It’s the Little Things

21 Jun

Sometimes being a woman in New York is exhausting.  The hooting, the hollering, the cat-calling, the whistling, the honking.  I tend to get the most harassment when I am on the run.  I can’t even count the number of times I have heard the comment

“Can I run with you, baby?”

“No.  And you couldn’t keep up if you tried.”

I’ve never had anyone take me up on my challenge and I hope that I don’t.  I’m fast(ish) but put me up against someone who does a few speed repeats and I’m toast.  Because of a vast amount of past experiences, when I run I tend to expect the worst from (male) passersby.  Every now and again, though, they surprise me in a good way.  I have been living, and running, in the same neighborhood for 7 years now.  I know all the neighborhood characters by face and some by name.  I pass the same people day in and day out.  For some reason, though, it never occurred to me that these same people notice me, too.  Today, I left my house with my gym bag, resigned to running on the treadmill because the prospect of 95 degree heat plus humidity plus a blazing sun seemed a little too much to handle, especially when I have to work until 4am.  On my way to the gym I caught sight of this guy who I have seen for years now but never spoken to.  He seems to know a lot of the old school people in the neighborhood.  He has a gravely voice and he oftentimes walks down the middle of fourth avenue rolling a shopping cart full of what appears to be sheet metal.  He curses a lot for reasons I have yet to figure out.  Call me an asshole but I never felt compelled to stop and have a conversation.  Today as I walked to the gym he caught my eye and in that unique voice he said,

“You can run, baby.  God bless you.  I seen you and damn, you can run.”

I smiled, thanked him sheepishly and went on my way, a little spring in my step.  Mostly, I run for me but every once in a while it is nice to be noticed and appreciated by a pseudo-stranger for the things you work hard at.

Tags: ,

Peace Out, Summer Choi

19 Jun

Summer choi.  A simple Google search returned hits of a person with the name Summer Choi. Guess she is an artist.  Certainly didn’t help me in my quest for dinner.  When I tried refining my search to “summer choi recipes” I ended up with a lot of suggestions for bok choy.  I love bok choy but again, not much help when in my fridge, wrapped in wet paper towels, were two large bunches of summer choi from two subsequent CSA hauls.  Hrm.  I went back to the fridge to investigate the greens.  It looked like frisée.  Upon tasting it, it tasted like frisée.  Okay then.  Summer choi = frisée.  Now we were getting somewhere.  The only problem is that I don’t really like frisée.  I always pick it off my salads, relegating it to the same place that radish generally resides:  the wild world of decorative vegetables.  I did some quick math and decided there weren’t enough salads in my future to decorate them reasonably with enough frisée to use both the bunches.  Plus, wasteful.  Back to the drawing board.  Some more research revealed that most people pair frisée with bacon and a soft boiled egg.  That would be great but I don’t eat meat of the land-living variety and we had already finished our half dozen eggs from last week’s share.  And then, bingo!  A recipe for suatéed lemon maple frisée from epicurious, reproduced here with added exclamations.

Suatéed Lemon Maple Frisée

  • 3 tablespoons olive oil, divided
  • 1/2 cup coarse fresh bread crumbs – we used Panco!
  • 3/4 teaspoon grated lemon zest
  • 3/4 teaspoon anchovy paste
  • 1 (1-pound) head frisée, torn
  • 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
  • 1/2 teaspoon pure maple syrup

Heat 1 tablespoon of olive oil over medium-heat until shimmers.  Add breadcrumbs and cook until golden brown, should take about 4 minutes.  Transfer into a bowl and add the lemon zest (really makes the dish!) and a pinch of salt.

