Saturday, January 03, 2004
Lloyd and I had planned to see ROTK today, but decided instead to postpone until Sunday so that we could sleep in. This left me with a nice unstructured day to do whatever I wanted. I decided to catch the bus to Jackson Heights and poke around in Indian groceries for a few hours, but first I read this little heartbreaker of an article in the New York Times about the hard fortunes of my beloved Pittsburgh, where Lloyd and I had been planning to move until we learned just how broke the city was, and how uncertain its future is. If you’ve ever wondered what happens to a city when its primary industry disappears and the tax base shrinks (40% of city property is tax-exempt, half of city-based corporations are tax-exempt, and 2/3 of the workforce commutes in from the suburbs and is subject only to an annual $10 occupation tax), well, this is it.
After that, a nice field trip was in order, so I walked around the block and got on the bus. Imagine my surprise to discover that the bus did not go to the heart of Jackson Heights, but rather to LaGuardia Airport. I took this as a sign that I needed a nice long walk, and after several bizarre detours that will be shared at another time, I found myself on Steinway Street, the largest and most famous shopping drag in Astoria. I stopped in an Indian grocery on 30th Avenue, where I found a tub of bitter melon, and, inspired by aethele’s beautiful photographs of broccoli romanesco that she took in Germany, I asked the nice man behind the counter if I could get a picture. He was more than happy to oblige.
When I got home, after first popping into Manhattan to have some arepas for lunch, I decided that I’d had enough bitter for one day and was ready for some sweet instead. Since I have received a lot of e-mail about the ginger fingers, I thought that I might as well make a batch of them and take a picture to a) convince the fence-sitters that these are definitely worth the effort and b) remind myself that even without a bakery, I am still a bakerina. (Go ahead, bake a batch. You know you want to.)
Oh, orionoir, now you know you’ve just touched off a litany in me, one that will not be stopped. Don’t look all “who, me?” You know it, I know it, you know I know it, I know you know you...well, you know.
There’s a tv show based in Pittsburgh? I wonder if they screw around with locations, like in Flashdance, where Jennifer Beals leaves the main branch of the Carnegie Library in Oakland and, it’s magic! she’s downtown! You may have gathered that I am a totally pedantic smitty where locations are concerned.
Even though I know you’re being tongue-in-cheek about the po’pipples, I’m going to rant about eating the rich anyway. My problem isn’t with the po’pipples; hell, as far as I can see, they’re the reason that there’s a tax base at all. Most of them are working po—they’re the ones who drive the jitneys, sell us tampons at Revco, chop the broccoli that goes into the vegetable soup at those evil Panera Bread cafes that plague the county like locusts. The tax base is actually being shot to hell by executives and fund managers who buy half-million dollar homes in Cranberry and million-dollar homes in Sewickley and drive into Pgh. every day, not noticing the relationship between their assmobiles and the fact that the roads in Pgh. are always under construction (haven’t been able to drive from point A to point B since about 1950), and rabbit on loudly to their secretaries (most of whom *do* live in Pgh and are getting the shit assessed out of their homes, since the money has to come from *somewhere*) about how if the city starts taxing commuters they are going to raise holy hell and be the first ones to applaud when an inevitable Republican administration is elected in city government; I have good friends who work with people like this, and all we can think to say is, you miserable pusbag, you pay the City of Pittsburgh TEN DOLLARS A YEAR in occupation tax, the same ten dollars I had to pay out of my work-study earnings when I was in college, when that ten dollars represented 2 1/2 hours of work. You want to bitch, go to Philadelphia, where the city wage tax is the highest in the nation, and it doesn’t matter where you commute from; as soon as you drive past that “Welcome to Philadelphia!” sign, the meter clicks on. Until you’re willing to do that, then fuuuuuuuuuuck yoooooooou.
Of course, there is the rub. I don’t want to open a bakery in Palo Alto, or, for that matter, Sewickley or Cranberry. I don’t think that only people who have cars and access to tastefully-designed strip malls should be able to buy really good bread. I want a city bakery, a place where commuters AND college students AND little old ladies who stayed in the old nabe long after their children fled to subdivided dairy-farm country can buy bread that tastes like something, rather than the underbaked may-as-well-call-it-gum that passes for bread all too often. But I can’t take advantage of the economies of scale that the big bakeries can, which means that I can’t price the bread at a price that will be good for the working poor, which means that I have to court the very people who have the disposable income, who, you may have gathered, are starting to really piss me off. It’s just not a good marketing plan, is all I’m saying.
But I will grant that I am being a little disingenuous when I say that we’re not moving to Pgh. because the city is broke. We’re not opening the bakery in Pgh. because according to my SBA counselor, until I get some full-time bakery experience (which I can’t do without quitting my job), investors or partners, the best financing for which I can qualify is a line of credit, repayable annually, that represents exactly one-tenth of the money I would need to start up. We could, of course, just decide to move to Pgh. and get tedious office jobs like the ones we have here in New York, but we’ve decided not to do that because, well, the city is broke.
If your son ever asks you about the ugliest city in the world, tell him you have it on good authority that North Philadelphia qualifies, although technically it’s a neighborhood, not a city in and of itself. Think of my previous comments about Meriden, about the feeling of a force like a malevolent hand reaching down and slapping a city, leaving it beaten, shaken and empty. Then magnify that by about 10,000. The force that swept down on North Phila. ( in the form of disappearing jobs, disappearing revenue, disappearing services, guns and drugs rushing in to fill the vacuum) is that of an adult well beyond fury, thrashing a child senseless. Or rather, it’s more like torture, the guard seeing how much more the prisoner can take, the prisoner finally dying, only to be resuscitated so the guard can torture him one more time.
