I accidentally entered a bike race

“Withnail & I.”  Classic film by any measure.  Yet almost entirely ignored Stateside.  Everybody’s loss, I suppose.  Because the “we’ve gone on holiday by mistake” line is only one of what seems like a billion killer lines from the movie.  Quotable films extend beyond Will Ferrell’s fare, you guys.

And that’s the scene that conjured up in my head this morning.  This morning that came far too quickly after a night celebrating a friend’s birthday the night before.  The night before wasn’t conducted with a great deal of consideration of what this Sunday morning was going to bring.  It was, after all, a friend’s milestone birthday and we were going to celebrate it properly.  A catered dinner, wine that gushed from many bottles, coolers filled to brim with PBR, and a firepit out back that welcomed everyone outside on a frosty late-summer night.  And of course, there were cigars.  Of course.

So I got to bed at around 1am only to have to wake up around 5:30am.  Why?  Because weeks earlier, I had signed up for the Tour de Greenwich 20-mile ride.  What the fuck.

So, groggy, tired, and carrying a mild hangover, I hitched a ride with some friends up to Greenwich for this ride.  I didn’t mind too much because it’s only a 20-mile ride, and it’ll be a casual morning ride.  I was forewarned of a “nasty climb” at one point of the ride, but I shrugged it off as no big deal.  I mean, it’s not Alpe d’Huez, it’s fucking Greenwich – what’s the big deal.

When we got to the event, I looked around and saw the obligatory collection of rabid cyclists.  You know the sort.  The sort who shave their legs, who wear fully synchronized bologna suits; they ride carbon bikes that cost more than my car, and they nerd over their wattage, VO2 max, and electrolyte intake.

If somebody needs to nerd over shit that like, better them than me.  ‘Cause I fail to follow any of those cycling rules that govern such discipline in the sport.  I ride on the road with baggy shorts, I use mountain bike shoes and pedals, I rarely shift gears, and my bike has a flask holder.

So, when I rolled up to the registration table, I was given a number to pin on with the instruction, “You’re in the second heat.”

Wait, what?  What second heat?  What “heat”?!  Turns out, the Tour de Greenwich wasn’t a casual ride through Greenwich at all.  Not at all like the NYC 5 Boro ride, or any of the other individual borough tours.  This was a fucking race!

I had accidentally entered a bike race.

I looked around and started to take stock of all the people around me.  Guys were on their bikes doing short sprints in the parking lot.  Other guys had shot off to do a recce of the start of the course.  Some guys had hauled out their rollers and trainers and were spinning in place next to their cars.  I was in a sea of spandex.

Holy shit.

Realizing there was little I could do about this, I decided to that I was going to ride this the way I had planned to ride it all along – cruising around the 20 miles or so around Greenwich to admire the mansions, the huge tracts of land, and take in the morning scenery.  Fuck the race, I wasn’t prepared for a race, I wasn’t going to even try to “race” this thing.  The last bike race I did, it was a mountain bike race, and I came in about 20 minutes after everyone else.  I’m not cut out for this racing bollocks.

Around 7:45am, the second heat were called up to the start line. Thick silence all around me.  Everyone was taking this serious as shit.  I started to giggle at how out of place I was.  I took a swig of scotch from the flask on my bike.  After about 3 minutes, they sounded the start, and the rapid clack-clack-clack of everyone’s clipless pedals accompanied the forward motion.  The road went straight, then a 90-degree turn to the left, and it immediately started to climb uphill.  Oh, for fuck’s sake.

I would later learn that the entire course was effectively 10 miles uphill, then 10 miles downhill to the finish.  Since I wasn’t going to race, I slinked to the right and let everyone fly past me.  Then I cruised along the course around lovely Greenwich and took in the sights.  And worked off the hangover.  And it was magnificent.  These enormous mansions all around me.  Some mansions had adjacent cottages.  Some of those cottages had their own cottages.  There were horses, there were farms, there were houses that looked like Hogwarts.

And the whole time, I kept thinking, what’s the fucking rush, you guys?  If I had ridden faster (I couldn’t ‘cause I’m fat and slow, and was still coughing up my cigar from the night before), I’d have missed all these sights.

I took the time to slow down, wave, and say hi to all the course marshalls and cops.  No one appreciates the thankless job they do.  Instead of tucking in, I would use my brakes on the downhills because I wanted to check out the ‘hood.  The only time I put the hammer down was when I got to this so-called “nasty hill”.  And holy shit was it completely ridiculous.  I checked the map and it says that it’s a 10.6% gradient.  I don’t know what the fuck that means, but it was every bit like climbing a wall on your bike.  Straight up.  Thankfully it wasn’t a long climb, and I just pounded my legs to crank up that sumbitch.  When I got to the top, I felt like my heart and lungs were going to explode out of my chest while I simultaneously shit my pants (I didn’t).

After about an hour and quarter, I reached the finish line.  Naturally, my other friends had all finished much earlier and had posted massively respectable times.  They’d docked their bikes on top of the cars, and they were already breaking out the coffee, the donuts, and they had the music was cranking from their cars.  A genius amongst us had the foresight to bring beer.  Now, since this was 9am, the beer was flavored with maple bacon.  Breakfast beer, perfect!

So, in the end, the ride finished exactly how I had treated the whole thing.  To earn an excuse to stuff my face with donuts, drink beer at sun-up, and treat the whole thing as a goof.  Because I fucking goofed up by not realizing that I’d signed up for a goddamn race.

The next time, I ought to do a better job reading the descriptions to these things.