Wipe the crumbs out of the pan, add the remaining olive oil and the anchovy paste (warning:  it’s a little stinky!) and heat for about 15 seconds.  With the heat on medium-high, add half the frisée and suaté until slightly wilted.  This should take about a minute, give or take.  Then add the remaining frisée and cook until wilted, another 2 minutes.  Take it off the heat and stir in the lemon juice, maple syrup and salt and pepper to taste.  Put on a plate and sprinkle (very liberally, I’d say) with the Panco. There will be likely be some Panco left over after the dish has been topped.  Try to keep yourself from eating it with a spoon.  Or don’t.  Personally, I have found that my self-control when it comes to lemon-zested Panco is seriously lacking.  You learn something new every day.

Seriously, this dish was a life saver.  Unfortunately we were too late for the first batch of “summer choi” which we were at first a little relieved about but after tasting this, and realizing how quick and easy it was, we were sort of sad it had to be banned to the garbage.  This wasn’t the prettiest dish we ever made (hence the lack of accompanying picture plus we ate it too fast), but it certainly went down easy.  Frisée, gone!

 

Tags: , , , ,

Bloomberg Ban on Big Bubbly

14 Jun

Those of you who know me are aware of my love for The New Yorker.  Yes, it arrives in my mailbox too often.  Yes, I have stacks of unread issues piling up and gathering dust in my room.  Yes, I have this ridiculous fantasy of one day reading them all despite never canceling my subscription.  Yes, I am aware that my life as a New Yorker subscriber makes me more likely to reach the rank of hoarder.  I don’t care.  I just love it so much.  This week’s cover was especially awesome considering Mayor Bloomberg’s proposed ban on large sodas.  Here it is for your viewing enjoyment.

newyorker

So awesome.  Also awesome is the “Talk of the Town” piece on the same topic entitled “Fluid Ounces” by Lizzie Widdicombe (fantastic name.. don’t ever change it).  First she goes over the basic premise of the ban which will effect drinks over 16 ounces and will not include convenience stores such as 7-Eleven — or as we used to call it growing up, Sleven —  which is set to open 100 new locations in NYC.  The author then went on a little soda-drinking tour, stopping in locations known for serving massive sized beverages, often with free refills.  Many of these were chain stores and a lot were located in tourist areas and the Bronx, the borough with the highest obesity rates.  The article quickly, rightfully, and not-surprisingly ended up focusing on income levels.  One KFC employee said “Show me a picture with the mayor insidea KFC.  His meals probably cost a thousand dollars.”  Downtown, standing outside the Waverly Inn, one of the locations where sodas are poured from small glass bottles into highball glasses, was interviewee Fran Lebowitz.  Of the proposed ban she said

“These issues are class issues… Soda is the recreation — the summer house — of the poor.  This man (Bloomberg) has eleven houses.  That’s the self-indulgence of a billionaire.  He’s of the generation of Jewish men who feel that if they didn’t become a doctor they are a failure.  Now he’s trying to become a doctor.”

Although I don’t quite agree with the way Lebowitz put it, I side with her sentiment.  Is it good to put ounces upon ounces of sugar liquid into your body day after day?  No, certainly not.  It’s bad for the individual and it’s bad for our health system.  But for a wealthy white man to go around telling people not what they should and should not drink but what they can and cannot drink, because he prefers sparkling water over Coke*, is really uncalled for.  Obesity is not only because of soda.  It is because of a lifestyle.  It is tied to differing ideas of beauty.  It is about access and education, or lack thereof.  It is about exercise.  It is about a litany of things.  And you know what?  If people want 32 ounces of soda they will get it.  Simple as that.  And no tsk tsking from Bloomberg is going to change that.

So Bloomberg.  I really appreciate what you did with the parks, they look great.  The beach volleyball courts in Brooklyn?  Yes!  But if you could please stop doing things like increasing term limits for yourself and screwing with people’s personal choice, that’d be awesome.  Thanks.

*That was a baseless assumption but I’m going with it.

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Radish Greens – Who Knew They Were Delicious?

7 Jun

So, in keeping with the theme that my blog has ABSOLUTELY no theme, I have decided to share with you small number of faithful followers something I “cooked” yesterday. The definition of cook, according to my highly technical Google search term “cook definition,” is to

prepare (food, a dish, or a meal) by combining and heating the ingredients in various ways.