Aw, gosh, Court, I really wish now I had replied to you before engaging my Ranting Swede persona in my reply to orionoir. He, of course, knows that I am a gloomy old bitch because we were in the Marines together (uh, I mean because he’s an old friend), but you, dear, I wouldn’t blame you for wondering what you got into as you run fleeing from this page, screaming in the night. 
Seriously now. An arepa is a wonderfully tasty griddle cake indigenous to Venezuela and Colombia. It is made with masa harina, which is a type of cornmeal made from hominy. I’ll try to keep this short (HA!): when corn kernels are soaked in a slaked lye solution, they puff up and get very white and fluffy. They also have elevated levels of lysine—a more efficient protein, if you will. When the corn is still in kernels, it is sold as hominy. You can usually buy both dried and canned hominy in groceries that cater to Latino communities. When the hominy is dried and ground into flour, it becomes masa harina.
I had my arepas at a restaurant in my old nabe called Caracas. It is one of the tiniest restaurants you will ever see; it only has six tables, and when they’re full, the place feels like Penn Station. I would be surprised if the whole restaurant, including kitchen, is more than 200 square feet, tops. I’m thinking more like 150. At this place, they serve arepas as a bread substitute and build little sandwiches out of them. I had two. One was stuffed with a type of chicken salad dressed with avocado sauce; the other was a mix of black beans and a very hard, salty, crumbly Venezuelan cheese reminiscent of feta. To go with it I had this amazing drink called papelon con limon, described on the menu as “a refreshing natural blend of sugar loaf and lime.” It is probably the best liquid I’ve ever drunk in my life—well, maybe second best. It looks like iced tea. It tastes like the best limeade you’ve ever had, with a little hit of molasses. Damn, I wish I had one now.
Recipe for arepas: http://www.internationalrecipesonline.com/recipes/view.pl?3306
About the restaurant: http://www.caracasarepabar.com/index.htm
Yes on incorporation, btw. 
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Oh, orionoir, now you know you’ve just touched off a litany in me, one that will not be stopped. Don’t look all “who, me?” You know it, I know it, you know I know it, I know you know you...well, you know.
There’s a tv show based in Pittsburgh? I wonder if they screw around with locations, like in Flashdance, where Jennifer Beals leaves the main branch of the Carnegie Library in Oakland and, it’s magic! she’s downtown! You may have gathered that I am a totally pedantic smitty where locations are concerned.
Even though I know you’re being tongue-in-cheek about the po’pipples, I’m going to rant about eating the rich anyway. My problem isn’t with the po’pipples; hell, as far as I can see, they’re the reason that there’s a tax base at all. Most of them are working po—they’re the ones who drive the jitneys, sell us tampons at Revco, chop the broccoli that goes into the vegetable soup at those evil Panera Bread cafes that plague the county like locusts. The tax base is actually being shot to hell by executives and fund managers who buy half-million dollar homes in Cranberry and million-dollar homes in Sewickley and drive into Pgh. every day, not noticing the relationship between their assmobiles and the fact that the roads in Pgh. are always under construction (haven’t been able to drive from point A to point B since about 1950), and rabbit on loudly to their secretaries (most of whom *do* live in Pgh and are getting the shit assessed out of their homes, since the money has to come from *somewhere*) about how if the city starts taxing commuters they are going to raise holy hell and be the first ones to applaud when an inevitable Republican administration is elected in city government; I have good friends who work with people like this, and all we can think to say is, you miserable pusbag, you pay the City of Pittsburgh TEN DOLLARS A YEAR in occupation tax, the same ten dollars I had to pay out of my work-study earnings when I was in college, when that ten dollars represented 2 1/2 hours of work. You want to bitch, go to Philadelphia, where the city wage tax is the highest in the nation, and it doesn’t matter where you commute from; as soon as you drive past that “Welcome to Philadelphia!” sign, the meter clicks on. Until you’re willing to do that, then fuuuuuuuuuuck yoooooooou.
Of course, there is the rub. I don’t want to open a bakery in Palo Alto, or, for that matter, Sewickley or Cranberry. I don’t think that only people who have cars and access to tastefully-designed strip malls should be able to buy really good bread. I want a city bakery, a place where commuters AND college students AND little old ladies who stayed in the old nabe long after their children fled to subdivided dairy-farm country can buy bread that tastes like something, rather than the underbaked may-as-well-call-it-gum that passes for bread all too often. But I can’t take advantage of the economies of scale that the big bakeries can, which means that I can’t price the bread at a price that will be good for the working poor, which means that I have to court the very people who have the disposable income, who, you may have gathered, are starting to really piss me off. It’s just not a good marketing plan, is all I’m saying.
But I will grant that I am being a little disingenuous when I say that we’re not moving to Pgh. because the city is broke. We’re not opening the bakery in Pgh. because according to my SBA counselor, until I get some full-time bakery experience (which I can’t do without quitting my job), investors or partners, the best financing for which I can qualify is a line of credit, repayable annually, that represents exactly one-tenth of the money I would need to start up. We could, of course, just decide to move to Pgh. and get tedious office jobs like the ones we have here in New York, but we’ve decided not to do that because, well, the city is broke.
If your son ever asks you about the ugliest city in the world, tell him you have it on good authority that North Philadelphia qualifies, although technically it’s a neighborhood, not a city in and of itself. Think of my previous comments about Meriden, about the feeling of a force like a malevolent hand reaching down and slapping a city, leaving it beaten, shaken and empty. Then magnify that by about 10,000. The force that swept down on North Phila. ( in the form of disappearing jobs, disappearing revenue, disappearing services, guns and drugs rushing in to fill the vacuum) is that of an adult well beyond fury, thrashing a child senseless. Or rather, it’s more like torture, the guard seeing how much more the prisoner can take, the prisoner finally dying, only to be resuscitated so the guard can torture him one more time.