Today’s View From a Hotel Window
Posted on June 3, 2012 Posted by John Scalzi 43 Comments
Here you go. Sorry about the fuzzy picture; the window’s a bit schmutzy. As always, if you recognize where this is, please don’t use it as an excuse to stalk me; that’s creepy.
Also: Hello, New York. I am off to find a snack within you. Rumor has it you might have places to eat.
All I can think about is all the brickwork. Wow! How amazing to think that those buildings are built by what are basically great big legos.
For a snack or full meal I can recommend Wild Edibles: http://www.wildedibles.com/
which has excellent seafood at reasonable prices. Very very fresh.
Another favorite of mine is Tamarind: http://www.tamarinde22.com/tribeca/home.html#
My favorites are the ACHARI HIRAN KI CHHAMPEN Venison chops marinated in pickling spices, roasted chickpea flour and hung yogurt and the ZAFRANI MURGH TIKKA Chicken tikka with saffron, malt vinegar and tandoori spices. They sound a bit exotic and spicy but are actually quite mild.
Enjoy your stay!
Careful you don’t order a Dr. Pepper (or whatever your favorite soft drink may be, if any) with more than 20 oz. Rumor has it the current Hizonner is on a tear about that.
I love New York, but I’ve never learned to do it in moderation.
Go to Pie Face. Adorable little bundles of tasty goodness – both meat pies and sweet pies. You can find it on Broadway at 52nd (53rd?). I am an addict, because the pies are not only adorable THEY ARE LABELED WITH SMILEYS. :X = Mexican pie :C = Chicken pie. etc. It is a place of great happiness.
(And I promise not to stalk you there, since I’m not going to get back there before Wednesday and then I will be focused, as always, on the pie.)
Wait, is that a Real Thing that’s actually happened to you?
I realize that one tree does not a forest make, but now I have this idea that in your life you’re constantly assaulted with single panels of cartoonish images containing word balloons wherever you go.
Another thing that’s nice: Mee’s on 53rd and 9th. Huge, ginormous bowls of noodley soup. Am particularly fond of the roast pork. Also scallion pancake. (It looks shabby but again: so nice.)
BTW…very nice article in the Dayton Daily about you today…
http://www.clintonstreetbaking.com/
Literally best Pancakes on Earth. Also have awesome lunch and dinner menu’s and the scones are heavenly. :)
Makes me wanna sing “N-Y-C” from Annie. Ahem. Mi-mi-mi-mi –
Have fun! Always wanted to go to NYC.
You’re in NY. You get Pizza. Go watch Jon Stewarts’ Daily Show rant about Pizza for some good places to go!
Desert, big gay ice cream truck!!
“BTW…very nice article in the Dayton Daily about you today…”
Doesn’t seem to be in the online version.
The Carnegie Deli.The Pastrami Sandwich. Need I say more?
I’ve only been to New York once. I found the church from Ghostbusters and yelled “Nobody steps on a church in my town!” at it. From the reaction of the locals, I suspect that I was not the first person to do that.
I`m behind the sign.
No,the other one.
RUB BBQ has bacon chocolate chip cookies along with other good BBQ dishes including the “burnt ends” that sell out fast. Nearby is the Doughnut Plant. I’ve heard good things about beer selection at The Ginger Man.
I think it’s only stalking if if they catch on.
Snack?
One word: Shawarma.
All those superheroes can’t be wrong …
What _aggie said ^_^
Can someone explain to this peasant from the hinterland what’s the difference between shawarma and a gyro?
Hmmmmm…that’s an avenue (subway grating) although not Lexington or Madison because not narrow, which kind of eliminates the Upper East Side. You’re not on Central Park West because one side of the avenue doesn’t exist. You’re not on (Upper West Side) Broadway because that’s a two-way street with a median. You’re somewhere Midtown-ish.
(Not stalking you; just familiar with the territory. Twenty years ago, I could have directed you to a restaurant in that vicinity. There might still be a Greek place at Varick and Chambers and it might have gotten good again.)
Now we know where to deliver the huge pile of ukuleles …
WOW.
There’s not a single plant in this image. Is that common in USasian cities or is that just by chance? I’ve got a tough time to think of areas in Berlin or Hamburg where you can’t see a plant or two, even if it’s just a patch of grass or a tree with a fence.
Word you’re looking for is “American,” Carina, and the answer’s no, it’s not that common.
@ Carina
Nope, just Midtown. The rest of New York has sad cloistered little patches of plant life just like every other high density city on Earth. New York packs four times the population of the Berlin metro area onto an island.
One reason I live in Austin is the greenery. Though pretty much every major metropolitan area in modern civilization chokes its ecosystem, parks and patches of grass or not. I suspect our descendents will look on our urban planning much as we look on feudal architecture, quaintly primitive.
Just FYI, normally when folks are trying to studiously avoid using the demonym American, they opt for USian…some Asians might take exception to the term USasian.
My late friend Isaac Asimov extrapolated from New York City (and specifically from the now-destroyed Pennsylvania Station) to Trantor, capital of the first Galactic Empire. Its land surface of 194,000,000 km² (75,000,000 miles², 130% of Earth land area) was, with the exception of the Imperial Palace and gardens, entirely roofed over or enclosed in artificial domes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trantor
With the exception of the tourist spots we have never had a bad meal in NYC. LAst time we were there we took many meals on 9th Ave around Midtown – it just seemed like one very nice restaurant after another, different cuisines, different styles and not a bad meal in the bunch. Several were outstanding!
