Balkans II

Saturday, June 22, 2013
Staying at relatively-upscale hotels abroad, you can depend on having CNN International and BBC International for something broadcast in English.  Even though you can't find a Mets score if your life depended on it, I still turn these channels on for a strangely-accented touch of home.  As a result, my scant knowledge of the latest cavortings of Hollywood starlets and New York fashion models is at an even lower ebb than usual.  These channels seem to have more interest in a Kosovan than a Kardashian.  Therefore, I'm hearing a lot of international stuff, even about countries which have few good restaurants in New York.  This has led me to recognize that the Russians are the Republicans of international politics.  We know that Vladimir Putin grew up in the KGB, mastering deception, intrigue and dishonesty.  Possibly, disguise was another subject that the KGB taught him, which leads me to ask, "Has anyone ever seen Vladimir Putin and John Boehner together at the same time?"

We returned to the Sofia's grand synagogue for Saturday morning services.  In spite of the bright picture yesterday from a leader of the community, we found only a dozen adult Jewish men, two above a quorum (minyan), at prayer.  The grand sanctuary was not used, but instead we were in a small prayer room, about 20' by 30', with a section for the women curtained off.  In fact there were almost as many local women as men, but, of course, they don't count or, slightly more politely expressed, they are not counted.

I was at a great disadvantage throughout the service, although its contours were familiar to me.  The prayer book was entirely in Hebrew, with no prompts, transliterations, translations or footnotes in English.  The prayers and all spoken commentary were in Hebrew with a tiny smattering of Bulgarian. There were no interjections of psychological insights or contemporary analogies.   I spent the time flipping through the pages of the prayer book looking for the familiar words of the Kaddish, the prayer of mourning, which I continue to recite for my mother, sure to occur somewhere during the service.  I found several versions, and, to insure that I used the hometown favorite version when the right time came, I piously poked the man sitting next to me, pointed to a page and asked "Is this your Kaddish?"  In only mildly-accented English, he replied, "I don't know; I don't read Hebrew."  I finally found a usable version of the Kaddish, but the rapid chanting rate of the conversant congregants left me far behind when the time to recite arrived.

My greatest disadvantage at this service, as my fellow West End Synagogue members will appreciate, was the absence of room to roam, since I am a devoted shul walker.  That is, I spend most of a Saturday service perambulating, schmoozing, joshing, carping and often simply annoying the more observant attendees.  The small space of the prayer room, filled with tables, chairs and a podium, would not allow for such wandering, and, even if I could circulate, the only people I could target I had just seen at breakfast and would see again for hours at a time for the next 10 days or so.  It's not the same as catching up with friends and acquaintances whom I might have missed for weeks, or might miss for weeks to come.

The rest of the day, America's Favorite Epidemiologist and I separated from the group and spent most of the time in the company of Nikolay V., his wife and 5-year old daughter, Sofia residents.  I first met Nikolay in the mid-1990s, when he was the graduate school roommate of a young friend of mine.  After graduation, which I attended as the honorary older relative for both young men, Nikolay worked in New York, London and Tokyo before returning to Bulgaria to serve in high government posts.  A few years ago, he rejoined the private sector. 

First, he took me to the family dentist to glue my tooth back in for the second time.  The young lady dentist was very careful, shaped things a little for a better fit and charged me some amount that one day I will see translated into dollars on a credit card statement.  The young Greek male dentist did not charge me, but we saw what the results were.  I thanked her and bid goodbye in several languages that had no relationship to Bulgarian, before Nikolay and I retrieved my young bride from the hotel and drove off to meet his wife and daughter at Sofia's newest and largest indoor shopping mall.  With the hot temperature, this was a practical choice for spending some time.

Later, we went to dinner at the Panorama, atop the Kempinski Hotel, one of the finest and most luxurious restaurants in the country.  Don't miss it if someone else is paying.

Monday, June 24, 2013
We had a busy and tiring couple of days, with a lot of time spent on the bus seeing far more of Bulgarian countryside than most of us had bargained for.  However, in the town of Samokov, nearly due south of Sofia, we visited the beautifully-restored 19th-century mansion of a Jewish merchant family, actually the smallest of three that they owned.  The government restored the property as a national legacy without any religious bent.  In dramatic contrast, immediately adjoining the mansion was a deserted synagogue, built at about the same time as the mansion.  The synagogue fell into disuse at the end of WW II, when the Communists came to power, and, while Bulgarian Jews mostly survived though living under a Nazi ally, they left for Israel and points west by the thousands soon after the war.  Samokov also holds a lovely mosque, now operating as a simple museum and performance space. 

We went to Sofia's central cemetery, which has sections for each major religion.  Because of the overall integrated character of the cemetery, the Jewish section was mostly spared anti-Semitic vandalism during the unfriendly decades under Fascist and Communist rule.  The cemetery only dates back to the late 19th-century, which also meant that it was generally orderly and the tombstones were not weathered beyond comprehension.  The inscriptions in a variety of languages, our Bulgarian-Jewish guide is multi-lingustic, and symbols carved into the stone, told fascinating stories.  Not only the Jewish section offered interesting sights.  Several newer graves in the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic sections used modern photo-engraving techniques on the tombstones.  I saw portrayals of a youngish man standing in front of his van, and at least two showing the decedent sitting at a table with booze and a cigarette in hand.  A bottle of Johnny Walker was clearly reproduced on one of stones.

We drove high onto the mountains southwest of Sofia to visit the monastery at Rila, an enormous complex which contains the single most-decorated church I have ever seen.  I must pause to apologize for the absence of any visual evidence of our explorations.  I took some pictures along the way with my smartyphone, but  some subtle interplay of hardware and software between my phone and the computers I have been using to record these observations has left me wordy and pictureless.   

Today, we drove to the extreme northern edge of Bulgaria, to Vidin, on the banks of the Danube, directly across from Roumania.  The town has examples of Roman, Bulgarian, Turkish, Communist and modern architecture, a microcosm of Bulgarian history.  Notable was the ruins of a Jewish synagogue, once grand and now rubble-filled with scant hope for resurrection to any purpose.

Tuesday, June 25, 2013
Bye-bye Bulgaria, hello Macedonia.  After about four hours on the bus and an uneventful border crossing, we got to Skopje, the capital of Macedonia.  In a strange way, Macedonia reminds me of Israel in the very denials of its existence by some of its neighbors, particularly Greece and Bulgaria.  Both claim that even the name of the country is inappropriate, because whatever or wherever Macedonia was, it was theirs.  Greek maps label this land as FYROM, Former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia.

Allow me to backtrack a moment.  While the border crossing and the bus ride were uneventful for everyone else, drinking a Coke Zero (more common that a Coke Light in these parts) at a rest stop near the border was sufficient to make my Bulgarian-glued tooth fall out, lasting about four times longer than its Greek-glued predecessor.