As this recipe required no heating whatsoever, I suppose I am stretching the definition a little by saying I cooked it.  Especially since, as far as I know, there was no chemical reaction in keeping with something like ceviche to stand in for the heat element. I guess what I am trying to say is that I would like to share with you small number of followers something I created by mixing a few things together in a small, 4-cup Cuisinart Mini-Prep Plus… in orange!

And now for the pre-recipe, wholly unnecessary but undoubtedly expected, overshare.  My boyfriend and I are in a CSA and we picked up our first share yesterday.  Earlier in the day, Pete had received an email with the contents of the upcoming box:  braising greens, arugula, red leaf lettuce, green leaf lettuce, summer choi (another word for more leafy greens), radishes, turnips and sage.  The radishes and turnips came with their topping of green leaves which, after researching, I discovered were also edible and rumored to be rather delicious.  Having looked at the list of salad greens, salad greens and more salad greens, we decided to check out the Union Square Green Market in search of a few items to mix with all the salad greens to make it, well, more salad-y.  At the market we acquired sugar snap peas, heirloom tomatoes, yellow squash and two bunches of beets (because they looked so good AND there was a deal!) complete the their greens.  We then proceeded to the CSA pick-up location where we acquired an ungodly amount of leafy greens.  I mean, I knew there would be greens but this was like 3 bags full of greens.  So, so many greens.  It was intimidating!  What is one to do with so many greens??  How many salads can you really eat before the greens get all slimey and gross?  It was a race against the clock!  When we got home we decided the best idea was to divide and conquer.  Pete started roasting the beets and consolidating the bounty and I started researching uses for beet, turnip, and radish greens.  What I found was intriguing and, in the end, delicious.  I pulled it off this highly awesome website kept by a Parisian.  You should check it out.  She has cool things.

Radish Leaf Pesto

I know it’s not a beautiful picture but Pete and I ate too much of the pesto to do anything much more attractive than this.

2 large handfuls of radish leaves
1 ounce hard cheese (I used Parmesan)
1 ounce nuts (I used almonds here and, because the greens were older and more bitter, I used closer to 2 ounces I would guess)
2 cloves garlic
a bit of lemon zest
juice of half a lemon (also an add-on from the recipe and again because of the bitterness of the older leaves)
2 tablespoons olive oil plus more for consistency
salt, pepper and ground chilli pepper (I left that out) to taste

Put all the ingredients in a food processor and process in short bursts until it’s smooth.  Add more oil as needed for consistency.  Taste and adjust the seasoning.  For longevity, Clotilde Dusoulier, the author of the blog, advices to either freeze it or pack it in an airtight container and that if you add a thin layer of oil to the top it will stay fresh longer.  I appreciated the advice but I doubt it will be necessary – this pesto will be gone within a day.

Tags: , , , ,

A Simple Request

1 Jun

Working in a bar has made me learn a lot about people.  It has made me realize that, on the whole and when combined with alcohol and a certain lack of respect for service professionals, people are poorly behaved and quite stupid. In the past, I have written a a few times about the poorly behaved subset, but today I wish to regale you with a tale, a short tale, of stupidity.

My bar, for those of you who have had the pleasure of drinking there, is a bar, strictly that.  We have weekly food specials — wings on Mondays, cheese and crackers on Wednesdays, bagels on Sundays — but we lack a kitchen.  All the foodstuffs are brought in from outside and are free.  Sometimes, this leads to some confusion.  People come in on non-food days thinking that there will be food out.  People take a seat at the bar and place an order for wings when the goods are located directly behind them in a heating tray.  People sit down and order a beer and ask to see the menu.  All these different misconceptions about the services we provide, or don’t provide, are completely understandable.  The conversation I had last night, however, was not understandable at all.

A group of four people came in and found a table.  The representative of the group, a tall guy in plaid, then came up, ordered the decided-upon drinks, and asked to see the food menu.  I responded the way I always do.