 

 

Have beer, will ride

 

At times, a fortuitous confluence of events will lead you to crack some hare-brained scheme that seems like a good idea at the time, when in the fact…

 

Since picking up a road bike in the late winter, I’ve been plotting different ways get more saddle time, either through frequency or distance.  Or both.  Right around the same time, I became friends with a neighbor down the street who’d been into home-brewing his beer, which alerted to me to the fact that these days, in the New York City area, there are more craft beer breweries than ever.

Now I, for one, have long held a particular disdain for this whole microbrew or craft beer movement.  Mostly because it seemed in the ‘90s that every other shitty microbrewery was bottling any manner of brown effervescent swill that seemed to taste like anything but beer.  You had beers that tasted like peaches, bubble gum, chocolate, you name it.  Fuck you, that’s not beer.  Beer shouldn’t taste like cherries.  Or bacon.  Or whatever the fuck they were putting in these beers and selling them to shitheads around the country who had an appetite for candy in a bottle that could also get them fucked up.

Fuck you, beer should taste like beer.  End of argument.

What’s turned it around recently for me is how these craft beer breweries seem to have abandoned the stupid fruity flavors, and have gone back to making beers that taste like fucking beer.

So, one day, I hatched a plan in which I’d ride my bicycle up 15 miles to Elmsford, NY to visit the Captain Lawrence Brewery to taste their wares, then shoot 10 miles eastward to the Craftsman Ale House – where they not only carry over hundred types of killer beers but they also brew their own – followed by a 10 mile ride home with a slight detour to the famous Walter’s Hot Dogs joint in Mamaroneck, NY.

I also knew the inherent risks of trying to do a 35-mile bike ride with two pitstops for beers.  I needed wingmen, so I recruited two buddies with equal senses of depravity to do this ride with me.

We chose a Saturday, and set off at 11am.  I figured it would take us about an hour to ride the 15 miles to the Captain Lawrence Brewery.  We kept a decent pace, around 15mph for the first 12 miles of the ride.  As we got towards Elmsford, the massive criss-crossing array of highways and winding country roads caused me to veer off the planned route, and we were suddenly – and painfully – faced with a hot and slogging climb up a mile-long hill.  It looked like an asphalt wall.  20mph speeds ground down to about 8mph.  Gears shifted to the smallest ratios, legs churned so slowly, and halfway up, all three of us were ready to puke.  And we hadn’t even had a drop of beer yet.

When I fuck up, we all suffer.

When we reached the peak, we welcomed the downhill rush down to the brewery, which was set in some industrial park.  It didn’t look like a brewery in the traditional sense at all.  More like a warehouse with a picnic tables in the back next to a bocce ball run.

“Hey, are you guys here for the beer?” a portly fella greeted us behind a table at the entrance.  Was this the stupidest question ever asked?  Possibly.  We told him we intended to have a quick pint or two before setting off again.

“Sorry, today’s a pig roast event, and it’s $40 to get in.  You can’t get beer today without paying for the pig roast.”

Are you fucking kidding me.  If it wasn’t for that ludicrous hill we just climbed, I might’ve had enough energy in me to dish out a cockpunch or two.  We still had 20 miles to ride, the last thing I need is to stuff my fat face with pig and beer – we weren’t even halfway through our ride, for fuck’s sake.

After a lot of negotiations, they let us in to “discuss the matter with the manager.”  We walked into the tasting room, and were made to stand around for about 15 minutes before the manager graced us with his presence.  The whole while, pints are being poured liberally for pig roast patrons in front of us.  Not one drop came our way.  Not even a sympathy pour.  Fuckers.

After 15 minutes, some bespectacled hipster with a metal bar through his septum came to speak with us.  “Sorry, we’re only doing the pig roast event today.  Each of you have got to pay the $40 if you want any of the beer.  It’s all you can drink.”  Which would’ve been a stellar deal if we were going to park our asses at the bar and didn’t have another 20 miles to ride, fucker.  After going back and forth with the beer overlord, he relents – “Your only choices are to pay the $40.  Or if you want, we can sell you bottles to go.”

WHY THE FUCK DIDN’T YOU SAY THAT IN FIRST PLACE, DICK?!?!!  Why the fuck are you guys making it so hard for us to buy your fucking beer?!!

After I calmed the fuck down, we grabbed three large bottles, some cups, and settled into one of the picnic tables outside to quench our thirst.  It didn’t take long for one of their staff to come harass us about sitting at the picnic table without paying for the pig roast.  What the motherfuck.  After a brief negotiation, they left us alone to finish our beers, then off we went to the next beer stop.

While this leg of the ride was along considerably flatter terrain, it wasn’t an easy ride by any means.  The humid, midday sun was beating down hard.  The three large bottles of hoppy nectar – on empty stomachs! – weighed us down.  We coasted slowly through the next 10 miles.

At the end of the 10 miles, I promised the lads a second oasis of craft beers.  Craftsman Ale House in Harrison, NY boasted their own collection of brews in addition to hundred of other primo beers.  When we got there around 2:30pm, the place was empty, and we were more famished than buzzed.

As a stark contrast to the Captain Lawrence joint, this manager couldn’t possibly be more welcoming.  We pushed our collection of carbon fiber and titanium rides into the bar, and pulled up to three adjacent stools.

Polite banter, perusal of the massive beer list, three even more massive cheeseburgers (including one unceremoniously and viciously halved), and quick brew samples ensued.  Here’s when our next installment of downers took place: turns out that while the Craftsman Ale House brew their own beers, they do not sell their brew.  What the fuck.  So we were left with their confounding list of beers brewed by other folks… and this fucking thing on the right.

Time flies when you’re having fun and before you knew it, all three of us were getting buzzed on our phones.  Text messages galore, each with similar queries from our old ladies – “where the hell are you guys?”

