poppyseed bagels to take home.