Poor in New York: Paper Towels & Coffee Filters

I’m sitting at my kitchen table, as the sun spills into my little apartment from all angles. The street is quiet, the windows are open, and the light looks golden as it waltzes on my wooden floors. While typing frantically for a midterm is no ideal way to spend a Sunday afternoon, I could think of worse pastimes. The only thing that would make this activity better would be a cup of coffee.

I clean out the pot, grab the coffee grounds, and find the filters. One problem: I can’t find the filters.

Not on my shelf.

Not by the coffee maker.

Not in the wrong cabinet.

Not even in their secret spot behind the spices.

At first, I’m displeased. Then anger sets in. Must I really change out of my PJs and walk to C-Town? Really? Must I? Because today is Sunday… a lazy Sunday.

Ah, but isn’t laziness the mother of all invention?

Frustrated and decaffeinated, I glanced around my apartment. Teapot, toaster, microwave, paper towels…

PAPER TOWELS.

We already know paper towels are good for everything. They can act as plates, toilet paper, Band-Aids, cutting boards, and tissues. I use them to scrunch my hair into curls, and I think they’ve even been incorporated into few Halloween costumes.

So I decided this could work (with a little motivation from Google). First I folded the paper towel in half. I then folded it one more time, making a square. Next I formed a cone by opening up the small square (with three sheets of the paper towel creating one side of the cone, and one sheet of paper towel creating the other side of the cone – it’s uneven but it works). Finally, I trimmed off the top of the cone and made a pot of coffee as usual.

Maybe I should be lazy more often. Maybe I will be lazy enough to create the next Snuggie. Maybe I will never buy coffee filters again.

-------------------

Here are the steps for you visual learners:

"My Mother Punched Your Mother"

"My mother punched your mother in the face. What color was da blood?" "Red!" "R-E-D, that spells the color red and you are not it." 

Have you ever heard the rhyme, Eenie-meenie-miney-mo?

Yeah, it's like that. 

Except not. 

"My mother punched your mother in the face. What color was the blood?" This time a girl with braided pigtails shouts out "blue!" B-L-U-E, blue. Phew. I’m not "it" for our impending game of freeze tag. Thank goodness. I could never keep up with these balls of neglected energy, much less be the instigator of giggly sprinting. 

Newark, NJ has its fine moments and I never enjoy the city more than when I'm bounding around like an 8-year-old on a blacktop (except maybe when I'm bounding around on a rooftop). There is an inherent carefree perspective to the city when you’re running in parking lots with its most innocent inhabitants. Though like the children themselves, a worriless existence is often marred by the sharp pangs of reality - their reality, mind you, not mine. 

The people who work at Safe Haven, a nonprofit after-school program in Newark, sometimes come into the city on weekends. They need an outlet to see others their own age and to escape what can be a highly uplifting or horribly depressing lifestyle.

But the opposite is true for me.

There are days I need to leave the city in order to half grasp my own existence, much less remember why I relocated to New York in the first place. I'd be lying if I told you my connections in Newark weren’t one of those reasons. 

The truth is, I need to be pulled in multiple directions. I need to get holes in my clothes, and scratches on my knees. I need to fall down and run fast on a playground and have hair in my eyes and let a fraction of my "adult" life die - because if I don’t? If I do not escape my everyday world, I will surely loose touch with a more truthful version of reality. 

And that can’t be found in an office. Or a club in the Lower East Side. Or even at a bible study in the Village. My realities are always found when I'm most uninhibited, and yet heavily burdened by something that has nothing to do with myself. 

“Tag! I gotcha!”

A smaller girl with big brown eyes laughs around my “frozen” self. As she skips in a giddy circle, a group of children run past us, mowing her down in a matter of seconds. WHAM. Tearfully she looks up at me from the concrete, with a rip in her tights and dirt on her white blouse.

Ah, the pangs of reality.

But I wasn’t worried about her. I knew in a matter of minutes she’d be smiling again, probably trying to play tag by pulling on my green sweater and perpetuating an unsightly hole in the right sleeve.

If there is anything I’ve learned about the children of Newark, it is that they are a special type of brave we can only strive to be within our own worlds. Their resilience shines through every bump, cut, and bruise.    

Hawkins Street playground battles, and a little dose of reality.

Making It Happen

This is a pretty awesome idea.

Hector is a close friend I met in college (as well as my sister’s boyfriend!) and he has some extraordinary thoughts about how to merge his passions. Basketball and serving others in need don’t always go hand-in-hand, but he wants to prove how they can.

