For those of you living in the NYC area who enjoy cruising ebay and craigslist for neat finds, I’ve got a good site for you. I’m probably late jumping on the bandwagon for this site, as it says they are celebrating their 1 year anniversary, but the Housing Works Thrift Stores have a great online auction site. You can shop by the window displays of their various storefronts! What a great idea. It is a great quick glance at the various styles of the city. Do you think these reflect the vibe of the various locales?

I’m seriously pondering this pear print.

The 14th street window looks great too… love that wood chair hanging up in the left side.

There is a body shop/garage next door and now that the weather is pleasant they’ve taken their work and their radio outside. We leave our side door open for a bit a fresh air, so we’ve really been treated some gems in the past few days as they play the best and most unexpected music. Today’s sound track includes Copa Cobana, and a bit of classic disco. Yesterday we were treated to some Sammy Davis Jr and various other rat pack tunes. Good stuff.

I’ve just noticed that 423Smith has been added to I Had Outs Poker Blog links so I guess I’m now obligated to make a poker-related post every so often. Here’s one relating to the neighborhood:

Read in the Carroll Garden’s Courier police log -

An area man was beaten and robbed last week after a late-night poker game at a local bar. The men who attacked him were the sore losers that the victim had cleaned out, officials were told.

As of this writing, cops had arrested at least one of the poker plays allegedly responsible for the robbery, which took place just after 4 a.m. on September 16.

The victim told the police that he was leaving the bar and was walking down the 200 block of Smith Street when one of his “poker friends” allegedly trailed him, hoping to get his winnings back. When the victim kept walking, the suspects allegedly attacked, breaking the man’s nose as well as a couple of ribs.

The suspects allegedly ran off with $500 in case as well as the victim’s cell phone.

Investigating the robbery, police rounded up and arrested 22-year old Maurice Panchame, who was charged with robbery. As of this writing, cops were searching for the other jokers involved in this caper.
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Ouch!

Speaking of…Tammy? Andrew? Leon? Dan? Wei? Devin? Allen? Dave? Harv? When’s our next game? No guns/knives/baseball bats/Irish allowed!
Okay, just kidding about the Irish of course. In fact, I’ll provide the Jameson’s.

The gut-splittingest show in town, The Nights of Our Lives, makes its monthly visit to the UCB Theater tomorrow night at 9:30p!

The deal is five writers tell a true (ish) story pertaining to a specific theme. This month’s theme is “Love, Lust, & Heartbreak.” It will be sure to make everyone in attendance incredulous, disturbed, and, ultimately, uncomfortable. Many of the stories will probably involve bodily functions. A couple tales will be oddly poignant.

All hyperbole aside, this is one of the best and cheapest ($5!) shows in New York. Verily, it will be a night of YOUR LIFE. Zing.

Anyway, again, The Nights of Our Lives, 9:30p tomorrow (9/27) at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater. You can listen to mp3s of past shows HERE.

Edit: If you decide to go, call ahead and reserve tickets because it will sell out. The UCB box office number is 212-366-9176.

Remember when the “rock” in “indie rock” actually meant something? If you do, tomorrow night you’ll want to check out CG’s very own pep squad, Goes Cube, who will regale you with angular, devil-horn-worthy stop/start tuneage along the lines of Drive Like Jehu and Hoover, except with more of the metal and less of the classic emo.

Goes Cube plays Sin-e tomorrow (9/26) with You Say Party! We Say Die! and The Blow. Doors open at 8p, and it’s an $8 cover, I think…? Anyway, check out their MySpace page for more listening pleasures.

If you’re lucky, you might even see David make the “AWESOME SHRED” face.

He’s done a bunch of other flipbook movies too.

My friend Tom sent this link. This guy can really dance!

I paid Rosa (from Frank Luncheonette) today for my coffee with a $5 and started to walk away from the counter without my change. She said to me “We’re both stunad’s today huh, you forgot your change” Turns out Rosa and I were both having a ditzy day. Then another patron joined in the discussion of the difference between a stunad and a stupido. Stunad is just ditzy, air headed, flakey - whereas a stupido seems to be more of a dumb ass. And well, stunad (or spaz) is not an entirely poor description of me at times, especially when I haven’t had my coffee.

In exchange for the new phrase, I shared with Rosa and the other guy the Dutch gesture for “crazy.” Instead of twirling your finger by your ear to indicate “screwy in the head” as we do in America - the Dutch curve their index finger like a hook, and then move it in a arch in front of their forehead. This takes on all various sorts of styles and flourishes as befitting the finger waver, but it all communicates the same. According to wikipedia tapping your forehead is also commonly accepted in holland.

Definitions from Urban dictionary:

1. stunad: Italian slang for a stupid person
“Whaddaya mean ya quit ya job, ya stunad?”

2. stunad Italain-American for ‘light headed person’.
“You stunad, you forgot the tickets?!?!”

Yes, the couch saga continues. With the arrival of our new couch, we had to find a new home for the old, comfortable, perfectly nice couch. We’d spent many an hour on that couch - watching movies, eating popcorn, watching movies, eating more popcorn. But it was time for poor couchy to go.

I put out an ad for the couch on cragislist for a FREE COUCH. The only catch was that you had to come and get it out of our apartment. I assured my husband that the switch would be no trouble at all and the Craigslist folks would do all the heavy lifting. Famous last words.

(more…)

see also

For those of you who were just dying to find out what became of the couch we found on the street..

From Flickr

There has been a bit of news lately about the astronauts losing stuff in space. I guess they’ve had some trouble misplacing screws and bolts and spatulas and what not. But really, shouldn’t we give them a little slack? How easy can it be do do anything floating around in zero gravity encased in a large puffed-up suit?

But there is quite a bit more than a spatula out there in the ether.

The US Space Surveillance Network tracks around 9,000 objects in orbit that are bigger than a few centimetres. Of these, 17% are used rocket bodies from launches, 31% are operational or retired satellites, 38% are fragments from previous collisions and 13% are “mission related debris” - bolts and other spare parts.

Friday night we went to Kabab King in Jackson Heights. Having lived in the DC area for a few years, we are always on the hunt for a kabab place that can fill the shoes of Moby Dick’s House of Kabobs. Kabab King might just be the ticket. While an Iranian Kabob (Moby Dicks) is quite a bit different from a Pakistani Kabab (Kabab king), they are both equally delicious! I ordered the Beef Bihari platter, which is sort of like pulled beef (soft and falls apart easy) but with a hoopla of south Asian spices. The platter included a heaping helping of rice and some salad. Delicious!

Kabab King

Afterwards we went to the Patel Brother’s Grocery Store, where I was introduced to entirely new world of vegetables! Here is a nice map of the area. Kabab King isn’t on this map but it is right next to the Eagle Theater (#9)

Here are some pictures from Patel Brothers.

Bitter Gourd. 2 ladies were kind enough to give us some preparation tips. I gather it is something of an acquired taste. I’ll let you know how it turns out.

I thought this looked so very nice and green.

Now that I’ve looked up the uses of Ghee I wish I had bought some.

And last but not least, I bought a bag of sliced frozen Chickoo. There was a milkshake recipe on the back so I figured it must be good. Honestly I hadn’t heard of Chickoo before and it was in the frozen section along with onions, peppers and bitter gourds, so i thought it might just be a spicy vegetable (which made the idea of a milkshake even more intriguing…) My powers of deduction in regards to the grouping of frozen foods failed me and it is actually a delicious fruit also known as a Sapodilla. I look forward to trying out that milkshake recipe tonight.