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Triborough Bridge at Dusk
On a cloudy evening that threatened rain, my roommate Andrew and I went for a short walk north to the Astoria park , right across the river from Randall’s Island and beneath the Triborough Bridge.
The city skyline sparkled with misty intrigue.
My First Day in Astoria
The best days are the days when I forget myself and just for a moment, just a breath, I am reminded of being in Italy so much that I am completely transported. It’s like catching a scent on the breeze that disappears before you can identify it.
#991: Sometimes, New York City makes me think that I am in Italy.
(excerpted from someday-forthcoming 1000 Reasons I Love New York.)
Today was one of the days when New York was at its best. I woke up well-rested, my first morning alone in my new apartment in Astoria. The sunlight danced across my white curtains and I walked through the blue and green and yellow living room –painted by former tenants–into the yellow kitchen. My own kitchen, clean, spare, and yellow.
I decided to make a bowl of oatmeal. Half a cup of oatmeal, one cup of water, generous pinches of ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, a few squirts of honey, and a handful each of dried cherries and cranberries. Microwave and serve.
When I opened the window, I couldn’t believe how warm it was, so I brought my oatmeal onto the fire escape to enjoy it in the sunshine.
The fire escape overlooks the back garden, with a central fountain and trimmed hedges that brought me right back to Sant’Ilario d’Enza in Italy, where I lived earlier this year.
Later, when I walked down the street to drop off my laundry, I noticed that two of the buildings on my street are called “Locarno” and “Amalfi.” Locarno, I assume, has something to do with Florence’s Arno River. Then I saw a typical Italian clothesline scene:
The highlight of the day was my trip to Euromarket, the European foods specialty market a few blocks from my apartment. I drove by it several times while I was moving in and I couldn’t wait to see what they had inside. It’s one of the biggest European-import stores I’ve been to so far in New York, with the exception of course of Eataly. They have an enormous selection of chocolate, including the largest collection of Milka and Ritter Sport chocolate bars I’ve seen in America.
They also carry a huge assortment of packaged cookies and crackers, many of which intrigued me with their foreign characters and delicious-looking package imagery. I was truly transported to Italy when I saw brands like Mulino Bianco and Gran Pavesi, including the slices of toast that Italians eat for breakfast topped with jam or nutella. Their bulk section excited me the most, though, because it had inexpensive Italian polenta, which I’ve been searching for since I returned from Emilia-Romagna!
The last Italian moment of the day? An afternoon blood orange (arancia rossa.) Italy in winter is the land of oranges, the freshest, biggest, roundest, sweetest oranges I have ever tasted. They sell them in supermarkets with big green leaves still on them, and I used to eat two or three a day when I was in Emilia-Romagna. Blood oranges are especially prized and are often mixed in with regular oranges, so you never know which to expect when you peel one. When I was the nanny in Sant’Ilario, I used to squeeze fresh blood orange juice for the kids every afternoon at snacktime.
Buon Ringraziamento
Yesterday I arrived at the Albany-Rensselaer train station at 2:15pm. It was heartwarming to see all of the families expectantly looking toward the arriving travelers and how excited they got when they spotted the one they were looking for among the crowd. Such a different vibe from your day-to-day train and subway commuting, when you push through a wall of people to get off the train only to discover that the up escalator at 59th Street is broken. Again.
Today I was lucky enough to have a delicious Thanksgiving meal cooked for me by my family, and to spend the entire day in the company of aunts, uncles, cousins, parents, and my grandma! Highlight: my mom teaching my cousin how to carve a turkey.
I know that Italians don’t technically celebrate Thanksgiving, even though I used to hear it translated (literally) as “Ringraziamento.” But somehow the entire spirit of the holiday makes it, for me, the most Italian of all American holidays, one that brings us the closest to the Italian concept of “giorno di festa.” It’s not a holiday exclusive to one religious group, so it’s safe to say that the whole country kind of shuts down. People stop working and checking e-mail (maybe?) It’s not Italian in that everyone spends hours traveling to reach their families–if this were Italy, we’d all be together already. Its purpose is to gather with family and take the day to eat a multicourse meal, drink a few bottles of wine, talk a lot, eat more, and talk even more. There is no purpose other than relaxation, not at a future time, but here and now, today. Not with the family you wish you had, but with the people that are actually around you. The family, holiday meal (“cenone,”) is my favorite part of my memories of Italy, those endless Sundays after lunch spent playing with kids and just digesting.