Our luxurious hotel is plopped down in the middle of the Turkish (Muslim) quarter, surrounded by twisting alleyways full of cafes and jewelry shops.  Several minarets are easily seen from our room's window, and the amplified call to prayer is heard throughout the day.  The genuiness of the neighborhood is more than offset by the regime's aggressive development of the city center, at the Stone Bridge.  In just the last few years, and continuing, the most improbable statues and buildings are going up, in this poor country.  Obviously to counter the antagonism of its neighbors Macedonia, at least the entrenched political elite, has been inflating its history to grandiose scale.  Huge statues of Philip of Macedon, Alexander the Great and Alexander's mother (in four poses) are placed in the middle of a large plaza, each surrounded by dancing waters illuminated by colored lights at dusk.  But, it doesn't stop there.  Near the Stone Bridge itself is a seemingly-exact replica of the Charles Bridge in Prague.  Around the corner is a copy of the Arc de Triomphe.  It's worse than Las Vegas.  Buildings evoking other great edifices are under construction.

On the other hand, the government (actually the left-wing predecessor to the current regime) built a credible Holocaust Museum just a few feet from the Kitsch Parade.  That's significant because Macedonia lost almost all (98%) of its Jews.  However, instead of simply moving on, as other countries have done, Macedonia recovered stolen Jewish property and used the funds (maybe not all) to create the museum and sponsor related Jewish activities.  Now, here's where it gets interesting.  Bulgaria proudly proclaims (and we heard it repeated a couple of days ago) that it saved "its" Jews.  That's true.  But, in 1941, Hitler turned over Macedonia and Thrace to Bulgaria, its fascist ally.  In 1943, Bulgarian police and army units rounded up all the Jews in Macedonia and Thrace, packed them into cattle cars and sent them to Treblinka for extermination.  Over 7,000 Macedonian Jews and 4,000 Thracian Jews died.  This distinction between "us" and "them", our Jews and their Jews, my people and the others, seems to be characteristic of the Balkan mindset.  One modern, young, educated Bulgarian woman that we met explained that her grandparents were born in Hungary, her parents were born in Hungary and she was born in Hungary, but they all are and were Bulgarian.  In Madedonia, we met two young men, one identifying as Jewish, the other as Muslim, both though proclaiming that they were "ethnic Albanians."  This nationalism was rife; I heard it in each of the three countries that we have visited.  No one spoke of a neighboring country with an ounce of admiration or affection.  Last year at this time, we were in Jordan and Israel, where we heard people saying a few nice things about their neighbors.  I don't underestimate the divisions between those particular Arabs and Israelis, but, at least, they chose not to piss on each other in public. 

Friday, June 28, 2013
Another long bus ride and border crossing yesterday brought us to Ioannina, Greece, the spiritual center of this trip.  Ioannina, a city of about 120,000 in northwest Greece has a beautiful natural setting, on a large lake with mountains behind it.  Our hotel room provides us a great view of this.  Again, though, it was Jewish stuff, not the landscape that brought us here, but I'm running out of steam, and you likely patience, so I'll pick up the thread later. 

I've not seen a tangible copy of the New York Times or the International Herald Tribune so far on this trip.  However, whenever I'm able to get to a hotel's computer, or the rarer moments when the alchemy allows my smartyphone to link to anything, I read NYTimes.com.  So, I was sad to read the following obituary. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/23/arts/sam-most-who-helped-bring-the-flute-into-the-jazz-mainstream-dies-at-82.html?hpw 
I knew Sam Most briefly at CCNY, when I staged a coup and took over as president of the college's Modern Jazz Society.  I was assisted by a weird guy named Arnie, who looked like a young Lou Jacobi, not Derek Jacobi, and had a beautiful Negro wife (the most polite description at the time).  Arnie was friendly with Sam and other jazz musicians, and the three of us discussed holding a concert at the college featuring Sam.  As an interesting aside, I should point out that Sean "Puff Daddy" Combs got his start promoting events at City College more than 30 years later, even though he was not a student.  Most notoriously, he advertised a celebrity charity basketball on December 28, 1991 that drew thousands of fans, who pushed into a small lobby and down a small staircase, resulting in the death of nine people, and injuries to 29 others.  According to the New York Times afterwards, "Questions were raised about how City College could have approved the event, whether the promoters were adequately prepared, and whether the Police Department moved quickly enough to stop the disturbance."  The ensuing law suits did not inhibit the growth of Mr. Combs's career in music, fashion, on Broadway and almost anywhere where flash substitutes for talent.  By contrast, we never held the Sam Most concert and my career as an impressario morphing into an icon never got started. 

What I recall about my conversations with Sam, who was acknowledged as the first notable jazz flutist, was the muted bitterness that he felt towards Herbie Mann, the then far better-known jazz flutist, who achieved great success playing Latin jazz, an opportunity that Sam claimed had first been presented to him.  At this time, Sam was living in a rundown SRO (single room occupancy) building somewhere between City College and Columbia University, a short distance in geography only.  In the following decades, Mann continued as a popular figure in jazz, leading different groups and turning out many recordings, while Sam retreated to working as a sideman in Hollywood and Las Vegas.  R.I.P. Sam.

Balkans I

Monday, June 17, 2013

A short time ago, a bet that America's Favorite Epidemiologist would be spending her birthday in Thessaloniki (Salonika), Greece would have drawn long odds. But, after a pleasant nine-hour transatlantic flight to Athens, an uncomfortable three-hour layover in its airport, a 40-minute flight to Salonika and then an additional one-hour delay in the Salonika airport waiting for Marcia, our group's leader, to trace her suitcase back to JFK airport, where it never left the ground, we arrived at a beautiful hotel in the center of Salonika after a short bus ride. The hotel is one block from the Aegean Sea, and our fifth-floor room has a perfect view of the water. After a restorative nap and shower, our group of 13, went no more than 5 miles to Yialos, a restaurant on the Aegean Sea, for an outdoor dinner where the food was even better than the view -- an unusual balance, rarely achieved. Dish after dish kept arriving. There were five types of fish, served cold smoked or marinated, or hot fried. There was a spinach salad and a Greek (surprise!) salad. There were fried zucchini chips and French fries. There was baked cheese, taramasalata (fish roe), skaradalia (garlic spread) and tzadiki (yoghurt and dill). Fortunately, I cannot recall either eating or being served plain vegetables. A dessert plate contained mini ice cream pops, Greek halavah, made from semolina, not sesame seeds, and some phyllo-honey combinations. Additionally, Marcia, without any complicity on my part, produced a delicous chocolate birthday cake for you-know-who. Even better news was that the cake came from a bakery/cafė/chocolatier in the lobby of our hotel, that might be willing to accept my patronage at random times of day or night. Happy Birthday, Beloved. An extra dinner treat was the presence of Heinz, Shelly and Hella Kounio, a prominent local Jewish family. More about them later.