“Sorry, we don’t have a kitchen but you’re more than welcome to bring food in if you’d like.  I also have this big book of menus if you want to order something.”

He nodded at me vigorously.

“Would you like the book of menus?”

More nodding.  I handed him the book, which is actually a huge binder full of little laminated folders packed with tons of menus from local restaurants (mostly Asian Fusion, it seems) and went along doing my job.  About 45 minutes later, a thin girl in a green dress (a t-shirt, maybe?) comes shuffling, and I mean shuffling, up to the bar, holding the binder open on her extended forearms.  She slides the binder down onto the bar in front of where I was doing dishes and looks up at me, doe eyed.  She then looks down at the open menu laying across the binder, looks up at me again and then cocks her head to the side.  At this point, I was pretty sure I knew what was about to happen but I didn’t want to believe it.  I gave her the benefit of the doubt.

Me:  “Yes?”

Simple Girl:  “We would like to order take-out off this menu,” tapping her finger on the menu for a local Middle Eastern restaurant.

Me:  “That’s great.  Call them.”

Simple Girl:  “Oh, we have to call?”

Me, exasperated:  “Yes.”

She then picked up the book of menus and once again laid it over her forearms and headed back to the table where the rest of her party awaited her.  I looked in disbelief at two of my other customers who had overheard the entire interaction.  They looked equally as amused.  I shook my head and continued on washing glasses, chuckling about the stupidity of the request.  Then, it occurred to me, it wasn’t just this one stupid girl.  There were 4 people.  There were 4 people sitting at a table, deciding where to order from, and they all came to the consensus that the reasonable thing to do at that juncture was not to order directly from the restaurant that clearly had no association with the establishment in which they were currently sitting.  No.  The reasonable thing to do was to send someone up to the bar with the menus to request that the bartender order their dinner for them. I stopped being amused and got a little sad.  People.  So stupid.

Tags: , , ,

Special Guest: Mavis Staples!

30 May

Just a warning, the following post will likely make very little sense.

So the dream theme continues but this time with a twist:  instead of water sports like in the last fun dream, this time I had a dream in which I was ice skating.  The premise of the dream was that I had to write a paper about something — I’m not sure what the topic was but if dream student Rebekah is anything like real student Rebekah then it probably had something to do with access to food, patenting seeds, maybe a little something about the construction of a pipeline and the resulting uptick in the spread of HIV along the trucking route — anyway, after the paper was written I then had to, with a partner, act out the topic and analysis of said topic on ice skates in front of the whole class which, as it turned out, was quite large.  I am not a good ice skater and, unlike my dream sailing prowess I have spoken of before, I am also not a good dream ice skater.  I spent the majority of my dream fretting over falling down and having my partner, equally as shitty in the skating department, slice my fingers off with his blade.  Rewind.

In the beginning of the dream I found myself sitting at a restaurant with a bunch of other people mere hours before the performance of the paper that I had yet to write.  I don’t know what kind of food we were eating, but I do know that I drank one of those mini old school bottles of Coke.  I know this because, upon asking for, and reviewing, the bill, I discovered that all the drinks were missing.  Trying to be a responsible dream patron, I went to the server and asked him about the pricing of the different sodas.  Were they all $1.50? I wondered.  Apparently not.  The server then launched into a whole diatribe about soda pricing, quoting for me the prices of all the other drinks in the drink fridge and omitting information about the relevant beverages which, in the end, turned out to all cost $1.50.  Sigh.  I threw money on the table and rushed off to class…I mean the skating competition…I mean class.  When I arrived, I busted out my computer, determined to finish the paper before I took to the ice.  Then, all of a sudden, I was at the sea shore!  With my computer!  What if sand gets into the keys??  People were swimming and having fun.  I was stressed out.  I decided to take a nap.  I walked inside and I was in a house that looked vaguely familiar to me.  I went in search of a bed.  I looked and looked.  Then, finally, I found a room with bed potential.  I opened the door.  There in the bed was some old dude who I don’t know but who seemed to upset dream me.  He awoke when I opened the door.  He was wearing ice skates and was trying, ungracefully, to ask me about the state of the paper I was working on.  I turned and fled back down the stairs to the sea shore which, oddly enough, was overlooked by a sink that was full of dishes.  I started doing the dishes and, in the process, found a bag of spicy mangoes.  I snuck some into my pocket.