Over an hour after we settled into that bar, we grabbed our bikes and started the final leg of our ride – the 10-mile slog home.  10 miles is nothing.  Correction: ordinarily, 10 miles is nothing.  It’s a ride that most cyclists can do on autopilot and barely break a sweat.  But 10 miles on belly full of hearty craft beers, cheeseburger and fries – that’s a different story.

Fuck, was that a sloooow slog home.  In our opening leg to the first brewery, we averaged just under 15mph.  On the final leg home, we average 8mph.  That is some pathetic decline in pace.

So, 6 hours later, we all finally returned back to the spot from where we started our ride.  6 hours later, we had made 2 lengthy stops for beer.  6 hours later, we had no interest in that final detour for hot dogs.  6 hours later, nothing had worked out as planned.  6 hours later, we were 3 hours late because I’m such a fuck up.  6 hours later, each one of us was in the fucking doghouse.

6 hours later, we decided we’re gonna do it again.

 

 

12 things to leave behind in 2012

 

 

The word “bespoke.”  I was in a bar last week that boasted “custom bespoke cocktails.”  First of all, way to be redundant.  Second, what the fuck is a bespoke cocktail?  By definition, that a poncy way of saying “we’ll mix whatever the hell you want.”  In which case, that’s like, you know, EVERY BAR.  Fuuuuuck yooooouuuuu.

“Curate” is another word.  Holy fuck is this word thoroughly misappropriated.  Almost as bad as “diva” was.  Museums and art galleries only, if that.  You don’t get to fucking curate anything else.  A butcher is not a meat curator, a DJ is not a music curator, you don’t curate Twitter feeds, none of you assholes are curators in any capacity.  Please fuck off with the curating.

“Occupy” anything.  Here’s a bonus fuck you to the assholes who wasted their meaningless lives about a year ago trying to picket Wall Street.  A lot of good that did, you fuckwads.  No one gave a shit then, and fewer than no one give a shit today.  But what’s worse is somehow this “occupy” term taking on a whole new meaning for which it was never intended.  Don’t believe me?  Look at this shit on the left.

Lena Dunham.  Holy shit, you are SUCH a bore.  If Lena Dunham is to be cultural milestone, then 2012 is the year of celebrating mediocrity.  You’re not funny, you’re not interesting, how the fuck you finagled million dollar deals out of tepid, borings ideas that no one gives a shit about is beyond me.  And frankly, I’m jealous as fuck.  Because no one’s giving me million dollar deals for any my stupid ideas.  Oh, that’s right, I don’t have hyperartistic celebrity parents like you, you charlatan.  Ugh, enough with this dummy.

Instagram is all its faux filtered tilt-shift bullshit glory.  If someone took away Instagram tomorrow, would you miss it?  Would you?  I know if someone took away my Facebook or Twitter, I’d be fucking pissed.  But Instagram?  Who gives a shit.  Instagram did one thing only – they ability to share filtered, tilt-shifted photos.  Sharing?  Any number of other platforms can do that.  Shitty filters and fake tild-shift effects?  Every other camera app can do that now.  So what’s the value of keeping Instagram around?  And they’ve now got some new policy where they can sell my photos?  Fuck that.  I just deleted my account.

Plastic mini skateboards.  I got my elder kid a skateboard last year.  It was brilliant – a proper skateboard with a maple deck, trucks, big bearing wheels, the lot.  Then these stupid vinyl mini-skateboards show up all over the city. All commandeered by some hipster douchebag with a gnarly beard.  It takes every fiber of my being not to throw an empty Starbucks cup in front of one of these douchebags just so see him fly and eat some curb.  Fuck off with these little skateboards, you look ridiculous.

Homeland.  If there’s one thing I can reliably count on each Monday, it’s that my Twitter feed and my Facebook page will be completely inundated with comments about fucking Homeland.  “ZOMG!!  Homeland is the greeaaatest!!!!”  “WTF!  Homeland jumped the shark!!”  I have never seen the show and at this point, I never want to.  It may be a good show, but I’ll never know for real because you fuckers have ruined it by being completely incapable of not yammering about it all day and night.

Dubstep.  Thank you all for already killing this off.  Skrillex can now go back to pumping gas in the Valley.

That Gangnam guy.  Please, PLEASE, PLEASE go away.  I hope someone takes him across the border and straps him to one of Kim Jong Un’s “weather rockets.”

YOLO.  A few years ago, when I was in the market for my first paddleboard, I nearly bought one that was Yolo brand.  Thank fuck I didn’t or I’d have to set on fire, gather up the ashes, then set it on fire again just to be sure.  If anyone ever uses the phrase YOLO to you, verbally or in writing, no judge would ever convict if you decided to stab ‘em with a rusty spoon.

Camera phone self-portraits in the mirror.  It’s the holding of the phone that’s so, so stupid.  If you must use your camera phone to take pictures of yourself, make sure it’s dick shots only (Brett Favre can help if you’re not sure).  No more self-portraits.  And I’m not even going to get into doing with iPads.

Moustaches.  I don’t just mean in November (although that can fuck off, too, because all that Movember bullshit is prejudiced against those of us who can refrain from shaving for two months and still look like cantaloupes).  I mean year-round.  Hipster moustaches, moustache ink on index fingers, glue-on stashes, all of it.  A follicle tuft positioned between your upper lip and your nostrils is hardly a thing that needs to be celebrated, so please fuck off.  Moustaches on Instagram are the fucking worst.

 

Shit I thought about when riding the subway

• This morning, I saw a dad checking to see if his kid had a poopy diaper.  No biggie, just pulled the top band and peeked into the kid’s crack.  I’m so fucking grateful I never ever have to do that again with my kids.  The next time I have to do this with my kids, the roles are gonna be reversed.

• It should be perfectly alright to make fun of a guy who wears pleated trousers.