Tuesday, June 18, 2013

After the long day yesterday, which really began the day before with our departure from New York, Marcia, our leader, got us going at the very civilized hour of 10 AM, after a buffet breakfast on the hotel's roof garden, an even more civilized start of the day. We spent the next four hours guided by Hella, a beautiful, local Jewish woman, an insurance broker, whose family dates back hundreds of years in Salonika. Last night, her parents were at dinner with us and any distance between me and recent tragic Jewish history disappeared as Hella and Marcia told part of their story. Her father Heinz Kounio, just 13-years old, his sister, his Jewish German-Czech mother and his Jewish Salonikan father were on the first transport from Salonika to Auschwitz in March 1943. When the cattle cars were opened at Auschwitz, after more than one week on the rails, the longest ride any deportees experienced throughout Europe, the Salonikan Jews were unable to respond to the Germans' commands, because the Jews spoke Ladino primarily and a little Greek. The Germans called out for any German speakers. The Kounio family responded, although volunteering at Auschwitz had to be a dangerous venture. They were used as translators and clerks thereafter, and survived the war as a result, the only Salonikan Jewish family to survive intact. They returned to Salonika, among the 4%, allow me to repeat, 4% of the 50,000 Salonikan Jews to survive. Before the war, about one quarter of Salonika's population was Jewish. Hella's mother had been hidden as a child in Salonika and Athens, which was precisely the history of Dr. Laura, another member of our tour group, who eventually trained as a physician in Salonika and moved to New York City.

Since Salonika had once been such a big Jewish city, it had had an enormous Jewish cemetery. We rode around its perimeter today; it must have been at least 8 city blocks long (to me, a universal measure) and 4 city blocks wide. It reportedly contained about 500,000 graves. One of the first things that the occupying Germans did was to dig up the grounds, after giving the Jewish community six days to remove whatever (whomever) they could. Thousands of marble tombstones and slabs were disbursed throughout the city and wound up covering horizontal and vertical surfaces of all sorts, a swimming pool in one instance. Many remain in (dis)place until this day. Remarkably (is this the right word?), the complete area of the Jewish cemetery is now the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, the largest university in Greece, looking like any other architecturally nondescript campus built since WW II.

Wednesday, June 19, 2013
Last night, most of us went to dinner at a big outdoor taverna just a few blocks from our hotel. Two musicians played Greek ballads for hours as we ate a large number of dishes made up of tomatoes, cheese, olives, peppers, onions and olive oil in various combinations and permutations. Two special events occurred during dinner to me alone. A large tooth, one of those treated in exchange for the Toyota Camry ceded to my dentist, fell out while chewing my food. I captured it and, with Marcia's help, found a dentist just two blocks from the hotel, who glued me back together in an efficient, friendly and complimentary manner at midday today.

Moments before shedding a tooth, a bird made a deposit right at the neckline of my plastic polo shirt, something that has never happened to me before in spite of the legions of Manhattan pigeons I have lived beneath for decades. My fellow diners noted my good luck, a distinction that I would have eschewed given the choice.

This morning, before visiting the dentist, Hella escorted us around the central city area, once densely populated by Jews. We went to the Jewish museum, where we met with Heinz, her father, who discussed his experiences and answered our questions. In the Hagaddah, the story repeated each year at Passover, we are told to regard it as our story, as if we were the ones leaving Egypt and spending decades in the desert. Heinz's memories and passion were as fresh as the day that 109565 was tattooed on his arm. Hearing the stories from Heinz, Hella, and Laura (who found a picture of herself at a children's camp in Salonika in the early 1950s on the wall of the Jewish museum) brought me nervously close to the terrible events that transpired in my life time, not thousands of years ago. I hope their stories are repeated at least as long as the Hagaddah has been, so that all of us, regardless of our background, will honor them as our ancestors and adopt their stories as our own.

Thursday, June 20, 2013

Last night, we drove to the highest point above Salonika, to see the ruins of ancient walls. Then, we went partially down the hill to eat at a restaurant with a lovely view, but with food closer to earth. Notable was the duration of my glued-in tooth -- one bite into my order of grilled shrimp in the shell. I'll try once more in Sofia over the weekend to put my mouth back together.

We got on the road at 9:15 AM and spent the next 10 hours in or in the immediate vicinity of our bus as we headed into Bulgaria. The ride was supposed to be 5 hours, but presented with a choice of waiting at a very busy border crossing leading into modern roads, or a deserted border crossing and old roads, we chose the latter and it became later and later as we drove over two-lane, winding, climbing and descending country roads through tiny villages and fields of sunflowers. Rest stops brought us into direct contact with the history of gravity-dependent Bulgarian plumbing. Lunch was at a gas station, where there were just enough plastic-wrapped sandwiches to go around, although not enough to satisfy our hunger for real food.

We arrived at our hotel in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, the country's second largest city, almost exactly 10 hours after we set out. After a hasty dinner in the hotel's dining room (without visiting the attached casino), we took a walk through Plovdiv's old town. A parishioner (??) was kind enough to turn on the lights of the grand mosque so that we could admire the elaborate interior. After returning to the hotel after 11 PM, very tired and sweaty, the Upper West Side's Power Couple found that we had to change our room in order to replace a rumor of airconditioning with a suspicion of airconditioning. Although confined to the bus most of the day, we learned that the local daytime temperature here, as in Salonika, was in the mid-90s American, mid-30s European.

Friday, June 21, 2013

We walked again this morning into the old town to visit the only standing synagogue in Plovdiv. Standing, but barely operating. The lovely building, about 130-years old, was completely renovated by an non-sectarian, American NGO, and features an intricately painted interior and an exquisite glass chandelier that seemed to contain most of its original pieces. There is no local rabbi and barely any Jews. Only holiday services are regularly scheduled at the synagogue plus an occasional wedding or other festive event.

At noon, we headed off to Sofia. Road food lunch tip: On highway E80, about 50 minutes outside Plovdiv, near Pazardzhik (sounds very much like the infamous New York Giant quarterback), try Maestro Nedzho's Turkish restaurant. The parking lot was loaded with Bulgarian trucks. We ate collectively fresh parsley after squeezing fresh lemon juice on it, a chopped cucumber, tomato, onion salad (nearly gazpacho), slices of roasted eggplant drenched in yoghurt, a (for lack of a better word) Greek salad, and a platter of grilled, spicy lamb. With drinks, mostly soft, the bill divided up to 10 levs each, about $6. It's worth going out of your way for.

We rolled into Sofia well-fed, and headed directly to the grand (and solitary) synagogue for a meeting with a leader of the Jewish community.  He spoke of the renaissance of organized Jewish life in Sofia, very much in contrast with the situation in Plovdiv.  He expressed special pride in the recent marriage of a local Jewish man to a local Jewish woman, something that is becoming increasingly rare in New York City.

