brain dump 007 [late summer slump]

mexican grilled corn. one of two unhealthy taste fixations joe and i picked up from cafe habana in soho; the other is the michelada (a savory cocktail with beer, lime, salt, and copious hot sauce). the tyler florence recipe linked above is pretty good, even if, say, one is too lazy to buy and grate fresh parmesan and opts instead to use the three-year-old kraft stuff in the back of the fridge. the wednesday farmer's market at my office (?) has been featuring some fantastic (and fantastically cheap) fresh corn, so we'll be fattening ourselves with this for the rest of the summer.

the new pornographers' challengers, streaming for free via myspace (via jacob). i can't say i'm comfortable with buying the album at target for the special price of $9.99; i do hope the corporate promotional partnership means that NP are making some substantial dough, though. how do you guys feel about the indie bands and the corporate partnerships? should i care that, for example, wilco pretty much handed sky blue sky to volkswagen?

turf of gangs and gangsters, a new york times "weekend explorer" piece on the history of hell's kitchen. it focuses more on the "hell's canyon" skyscraper effect than on the northward ooze of chelsea (a store called something like "pocket pooches" opened up the street last month), but there are a few passages that hint at it:
One block east, the Mr. Biggs Bar & Grill at 10th Avenue and West 43rd Street is on the site of a dive bar, the 596 Club, which Mr. Coonan owned in the 1970s. In 1977 he and his crew murdered and dismembered the loan shark Ruby Stein there. The torso was later retrieved from the East River.

Mr. Robbins said macabre stories about the 596 Club still float around Hell’s Kitchen. Old-timers remember jars behind the bar that held the severed fingers of guys who had crossed the Westies. There’s the one about gangsters rolling a severed head down the bar.

“I’ve heard a lot of that kind of stuff,” T. J. English, author of “The Westies,” said in a recent interview. “Normally you’d dismiss it as absurd, but since it was the Westies, who knows? That place was certainly the proverbial bucket of blood.”

Scott Rudnick, owner of Mr. Biggs, said the place had its share of ghosts when he first opened 13 years ago, but the introduction of karaoke nights “spooked the spooks out.”

mud, sweat and tears pottery. i was reminded of this studio's existence when i dragged a bag of old clothes down tenth avenue to the salvation army last weekend. i'd always thought it was a color me mine-style, paint-someone-else's-crap place, but it's an actual studio, and i think i need to take a class there. classes are $400, and i haven't got that, so i'll sock money away for a while and return to the whim when i've got a plausible stash. i have a secret theory that i'll take a bunch of these classes and be able to start making stuff like this,* and while that will never happen, i'll have a hobby to chat with my sister (baby jo, a badass ceramicist) about. that's also good.

pat kiernan's huge apartment. i've never been fond of cribs-style love letters to celebrities' homes, but i am so pleased to learn that pat kiernan, beloved host of the local morning news, has a righteous pad on the upper west side. it's as oddly endearing and canadian as pat himself: two of the family's favorite things are a painting of dancing pigs and a giant mountie.

one in ten benefit auction. beginning this sunday on ebay, a sale of beautiful handmade things to support eireann's mom (who had an aneurysm and a stroke this summer, and whose insurance isn't covering her bills). great cause, gorgeous art and craft - bid, bid!

how have you been passing the time, o internets? i've been up to my eyeballs in work at casa de ladymag for the past few weeks, but the load, she is lightening, and i plan to celebrate that all weekend.

*speaking of diana fayt's (amazing, amazing) ceramics, she's going to have stuff at candystore in the mission soon - you san francisco types should get on that. it's gross that i'm slowly turning into a shopping blogger, but pimping independent design is at least slightly acceptable, right?


tom said...

Mates of State shilling for The New AT&T (looks a whole damn lot like the Old AT&T) is in the same league. I'm of a split mind. Yes, you'd want our indie heroes to stay pure. But some of these people have to eat.

And there is a bit of an insider-hipster thrill to have something that you, and few others, have heard rolling by between innings as the newest gadget is being hawked.

lauren said...

these things are all true, tom; i guess what surprises me is that it still gives me a twinge, though the phenomenon is quite old. i vacillate between hating and wanting to be one of the marketing peons who shuffle through tiny-label (read: cheap to license) albums and pluck out songs for primetime commercials.

aside: as wilco is with nonesuch/warner bros. and gaining some serious steam with the dockers crowd, they aren't the most useful example here; my apologies for that. they've been on my mind a lot lately, as i've been cultivating a theory that they're the next dave matthews band (though i feel much more warmly toward them than the analogy would imply).

jacob said...

i dunno, i've gotten pretty soft on the whole corporate shilling thing.

but cat power doing de beers definitely crossed some kind of line.

tom said...

Jacob: you know, I have noticed, in the background, that the "A Diamond Is Forever" ads have lost their intense focus and have drifted aimlessly between one montage and another lately. Shoulda put two-and-two together.

Lauren: well, at least Wilco wouldn't dump tourist-bus shit into the Chicago River / onto pleasure cruisers on said river. They're from around here, you know.

nyc art lover and etsy enthusi said...

does your sister have an etsy shop? i am a sucker for ceramics and love supporting up and coming artists (my apologies if she is already big, or if that label otherwise doesn't fit - i'm new to your blog, having stumbled in on it via internet search). best to you and yours.

lauren said...

she doesn't have one yet; she has been thinking about a web shop, though, and i've been talking etsy up as much as possible. i'll send up the bat signal here - many, many times! - when she goes online. welcome to the 'champ, and cheers!

wabes said...

what is better than a michelada?

...a michelada at a swim-up bar in mexico in july. despite the garishness of resort entertainment, J. had heard about them, and we were very excited to get one. the bartender was incredulous, more so when we were back the next day for another. but ours had worchestershire sauce and the fake-chicken maggi spice juice (like bouillon?), along with salt, lime, hot sauce.