• If you shoot a video with your camera phone in vertical orientation, the phone should prompt you, “Are you sure you wanna shoot it this way, stupid?”

• It is entirely too fucking soon to have pumpkin beer on the shelves.  It’s fucking August, for fuck’s sake.  First of all, pumpkin beer is for assholes, so let me get that out of the way.  Beer needs to taste like beer, not like a pie.  There are rules for this shit.  But if you must stock pumpkin-flavored beer, August is too soon.  Everyone bitches when Santa shoves his ass into our faces by Halloween – selling pumpkin beer before Labor Day is exactly the same fucking thing.  Fuck off with pumpkin beer.

• You know what I really need?  A Michigan filter.  This time of year, every insufferable Michigan fan farts their fandom to make sure that everyone knows that they went to Michigan.  Fuck Michigan.   No one – NO ONE – is more annoying than a Michigan fan.  They go on about the motherfucking Big House.   Good one, Michigan – the prison metaphor fits you assholes perfectly.  Yet, you’re like boneheaded Raider fans who are too pussy to earn proper criminal records.  “Go Blue” is such a fucking stupid pointless chant.  Last time I checked, this little bitch team had two colors – blue and yellow (fuck off with your “maize” – that’s corn, motherfucker).  Why the fuck are you ignoring the yellow?   Dipshit NY Giants fans also holler “Go Blue”, so way to go, Michigan.  Way to set yourselves apart.  Fuck Michigan.

You drink like an asshole

This past weekend, I went to a large birthday party-slash-reunion party.  A ton of folks showed up, most were local, and quite a few from several states away.  It was big affair, and everyone showed up ready to party.

The fact that it was a big and well-attended affair didn’t mean that it was an overly fancy party.  Not in the least.  A modest buffet, a couple of kegs and a cash bar for mixed drinks.

That last part – the cash bar – is where it started to go pear-shaped.  Not because anyone got supremely blottoed (I fucking wish).  But because there were drinks ordered that NO ONE in this universe or the next should ever fucking order.

People have no fucking idea how to order mixed drinks at a bar.

It’s fucking deplorable that there are drinks that you’re allowed to order, and drinks no one should ever order, and no one knows this shit.  Maybe an easy way to determine between the two is to use a few rules.  These are my rules, I made them up.

• If you order a drink that requires more than 3 ingredients, you’re an asshole.  In other words, fuck your Singapore Sling.

• If your drink order takes more than 90 seconds to make, you’re an asshole.  You’re twice the asshole if it takes you more than 90 seconds to order your stupid drink.

• If your drink has more than four syllables, you’re an asshole.  I hope you choke on your Long Island Iced Tea.

• If your drink has some cute name, you’re an asshole.  You know what’s the best way to make a Fuzzy Navel?  You get a bottle of peach schnapps.  And you shove it up your ass.  Past your freshman year in college, there’s no fucking way you have any business ordering a Fuzzy Navel or a Sex On The Beach.  It’s your freshman year, you’re supposed to do stupid shit you know nothing about.  After that, if you order a Fuzzy Navel, you need to be stabbed.

• If your drink order has to come from a “mixologist”, you’re an asshole.

• If you call yourself a “mixologist”, you’re a huge asshole.  And a huge dickhead.

So, what does this mean?  This means no more fucking Mojitos.  The fucking things are so 10 years ago, at best.  I read this tweet the other week and it made my fucking week.  Enjoy your herpes in a glass, losers.

Nevermind how much trouble it is to make a mojito, the goddamn mojito is such a pretentious asshole drink to order.  “I want you to make me a rum drink that cloaks the rum taste with a mass floating bits of leaves.  It makes me feel sophistimacated.”  Fuck off.

And don’t you fucking dare order a Cosmo.  That drink violates the 4-syllable rule, and Sex And The City is pretty much one of the worst shows of all time.

Also off-limits are Whiskey Sours, Mudslides, Kamikazes, or anything with fucking Kahlua in it.  If your drink has part of a plant or, a flower in it, or it has different swirly colors, you’ve made a grave error, and you need to send that sumbitch back and order yourself a proper fucking drink.

Another thing you’re not allowed to order anymore: a martini.  You can’t be trusted to order a martini properly.  Because all of you fuck it up with vodka.  Fuck that.  Martinis are made with gin.  Only gin.  James Bond is a colossal douche for getting the martini wrong for 60 years.  Also, of course you fucking shake a martini – who the fuck stirs one.  Bottom line is if you’re not gonna get a gin martini, you’re not getting a martini at all.

Here’s the thing: a drink is a rite of passage.  It’s not a fucking toy.  It’s a several ounces of fulfillment you sip out of a glass to replenish yourself, physically and emotionally.  It’s something you should take some goddamn pride in.  How the fuck are you supposed to take some pride in yourself when you waddle up to some barkeep and order yourself an “orgasm”?

Stop being a douchebag to yourself.

But I don’t wanna come across as being some persistent naysayer, only harping on shit you can’t drink.  There’re a ton of drinks that are perfectly acceptable.  Again, these are my rules, I make them up.

• You want something brown, get a Manhattan or a Sidecar.  These are classics that’ll never earn you a frown from your barkeep.  Too complicated?  You can NEVER go wrong with a single malt, neat.  Ever.  And don’t ever put your single malt on the rocks.  That’s like putting A1 sauce on a porterhouse.  Shitheads do that.  Don’t be a shithead.

• You want something red, order a Negroni.  Done.

• You want something green, fuck your Appletinis.  You get your hands on some absinthe or you can just fuck off.  You’re lucky I’m not putting brake fluid in your glass.

• You want something blue, fuck you, you don’t ever fucking drink anything blue, dipshit.