Greece and Bulgaria are experiencing political unrest because of economic and political issues.  However, we have only sat in the Athens airport for a while without going into the city.  That comes next week.  We are in the center of Sofia, however, but only skirted the edges of a demonstration on the way to dinner tonight.  We expect to get closer to the action in the next couple of days.  "Solidarity forever!"

The Great Experiment

Monday, June 10, 2013

I could coast today and simply paraphrase the article from yesterday's New York Times on newer ethnic neighborhoods in New York City.  However, it is so full of interesting facts and figures (37% of New York’s current population is foreign born), as well as food and restaurant suggestions, that you should read if for yourself.  In fact, the article is worth saving in order to plan interesting road (subway) trips all over the City.  http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/06/09/nyregion/new-york-citys-newest-immigrant-enclaves.html?hpw&_r=0 

Of course, I can’t avoid one good quote from the paper, from the society pages, my favorite reading.  In regard to the wedding of AB and JH, we learn that they “met in July 2011 at a dinner party for young venture capitalists in Boston.  Ms. B*** had just left a doctorate program in medieval English literature at the University of Texas to give venture capital a try.”  Now, I can sleep better at night.

Tuesday, June 11, 2013

“Americans want to be protected, but not at the cost of vitiating the values that make us Americans.”  Maureen Dowd, New York Times columnist, 06/08/13.  I don’t believe this. 

See http://www.people-press.org/2013/06/10/majority-views-nsa-phone-tracking-as-acceptable-anti-terror-tactic/, showing that 56% of Americans believe that the National Security Agency’s program tracking the telephone records of millions of Americans is an acceptable way for the government to investigate terrorism.  Throughout our history, the majority has shown little concern for the civil liberties of minorities of any stripe.  It has generally been the courts that intervened, sometimes late in the game, in issues such as Japanese-American internment, stop-and-frisk, and Jehovah’s Witness flag saluting, where the public-at-large was hostile, if not indifferent.  

Locally, the Metropolitan Transit Authority has been installing surveillance cameras in busses since 2010.  What I find most interesting is the placard in our busses and subways proudly promoting this program, which may comfort good guys and discomfort bad guys.  With the exception of a few folks down at the ACLU, I suspect the motives of many carping left-wingers and right-wingers about the erosion (is there a word for very fast erosion?) of privacy.  The same poll cited above shows that support for NSA surveillance programs under Bush – 75% of Republicans, 37% of Democrats – has a different profile under Obama – 52% of Republicans, 64% of Democrats.  Home of the Free and Land of the Brave?

Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Yesterday, I had lunch with Irwin Pronin, 1962 CCNY student government president, at Wo Hop, which he said that he had never been to.  That gap has now been successfully filled.  Today, Stony Brook Steve and I had lunch at New Yeah Shanghai Deluxe, 50 Mott Street, pretending that we were three people so that we had three lunch specials, shrimps with lobster sauce, chicken with cashews and orange beef for about $16 before tax and tip.  Good by any measure.

Friday, June 15, 2013

For the second day, I stayed home from work trying to clear my head before we take off for a big trip.  On Sunday, the Upper West Side’s Power Couple are flying to Greece, then proceeding over land to Bulgaria and Macedonia, which for political reasons is internationally designated as the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, abbreviated as FYROM.  This trip has a strong historic and cultural bent, so there will be very little exploration of sandy beaches and quiet coves.

The biggest challenge posed by this trip is in my packing. For the first time, I’m going away for more than three days relying only upon carry-on luggage.  In the past, it hasn’t been an excess of caution that bulked up my luggage, but the sheer size of clothing needed to cover my (how might you say?) large frame.  Additionally, I don’t need an excuse to perspire, so my cotton casual wear needs laundering after each use.  Rather than spending my time doing laundry by hand or searching for laundries in foreign settings or tolerating the extraordinary expense of having the hotel do my laundry, I usually packed loads of underwear and shirts to carry me through most, if not all, of my days on the road.  That dictated large luggage, needing to be checked through, risking delays, loss, confusion and, these days, extra fees.  There is another alternative for some folks that I would not use.  They shed clothing as they travel, starting out with usable but worn items that they abandon stop-by-stop.  That eliminates laundry as a concern, and, at least, towards the end of the trip, frees up lots of room in their luggage.  However, my clothing, even underwear and T-shirts, are generally in very good condition, carefully selected in the first place and treated carefully thereafter.  How can you throw them away?

Anticipating this trip, I’ve taken steps to go all carry-on.  First, I bought a wheeled duffel bag, inches shorter than the one I have, and therefore allowed into the passenger cabin.  Next, I purchased underwear and polo shirts made of man-made fibers, less bulky than my cotton goods and easily washed and dried in a hotel bathroom, just the way that ladies have done since the Israelites crossed the Sinai Desert.  That translates into transporting six to eight pieces of clothing instead of 20, and having them available on a rapid turnaround.  Finally, I bought small containers of shaving cream and mousse, the only cosmetic/grooming items that I normally possess in sizes that would be condemned to the garbage by our friends at the Transportation Security Administration.  I have to admit some pain in the purchase of these shrunken containers.  For decades, I cruised the aisles of supermarkets and pharmacies, reading labels, comparing ingredients and prices, choosing the best bang for my buck.  As a result, my pantries and cabinets hold multiple packages of the items that I require to look and feel lovely, usually in large packages reflecting the best value.  Now, instead, I went shopping for package size, rather than unit-price, to fill up my toiletry kit to government standards.  It hurt, at first, but, starting at the check-in at JFK on Sunday, I hope that the benefits of plastic clothing and miniaturization will outweigh the extra initial expense.  Stay tuned.   

Rolling Along

Monday, June 3, 2013

I reconciled with Dim Sum Go Go, 5 East Broadway, which I long touted as the best dim sum joint in Chinatown.  However, on my last visit, August 30, 2012, I had the worst and most expensive scallion pancake that I ever had.  This kept me away for the next 9 months, until today when I was meeting someone for lunch who knew his way around Chinatown, but had never been to Dim Sum Go Go.  We each ordered the dim sum assorted platter ($11.95), with 11 pieces, and it was as good as I recalled from happier days at Dim Sum Go Go, each piece unique in shape, color and contents.

Tuesday, June 4, 2013

New York City introduced a bike sharing program last week.  You can participate by purchasing an annual membership or daily or weekly access.  Many bike parking stations have been installed in Manhattan and Brooklyn, although a look at the map shows that they are all concentrated where the white people live.  http://citibikenyc.com/stations  The program is intended “for short, quick trips around NYC,” with overtime charges incurred for rides longer than 30 or 45 minutes.  I guess this is partially intended to get people off busses and subways for simple commutes.  Objections arose even before the program began, before any tourist on wheels encountered a garbage truck.  Most objections centered on the parking stations, 50 to 100 feet long.  Neighbors jumped up to complain about the unsightliness or the sanitation hazard of a fixed object on the street collecting schmutz at its base.  The more political folks objected to the sponsorship of the program, named CitiBike, by CitiCorp, a/k/a Too Big To Fail, with the bikes prominently displaying the name CitiBike.