Buon ringraziamento a tutti!
And now to bed, because we all know what tomorrow is.
Learn Italian: Smurfs
Italian magazines make me happy. I love the photos, the gossip, and most of all I love reading their colloquial Italian, usually filled with colorful slang expressions and peppered with creative use of English language words understood to mean things other than what they mean in English.
Back when I was living in Parma earlier this year, my favorite magazine was TuStyle, a fashion/gossip/women’s lifestyle weekly I bought for one euro at the train station. But my favorite Italian magazine of all time is Vanity Fair. I still remember my first copy, which I bought almost three years ago now, when I was taking the train from Florence to Venice on my own. A photo of a minimally-clothed Kate Winslet graced the cover–this was back when she was promoting both The Reader and Revolutionary Road–together with the words “Grassa per sempre,” or “fat forever.” The title was a direct quote of hers from the feature piece, in which she recounted her struggles with weight and how she felt the shadow of body self-consciousness cling to her even after weight loss success.
I’m not a big consumer of American Vanity Fair, but I like the Italian one because it intersperses fun pop culture articles with travel and some thought-provoking material. Plus, Italian musical artist Mina answers readers’ love and relationship questions on the back page of every issue.
I was flipping through a June 2011 issue today as I’m traveling northward via train to celebrate Thanksgiving with family. I happened to see this article:
I believe I knew at one time that the Italian word for Smurf is “Puffo.” (Plural? Puffi.) But I guess I’ve forgotten and seeing the word in print made me burst out laughing. Say it out loud. It’s delightful! With the Italian emphasis on the vowels, hitting the f’s hard and long, it just sounds so…so cute!
Thanks to Mary for bringing me the magazine!
Pet Corner on 60th & Lex
Things I Love About NYC (Items excerpted from the to-be-published list, 1000 Things I Love about NYC)
#58 Vary the way you walk by one block north, south, east, or west and you will probably discover something amazing/shocking/surprising/disgusting that you had no idea would be there (even if you commute to work through that neighborhood every single weekday.)
#117 People figure out how to make money in curious and creative ways.
#190 Even New Yorkers love animals as much as everyone else.
As I exited from the 4 train at 59th & Lex today, as I do every Monday-Friday to go to work, I didn’t follow the shops down Lexington and then turn left on 55th, across from a church and passing 2 Starbucks and 2 Vegetarian Snackbars on my way. Instead, I turned north and walked uptown one block, where I encountered the following scene on the busy southwest corner of 60th and Lexington:
Look closely at the above image and you should see 2 dogs, 3 cats, and 2 guinea pigs. Don’t be fooled by the 2 dogs in the center of the frame in front of the yellow birdcage–they are stuffed animals, and the birds in the cage are merely colorful wooden replicas of the real thing. But the other animals are very much alive–although the 2 guinea pigs to the left of the birdcage move so infrequently that it took me a few moments of staring to ascertain whether they were stuffed or not.
I stopped in my tracks when I saw this display. So did almost everyone else who passed by. Some people gathered to observe safely from a distance, while others boldly approached the animals and petted them.
The strangest part of the scene was this: nowhere could I locate the owner, proprietor, or caretaker of the animals. Yet none of the animals looked concerned or scared. The guinea pigs lounged lazily in their Sunday robes. The dogs cantered as long as their chain-link leashes would allow them, loudly greeting oncoming canines and straining to follow them. The cats under the birdcage were the only ones who seemed slightly preoccupied at their situation, as if they were stranded on a high-up precipice with no escape route in sight. They were fine for the moment, but should imminent danger present itself, they had nowhere to go–and they knew it. (I know from experience that cats always think one step ahead and always want to have an escape route.)
