Tag: #New York

  • Visiting a Farmer’s Market

    We’ve been going a little stir-crazy in the City of late. Due to an awful illness that ran through the family over consecutive weekends, school soccer matches, and unbreakable playdate commitments, we haven’t left New York City in close to two months. We were all getting the itch to leave the confines of the Five Boroughs. Finally, this past weekend, we put our collective foot down, and decided that this Sunday, we were getting in the car and driving out of town.

    So, we went to the Farmer’s Market in downtown Beacon, NY.

    I like visiting Beacon, for many reasons. First of all, it’s just far enough away from the City to make the drive feel like you are getting out. The town is beautiful along the Hudson River, and about twenty years ago, when I first visited the place with my soon to be wife, we both thought that this would be a great place to live. (Until we found out that homes there go for like $500k to million. And that was back in 2008!) Though living there really isn’t an option anymore, it is a place that we still enjoy visiting. Oh, and they have a rather cool disc golf course in town.

    I should have taken pictures, but I didn’t think of it.

    There is a very simple pleasure of going to one of these farmer’s markets. We’ve done the ones in Tarrytown, and Cold Springs, not to mention the big one in Union Square, as well as a smaller one in Harlem. I’m never sure what I am expecting when we go to these, but I have it in my head that I will find something that will inspire me to cook a huge meal. And that sometimes happens, but the wife is way better at looking at produce, and then thinking up all the things she will be able to make.

    What ends up happening is that the kid buys some little piece of jewelry, and I buy mushrooms, while the wife goes and finds stuff for us to eat, like risotto balls, and homemade doughnuts.

    It took us about an hour to dive up there. We walked around and shopped for an hour, and then took an hour to drive back to the City. We take the lazy way home, driving down 9D, which takes along the Hudson the whole way, but also cuts through forests, and goes up and down the steeper hills of the valley.

    This was the day trip that we all needed. We weren’t gone too long, and we didn’t go too far way. Just enough to feel like we got away for a bit.

  • The Week In-between Christmas and New Year’s

    (Note: No editing on this. You have been warned.)

    When I first moved to New York, and I was temping, I was one of the few people who was willing to work on the week between Christmas and New Year’s. I worked for a company that was in a midtown tower that had an amazing view of Central Park. At the job, I sat at a reception desk for eight hours, and did nothing. No one called, and except for a very sad office manager, I was alone. I couldn’t do anything on the computer; no Google searches, no looking at social media, and being that it was December 2006, no smart phones. I had a journal and a book to read, but even that annoyed the office manager. It was painfully boring week, but at the same time, the easiest $800 I ever made.

    By the time the next Christmas rolled around, I was working at Shetler Studios as their office manager. As I was the newest guy on the staff, that first Christmas, I was the guy who worked the In-between week of Christmas and New Year’s. You may wonder, who uses a rehearsal studio during that week? The answer is virtually no one. There was one guys who practiced piano every day, and he would come by during that week, and he was a good guy who could play, so it was fun having him there. Other than that, and the night manager who came in at 5pm, nothing happened during that week.

    As I started this in-between week, I thought back on those two jobs today. Sitting someplace, all alone, working but for what purpose? It most likely was true for that company in midtown, and was definitely true for the studios, that being open for that week was a loss for the company. Being closed would have made more sense, and saved money. But no, both companies spent a dollar to make a dime. I never asked the office manager at the midtown company why they were open, mainly because I needed the job and they were paying $5 more than I normally earned. When I asked old man Shetler why the studios were open, his response was that they were always open, no matter what.

    Just a thought that came into my head this morning.

  • Landlords

    I got an email yesterday afternoon from my landlord’s property office, informing us that they are going to install a buzzer system in our building, and that we need to be available Saturday morning for the installation. and when I read this email, my first reaction was that this was a lie, as they want to enter our apartment, and try to evict us.

    Yes, I am aware of how much that was a completely irrational response to that email.

    My second reaction was to respond to the email, thanking them for the buzzer, and confirming that we would be home on Saturday.

    But in my defense, we are like the last building in Manhattan that doesn’t have a buzzer, and we have been complaining about it for years.

    I don’t know what it is, but there is something about New York, where you can’t trust your landlord or super. Next to the Mayor, those are the most hated jobs in NYC. In the fifteen years I have lived here, I only know one person who had a positive experience with a landlord. For everyone else, it’s just pure hatred.

    In the end, I try to be fair, balanced in my interactions with our landlord; we have to work together as long as we live here.

  • Coronavirus Downer of a Day

    We are all having a down in the dumps coronavirus day in our home. My wife’s job hasn’t been the most fun of late, and to be honest, remoting into work every day does take a toll on you after a while. The kid had a tummy ache most of the morning, so we passed on going to the park, which, now that her tummy ache is gone, she’s become a rubber ball, bouncing off the walls. I, for my part, got my big chore done today (laundry) but pretty much have farted out on everything else; I have to finish school shopping, and creating a “school area” for the kid as the start of school is closing in.

    I had been hoping that school was going to start in September, and we were going to be able to drop into a normal routine for our family. I have to admit now that it isn’t going to happen. We have to choose, very soon, if the kid will attend classes in the school, or if she is going to continue with remote learning. We have to deal with the very harsh reality that as we don’t have health insurance (the kid is covered, thank God) that sending her to school does create a risk for us to get infected. I am aware that NYC has the lowest level of infection in the USA, but I am still nervous about getting so sick that I or the wife have to go to the hospital. That thought is never out of our minds.

    On a day when things aren’t working out the way we want, it’s easy to start down the path of all the awful things that could happen to us, and then everything becomes unbearably depressing, and the world is coming to an end.

    That’s why I suggest you check out my friend John’s free trivia night, called “Mind If I Ask You Something?” It’s virtual, on Wednesday night, and anyone can play. You can find him on Instagram or on Twitch.

  • What is Up with Texas?

    What is Up with Texas?

    I used to get that question often when I first moved to NYC. I grew up in Texas, and when people would eventually find out I was from the Lone Star state, I would get asked, “Hey, what is up with Texas?” This was in 2006, the waning days of George W. Bush, and my adopted home state had an amazing reputation of crazy and gun crazy on top of that. (Luckily, Florida has seemed to taken on the mantel away from Texas in the last several years.)

    Today, The New York Times ran this story, “Red vs, Red in Texas, With Republicans Battle One Another After Mask Order,” and the title pretty much encapsulates what in now going on there. It even caused me to ask, what is up with Texas? It reminded me of this story The New Yorker put out a week ago, “How Texas Republicans Politized the Coronavirus Pandemic,” which goes into detail on how state Republicans were fighting each other to have a convention in Houston in the middle of an outbreak of Covid-19.

    My 77-year-old father, and  my brothers with their families are still in Texas, and I can only imagine that the anxiety and worry I have for them is the same thing they all had for us in March in New York. The difference is that at least the City and state of New York were committed to fighting Covid. Not that they did a perfect job, but at least everyone was aiming for the same goal. In Texas, it just seems like the state leaders are running around in a hurricane of chaos they have created under the guise of personal freedom.

    When people used to ask me that questions about Texas way back in the good old days of ‘Merica, I would tell them that growing up in Texas, there was a strong through line of independence balanced with respect. It seems to me that Texas conservatives have perverted this idea, and now it’s costing people their lives.