Here’s the program: “The Shooting Touch Sabbatical Program grants graduating college seniors the opportunity to travel the world and partake in a international work program using the platform of basketball to help foster education and influence positive social change in third world communities.”

The video below is a part of Hector’s application process, as well as further explanation of how he hopes to achieve his goals and use any grant money received. The more you watch, the more it helps his chances.

PS – This guy has his crap together. As he was listing all of his extracurricular activities on campus, I couldn’t help but smile: Hector was always busy while I was in school with him, but when you are talking together, you’d think you were the most important person in the room. This is one of the many qualities I know that will help him later in life - whether it’s through this grant or through another opportunity just as selfless.

Enjoy and pass along. Happy Friday peps.

This is New York: Show Your Teeth

"You know… I want to quit.  But I wanna use more than I wanna quit."

 He stared at me with hands outstretched. Then Richard looked towards the ground and folded his arms over his chest, contemplating the next sentence with a persistent tapping of the foot.  

“He’s given me enough rope to hang myself, but I haven’t yet. So He must want me for something.”

I grinned.  We’d been talking for about 15 minutes. “Want some soup?”

“Nah… no soup. Still have any hot chocolate though?”

“Yep. Follow me.”

We left the florescent belly of Penn Station and broke free into the night air. Homeless men and women lined the entrance of the building, some speaking, some silent. A church from Virginia was passing out food. I joined them for the evening to help with their goal and to catch up with friends from home.

But there was one thing I noticed.

These people? They were all… smiley. I mean sure, I smile. But not really when I’m walking anywhere within 100 yards of Penn Station. Our visitors to the city though… they didn’t mind smiling one bit. They weren’t tired or apathetic and that jaded sort of mind-set wasn’t leaching away at their thoughts.

It made them vulnerable.

These people? They stood out. And not in the “I-like-her-outfit” kind of way. And not in the “He-knows-the-best-spots” kind of way. They stood out in the “They-must-not-be-from-here” kind of way. 

And then, I hated to think that something as simple as smiling is so foreign to city life that it becomes odd, or worse forgotten. I’m sure beneath the headphones, and layers of clothes, and bags of necessities, and bags of nonsense I’m still quite capable of a perfectly good smile to a perfectly great stranger.

Now of course, there are reasons we don’t smile and reasons why the city changes us (because it certainly does – no argument there). But then again, sometimes we must regress to go forward. Sometimes we must remember something from the “before” to ever advance to what’s next. After all, didn’t it once work for us?

Richard stood next to me. “I think I’ll go to that shelter in the Village tonight.” He sipped his hot chocolate and smiled.

So did I.

And I even showed my teeth.

(Editor’s Note: Richard’s history was a long and complicated one of drug abuse, clean streaks, and darkness. But he was a delight to talk with, and I’m very grateful he shared bits of his story. I don’t know what happened to him after that night, but he certainly reminded me of the beauty within the idea of perspective.)

I'd smile at that. 

Poor in New York: The Intern

This is the NY intern. Notice the expression of concentration on his face as he labels eight orders of Starbucks coffee.

Judging by his tie, I think it’s safe to say our Intern Boy is not in the publishing business. In fact he’s probably busting his butt through the left-brained world of finance or accounting.

Thus, in the future he will be making triple my salary.

Thus, I will offer minimal sympathy for his perplexity over the coffee order.

But we’ve all been there; we’ve all done that. It’s a humbling part of the rat race that everyone should experience. Then one day, when we're wealthy or successful, we’ll be dining out at Cipriani and smoothly say to our neighbor, “Remember that time when….” And they'd laugh, and we'd laugh and then we'd both sigh in nostalgic disbelief at our past circumstances. 

…Or we’ll be working at Starbucks.

I mean, either way.

At least we’d be working? 

We’d probably be happier "freelancing" at Starbucks anyway. 

Aren't We Lucky?

Broken shower, roommate shuffle, doctor’s appointments, grad school classes, and overtime work hours. Despite being a crazy past two weeks, here are some random reasons why I’m loving this city right now:

1) The fruit cart man remembers me. Yes, I’m excited. Yes, I will ask to work there again.Yes, that might be one of my favorite city moments. 

2) My paycheck finally arrived. Screw you, ramen noodles! Oh how fickle we may be when money is involved in the grocery list.

3) The subway stays open all night. Sure, this is something I’ve always known. But after visiting DC (which the rest of, by the way, was fabulous) and realizing other cities do not have the same system… Just call me grateful. You can also call me a fool because I had to cab it back to Maryland.

4) It was 55 degrees today and it’s February. So why not take lunch in Central Park? And maybe a coffee break as well?

5) I wore a pink wig around Harlem with a friend simply because I could.

And that was certainly a memorable experience.

 

Happy Friday people. Please enjoy those weekends.

Driving Through the Night

There’s a clicking noise to my left.

Someone’s phone is unabashedly interrupting the non-silence.

They talk.

It’s a different language, with perhaps a handful of English words jumbled into the overall prattle.

And all the while, a line of red lights is stretched before me, dotting the darkness like a landing strip for arriving planes.

Despite being surrounded by strangers, there is a familiarity to this. The crooked positioning of my neck, the gentle to sudden force of an unknown foot tapping overworked breaks – even the lighting. Shades of yellow and green leave playful sepia tones on the quiet faces of the resting and restless.

I feel both very old and very young when traveling on the road at night.

Forgotten moments of childhood creep into my mind with the passing miles. There are memories of cassette tapes and CD players, or bumpy highways that made your nose itch while napping on the seat of a bus. The oncoming wave of white headlights brings an oncoming wave of longings you’d hoped for as 14-year-old sitting in the backseat of your parent's SUV. “Where are you going to go?”

Some of these dreams have undeniably already been dashed, while other ideas are only just blossoming into full-fledged possibilities, as countless as the white lights on the opposite stretch of highway.

And maybe I only feel old because I so acutely remember being young. Late night drives and summer evenings with the windows down take me back to something previously enjoyed – though in fact, this phenomenon is still quite relevant! I can still smile at the darkness with breezy curls wrapped mercilessly around my head, laughing at God only knows what. I can still obtain that feeling of being infinite, stretching myself over the open road, eager as a shadow at dusk.

We drive through the night for a reason.

We travel through obscurity for a cause.

We are determined.

To get somewhere, to do something, to be near someone – whatever your reason, we are determined to accomplish a task. Whether that goal is to beat boredom or to complete a far nobler mission, there is a purpose non-the-less.

I like having a purpose, or at least an objective. I like chasing taillights and watching for the oncoming headlights of something great. I even enjoy spotting resurfaced ideas once lost on the road long ago. 

And most importantly... I like driving through the night to touch both the present and past in one accelerated motion towards what’s to come and what might be.

Poor in New York: Five under $5

Last August I blogged about several bars, shops, and restaurants that offer deals at $5 or less. It seems about time for another roundup so without further ado, here is your I’m-cheap-in-the-city menu to live by:

Breakfast: While the Brooklyn Bagel will always reign supreme in my mind, I’ve found a few bakeries outside of Astoria that will curb your carb appetite. Ess-a-Bagel (with locations at 51st and 3rd or on 21st and 1st) has been serving NY since 1976. The line is always long, but for $3-5 you can have a meal that will hold you over for hours. 

Lunch: If you’ve truly had enough slices of $1 pizza, not to worry. Head over to Gray’s Papaya on the Upper West or in the Village. You can buy two hotdogs and a 16 oz. drink for $3.99. Or – for the big spenders – chicken strips, fries, and a 16 oz. drink are all available for $4.95. 

(PS – I never said this was going to be a healthy post… At least you’re walking a lot.)

Snack: For the mid-afternoon munchies, try the Café Habana takeout on Prince and Elizabeth. Their specialty is “Grilled Corn Mexican Style” and cost only $2 per ear.

Dinner: Souths is a restaurant that was passed down to my current friend group via the old rulers of this city. Every now and then we would venture into this Tribeca bar back in 2009, ordering one thing and one thing only: nachos. Yes, they’re $10. But you HAVE to split them, making the bill about $5 each. And I have no doubt that between piles of cheese and guac, you’ll also try to mumble, “these are the best nachos ever.” (Editor’s Note: The Why Blog does not take responsibly for any of the possible after effects of this dish.)

Dessert: If you happen to be near Chelsea Market, Ronneybrook Milk Bar has a glass of milk + 2 cookie deal for $5. Or while strolling through Soho, hit up the new Georgetown Cupcakes shop for treats at $2.75 a piece. And if you really want to dig around for an authentic NY dessert, I’m sure you could find a cannoli or two for less the $5 in Little Italy.

Best of luck my foodie friends.

Souths New York Nachos. I mean... that's pretty incredible.