On the other hand, the long-haired black cat perched to the right of the yellow birdcage looks regal, pristine, and serenely above it all. I thought he was saying, “I own this town.”
In my perplexion I turned to a halted passerby next to me and asked him, “Who do the animals belong to?”
He replied, “There’s an old man that is always here with them.”
Sure enough, just a few moments later, the old man arrived. It appears that he is not trying to sell the pets, just display them to earn more donations in their food bowls. Not a bad idea.
Dear Erratic NYC Weather Gods,
…Since I moved here you’ve given me a July heat wave, an August hurricane, a super swampy September, and snow on Halloween. This past week you were so frigid I thought we’d skipped Fall entirely.
But today, all I have to say is thank you. The sun is firing up the red and yellow leaves that remain with passion. I’m walking to the bus stop and smiling because I’m not wearing a coat. It’s the kind of Fall day that lives in a fevered February fantasy and will keep me warm all winter long.
Perhaps tomorrow will be cold and blustery. Maybe even so cold it makes the back of my neck and my scalp ache in longing for a hat, hood, or scarf to cover it. But today, today is an unexpected blessing. And I’m grateful for the very unpredictability of our NYC weather gods.
How To Be A Pedestrian in the Bronx
1. Walk with the natives when crossing the street.
2. Take it one lane at a time.
3. Be confident to the point of being cocky. That will earn you respect from oncoming cars’ drivers trying to prove their machismo.
4. NEVER assume you have the right of way when crossing a driveway. Especially if that driveway leads into a 24-hour Dunkin Donuts and Baskin Robbins combo drive-thru. Once I saw a woman, holding her 3-year-old son’s hand, walk into a car moving into the driveway that expected her to stop first.
5. That being said, in all other instances, create the right of way for yourself.
6. If you get cut off by a car making a turn when you’re crossing the street, the driver may wave to you gleefully.
7. During a rainstorm, and for several days after, access to most sidewalk will be blocked by puddles roughly the size and depth of Lake Superior. Wear galoshes or walk in the road.
8. It’s faster to walk than take the bus during workday hours.
My first visit to Coney Island
Top, above: view of the boardwalk from inside the Dunkin Donuts at the subway station.
It was a cold, blustery, overcast day when Tommy, Mary and I rode out to Coney Island. None of us had ever been, so we hopped on the N train.
We got there around 5pm, and the Lunapark that I saw advertisements for all summer was of course closed since the season was over. Only a skinny black cat was slinking through the park grounds. But we went out to the beach and it was beautiful. The sand was dirty but we took off our shoes and socks anyway and went out to the water’s edge.
There were some skinny teenagers walking along the boardwalk and a youngish couple posing for professional photos in front of the artificial palm tree and along the rocks by the water. A few people walked their dogs along the shore. Behind us, the buildings behind the ferris wheel lit up as the sun set.
So was the train station when we got back.
Learn Italian: Poccio
In September I was lucky enough to host two of my Italian friends from Reggio Emilia at my place in the Bronx! We had originally planned for them to visit in July when I was living in Manhattan, but it was more convenient for them to pass through NYC on their way back to Italy (they had been staying in Denver for the summer, learning English and exploring the west coast.)
It was so awesome to get to speak Italian with them again! But we did speak a lot if English too, because they learned it quite well over the summer and wanted to practice as much as possible before going back to Italy.
Nevertheless, I managed to get a few new Italian words out of them. We also had some adventures that I hope to post about in the next few days.
Today’s learn Italian post + cute and funny anecdote is about fast food and the word poccio, which means a strange combination of different things.
In my case, I learned the word when I tried to convince my friends Tommy and Mary to try dipping French fries in a milkshake. They thought I was joking. I couldn’t get them to realize how yummy it truly is. So I promised myself to make them try it before they left. I thought the flavor sensation would win them over.
It didn’t.
They described it as a poccio. So at least I learned a new word.
When Nutmeg Met Basil 