J D rhroades @12:08 Coming from a place with no numbered public streets I am wondering how they tell the difference between 53rd and 9th and 9th and 53rd.
“One reason I live in Austin is the greenery”….
Well at least in the spring. Until the Texas drought kicks in with the usual upper 90’s low 100’s temps and the grass and trees turn brown and the grass fires rage across the hills. (Yeah, I’m in Texas too). Not ideal, of course no place is I guess. But hey, no 12 inch snowS and subfreezing temps
PIZZA.
@eddie, in Manhattan it’s easy – avenues go north-south and only go up to 12, streets go cross town and by a quirk of fate there actually are very few oppurtunities to end up at 1rst street and 2nd ave when you wanted 2nd street and 1rst ave. Queens however is lots of fun
@ Jonathan Vos Post
Don’t forget The Caves of Steel. But Asimov wrote in his autobiography that, being a bit agoraphobic, he actually thought roofing over New York City would be an improvement, and noted this surprised people who assumed it was intended as a dystopian extrapolation. Then there’s Harry Harrison’s hilarious Bill, the Galactic Hero which, among many other tropes, lampoons Trantor-esque ecumenopolises in the guise of Helior. Orson Scott Card took an interesting look at how the centuries-long construction of Capitol, his stand-in for Trantor, wipes out a planetary ecosystem. Some of my own fiction deals with how one might go about building and maintaining a world-city and, in particular, how much such an endeavor would not and could not resemble conventional human architecture.
@ whatever indeed
Fortunately, this year has not been nearly as bad as last year. Assuming no wackos fly their private planes into the IRS and no genocidally stupid jackasses toss their butts out their car windows, I have high hopes for the summer of 2012!
Hawaii. But I’m not in the military or tourist industry, so our annexed little paradise is a no-go for me. Having lived most of my life by the coast – Honolulu, Tokyo, DC and LA – I do miss the ocean. And no, the Gulf Coast doesn’t count.
Amen. I’m cold-blooded.
I’m Canadian, Kingston, Ontario. In 1990, a car load of cloudy-eyed friends drove me over over the border and loaded me on a train for New York. A little station in Watertown, it memory serves. I passed through the Bronx on my way to Grand Central Station, me looking out the window horrified. Burnt cars on blocks, like everywhere. It blew my mind, like Omega Man, there. Right there outside my window, and not the television screen. The boroughs have been cleaned up since, but I imagine the pizza is the same. The exact same. Took the shuttle bus to Pennsylvania Station across the way, but not before grabbing a slice of pizza outside the station. Mouth watering just thinking about it . . . surfed some good waves in Florida for three weeks afterward.
If you want to stroll and eat, try St. Mark’s Place in the East Village (otherwise known as East 8th Street). Half a block from Tompkins Square Park you have Cafe Mogador, a great Moroccan restaurant with nice merguez (lamb sausage). And across from Mogador is my current favorite hole in the wall, Dumpling Man – just two rows of stools, and you can watch them make more dumplings as you eat your own…with the house’s own “Monster Sauce.”
Spacetime breaks down where 4th Street intersects West 4th Street.
Hurray for Comedy Bang Bang! If you don’t listen to the podcast you should definitely check it out. It’s friggin’ hilarious. Just out of curiosity do you listen to it? Or just random happenstance?
“Spacetime breaks down where 4th Street intersects West 4th Street.”
Just a little ways from the S/T breakdown…W. 4th and Christopher, lives a fabulous real Spanish restaurant called Sevilla. If you are still in town, try it, you’ll like it!
@court
when one is just given 2 numbers, which is the ave? ex 53rd and 9th.
@Johnathan Vos Post
There is an intersection of Peachtree Rd, Peachtree St and West Peachtree in Atlanta.
@court,
I just reread your comment. I had missed the bit about only 12 ave. So there could be some confusion about a 5th and 9th, but not anything above 12th and anything. New Yorker’s probably automatically throw in the ave when both numbers are below 13 without even thinking about it.
@Eddie, it’s actually even simpler than that, because of greenwich village and the way the grid breaks down below 14th Street, 1rst and 2nd is pretty much the only intersection that’s ambiguous. 3rd ave doesn’t intersect 2nd street so 2nd and 3rd has to be 2nd ave and 3rd street, similarly for pretty much every other combination I could come up with. When it comes to travelling to Queens I have to ask for an address and specifics especially since Queens does thing like having 41st drive, road, lane, ave and street. Maybe Queens natives have a system I don’t know about, I’m a Mahattanite and a transplant.
Thank you for you help, John, and Neilp, resulting in {excerpt from}
Ch. 360: “Stubby Hubble” of the novel/trilogy Alzheimer’s War
[draft of 7:28-8:55, Tuesday 5 June 2012, 8 pages double-spaced; 2,000 words]
“Spacetime breaks down,” said Potifar Plum, “in Greenwich Village, where 4th Street intersects West 4th Street.”
“No wonder you were late,” said Captain Smedleeza. “There is an intersection of Peachtree Road, Peachtree Street, and West Peachtree in Atlanta.”
“There’s an intersection of 4 streets in Berkeley,” said Plum, “ each of which is one-way, in a direction pointing away from the intersection. So how do cars get there at all? Anyway, here I am. What’s up?”
“We don’t usually invite an astronomer to New York’s back-up Counterterrorism office,” said the NYPD Captain, “but the Chief of Police said to call you in.”