Then…transformed back to class!  Class was cold, because of the skating rink, and I was sitting on a sofa, trying to work on my paper that, at this point, consisted only of an introductory paragraph.  Dream Rebekah thought that writing the paper in larger font would make it look longer and therefore closer to completion.  Real Rebekah would never do such a thing.  I was getting stressed.  Getting antsy.  Then, the lights dimmed.  Everyone looked around.  And who comes in?  Mavis Staples!  She performed a rousing rendition of “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around” much to the pleasure of her brother Malcolm X (who is not her brother in real life, people!), also in attendance.  I woke up in the middle of the performance.  No encore for me but I did get out of performing that unfinished paper on ice.

Tags: , ,

My Own Corner of Crazy

22 May

So a few weeks ago, a very nice man, Jon, came and cleaned my apartment.  All of us living here — and believe me, there are a lot of us — are pretty good about cleaning up after ourselves.  We do the dishes, wipe down the counter tops, take out the garbage, clean up spills, wash the tub.  But none of us do the serious cleaning, like cleaning behind the toilet (or, in my case, anywhere near the toilet), the insides of garbage cans, the tops of shelves that have accumulated layers of dust which eventually becomes sticky and is really alarming when you touch it in an effort to get something perched up high.  I was anticipating his visit for weeks.  The morning of his arrival I said to my mom on the phone,

“Mom, I want it to be 4 o’clock already so he can be done and I can see how clean the apartment is.”

I was giddy.  When he first got to the house, he wanted to assess what sorts of cleaning supplies we had so I could run out and get whatever was missing.  He went into my most anxiety-causing area of the house – the Cabinet Under the Sink.   I have always thought to myself that if I was a roach or something else equally as disgusting (does such a thing even exist??) I would for sure hide in the Cabinet Under the Sink.  It is dark, there are pipes in there which means moisture, there are little nooks and crannies in which to hide.  Roach heaven.  Anyway, as my heart pounded he pulled out the big blue plastic bin of bleach, drain-o, roach killer (ugh), latex gloves and dish soap.  Lots and lots of dish soap.  By the time he was done going through the dreaded Cabinet Under the Sink I had broken into a slight sweat, due to roach-fear, and a slight red glow, due to embarrassment.  Sitting on the counter in front of me was not one, not two, but 5 containers of dish soap with varying degrees of content remaining.  And that is not counting the full one I had just purchased the day before that was sitting unopened on the kitchen table.  I flashed forward to my life, 20 years down the line.  Me, sitting in an easy chair, my 50 cats wandering around the piles, and piles of Seventh Generation lemongrass scented dish washing fluid, the 1-800-GotJunk trucks parked outside with the camera crew and the mental health professional:  The Dish Soap Hoarder!  I shook the horrific image out of my head to respond to Jon’s repeated question:

“Do you want me to marry these?”

“I don’t think that’s legal in New York.  Oh.  You mean as in combining them? Oh, yea, I guess you’d better…”

Jon went along his merry way, the plethora of dish soap no more than a hiccup in the day’s activities.  Before he left, and after he had found the 5 packets of sponges, he said

“Yea, I think I have everything I need for next time.  Just don’t buy anymore sponges…or dish soap.”

I chuckled.  Of course I wouldn’t.  That would be crazy.  And then yesterday, after I finished a recovery run on the treadmill, I decided to do some light grocery shopping.  Up and down the aisles I went throwing things into my shopping basket.  I got to the check out counter and started unloading my goods:  head of lettuce, red bell pepper, zip lock bags, bananas, dish soap.  Dish soap?!  How’d that get in there??  I looked around me, inexplicably thinking someone might call me out on my crazy.  I picked up the dish soap — Seventh Generation, lemongrass scented — and handed it to the check-out girl and said with a serious tone,

“You’d better take this.”