Right now, I hope the program succeeds under almost any name, in order to lessen air pollution and ease traffic, although there may be more emergency vehicles running around picking cyclists off the pavement.  I won’t be using it for several reasons.  My commute to work is reasonable, relatively comfortable.  Were I to pedal even one block, a cool shower and highly-absorbent towels would have to be made immediately available.  Also, I own a bicycle, which has resided quietly in the basement of Palazzo di Gotthelf for about a decade.  In fact, it is the fourth bicycle that I have owned in the last 30 years.  Two were stolen and one I sold during the years when I rode frequently on weekends in Manhattan, during that arid period before I met The Love Of My Life.

In those days, I usually spent weekend afternoons, if the weather allowed, pedalling my carcass up and down Manhattan Island, dipping in and out of Central Park.  Often, the last leg of the day would take me to Zabar’s or Fairway (on the Upper West Side) to re-stock my kitchen in East Midtown.  As a single man at the time, awaiting Cupid’s arrow, I went out on dates – many blind dates, rarely second dates.  I recall particularly one Tuesday evening about 20 years ago.  I had a first date with a woman who lived on the Upper West Side; I almost always arranged first dates on a weeknight because I would usually be generally presentable after a day at my desk.  We met and sat down somewhere for a drink.  I admitted that I was not my normal bubbling-with-joy self because my bicycle was stolen that weekend.

“When?” she asked.  

“Sunday afternoon.”

“Where?”

“In front of Fairway.”

“What time?”

“About four thirty.”

“Was it red?”

“Yes, a red mountain bike.”

“I saw it.”

“What did you see?”

“I saw the guy steal the bike.  He broke the lock and took it away.”

“In front of Fairway, in the middle of the afternoon, on a nice day, and no one did anything?  I was in the store walking around in a helmet and biking shorts and no one said anything?”

I left soon thereafter on foot, needless to say, and, although the woman was tall, slender and dark-haired, not unlike the one I married before and the one I married after, I never saw her again.

While I never expected to eat at over 200 Chinese restaurants in Chinatown, I’m more surprised by the number of new hotels I’ve seen all over the area.  There are more than 10 new, almost-new or brand new hotels where there were none in the recent past.  The Wyndham Garden Chinatown, 93 Bowery, for instance, is open 6 months and stands on the site of the Music Palace, a Chinese-language movie theater, the last one in Manhattan, which closed in 1998.

The hotel contains the Elevate Restaurant & Lounge, and, in case you forgot, Jake, it’s Chinatown, which means that Elevate is a Japanese restaurant located in the basement.  The place was near-empty; a man left shortly after I entered, and two women later, leaving me alone.  Its underground location was reinforced by low lighting and the beige grasscloth-covered walls did not manage to brighten up the room. Elevate has two menus, "regular” and Japanese.  Since I was on duty, I ordered from the Japanese menu – Edomae Style Sushi ($26).  A little research tells me that Edomae means in the manner of Edo, the old name for Tokyo, where the bay yields many of the most popular fish and shellfish found in sushi.  The platter contained 2 pieces each of tuna, salmon, yellow tail, striped bass, and white tuna (something new to me), a tuna roll cut into six small pieces, and standing cylinders of salmon roe and something awfully close to real (black) caviar.  While waiting for the food to be served, I realized that I might be taking a huge risk eating raw fish in a place that did almost no business, and I considered calling the waitress back and asking for a Kobe beef burger.  However, I placed my mission over personal safety concerns and persevered.  The pieces of fish were good, the tuna roll fair.  But, unless the white tuna and the near-caviar were particularly costly, the meal was not worth the price.  You might want to Elevate down to the basement, though, if you value your privacy.

Wednesday, June 5, 2013

Chinatown market report: Bing cherries are holding at 2 lbs. for $3. Large size Queen Anne cherries are widely available at 2 lbs. for $4, and that’s where I put my money today.  

   

Friday, June 7, 2013

Today is the court’s Annual Caren Aronowitz Unity in Diversity Program, where the courthouse’s stunning rotunda is occupied by about two dozen groups of court employees and related outsiders serving food rooted in their identity, or simply expressing their generosity.  It is a gourmand’s delight and always threatens any semblance of self-control that remains to me.  I tried to pace myself and managed to ingest, in bite-sized portions, a dumpling, quiche, Vietnamese summer roll, Mediterranean cigar, sushi, potato knish, ribs, shepherd's pie, Irish sausage, smoked salmon, Korean chicken, southern fried chicken, sticky bun, jerk chicken, shrimp lo mein, franks in a blanket, macaroni salad, before ending with tiramisu, a chocolate chip cookie, chocolate pinwheel, and a cream puff.  All for diversity.  In fact, I had both a Diet Coke and a Diet Pepsi to wash it down. 

These offerings, among others, were provided by Puerto Ricans, Jews, African-Americans, Irish, Dominicans, gays, Italians, Asians, women, and Catholics.  Canadians apparently went unrepresented, as did plain old Americans, who, almost by definition, do not live or work in New York City.  When a program like this is conducted outside of certain urban areas, it usually represents an effort by Them appealing to Us by displaying their folkloric and culinary charms, as well as their lack of horns, tails, extra limbs and noxious breath.  In New York City, however, Them is Us, in that Us is no more than a bunch of Them.  This does not necessarily breed harmony and congeniality; it simply makes intergroup battles less conclusive because none of Us can dominate all of Them.  So, I spent my lunch hour celebrating diversity after a fashion in recognizing that there is, at least, a place for Them in the kitchen.

Wedding and Movie News

Monday, May 27, 2013

It’s no surprise that I was thinking about weddings this weekend.  It is 10 years since America's Favorite Epidemiologist and I got married for the last time.  Even on a normal weekend, I faithfully read the social pages of the New York Times, deceptively named the Sunday Styles section, for the marriage news.  Among other things, I learned where Ruth Bader Ginsburg was Saturday morning, conducting a marriage ceremony in her chambers at the United States Supreme Court.  Also, Eastern District federal court judge John Gleeson and Second Circuit Court of Appeals judge Gerard E. Lynch picked up some spare change performing nuptials over the weekend.  Need I also point out that the feature story of the bonding of Alexis DiMartino and Kevin Cocca had a lovely photograph of the couple standing under “an archway of flowers and vines,” as the paper genteelly described the chuppah staring us in the face.  As a reminder to those of you who have not completed your conversion to Jew by contagion, a chuppah is the traditional canopy that shelters Jewish weddings.

My interest in marriages was especially piqued by the article on the weddings of high tech billionaires, such as Larry Ellison and Mark Zuckerberg.  I was galvanized by the description of the wedding of Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, to Anne Wojcicki, in 2007.  “The bride and groom, both 33 at the time, and many of 60 guests wore swimsuits (mandatory attire if you exchange vows on a sandbar).”  Now close your eyes for a moment.  Take a deep breath; keep your eyes closed.  Let your mind go back to any one of your weddings, and imagine you and your beloved and many of your guests in bathing suits.  This would certainly have eliminated the need to serve food, but would have made strong drink an absolute necessity for all concerned.

Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Up until today, I had only found one Korean restaurant in greater Chinatown, Jup She, 171 Grand Street (December 10, 2010), a very good choice.  Kori Tribeca, 253 Church Street, is another fine choice.  It occupies a long, narrow space with a tin ceiling high above.  A handful of Korean musical instruments hang on one wall.  A large white vase sits in front of a 4' x 4' damask cloth on another wall.  Several delicate boughs are set back in a sort of shadowbox effect.  Yet, the walls are so long and tall that room retains an open, understated feel.  Another notable design touch was the aluminum chopsticks, something I had not seen before.    

The lunch menu is quite simple, and a complimentary bowl of miso soup and a small dish of edamame, salted soy beans in their pod, are given to you while you choose.  You can’t help but notice the “Lunch Liquor Specials,” Sapporo on draft at $3 and wine by the glass at $5.  I noticed but passed.  I ordered the Bulgoki Lunch Box ($12.99), thin sliced beef in a delicious sweet, spicy, salty sauce with two fried dumplings, two small omelet slices, a small portion of Japchae (sweet potato noodles), a large green salad with a more flavorful dressing than usually offered in Japanese restaurants, and a large portion of white rice.  Excellent on the whole.  Adding to my pleasure was the background music, which I usually find repellant.  They were playing, at just the right volume if you wanted to ignore your companion, ‘60s bop, in the vein of Horace Silver, but not Horace Silver.  Even though I had the Sunday Times magazine to distract me, I was tapping my toes.  I almost danced right back to work. 

Wednesday, May 29, 2013

John F. Kennedy was born May 29, 1917, making today his 96th birthday.  Several of us met to commemorate the occasion at Mott Pho Bang Restaurant, 157 Mott Street, a Vietnamese restaurant appropriately enough.  The six grandfathers at the table had no military exposure at all beyond hesitantly reporting for Army physicals in their late teens, early twenties.  However, all were (and remain) avid newspaper readers and the chaos in Southeast Asia was well-reported then, with the inevitable heavy-handed Washington gloss which was not hard to spot.  Keeping out of uniform was not a casual matter for us, although I think that we all, in the spirit of Apple’s tax payments, stayed within the law.  I imagine that, to those of you males under 60, “selective service” is just a term for expedited check-out at Wal-Mart.  But, in the goldie oldie days, it often meant bullets and grenades and sharp sticks pointed up in camouflaged trenches, not what your average Stuyvesant High School graduate foresaw in his future.  So, in that spirit, we ate and reminisced about our youth and what we did to preserve it.

  

Thursday, May 30, 2013

A movie opened in New York this week entitled “Hannah Arendt.”  It deals with the period of time that, in the words of the New York Times reviewer, this “writer of long books and [] maker of complex arguments” was reporting on the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem.  Her work resulted in substantial controversy because she concluded that Eichmann was ultimately a bland bureaucrat, representing “the banality of evil.”  Her critics quickly found her representation of Eichmann to be factually incorrect; he relished his role as an exterminator of Jews before, during and after the war.  However, Arendt’s concept of the banality of evil caused the greater furor because it might make any one or all of us perpetrators.  Many accused her of ultimately blaming the victims.  

But, let’s go back to the top of the previous paragraph stating that a movie opened in New York this week entitled “Hannah Arendt.”  Might we anticipate future releases of “Bertrand Russell,” “Ludwig Wittgenstein,” “Simone de Beauvoir,” “Isaiah Berlin” and an all-singing and dancing version of “Jacques Derrida”?  

   

Friday, May 31, 2013

New York City will elect  a new mayor this November.  Although overwhelmingly a Democratic city in state and national elections, New York City has had a Republican mayor for the last 20 years.  Nevertheless, the most interest at present is with the Democratic candidates.  The favorite so far has been Christine Quinn, the speaker of the City Council, who may have peaked too early according to Sid Davidoff, the very wise observer of local politics and authority on hotels and restaurants in Sicily.  I have not announced my preference yet among the several candidates, but Ms. Quinn has gravely endangered her standing by one of her revelations in her memoir just released in time for the Democratic primary battle.  This is how the New York Times reported it this morning: "When her future wife made clear during one of her early dates that she could only be with a Yankees fan, Christine C. Quinn did not hesitate: 'I dumped the Mets in a hot second.'"  While I don't expect my politicians to be uncompromising in their beliefs, there are some tenets that define a person's being and may be abandoned only at the risk of losing one's soul, and my vote.

Hockey Sticks and Chopsticks

Monday, May 20, 2013
For several weeks, the grand staircase in front of the courthouse at 60 Centre Street, my daytime home, has been blocked by metal gates and yellow caution tape, allowing only a six-foot path up and down, in and out of the building. At first, I thought that we were being protected from demonstrators who might storm or occupy the steps in a fit of populist zeal. However, while there are frequent protests in and around City Hall, a couple of blocks away, none have migrated in our direction for quite some time. So I asked one of the senior court officers what’s up with that? It seems that our nemeses are not union organizers, left-wing protestors, right-wing protestors, or Law & Order freaks from near and far, but rather skateboarders. Their frolicking up and down the steps and balustrades have damaged the property, chipping away at the limestone/granite surfaces. Additionally, some skateboarders wax the surfaces to reduce the friction on their wheels, which does nothing for the surfaces or those who maintain them in the public interest. For Tavish’s benefit, I must admit that I have never owned, rented or borrowed a surfboard, snowboard or skateboard, so, absent the thrill of wafting over water, snow or concrete, I find myself as citizen-taxpayer-occupant cursing those buggers whose conduct has made a grand public space far less useful and far uglier.

The East is Red, as Chairman Mao used to say. In this case, red with Bing cherries, which are all over Chinatown. The going rate is pretty low, 2 lbs. for $3, but I saw 3 lbs. for $4 and 2 lbs. for $2.50 on the low end. Be careful though, the lowest prices matched the quality of bruised and overripe fruit and, remember, unless you have cultivated favor with the sidewalk fruit vendor, she will shovel the cherries into a bag without allowing any picking. I skipped the cherries and made an investment in apricots, 2 lbs. for $3.

