Tag Archives: NYC

Z: Zabar’s & ZZZZs

2020 A to Z Challenge, , , , , , ,

A to Z Challenge: My theme this year is NYC before and during the COVID-19 pandemic.

ZABAR’S: This 86-year-old specialty grocery store, located at 80th St. and Broadway, is practically an institution on the Upper West Side. It’s like the Trader Joe’s before Trader Joe’s. It opened in 1934 by Louis and Lillian Zabar, and continues to be a family-run business. This landmark grocery store, known for their bagels, coffee (selling over 400,000-lbs/year), and delicatessen, has been featured in a gazillion movies and television shows.

But even Zabar’s can’t escape a little controversy. Back in 2011, a reporter from New Orleans discovered the store’s lobster salad contained zero lobster. The $16.95/lb sans lobster salad (that had been sold for 15 years) became national news. To be fair, lobster was never listed as an ingredient (it was mostly crawfish). After Lobstergate, Zabar’s renamed the product “Zabster Zalad.”

Anyway, Zabar’s is one of my favorite stores and always worth the trek from Brooklyn. Fortunately, they offer shipping, so I can still get my Zabar’s coffee and bagel fix without setting foot on the subway.

ZZZZs: I’m definitely catching more ZZZZs these dayzzz . . . (there are roughly 569 z-words, but after blogging 26 days this month, I’m a little zonked.) I think a lot of us can agree that this pandemic has forced the world to slow down a little bit, which isn’t a terrible thing. Slowing down forces us to take stock, and re-evaluate all kinds of things in our lives. Sometimes, what we need is to take advantage of more opportunities to sleep.

Without our conscious selves interfering, our body can heal during snooze hours, allowing cells to produce protein. This foundation of protein in our cells, creates healthy cells that work to repair damage from things like stress and UV rays. Because the brain spends this time on maintenance, good, quality sleep is said to be one of the best ways to prevent Alzheimer’s Disease. Aside from making you more alert, sleep improves memory, may reduce your risk of depression, and keeps your heart healthy. Need more convincing? Check out these links:

10 Benefits of a Good Night’s Sleep
7 Surprising Reasons to Get More Sleep
Benefits of Sleep (via the smart folks at Harvard)

Thanks, everyone who visited me during this A to Z Challenge! I appreciate all of you and hope to stay connected. Perhaps I’ll even blog a little more often . . . or not. We’ll see. In the meantime, stay safe and healthy! And get some ZZZZs!

V: The Vessel & Viral Valedictory

2020 A to Z Challenge, , , , , , ,

A to Z Challenge: My theme this year is NYC before and during the COVID-19 pandemic.

THE VESSEL: Comprised of 154 interconnecting flights of stairs, the Vessel is one of the latest additions to Manhattan’s highfalutin $25 billion (yes, you read that right) Hudson Yards neighborhood. The spiral staircase consists of 2,500 steps, 80 landings, and is an interactive art piece by Thomas Heatherwick. You must get a ticket to ride climb the steps and are issued on a first come, first served basis, so the lines can get pretty long, but apparently, the views are spectacular. We haven’t actually attempted the trek up yet and frankly, we’d be fine we don’t.

View from below

The “comically-oversized pine cone,” as it’s been called by critics, isn’t without controversy. I’m not sure what the latest is, but originally, your free ticket came with the fine print caveat that simply visiting the $150 million stairclimber granted the Vessel the rights to use all of your Vessel content in perpetuity and for commercial uses. After receiving some harsh feedback, they amended their policy to state people still retain “ownership” of their social media posts, and the Vessel only wants to “amplify and re-share” the photos. Regardless, lawyers still found some troubling clauses in the Vessel’s Terms & Conditions such as “voluntarily giving up substantial legal rights,” and some questionable legality of searching a person’s body and belongings. Anywho . . . the Vessel folks are looking to rename the structure and are asking for the public to offer their two cents. Any ideas?

VIRAL VALEDICTORY: Originally, I vowed to vehemently veer from viral virulence, but a voluminous, verbose verse of Vs fought vainly to be voiced, hence, a Viral Valedictory.

Bon voyage, virus! Vamoose! Our vigilant vacations and vacated ventures will be a valiant victory over your villainous violation. With vigor and vitality, virologists wielding vials of vaccines will vanquish your violent invasion validating our vital and voracious vision for your eviction. (Take with you, the valueless, vindictive village vermin ventriloquized by the vulturous GOP near Virginia, and whose vicious and vexing vitriol is a verifiable vat of verbal vomit.)