She gave me a sideways glance that said “this bitch is crazy,” took the soap as if it was nothing and continued scanning my items.  I paid and walked out.  Sorry, A&E, you’ll have to find a new star.

Tags: , , ,

Only in Dreams

18 May

The past few weeks I have had the strangest dreams.  Or, should I say, I have remembered the strangest dreams.  I don’t know if it’s that I have been sleeping more fitfully, waking up at more regular intervals and thereby interrupting the process of my dream and making me remember, or just that my mind is trying to tell me something.  If it’s the latter, I think what it is trying to tell me is that there are some people I am angry at and I have a strange obsession with water sports of all kinds.

I have recently had two dreams in which I told off people who had wronged me, or perhaps people who I perceive to have wronged me.  The first one, the more detailed dream, made a lot of sense.  I have rehearsed in my head the very conversation that occurred in my dream.  Only, when I imagine the conversation I believe he will argue with me about how wrong I am, how I misperceived things, how I didn’t see what I know I saw.  In the dream though, he just sat there calmly while I told him what was what.  Didn’t defend himself, just sat there.  And this is because I’m right and he’s wrong and dream him realizes it.  Which is awesome.  Dream him is so much more agreeable than real him.  This closure that I have wanted to get for so long, that I know would only succeed in making me seem like a crazy person, was achieved in a dream state.  Hopefully that’s all that was needed.  Hopefully I won’t have another dream in which I push him down a flight of stairs because that is another thing I have fantasized about here and there.  Violence, whether in real life or dream life, is not good.  Or so I’m told.  The other dream, however, was sort of out of left field.  The person who I yelled at is someone who I am happy to not have in my life anymore, someone who was more of a detriment to my happiness than anything else.  I tend to operate by the theory that if you have a relationship with someone, any kind of relationship, and more often than not you leave an interaction feeling worse or less happy than you did when you entered it, it’s probably not a relationship you need to be in.  I was never happy after I saw this person.  Ever.  So why the dream closure?  Who knows but it was awesome.  And, the extra great thing about it was that, at least in this one dream, dream Rebekah was exactly the same as real Rebekah!  I told the girl off, and then I went around, in my dream, and told all my dream friends about what had happened.  I even embellished a little to make the story better!  It’s nice to know that in a dream state I exhibit remarkable consistency.

And now on to water sports.  As some of you who know me might know, I love love love the Olympics.  Specifically the summer Olympics.  I have even assembled my ideal women’s gymnastics team.  (I have also discovered that when you tell people you have assembled your ideal women’s gymnastics team they think you are a little bit of a freak so it is best to just keep it to yourself.)  Anyway, a few weeks ago I had a dream that I was in an Olympic sailboat race.  Not only was I in the race, but I won.  Yes, ladies and gentlemen, you are reading the blog of a dream-Olympics gold medal sailor.  And I did it on a Sunfish, no less.  You might ask why, of all the Olympic sports, and considering my obvious obsession with gymnastics, I would have a dream in which I sailed.  I do not have an answer to that question.  I don’t think I have set foot on a sailboat, Sunfish or otherwise, since summer camp in the early 90s.  But let me tell you one thing I know for sure:  winning Olympic gold is awesome.  What’s even more awesome is that when I woke up there was like a 5 second period during which I actually thought I had won Olympic gold in real life.  Those 5 seconds were totally great.  And when I realized I had neither attended the Olympics nor won the event, I wasn’t even let down!  I was just super impressed by my own imagination.  I went from congratulating myself for winning to congratulating myself for being a really good dreamer.  Gold medal caliber, even.