Tuesday, May 21, 2013
I went to Shanghai Heping Restaurant, 104 Mott Street, just over one year ago, soon after it opened (April 25, 2012). Reading my notes after returning today, it seems that the pleasant decor has been revised since then, simplifying the decorative touches. For instance, the walls now have unfussy sconces where there were once photographs of old Shanghai, which I actually liked. The place was about half full, with a sprinkling of non-Chinese patrons. While the setting was comfortable, the many tables well-disbursed, the absence of a crossword puzzle abbreviated my stay somewhat.

I ordered from the lunch special list, about three dozen items priced from $4.95 to $6.95. I chose fish filet, Szechuan style over rice ($5.95), which actually delivered rice on the side of an almost-regular sized portion of fried fish surrounded by peppers of various colors, sizes and potencies. It was very good, even if I dodged the gastric bullets on the plate. I also ordered a scallion pancake ($2.50) because I could. It came after the fish was finished instead of its usual frontrunning position. Although the scallion pancake was more greasy than crispy, it was good.    

Wednesday, May 22, 2013
See if you can crack this set: May 16@7 PM, retreat debriefing; May 19@2 PM, visit by Katharine Geisz, author of "From the Danube to the Hudson;" May 21@7 PM, Mets game. I arranged for all of these events of my own free will, in advance of the scheduling of the second round of the hockey playoffs, thereby removing me from a television set at the height of the action. In all of these three instances, I was then spared from observing defeats for our noble Broadway Blues. The denouement, as they say in Quebec, is my interview about synagogue fundraising at 7:30 PM on Thursday, May 23rd, exactly corresponding to the fourth game in the current series. I won’t even raise the implications for our wedding anniversary on Saturday, May 25th, in case the series is extended to a fifth game.

According to Congressional testimony yesterday concerning Apple’s compliance with U.S. tax laws, we learned that "in 2011, 64 percent of Apple’s global pretax income was recorded in Ireland, where only 4 percent of its employees and 1 percent of its customers were located." This allowed Apple to avoid paying corporate taxes to the U.S. government, another name for you and me. Of course, Ireland ain’t here, it’s across the Atlantic Ocean, about 3,100 miles away from Times Square. So, Apple has no reason to let any of that pretend-to-be Irish money fall into your hands, right? Of course, according to today’s Times, "Apple’s $102 billion in offshore profits is actually managed by one of its wholly owned subsidiaries in Reno, Nev., according to the Senate report on the company’s tax avoidance. The money is tracked by Apple company bookkeepers in Austin, Tex. What’s more, the funds are held in bank accounts in New York." Are you comforted knowing that this money is really in American hands, just not Uncle Sam's?

Today’s lunch at Shanghai Asian Cuisine, 14A Elizabeth Street, was similar to yesterday’s. It was a return visit (April 7, 2010, October 17, 2011), although I did not notice any change in decor from the past. I ordered scallion pancake again ($2.50) and shrimp with lobster sauce over rice ($6). The scallion pancake was wonderful, very crispy although greasy. It was also at least 8" in diameter, larger than usual. The shrimp dish was also relatively generous for a lunch portion, partially covering a large mound of rice. It tasted good, better with a shot of soy sauce which improves the taste of almost anything except chocolate ice cream.

Thursday, May 23, 2013
I am public opinion. The other night I paused my DVR to take a telephone call from Quinnipiac University which aggressively promotes the survey results from its Polling Institute. For the next 25 minutes or more I gave my opinion of many local politicians and policies. My evaluation of the upcoming mayoral race was soon trumpeted on various news outlets: "May 22, 2013 - Quinn At 25% In New York City Dem Primary, Quinnipiac University Poll Finds; Little Support For Kelly For Mayor" http://www.quinnipiac.edu/images/polling/nyc/nyc05222013.pdf/

Of course, I relished being asked, but some questions annoyed me and I notice that a few of them did not make it into print, maybe because of my responses. When asked "Do you approve or disapprove of the way Mayor Bloomberg is handling the war on terror?" I replied that’s a stupid question, akin to asking "Do you approve or disapprove of the way President Obama is running the subways?"

Takahachi, 145 Duane Street, on my first visit today, served the best sushi that I can ever recall eating. The restaurant is long and relatively narrow. Beyond the entrance desk, the sushi bar with stools is on the left, opposite eight generously-proportioned two tops. Further back are about a dozen more tables under a skylight, all in a tasteful setting.

I had the mixed sushi ($16.50) which came with one smallish piece each of tuna, yellowtail and salmon, and a California roll cut into six pieces. The fish was fresh and delicious. The only problem was that I could have eaten three times the quantity of food that they served (which actually occurs in many venues). First came a choice of white or red miso soup and a small green salad. I chose the red, a cloudy, mild-flavored beef broth. They served two "sides" with the sushi plate, not cole slaw and fries as you might hope for, but a cucumber seaweed salad and a piece of tofu in what appeared to be a fiery sauce which turned out to be sweet and soy. Both sides tasted very good and were very small. In all, this was an excellent meal for a small person.

Going to Takahachi when you are ravenously hungry might be a mistake, but you can make a much bigger mistake if you walk into Rosanjin, another Japanese restaurants two doors away at 141 Duane Street, thinking that all kimonos look alike in the dark. Rosanjin features kaiseki cuisine, described by the restaurant as "a sensibly choreographed [multi-]course meal consisting of small dishes served at carefully timed intervals. A typical kaiseki menu consists of eight courses. It invariably includes an ornately composed appetizer, a clear soup, sashimi, sushi, a grilled dish, a simmered dish, a steamed course and a dish with rice. The courses are brought in one at a time, in beautiful porcelain bowls and lacquer dishes." This choreography is available in $80, $120, $150 and $200 versions. The risk of facing major embarrassment by turning into the wrong doorway on Duane Street is mitigated, however, by several factors. Rosanjin is only open for dinner, outside the bounds of Grandpa Alan’s lunch hour forays. And, only the $80 and $120 meals are available for walk-in customers should you not look where you are going. The upper end takes more time to prepare, for chef and guest alike. The $120 meal requires one-day advanced reservations, except for Saturday when two days are needed; the $150 meal requires three-days advanced reservations. To reserve for either of these, a credit card number must be supplied, which will be charged if you decide to open a can of sardines at home instead. The two-star review in the New York Times said: "Meals at Rosanjin in TriBeCa can verge on excessive subtlety and daintiness, leaving you hungry two hours later despite all the money you’ve spent." Somehow, I don’t think that this is my kind of restaurant, even though another reviewer reported that "[d]inner at an elite kaiseki restaurant in Kyoto can cost upwards of $500 per person." If you find this kind of bargain appealing, you still shouldn’t plan to hold Dudley’s bar mitzvah there, because Rosanjin only holds 22 people.

Nolo Contendre

Monday, May 13, 2013
If you have Nook or Kindle, you are fortunate to have access to Susan Schneider’s new novel, "Fire in My Ears."

Before I even sat down in West New Malaysia Restaurant in the Chinatown Arcade, between Elizabeth Street and the Bowery, I ordered roti canai ($3.75) as a starter, that wonderful Indian pancake to be dipped into a small bowl of curried chicken and potato. Then, the waiter and I discussed what was to follow. He urged me to try choy kway teow ($7.50), listed under noodles without any explanation. It turned out to be an excellent choice, chow fun noodles, thin sliced beef, shrimp, egg, scallions, bean sprouts and flecks of hot red pepper. The portion was large, making the choice even more satisfying.

Tuesday, May 14, 2013
Steve Schneider came downtown for lunch to celebrate the publication of Susan Schneider’s new novel, "Fire in My Ears." Steve and Susan are somehow related by marriage. We went to the brand new Cafe Hong Kong (no accent), 51 Bayard Street. It is the third restaurant at that location I’ve visited in slightly more than 40 months, replacing most recently Pho 88, a better-than-average Vietnamese restaurant. The Cafe appears to be related to the Hong Kong Station, a few doors down, and its sister establishment on Division Street, with the same color scheme and similar exterior design elements. However, the inside is quite different, offering a large, diverse menu and table service, unlike the informal, noodle-centric fare at Hong Kong Station. It has two round tables, about 6 four-tops and 10 two-tops, with just about every seat taken while we were there.

In addition to 56 noodle and rice dishes, 57 entrées, soups, congee, and an extensive beverage service, the Cafe offered steaks with side dishes of spaghetti. I think that they may be overreaching. In any case, Steve and I ordered 3 things from the 41-item lunch special list, all at $6.95. We chose shrimp with lobster sauce, Szechuan beef and chicken with cashew nuts. Each came with a bowl of white rice, but, save tea, nothing else. Portions were medium-small, and all the dishes were carefully prepared with fresh-tasting ingredients, yet rather bland.

The on-line New York Times has this headline today: "What Is the Right Way to Come Out as Bisexual at Work?" There is none. Shut up. I’m trying to do my work. Also, I’m not interested in your deeply-felt opinion of asparagus, cowboys, turtles, Woodrow Wilson or saxophones. Keep it to yourself until I ask. Group therapy begins after 6 PM.

Wednesday, May 15, 2013
Four soft shell crabs at Wo Hop downstairs for $10.95, and I didn’t even think that I was hungry.

Thursday, May 16, 2013
With the news consumed by Benghazi (a Republican masturbatory fantasy), and the appearance of real abuses of power at the IRS and the Associated Press, I need the sports pages more than ever. Lunch was also a pleasant diversion as I spent the hour with Marty the Super Clerk at 71 Thomas Street where I was assigned to assist with case scheduling conferences in the afternoon. We went, as we typically do, to Pecan Café, 130 Franklin Street, which offers somewhat-imaginative sandwiches (cranberry chicken, salmon burger, sweet potato), soups, and salads. The large space combines old-timey touches, such as an exposed brick wall and a tin ceiling, with track lighting and exposed duct work. Most folks order the lunch special, soup, small salad or half a sandwich, a bag of chips, a cookie or a fruit, and a drink for about $12. Pecan also has a coffee menu and, throughout the day, computer-wielding people 1/3 my age occupy the long wooden tables. Pecan isn’t Asian, although I believe some Israelis are involved, so it doesn’t alter my count.

Friday, May 17, 2013
I could have sworn that I ate at Pho Viet Huong, 73 Mulberry Street, early in this (ad)venture. It sits a couple of doors above Bayard Street on a stretch that I pass several times each week. Yet, in doing some research on local Vietnamese restaurants, I could not match its name to my lunches. Besides these musings, I keep a list of restaurants visited fitting the mandated criteria, East Asian, greater Chinatown vicinity, lunch. However, the list is merely a word processing document, not a spreadsheet or database, so information retrieval and analysis is admittedly crude. I went there today and am sorry that I didn’t get there sooner.

Pho Viet Huong looks like a dump from the outside, which may be a partial explanation why I ignored it. However, it is large, airy and roomy inside, with between 2 and 3 dozen tables. The menu is also large, over 200 items based on most familiar creatures that move on land, in the air and through the seas. I ordered barbecued beef, fried egg on broken rice ($7.50). Sayeth WikiPedia: "Co’m tâm, or broken rice, is a Vietnamese dish made from rice with fractured rice grains." The grains did look small, but were not otherwise unusual. They were piled high next to several thin slices of nicely grilled beef, a fried egg sitting on top of a tomato slice, and a cucumber slice. As in almost all other Vietnamese restaurants, five or so different sauces sat on the tables at Pho Viet Huong. I squeezed some dark, sweet stuff on the rice for variety. Very good in all, although prices on many main courses were in the mid to high teens, a couple of bucks more than some of its competitors.

The revelation that I missed a restaurant right under my nose is overshadowed by the next tale. I’ve complained in the past about not being discovered by all the TV and movie crews that populate the neighborhood around the courthouse for days on end. Well, I was caught on camera recently, but not under the most flattering circumstances.

For years, I’ve been irked by the condition of a terrace on a low floor directly below Palazzo di Gotthelf. It’s heaped with odds and ends, empty flower posts, discarded outdoor furniture, bags of planting materials, offering an ugly sight for the hundreds of people passing by each day, including potential buyers of semi-expensive apartments. The condition is also a violation of our building’s house rules and possibly New York City’s building code as well. The items may also be a threat during a storm and pose a fire hazard as they sit and rot. I have to pass by this mess every day, one, two, three, four times according to events.

I’ve mentioned this condition to members of the co-op board and other owner-occupants to no avail. I know the owner-occupant of the offending property by sight, but I never approached him, for better or worse, because I don’t like the cut of his jib, as we ancient mariners say. But, I’ve stewed day after day, year after year. So a couple of weeks ago, I printed a few sheets of paper calling terse, but polite, attention to the situation by unit number, and I pasted them in the building’s mailroom and in a back hallway on a couple of days. It doesn’t compare with that guy standing in front of the tank in Tiananmen Square or Freedom Riders on Greyhound buses, but I had to take a stand.

Well, the other day I received an expensively-delivered letter from the building’s law firm calling upon me to cease and desist from violating house rules by posting notices on the premises without permission. It seems that Grandpa Alan photographs very well on the building’s video surveillance equipment. First thing Thursday morning, I called the attorney who signed the letter and informed him that I have reacquainted myself with the house rules and will comply with them henceforth. He accepted my promise without the need for any confession. He also listened to my complaint and suggested how I might convey my concerns more efficaciously without running afoul of the authorities. I forgot to ask him for a print of the film, however, for that time in the future when I will want to recall my days as a delinquent.