8.19.07 Red Hook

Biked to the Red Hook ballfields on Sunday — famous for the vendors who on weekends sell “homemade” regional Latin dishes. Salvadoran pupusas, Mexican huaraches, ceviches, super colorful Guatemalan dishes. It was 1PM — lunch hour — so there were lines, but as it was a Sunday no one was in a big hurry.

In recent months the Parks Dept (it’s in a city park) has threatened to evict the vendors — for health violations, expired permits, lack of places where prep can be inspected (the food is often prepped in people’s homes) and risky food storage (on the ground). Items like the latter have been dealt with — but there is more. This from New York Magazine:

The city, eager as ever for the fat stacks that only a bidding war by commercial concessions can offer, has given the vendors notice that their Temporary Use Agreement, the permit given to them by the Department of Parks and Recreation, won’t be renewed. The city wants to open the parks up for concession bids, which will almost certainly mean an end to the makeshift food stalls that have been operating there for over ten years. “They told us that the last day we can operate in the park is September 8,” Cesar Fuentes, the executive director of the Food Vendors Committee of Red Hook Park, Inc. “The only person that can extend our permit beyond this season is the Commissioner of Parks.”

And a food review in the Times.

The blog Porkchop Express has super up to date info — a long letter from Cesar Fuentes about the vendor’s situation and where things stand. Dept of Health is in charge of the regulations for food handling and prep. Odd that the hot dog and halal carts all over town aren’t subject to the same strictness.

This blog also has reviews of each and every vendor/tent — complete with family histories and what’s in each dish.

Here are a couple of pupusas that we ate. One of them with pork and cheese inside and one with beans and cheese. The ensalada is cabbage with some mild salsa.

And here is a huarache — yes, the same name as the sandal (these would be about a size 12) with meat and cheese and pretty spicy green sauce.

To wash these down we had horchata — a drink made with rice, almonds, spices and sugar. It’s a kind of sweet milky drink that goes really well with spicy food (the original version is a Muslim drink made with tigernuts — and Valencia, in Spain, even has a council to regulate the quality of the horchata sold there). I also had some mango slices to which was added hot pepper, salt and lime. They were sweet, spicy, salty and delicious. We were full — so, if things get worked out, future visits will allow sampling of the many other dishes.

The big Ikea blue box next to the ballfields is almost finished. Nearby are some lovely little residential neighborhoods, some brick projects and, further on, a dock for cruise ships — we watched passengers walk the gangplank onto the gigantic Classic Princess and wondered if they’d have a good time. Further down the road a group of hipsters were working on what looked like a large parade float with metal horses lying around ready to be mounted and decorated.

I recently heard about an upcoming forum called “New York: Is it in danger of losing it’s Soul?”. Red Hook, much of it anyway, still has plenty — but as the waterfront gets developed there is always the danger that the lure of big bucks will carve big chunks of that soul away. There are plenty of vacant lots and crumbling warehouses here — there were some suspicious large fires last year. As beautiful as dead tech is, I’m not suggesting that the areas with crumbling concrete and rebar spikes sticking up be kept intact, but that development be allowed to take place on a human scale and at a human pace.

My own neighborhood, South Hell, still has some of what might be called soul — though some would just call it funky and underdeveloped. There are neighborhood restaurants, a butcher, a fishmonger, a baker, a few delis and a vegetable market. Some small theaters and the usual — for this neighborhood — zipper repair places, steel clothing rack makers, pushcart warehouses and tailors. This area used to have a lot more or all of these, but it was a rough part of town in the 80s and 90s — before I moved here — and I think changes in other parts of town took business away from the fishmongers, for example. Now there is just one left. There were lots of prostitutes in the recent past, and before that gangs controlled certain blocks. The whores are pretty much gone, which is a little surprising as the tunnel entrance is right here and often the Jerseyites are prime customers. There are still some halfway houses and a methadone clinic — there are certain times when the junkies can be seen in the surrounding blocks — nodding or frozen like zombies. The local police station says they’re all harmless. Hotels and condos are going up fast — so things will change further — but the huge gouge in the neighborhood that constitutes the tunnel entrance and approaches will permanently stifle the flow and interchange that allows a neighborhood to have character and life. When it was built, that area was maybe the worst in the city, in Manhattan anyway — so tearing it down seemed like a reasonable idea I guess — but to replace it with a dead zone is not exactly a solution.

Here is a website called Save Soccer Tacos — it has links and letters you can send.

3.15.06: Pepper grinding

I’m wondering what’s with the pepper grinding ritual that invaded U.S. restaurants a decade or 2 ago? I agree that freshly-ground pepper is a nice addition to many foods — like salt, it seems to bring out the flavor, to stimulate the palate. But that’s obviously not the point of this ritual — the point is social, economic, and psychological. How and why did it become a little ritual to have the food arrive and then be quickly followed by a man (usually a man) who asks, “Do you want some pepper ground over that?” He wafts the phallic object over your food like a wand and waits for you, the master, to tell him “when”. Then he is gone and may never return.

Wouldn’t it be easier to have a little pepper grinder on every table? It wouldn’t be harder than keeping all those refilled saltshakers out there, would it?

But that’s not the point, I suspect. What’s important is the ritual and the relationship. The servant and the implication of service… the feeling of being pandered to and pampered in a customized manner. One hopes that this little ritual assuages any impulses by the client to imperiously order the staff around, and sometimes it does seem to absorb these impulses, though not always.

3.13.06: Adelaide: Surfing, cuisine, syntax, megafauna, last show

Went for another surfing bout yesterday. Last time was about a year ago in Perth. Mauro was the organizer, naturally. He's the most avid surfer. We had to drive south, to the bottom of the peninsula, about an hour away, where the actual sea was. Lovely beach, if a bit windy, and I could get up on the board as far as my knees and steer with them — and be hands free!

Saw llamas, parrots, kangaroos and some ibis as we drove back north.

Stopped at McLaren Vale winery area for an early dinner on the way back and fell out when I got back to the hotel.

More Aussie cuisine:

• Hundreds and thousands — (also known as freckles) — Tiny candy sprinkles.
• Spiders — ice cream in a soda.
• Capsicum — red or yellow peppers (not the hot ones.)

Here are some local election posters — Keep those bastards honest, Kate!:

Nice piece in 3 Quarks Daily on Trapped In The Closet. I’m jealous. It’s a lovely musing that begins with observations of this surprising pop phenomena and segues into thoughts about how our brains organize our thoughts and how we tell stories — with some words I’ve never heard before.

“…if it's true that it all comes down to syntax, then you could also say that human thought can be divided into two basic categories, paratactic and hypotactic. They are the two most elemental ways of putting thought together.”

Ganda cooked over 100 dumplings for everyone last night in her room after the show. Dana’s mom dropped off cupcakes that spelled “Here Lies Love”.

I went by the museum and took some pictures of their lovely dioramas — but was stopped for using a tripod. But I managed to get a few off before I had to put it away.

Tonight is the last show…until when?

Giant animals that used to live in Australia:

In Pleistocene times, giant "megafauna" inhabited Australia. These animals mysteriously disappeared in Australia about 15,000 years ago, including:

• The great rhinoceros-like Diprotodon, the giant kangaroo standing 3 metres (10 feet) high
• A giant marsupial wombat
• Megalania, a goanna 6 metres (12 feet) long
• Quinkana, a land crocodile 3 metres long
• Wonambi, a python 7 metres long
• The flightless birds, Genyornis (giant emu) and Dromornis, which matched the great Moa in size

Here they are seen in a kind of Antipodean garden of paradise.

Aboriginal stories which have been recorded throughout Australia indicate clearly that the animals were a part of the environment of early man on this continent, remembered with both fear and awe for generations.

The oral tradition goes back that far…15, 000 years! It makes written history seem — well, not worth the papyrus it’s written on.

Tonight’s show was the last one here. It was probably the best played one we’ve done. Really beginning to lock and rock on many tunes. Kind of sad to be putting the performances on hiatus for a while, but we’ll see. Got lots to think about — how the narrative can be transmitted without my talking bits — which are fun but kill the momentum, etc. etc.

Had a pot luck late lunch in Graham’s room…almost everyone brought food or cooked food in the hotel kitchenettes and we had loads of leftovers that we ate after the show.

3.8.06: Aussie Cuisine

One of my favorite pieces in the Whitney Biennial:

Long tech rehearsal today. Band is amazing, as most of them have just gotten off the 20+ hour flight — they check in to the hotel and then are rushed over here to the venue. They all work hard and no one complains about being tired, not once.

It’s like doing a first gig ever — so many new songs and so much to remember — lyrics, marks, lighting, guitar chords and settings — I’m scared and overwhelmed. Kind of nice, though, thrilling even, being less than sure and confident about it all. Jumping in the deep end without too much of a safety net. But scary as hell.

Aussie cuisine:

Pie Floater — a meat pie “floating” in sea of mushy pea soup, with a squirt of tomato sauce on top. To be eaten when drunk.

Flavored milks. Saw a large strawberry milk at the venue lunch counter. Milk here comes in a variety of flavors, such as apple, banana, caramel, chocolate, cookies 'n cream, lime, malt, mango, papaya, strawberry, tropical fruits and vanilla, with a few more exotic flavors available.

NZ features many more flavors — spearmint and…peanut butter flavored milk!

Woolworth’s in Whangarei (NZ) decided they could get around some selling restrictions by also selling "Milk Flavoured Milk". Milk flavored milk!

South Australia has the highest consumption of flavoured milk per person, where Farmers Union Iced Coffee outsells Coca-Cola.

I remember from a previous visit the shockingly unusual crisp (potato chip) flavors. Ham and mustard. Big red and meat pie. Feta and herb, Thai chili.

To be fair, almost every restaurant meal I’ve had here has been extraordinarily delicious. It would be nice to think that the cooking is simply all top notch, which in many cases it is, but I think other things might be involved. I’m going to suggest that due to the relative sparseness of the population here, and the fertility and abundance of the local fields and seas, there is an unusual availability of fresh produce, meats and seafood. I suggest that it is this freshness of all of these that makes the foods so much better — and that we, especially in NYC, are just not used to super fresh foods. The taste is definitely better.

I had some calamari that were lovely and an octopus over greens that was much much better than the mangy little tentacles served up in top restaurants in NY. This was like a steak but with big suckers on the side!