Then, two nights ago I had yet another dream.  In this dream, a friend of mine was pregnant.  Very pregnant.  The weird part of the dream was that in her rather large state she insisted on swimming a 100-lap race.  In open water.  Without goggles.  (And no, it was not part of the Olympics…it was just your regular, every day, run-of-the-mill 100-lap open water race.  For fun.)  I don’t know why she wasn’t wearing goggles.  I don’t know why she was in the race – she isn’t a swimmer in real life.  I also don’t know whether or not she won because a 100-lap race takes a really long time to finish, in a dream or otherwise.  What I do know is that she was doing a damn good job last I saw.  Maybe the dream-baby added to her buoyancy.

Anyway, that’s it for this first and, likely not last, installation of my dream journal.  Going forward I hope for more water sports and less anger.

Tags: , , , , , ,

Solamente en ingles

9 May

First and foremost, please forgive my inappropriately accented Spanish.  I have no idea how to make an accent mark in WordPress but, for those of you who care to know, there should be an accent over the “e” in “ingles.”  And now, on to the real purpose of this post.

Last night before bed I was perusing the New York Times on my phone when I came across this article about the mysterious death of a groom at Churchill Downs.  In the interest of full disclosure, I would just like to say that when I initially read the title and, in fact, the reason that I continued on to read the article at all was because I thought it referred to a bridegroom, not someone hired to care for horses.  Like most people, I am always interested in something tragic.  Not to say that the death of this man isn’t a tragedy, but there is something especially upsetting about the death of someone right before or right after marriage, or some other important life event.  It’s like, you have made a decision to do something big and important with the future in mind, and then bam.  Dead.  Anyway, as I was reading the article (I had committed to it, after all) I came across the following few paragraphs:

Officials said Mr. Pérez, a Guatemalan immigrant, was living in the stables at Churchill Downs at the time of his death. His son, Wilson Pérez, 19, identified his body. He had been licensed by the racing commission as a groom in 2008, Mr. Brown said.

Police officers worked to establish the facts of the case on Monday, hobbled in part by the fact that Mr. Pérez’s son does not speak English.

“It is sort of a barrier that you can’t get the information firsthand,” said Lt. Barry Wilkerson of the Louisville Metro Police Department, who spoke at a news conference on Monday.

Okay, people, we are talking about Spanish, here, right?  Not like, Malayalam or Welsh.  According to the US Census, as of 2010 16.3% of the overall population, and 3.1% of the population of Kentucky, identified themselves as being of “Hispanic or Latino origin.”  I know that not everyone who identifies as being of Hispanic or Latino origin speaks Spanish, but I also know there are plenty of people of other backgrounds that do speak Spanish.  Also, weren’t there all kinds of people there for the Kentucky Derby?  Maybe one of them speaks Spanish.   I don’t know, maybe having lived in New York for all these years has blinded me to the fact that there are some more linguistically homogenous areas of the country, but I can’t imagine how trying to get information out of a Spanish speaker would be especially “hobbling” to a murder investigation.  We’ve got plenty of Spanish-speaking police officers up here in NYC, maybe one of them would be willing to help.  It’d be a nice vacation from the rain.

Tags: , , , , , ,

Don’t Be An Asshole

3 May

Last Thursday night I was, as I am every Thursday night, behind the stick of the bar in which I work.  It had been one of those days.  Specifically, it had been the day that I was harassed by someone in, and on my way home from, The Home Depot near where I live.  I was not in the mood.  But, in an effort at being professional, I tried to put my day’s anger out of my mind.  After all, it wasn’t the fault of my customers that some asshat in an SUV had stalked me through a hardware store and then tried to give me a ride home.  The night went along more or less without a hitch…until about 3:15.  We have this customer who comes in after his restaurant closes most nights of the week. I find him incredibly annoying.  Also, weird.  Annoying and weird.  But as long as I ask him how his night went, give him the 5 tastes of beer he wants and then the actual pint he decides upon, everything is more or less okay.  I try not to talk to him much but to be pleasant when do.  Generally he only stays for one or two, generally he is gone by 12:30 or so.  This past week was different.