• You want something with tequila in it, try a tequila and tonic.  That’s right, tonic with fucking tequila in it.  Not gin, and not vodka, you unimaginative wank.  And stop being so scared of tequila.  Some of you treat tequila as if one whiff of it will send you into some PCP ragefest.  Calm the fuck down, it’s just tequila.  Tequila and tonic – with a slice of lemon – is one of the greatest summer drinks, so fucking get to it.

There you go.  Sort your shit out, and stop ordering dickhead drinks.  No one ever got in trouble ordering a beer (unless it’s got fruit in it, or needs to be served in stemware).  Or wine (although it may not yet be safe to order a Merlot).

So don’t say I never did anything for you.

 

Paris and London: just the lowlights

Let me start by getting one thing out of the way.  That old adage about how Paris would be wonderful if it weren’t for all the French?  Bullfuckingshit.  Paris blows because it’s filled with Americans.  Everywhere you go, it’s Yanks all over the place.  What the fuck, I thought we were in some massive sinkhole of economic diarrhea – yet, Paris, one of the most expensive cities in the motherfucking universe, is filled to be brim with holidaying Yanks.  Fucking blows my mind.  Granted, I was there to do the same, so I’m not gonna begrudge someone else’s holidaying shenanigans, but goddamn there are a lot of Yanks in Paris.

Anyway, two weeks in Paris with a slight detour to pre-Olympic-bullshit London yielded some entirely pointless observations:

French countryside.  For all talk about the visual orgasm that is the French countryside, it’s remarkably dull.  You might as well be driving through the middle of New Jersey.

British graffiti sucks.  Banksy notwithstanding (which is technically is street art, not the sort of graffiti I’m talking about).  On the left is what was scrawled on the back of a loo in an average pub right off Greek Street in London’s Soho.  Compare that to the right, taken from the bathroom at Max Fish in New York’s Lower East Side.

When you make the mistake of going to see the Mona fucking Lisa, you usually have the misfortune of getting crammed with about 150 other boneheaded tourists all clamoring to see the same stupid painting.  Problem is, every single of one of them will be a complete imbecile.  Not only are they pushing and shoving, you get dipshits like this trying to take a picture of the painting from about 30 feet away.  Using an iPad.  Took every ounce of self-restraint not to swat that iPad out of his hands and send it hurtling towards the Mona Lisa itself to test out the painting’s perspex shielding.

 

This fucking guy at Versailles.

Café du Flore, Café Deux Magots, Brasserie Lipp – apparently this view affords you a tiny lukewarm cup of espresso that’ll set you back 10 euros.  We hit all three landmark restaurants in one sweep one lazy Tuesday afternoon.  Sure, they were lovely and boasted all sorts of literary history, but holy shit do they know how to work the whole tourist trap thing.  In fact, all the tourist traps are finetuned to perfection.  We hit a whole bunch of them – Au Pied du Cochon, Bofinger, Chartier, the three above.  You walk in and not a single Parisian is to be seen in any of these places.  Yet, somehow they make you feel OK sitting down and having an unspectacular yet unoffensive meal.  You know full well that you’re in a tourist trap, for some fucked up reason, you’re OK with it.  Which is heaps different from any given tourist trap in New York.  I think.  I haven’t been to New York tourist traps in a long while, so I’m just projecting here.

Andouillette.  Speaking of restaurants, my typically brave demeanor when it comes to food finally betrayed me.  On my final night in Paris, having already tried so many typical French foods, opted for one of the few remaining things I had yet to try: andouillette.   Sounds like an andouille, right?  And I fucking love andouille.  I had to try it.  Even if the description is nothing like andouille – andouillette is a sausage that’s constructed of chopped up tripe stuffed into an intestine.  Not just a natural gut casing, but the whole fucking intestine.  Filled with chopped up tripe.  How bad could it be?  Holy shit, never ask that question when it comes to andouillette.  Because the andouillette will punch you in the mouth with a definitive and declarative answer.  It tastes like you’ve just eaten the toilet from Trainspotting.  And you can’t swallow it because it’s all hard and crunchy and it tastes like shit and you start to gag and the combination of gag and a mouthful of shit causes you to asphyxiate, and your only solution is to wash it down as quickly as possible by guzzling wine right out of the bottle which causes you to instantly become the ape-like retarded tourist in the restaurant.  Everything is horrible and you want to die.  After coming to, I politely sent the plate of Satan’s pinched loaf back and ordered a steak tartar instead.  You have no idea how delicious a raw hamburger is after you’ve tried andouillette.

The subway music is much more interesting.  That’s not to say that any halfwit walking around with an accordion equals something good.  In New York, half these schmucks on the subway create some indiscernible racket and demand loose change from you.  Parisian minstrels, on the other hand, often sound like they might actually be good at weddings and bar mitzvahs.

Deodorant.  Europe is gonna be so awesome when they discover deodorant.

Reclaiming the city from awful tourists

(source: Mark Armstrong Tumblr)

Unlike a lot of city dwellers who can’t wait to skip out of the town the minute the sweltering summer hits, I fucking love New York in the summer time.  Granted, I don’t live in the city, and if I was stuck in a smoldering shoebox in the city, I couldn’t be blamed for wanting to bail and glom on to my friends’ Hamptons rental at every available opportunity.

I live in the burbs of New York, and even though I spend every fucking day in the city at work, I love being in the city.  But with the onset of summer, I’m hastily reminded of the single-most grating aspect of city – the motherfucking tourists.

Motherfucking tourists are the fucking worst.

A couple of years ago, when I saw that picture above of the two-laned sidewalk, I thought my dreams had finally come true.  If I could vote, I would’ve re-elected Mayor Bloomberg as mayor for life.  Alas, it was a fucking stunt, and my dreams and hopes were crushed to smithereens.

What New Yorker wouldn’t relish some concerted initiative focused on making sure that tourists get and stay the fuck out of the way?

This morning I had to refill my subway metrocard.  Wouldn’t you know it, I get stuck behind two tourists.  They did everything you expect tourists to do – fumble around the touchscreen, going back and forth.  Which is understandable if you’ve never used the machine before.  But they were buying a shit ton of single-ride tickets, and chose to pay for each fucking ticket with motherfucking coins.  Coins.  Half a dozen single-ride tickets with goddamn coins.  Where the fuck did they score that many coins anyway?  There are no slot machines in the city, far as I know.  Pair of shitheads.

We need set up one subway card dispenser in some dark corner at each station.  If you take more than 10 seconds to buy your subway card from the regular machines, boom, you get locked out of the regular machines and you have to the shitty machine in the corner.  That’s fucking teach you.  Especially if you’re a New Yorker – stop buying your subway card like a goddamn tourist.  Subway card machines should be like the Soup Nazi.  You walk up, you punch the buttons precisely, you take your card and you walk away.  Quickly.  If you take more than 10 seconds, you gotta go to the dreaded tourist card machine in the corner where the wino using as a makeshift urinal.

You know what, let’s make it a whole checkout thing altogether.  In stores – I don’t care if it’s a small drugstore or a massive department store – we need to have dedicated checkout lanes for anyone with bulky backpacks, athletic sandals, fanny packs, soccer jerseys, and/or Hollister shopping bags.  That shit’s a dead giveaway you’re goddamn tourist ready fuck things up for the rest of us.  Special lanes for you so that you can fumble for loose change in that fanny pack while the rest of us can get our shit, get out, and get on with our goddamn day.

And why limit those tourist and local paths to sidewalks?  Put that shit on crosswalks as well.  I’m not sure what it’s like in other cities, here in New York, most of us will fucking jaywalk a Don’t Walk sign if we feel we’ve got anything more a 50% chance we’ll make it the other side of the street before getting splattered by that mad yellow cab careering towards us.  I got shit to do, I can’t be standing around waiting for some light.  But what good is that when you’ve got a wall of German tourists standing like they’re trying to defend a free kick at the World Cup in front of you?  I say we make ‘em stand in a tourist-only crosswalk lane while the rest of us are free to put our lives in our own hands and dodge traffic all day.  Like I said, I’ve got place to go and shit to do.

And how the fuck do we get around the whole tipping thing when it comes to tourists?  I get that tipping isn’t a big thing outside the U.S. – some more argue that plenty of assholes don’t tip within the U.S. either, but that’s another story.  Anyway, I was in dark, dank bar in the West Village a few weeks ago – one of those bullshit “secret” bars that EVERYONE knows about.  Well, I sat down for a few brews and this Swedish girl walks up to order some drinks for her friends seated at a nearby booth.  “Can I have a beer?” she says.  First of all, that’s completely retarded question to ask at a bar.  In any case, the kind barkeep offered a beer suggestion, she took it, got three pints, paid for the beers, LEFT NO TIP, and walked away.  The barkeep didn’t seem too bothered by it – probably not the first nor last bunch of clueless tourists who wandered into his bar that night.  But holy fuck, can these assholes please get some crib sheet when they arrive at the airport on what proper etiquette is expected of them when they come to NY?  Shit, if I’m obligated to try and converse in a bit of French when I’m in Paris, you sure as fuck are expected to tip the people serving you in NY bars and restaurants, bitch.

Here’s what a cheat sheet might look like (and of course it’d have to be written in goddamn Comic Sans – if it wasn’t written in Comic Sans, how you would know it’s completely stupid?):

All of which is to say that Big Gulps aren’t ruining New York.  Not bath salts.  Not douchey hipsters.  Not Tim Tebow (OK, maybe a bit).  It’s fucking tourists.  Goddamnit.

First world problems

No free wi-fi at airports and hotels.  What’s this shit with making pay $20 a day for wi-fi in your bullshit pretentious hotel?  And I think it’s fucking criminal that neither JFK nor LaGuardia airports consistently provide free wi-fi (not you, JetBlue, we all know your terminal fucking rocks).  Airports and hotels are proper fucking ports of business.  Not just where parents who have lost the will to live are dragging their little shitbags Timmy and Tammy for a week at Disneyworld.  Timmy and Tammy are ingrates and don’t deserve wi-fi.  The rest of us, who are at airports under duress, travelling for work?  The least you bastards could do is blunt the hurt with a bit of free wi-fi.

Same shit at hotels.  Oh, you want me to pay $400 for some shitty room you painted white and hung a framed painting on the ceiling, but I’ve got to cough up another $20 so that I can send emails and post stupid Facebook updates from my room?  Dicks.

 

Paying more for gas with credit.  Why the fuck are gas stations the only establishment left on earth that can get away with charging you extra if you pay with a credit card?  No one else would fucking dare.  I buy a pack of gum at the drug store and I wanna charge it?  Same fucking price.  Even the little shitty Chinese takeout joint in my town won’t tack on superfluous charges if I wanted to charge my wonton soup.  Stop being dicks about it, gas stations.

 

“So…”  What is this verbal tic I’ve started noticing so glaringly over the past coupe of months or so?  Maybe folks have been saying it for much longer, but I’ve only just recently noticed it.  There is no fucking reason to start every sentence with that word.  “So I was watching Mad Men last night…”  “So how did you like that concert?”  “Soooo… where’re we going for dinner?”   What the fuck is that?  No, no “so”.  No fucking “so” anything.  At this point, this completely gratuitous prefix is all the signal I need to completely ignore everything that comes out of your mouth after that stupid word.  A friend recently raised it as a particularly irritating issue, and I thought I was the only one to notice this particularly grating behavior.  He lives in Vancouver.  This is a pan-continental epidemic that’s just gotta stop.  Right fucking now.

 

Bottled water.  What.  The fuck.  When the fuck did water cost more than beer?

Diaper Genies.  You can never ever get that smell outta your head.  Ever.  I’m a couple of years out from needing one in the house (for my kids, not me, you assholes), but just say “diaper genie” and that pong immediately fills my olfactory sense.  They’re a pretty awesome invention – making your own shit-filled sausages – but if they could fix the smell factor, the Diaper Genie would be greater than the iPhone 5.

 

3 Series drivers.  Why do 3 Series drivers consistently refer to their stupid little cars as “sportscars”?  Have these assholes never seen a sportscar?  How the fuck is your overpriced rear-wheeled drive Honda-equivalent a sportscar by any motherfucking stretch of the imagination.  An M3? Fine, I get that.  But none of these shitheads are driving M3s.  They’re driving little shitty 3 Series cars… and quite poorly, I might add.  Looking at the way you shitheads drive and park, you might want to chill with your delusions of grandeur there.  Your shitcart is not a sportscar.

 

Pointless rental upgrades.  I recently scored what I thought was a tasty upgrade when I rented a car in Boston.  I had booked some shitty little Chevy or what not, and when I got to the rental office, they didn’t have my car ready for me.  A bit of a Seinfeld “you-know-how-to-take-the-reservation-you-just-don’t-know-how-to-hold-the-reservation” moment.  But after a few minutes, I was told I’d been upgraded to a Mercedes.  Sweet.  Thinking it’d be some small C-class, I walk up to the lot to see a beastly, stark white GL SUV.  It’s the biggest fucking thing they made short of a tour bus.  This thing was ridiculous.  It was as big as a house, so full of driving aids I felt dumber by the minute sitting in it.  The thing had blind spot warning lights, rear camera, sensors of every sort – it was as if it was coaxing you to be as careless as you fucking want on the roads because “the car will take care of it for you.”  And it came with paddleshifts on the steering wheel.  Cool.  Except when you tug on one of the flappy paddles, it’d take about a week for the gear to engage.  What a thoroughly stupid, pointless car.

Not quite a day in San Francisco

When I was kid, San Francisco was by leaps and bounds my favorite city in the world.  It was figuratively and quite literally the farthest thing from my birthplace, Kuala Lumpur.  My parents had taken me there as a kid and I was blown away by all the touristy bits I got to see (I was a kid, gimme a fuckin’ break).  Fast forward about 20 years, and San Francisco is easily one of the most loathsome cities on earth.

It makes me believe that that South Park episode involving Stan’s parents moving to San Francisco and facing the smug invasion wasn’t so much a piss-take as much as it was a documentary.  You know, the same way Portlandia is a documentary (don’t argue, it is).

I’ve come off another manic cross-country trip: overnight in Chicago, then quickly off to San Francisco, and 20 hours later, on a plane back to New York.  I got to squeeze in a Cubs game whilst in Chicago, but I knew I had almost no time to spare after that so I had to be quite decisive about how to use my time in San Francisco.

Much as I loathe a city, I’m loathed further to not make the best of it.  So when I arrived on the Tuesday evening, I thought it’d be a good idea to grab some dinner in Chinatown.  Oddly, I realized that in the countless times I’d been to San Francisco, I had never eaten at their Chinatown.  Didn’t seem right, so I sought to rectify it this trip.  Despite how most in the know say that the best Chinese food in San Francisco is outside of Chinatown, not in it.  But whatever, I had very little time here and I had to make the best of what I had.

Hop in the cab, I did my usual thing of asking the driver where I should grab a meal.  He was Asian too, so I figured my chances of a decent reco were pretty good.  “Tell me where you like to eat.”  He mumbled, spaced for a bit, then mumbled some more.  So to help him, I suggested that I “don’t want any place that has lots of qwai-low”.  “Huh?!  What’s that?!”  I couldn’t tell if he was fucking with me or not.  I let it drop and not mention the qwai-low thing again.  He mumbles something about a place called “Dragon-something” on Broadway and Columbus.  I Google Map it on my phone and don’t see anything called Dragon-anything on that cross street (Google Map street view is the greatest thing evah).

At this point, I’m don’t trust this driver one iota, so I bail on his idea and head to the R&G Lounge.  This place is rated all over Chowhound, Eater, Yelp, and it came with Bourdain’s endorsement.  None of travel companions wanted to come with me so it was dinner for one lonely tourist, thankyouverymuch.  I even sat at the exact same table Bourdain sat in in No Reservations segment.  I settled in an ordered half a Peking duck and a plate of Hong Kong fried noodles.

I couldn’t decide what was a bigger letdown: the food or the fact that I got seated next to a table of insufferable art students with their stupid conversations and their stupid pointless vacuous delusions.  Fuck the art students, this food was pissing me off now.  As a rule, duck is fat, no question, but this duck looked like it lived generously on bacon pies at an Oklahoma state fair.  And the plate of Hong Kong noodles was easily the most amateurish presentation of the dish I had ever had.  I’ve had better off-the-boat Chinese food 20 minutes from my house.  I had flew 2,600 miles for this shit?I  Fuck you, Bourdain.  That’s right, I’m blaming you.

 

The next morning, I had work up early (as you do when you fly coast to coast) and knew I had to find a way of redeeming the previous night’s culinary failure.  Staying at Union Square, I learned of the Sears Fine Foods diner a block away.  I ventured over – what a fucking delight this place was.  To paraphrase a Guy Richie film (I know, I know), there’s no school like the old school, and this place was the fucking headmaster.  Declining a table, I sat at the counter and ordered pretty much the only thing a first-timer should have: an order of their 18 Swedish pancakes and black coffee.  It was perfect.  Like perfect.  The six stacks of tiny delicate pancakes, the side of lingonberries, the real maple syrup, right down to the hearty black coffee in the cracked cup.  It made up for the false start the previous night.   San Francisco was starting to suck a little less that morning.

When I got up to pay, the waitress handed me a token and said, “This is for the slot machine out front, good luck.”  Any more charm and this place would’ve been made of candy and Nigella Lawson would’ve emerged from the kitchen.  I fucking loved this place.

And by the time I hopped on a plane at 4pm that day, that breakfast would prove to be the absolute highest point of my brief visit.  Because the rest of my day consisted of the following:

• I learned that people are keeping chickens in their apartments as livestock.  Live chickens.  In their apartments.  “When you reach into a coop and retrieve a warm egg that’s just been laid, it’s the most magical thing in the world.”  Well, fuck me for thinking the birth of my kids was kinda cool.

• Related to the chicken thing, I learned the chicken diapers are a thing.  These people who are keeping egg-popping chickens in their tiny apartments are doing so by putting diapers on their chickens.  Take a minute with that one, I’ll wait.

• People want to compost inside an office building.  That’s right – I actually ran into someone who was frantically looking for a compost bin in an office building, then seemed to lose his shit when he couldn’t find one.  I was then treated to a lengthy diatribe on why composting is the greatest thing on earth (wait, I thought that was a freshly-laid egg; make your minds up, you fucks), and that everyone everywhere on earth should compost.

• “I loooove Arnold Palmers.  But this one’s the wrong color.”  Please, PLEASE, PLEASE fucking kill me now.

And with that, I hauled ass outta there and returned to my own world of madness back in the New York.  At least that that madness I’m familiar with.

 

Help me, I’m stuck in a tree (hugging) house of horror

When the rain is pissing down so hard that it looks like the book of Exodus has opened at your front door, that’s the best time in the world to make your way to a tree-hugging festival in the middle of NYC, right?  Right.

Which is what I did yesterday.  Wifey’s idea, natch.  She was all into celebrating Earth Day so she signed up the whole family for the NYC Green Festival.  Which I suspected was going to be every bit as terrifying as it sounds.   You fucking know it: a fully-sustainable clusterfuck of granola, drum circles, and hemp shampoo.

To help protect Mother Gaia, do we do the right thing and take public transportation to event?  Fuck no, we all hopped into our 250hp fossil fuel-fed four-wheel drive family sedan and gunned it down the West Side Highway.  I may have even hit a bird on the way down.  We then spent another 30 minutes circling the west side looking for a parking lot that wasn’t full so we could park our car.  Fuckin’ A.

Eventually, we got to the event, which was tucked into one corner of the Javits Center.  It was the smallest event at the convention center that day.  It was dwarfed by something else called the International Beauty Show (they used the most unfortunate acronym, IBS New York – I was expecting row upon row of portajohns), and some college fair.  We snaked our way through what looked like a million Snookis and another half-million high school imbeciles.

 

When we got into the Green Festival, it wasn’t entirely what I was expecting.  Being at the Javits Center, this was like a trade show.  But open to the public.  Four massive aisles of booths, multiple stages set up across the floor for talks and workshops, and a floor full of extras from Portlandia.  We started our wander through the booths.

What did the kids immediately make a beeline for?  The first few booths, which had tons of chocolate, all boasting fair trade, organic, small batches made by Nicaraguan cave children or some shit like that.  Kids didn’t give a shit, they just saw open bowls of chocolate and they were encouraged by the nice hippie ladies behind the counter to help themselves as much as they wanted.  Thanks for nothing, bitch, you’re not the one who has to deal with the sugar crash in 20 minutes.

 

Eventually, I came across a booth that didn’t piss me off – a bike shop!  They had some sweet small brand bikes, but in the end, they didn’t really have anything that excited me too much.  The only bike I wanted was the owners fillet-brazed steel fixie.  And he wasn’t about to part with it.

Right in the back of the hall was this big white bus.  The inside of the bus was a kids’ play area, but the whole thing looked suspiciously like some brainwashing lab on wheels.  I imagined my kids going in as normal kids who eat hot dogs and play with lightsabers, but then coming back out wearing a hemp sackcloth, eating a bean taco, and asking to adopt a goat.

Thankfully, Kid Uno did not disappoint, as he took to their whiteboard and happily predicted the devastation of the earth’s poles (left).  I have never been prouder.  My kids ain’t half bad, after all.

Also not half bad was the centerpiece of the event, an all-electric Ford Focus.  I have a difficult time with Ford.  Being an American car, I can’t be blamed for thinking it’s going to be a piece of shit, but the Ford Focus also has roots in Europe, which means it can’t be completely awful.  This electric version was eye-opening, that’s for sure.  Not only did it not suck, the build quality was quite decent, design fairly ergonomic, and the ripped-off-from-Aston Martin front end was flattering rather than offending.  Downside was that it’s still a short-range, single-speed, 40-grand hatch.  It may be one of the first all-electric cars that doesn’t look like a Tamagotchi toy, but it’s not quite the answer yet.

And in what shape did I emerge from this whole thing?  Fuck if I know.  All I know is that my kids had a blast, wifey enjoyed it, I ate some really shitty food (vegan cheese and kale chips), some not-so-terrible food (corn salsa and vegan macaroons), and I wanted to punch this fucking guy who kept walking around playing a guitar…

 

And I escaped without getting caught up in some tree-worshipping pagan ritual.  Boo yah.