lacartaajena:

Jan 2010 Food Fest, Parts 4, 5, 6 and 7 (continued)

We rolled ourselves out of Lan Zhou and began wandering up 8th Avenue — in Sunday morning Chinatown crowd. We stopped into a bakery for some pineapple bao and custard bao. (They were not so enthused to have us as the Lan Zhou noodlers.)

Then we walked all the way up to 39th, passing along the way a rash of banks and a couple of great Chinese food markets, one of which had enormous squid and cuttlefish on display.  (Hooray for cephalopods!) The neighborhood also offered several other promising non-American food options, among them Malaysian, Vietnamese, Polish, Halal and (near and dear to my heart) Colombian. (There was also a Colombian clothing store featuring the super-tight fashions andbootylicious mannequins so popular in my beloved Cartagena.)

Turning west on 39th, we wandered into a serious headwind (so cold!) toward Sunset Park, with a view of the lovely Upper New York Bay, then north along 5th Avenue, along a third border of Greenwood Cemetery (where we paused to watch a gaggle of its ever-present Canadian Geese wandering among the tombstones and make the necessary jokes about goose poop). At one point we caught sight of Lady Liberty down the street. (You have to squint pretty hard at the Berryphoto to really see her.)

Approaching the south Slope, we stopped into Adam’s on 5th Ave. and 17th for some honey vodka (it’s better than it sounds; we don’t even like vodka) and a little rum, and then into the Black Horse Pub — under the auspices of getting a beer but really because we needed some water and a bathroom. (Great selection of drafts. Interesting half-American half-not crowd. I predict we’ll return. Perhaps during the World Cup.)

At home we blamed Jay’s cough and the brutal cold for the moderately embarrassing hot toddies we made ourselves. Repeatedly.  We also sucked down our Chinese pastries.  And then, after an hour or so without any solid food, we ate dinner, too.  And made it almost all the way through a DVD of Honeymooners episodes.

It was a good day.

GOWANUS SUCKING AWAY OUR HIP INDUSTRIAL SPACES: ‘New York City’s only homebrew supply store, Brooklyn Homebrew, opened Tuesday in its new Gowanus location on 8th Street at Third Avenue. Up until now, the store has been operating out of a one-bedroom Sunset Park apartment.’

SICHUAN IN SP: ‘But a trip to the borough is made worthwhile by Sichuan eatery Metro Café (4924 Eighth Ave., 718-437-7980). For starters, grub on grilled skewers of lamb and smoked eel, before selecting from the well-edited Sichuan menu. The tender beef with Sichuan special sauce (hello, cumin!) is swaddled in green chiles and peppercorns, while the house special hot chicken is smoky-crunchy pleasure—make sure to chomp the peppers.’

For the second time in two months, a car driven by a young person has tried to make a turn into the crosswalk while I was walking and the crosswalk sign was white. In each case, said young person stuck their head out the window, and suggested that I was in the wrong (Suggestion #1: “You better watch where you’re pushing that baby.” Suggestion #2: “Really? Really?”).

So, two assumptions: A) For every driver that sticks her head out the window, there are another hundred who mutter about the idiot on the crosswalk walking in front of their car when they’re trying to turn. B) New York drivers are generally aggressive about edging their way into intersections, but I’ve been in the city for 11 years now, and this decision by young drivers to actually blame the person on the crosswalk for using the crosswalk seems knew.

The “Really?” run-in just happened this morning on Prospect Avenue. Is anyone else seeing an increasing number of cars trying to push pedestrians off the crosswalk? Are young drivers the one doing it?