He, I’ll call him Daniel, came in at the usual time with a few of his coworkers.  They were celebrating the return of one of the other employees of the restaurant who had been injured the week before.  We were all happy he was back at work and smiling.  Daniel had his customary two beers and then the third.  After the third beer, about 2 1/2 hours after he originally showed up, he decided to go home.  I was happy.  Then, 15 minutes later, he was back.  That is never a good sign.  Generally I find that people who come in late night looking for that one last drink are the most problematic of them all.  Sometimes you don’t know how much they have had and that last one puts them over the edge.  Sometimes you know how much they’ve had but, since they have been there for awhile and you know them, you feel a little bad cutting them off even though you know you should.  You don’t cut them off and you always, every single time, regret it and swear next time that happens you’ll do it.  But then it happens again and you don’t.  Vicious cycle.  Anyway, I have no idea of what this guy’s tolerance is whatsoever.  I only ever see him have one or two.  But I knew when he walked back in the door that this was the drink that was going to do it.  He ordered a Guinness.  With a 4.2% ABV, I figured this was a safe and smart order.  He started asking my coworker a question.  She said she didn’t want to talk about it.  Then he did the thing which I find that men often do:  he asked her again.  Again and again and again.  He phrased it differently.  Tried to guess the answer.  Over and over and over.  Finally she, and I, had had enough.  It was my bar – she was barbacking – so I decided to step in and ask him to drop it.  As I see it, as a bartender, it is my job to make sure that my clients and coworkers feel comfortable and safe and not annoyed.  He argued with me, told me he wasn’t talking to me, that I interrupted.  She fled to the bathroom, I walked away to the other side of our very long bar, leaving him alone.  A few moments later a song came on that sounded more appropriate at a funeral than in a bar, so I walked down the other end, past Daniel, to skip to the next one.  He started up with me again.  I ignored him.  And then, again.  Clearly this is a man who doesn’t take no, or drop it for that matter, for an answer. Finally, after another pointless back-and-forth, I got so annoyed by his condescension and accusatory tone that I asked him to finish his beer and go.  He said he could go somewhere else.  So I said fine, and I took his beer and pulled it in front of me, a sign that it was no longer his to drink.  He looked at me and said,

“Are you drunk?”

“No,” I responded, “but I’m fairly certain you are.  I’m working.  This is me doing my job.”

And then he said it, “go fuck yourself,” and he stormed off.

Now I have been a person far longer than I have been a bartender, but 95% of the times I have been told off in one way or another have been when I have been behind the bar.  And 95% of those times have been by men.  It’s something that I never get used to and something I completely don’t understand.  Being called a bitch.  Told I am “disrespectful.”  Informed that if a girl at my bar has a tattoo on her lower back that is exposed it is someone’s “right to take a photo of it,” that if she didn’t want it looked at she wouldn’t have gotten a tattoo there.  Being instructed to “smile, it’s not so bad.”  Having dollar bills hurled at me over a bar as if I were a piece of trash.  I am told by friends not to let it bother me, and it’s not as if it diminishes my feelings of self-worth or anything, but it still doesn’t feel good.  All I am doing is trying to create an environment that is safe and enjoyable to the majority of people in it.  If you are the one that is standing in the way of the obtainment of that environment, then I am going to ask you to stop and, if you don’t, to leave.  And your meager tips aren’t going to stand in the way of me holding you accountable.  I don’t need the money that badly and I don’t need you to come back.  I find that the people I stand up for, the people I step in for, make much more loyal customers than the drunken idiot I tolerate.  That’s the way it is.  That is my job. Don’t blame me for the fact that you misbehaved, blame yourself.  Go home and think about it.  Figure out why it is that you are not able to act like a normal person in the world. Alcohol is not an excuse and it’s not a license to do, and say, whatever you want, even though a lot of people think it is.  All you have to do is abide by one simple rule:  don’t be an asshole.  Now is that so hard?

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →