Empire State of Mind
I love my regular runs on the National Mall, but jogging the Brooklyn Bridge is a whole different kind of inspiring.
3 hours and 46 minutes from my desk in DC to my seats in the Garden!
Love the BIG EAST Tournament — Go Hoyas!
It wasn’t pretty, but Hollis Thompson, and Hoyas pulled away in second half to beat St. John’s, 69-49 (Washington Post), making it a worthwhile day trip up to NYC and Madison Square Garden.
Great effort on offense and defense by the Hoyas.
Short version: rich people just want convenient food, don’t really give a toss if it’s mediocre or expensive.
By Felix Salmon on Grub Street:
Momofuku Ssam Bar on lower Second Avenue is a roaring success; open the same concept 60 blocks north and you’d probably fail miserably. Gourmands and food writers naturally flock to the new and interesting, but the rich tend to be neither gourmands nor food writers. (It goes without saying that food writers tend not to be rich, too.)
Reinforcing that theory is the fact that for the rich, the combination of high prices and unadventurous food acts as a sort of invisible velvet rope. Besides being handily located on the Upper East Side, a restaurant like Nello can charge $26 for mediocre beet salad, or $40 for a plate of uninspired mushroom risotto, because to its customers, the money matters as little as the actual food does. But the 99 percent won’t go there, because when they do splurge on food, they want an adventure to remember.
I’d also be curious to know how many of these 1 percenters have their own chef. I mean, if I had my own chef, I probably wouldn’t be going out to eat all that often….
Fascinating, and I imagine there are some parallels here in DC, in addition to the number of restaurants (e.g., Cafe Milano) in which the food is fine if not notable, but people go to be around the other people that go.
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During thousands of elaborate restaurant meals over dozens of piggy years, I’ve received many exacting, even loopy, instructions.
I’ve been prodded to dab a special scent on my wrist before savoring my salad. To proceed through the five microscopic canapés before me from left to right, as if they were words in a sentence that would lose all meaning if scrambled. To exhale a particular way as I chewed an avant-garde popcorn cluster so that the smoke inside it billowed from my nostrils.
Romera New York is the first restaurant where I was told to “make a memory” of my water.
Romera is Manhattan’s newest culinary oddity, an elegant hideaway whose conceits include the pairing of each dish in an 11-course meal with a lukewarm flavored water in a lidded grappa glass. One water might be infused with leek and radish, another with jasmine and dried seaweed. Most taste like indecisive teas, commitment-phobic broths or pond runoff.
“Feel free to smell them,” said a server, as if I might otherwise feel jailed. “And to taste them.” He paused. “Make a memory of them.”
While blazers are optional at Romera, straitjackets would be a fine idea.
"— Dinner and Derangement - NYTimes.com
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This may look like a promotional stunt for the Blu-Ray release of the Star Wars saga, but nope — it’s the planet Tatooine, re-imagined by George Lucas in the updated version of A New Hope.
(Not really. Photo of Jawas and a stormtrooper crossing a Manhattan street by Stuart Ramson / Insider Images via the New York Post)\
Posting for Jasen.
![9/11 remembrance.
shortformblog:
thedailyfeed:
He didn’t know anyone was watching, but as Robert Peraza, 68, fell to one knee, bowed his head and placed his left hand over his son’s name at the National September 11 Memorial, a photographer with a long lens captured the very private moment. Overnight, the photo went viral, becoming the iconic image of the 10th anniversary of 9/11. [more]
An amazing photo. An amazing story. An amazing reflection.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lrgsfp0u891qf5y35o1_500.jpg)
9/11 remembrance.
He didn’t know anyone was watching, but as Robert Peraza, 68, fell to one knee, bowed his head and placed his left hand over his son’s name at the National September 11 Memorial, a photographer with a long lens captured the very private moment. Overnight, the photo went viral, becoming the iconic image of the 10th anniversary of 9/11. [more]
An amazing photo. An amazing story. An amazing reflection.
(via shortformblog)
Nine days before the sky fell
- “SEPT. 11, 2001, changed everything.” As the tenth anniversary approaches, a lot of experts will weigh in on that statement. But to see how an event transformed us, we need to remember where we were just beforehand. So I went to the library and looked at The Boston Globe and The New York Times of Sept. 2, 2001. What were we thinking about 10 years ago today? (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)
ipen:
Fast Company: At 9/11 Memorial, Name Placements Reflect Bonds Between Victims, Thanks To Algorithm
Instead of being listed simply alphabetically, the names at the 9/11 Memorial are listed to reflect friends and co-workers — A juggling task that was possible only because of a powerful algorithm.
I think memorials end up being one of the most fascinating pieces of architecture (see Vietnam Veterans Memorial). As sad as they are, in recent years they have become a reflection of the meaning behind the conflict or incident, rather than a simple memorial with names listed. There is a meaning behind them, and I think that’s fascinating.
I also think that the team that decided to do this was absolutely insane, but it turned out amazing. I can only imagine the problems they encountered while trying to maintain the relationships between the victims.
It took a long time for this memorial to be build, but it does appear that it will be a good place for reflection and remembrance of the lives lost on a tragic day.