To everyone else: Vindication, via your versatileness, videoconferencing, vegging out, and vigilant volunteering for the vulnerable victims and vendors is vicinal. Levitate the vibrations with vivacious voodoo vibes and vocal invocation and vaporize this vulgar virus into oblivion. Be vainglorious, as our viable viceroyship is inevitable.    

Voila!

U: Upper West Side & Upanishads

2020 A to Z Challenge, , , , , , , , ,

A to Z Challenge: My theme this year is NYC before and during the COVID-19 pandemic.

UPPER WEST SIDE: I love the Upper West Side of Manhattan. I’m sure it has a lot to do with it being where I stayed when I visited NYC for the first time back in 2013. Actually, it probably goes back even further to You’ve Got Mail, one of my favorite movies, and one that celebrates the UWS. There’s just something about this neighborhood; the history, the architecture, the vibe. However, we chose Brooklyn for two reasons: our dear friend and her now-toddler daughter live here; and Brooklyn bucks go a lot further when it comes to living arrangements. Flanked by Central Park and the Hudson River, the UWS spans south to 59th Street and north, to 110th Street. The Upper East Side might have Museum Mile, but the UWS boasts plenty of cultural go-tos (Lincoln Center, American Museum of Natural History, Columbia University, and several theaters, like the Beacon). It’s got Zabar’s for Pete’s sake! The brownstone- and tree-lined neighborhoods also have that quintessential NYC feel, too.

You’ll also find the 72nd Street station control house, that opened in 1904 as one of the original 28 stations of the NC subway system. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the control house was deemed adequate because of narrow stairways and no underground crossover or crossunder to access all trains from one entrance. A new control house built near it in 2002, provides the much-needed space and second exit/entrance.

The station underwent another renovation in 2018 that included a sky and cloud mosaic by Yoko Ono, who lives in the iconic Dakota building atop the subway stop. I took a picture of the mosaic one day–not even knowing who created it–but for the life of me, I can’t find it. Thank goodness for the interwebs.

UPANISHADS: I started studying Hindu philosophy five years ago and essayed my experience for a magazine in early 2017. For those first couple of years, these philosophies and the practice of meditation provided me with a perspective that kept me in a calm and contented Zenned-out state. I guess I had enough Zen reserves to muster through the first few months of Trump’s “presidency,” but as time went on, those tanks got tapped out. I remember at the time, I had been reading the Upanishads, ancient Sanskrit texts of spiritual teachings and ideas of Hinduism, but the god-awfulness of the Orange Menace, became too much and my Zen ran for the hills. I’ve been struggling to catch up to it ever since.

I don’t subscribe to any organized religion (often an oxymoron, if ask me), but I can get behind some of these sacred teachings and words of wisdom regarding karma and inner spiritual contemplation. Written in poetic verse, I find the text in the Upanishads much more palatable than most translated spiritual teachings. I’ll be the first to admit, some of it feels preachy and not relatable, which is why I don’t throw all my philosophical and spiritual eggs in one basket, but it’s got several nuggets of insight and perspective that my brain seems to align with. I’ve been revisiting these lessons over the past couple of months–even before this pandemic began–in an effort to find just an inkling of that elusive Zen. I’ll leave you with a snippet of the Aitareya Upanishad that pertains to the unity of life:

The Self is in all.
He is all the gods, the five elements,
Earth, air, fire, water, and space;
all creatures,
Great or small, born of eggs, of wombs,
of heat,
Of shoots, horses, cows, elephants, men
and women;
All beings that walk, all beings that fly,
And all that neither walk nor fly.”

2020 A to Z Blogging Challenge

2020 A to Z Challenge, , , ,

Oops, I did it again. Another year went by without blogging, even though I said I would. Turns out, NYC has a lot of shiny objects. Plus, I’ve focused my writing energy on my YA manuscript, ROAD NOISE. For the last ten months or so, I wrote Monday-Friday, from about 8:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. and completed the book two weeks ago. It’s now in the cyber hands of a couple of agents (a hopeful assumption).

So timing is perfect to jump into the 2020 A to Z Blogging Challenge that starts April 1. The last time I participated in this challenge was back in 2015 and I really enjoyed it. You can check out those posts here.

This time around, I’ll be blogging about my experiences as a new New Yorker over the past year, as well as our new New Yorker life of being homebound in a small apartment during this pandemic. The city that never sleeps is definitely in for a long nap. So basically, each post will have two of each letter; a before and during, if you will.

Hopefully, this blogging challenge will give me something to focus on instead of my worrying about our friends and family back in Colorado, especially our son who attends college in Boulder.

Until then, stay safe and wash you hands.