NEWS & COLUMNS

Best Pickup Joint

Fulton Fish Market, Weekdays Before 6 a.m.

Something Fishy, Perhaps. After an evening of downing a number of sophisticated alcoholic products, our boyfriend decided we weren’t ready to go home and ordered the cabdriver to drop us off at the Fulton Fish Market. The Fulton Fish Market is one of those places one never sees unless one’s cousin is staying and he brought the Frommer’s, and subsequently we’d heard about the Fish Market, we’d driven by the Fish Market, we’d even been to the Tokyo Fish Market, but never before that moment had it occurred to us to make the rounds of the Fish Market, especially not at that very late hour when one feels emulsified like glutinous Raisinets. But our boyfriend wanted lobster. He had the idea that the perfect thing for us at that moment was to buy oysters and lobsters in bulk, cook them up and serve them to our friends in the morning.

He left us to go look for Malpeques, and so we stood there alone, sniffing up the brine and entrails. And then we noticed them, around us, working, sweating, like a Janet Jackson video, men, yes, the kind of men we’d never seen in any of the almost hundred places we tended to patronize in the city. They were broad-backed, thick-fingered, the whole thing, and the fish buyers and chefs, as we think some of those men must have been, had, in the words of Andrew Marvell, a "vegetable" quality to them, square and crouched like beets. We fantasized that these were chefs who had been to jail, who pulled in a million a year and wore their Converse hightops and their duct-taped North Face jackets. These might just be our fantasies, but women, we’re telling you, if you’re looking, you’re looking in the wrong places, because those men are hot.

Best Surviving Pocket
Of Old-Fashioned
Midtown Sleaze

"Southport"

Is That a Crackpipe in Mickey’s Pants? We spent much of this past year living right across from the Port Authority on W. 40th St. Those of you still bemoaning the Disneyfication of 42nd St., please believe us when we tell you that the old sleaze hasn’t vanished. We know this from intimate experience. It just got pushed south and west, along 8th Ave. and on several blocks of cross streets between 8th and 9th Aves., the last old-time sleazy porno ghetto area in midtown Manhattan. A hood, one wag friend of ours jokes, that The New York Times and the realtors will soon dub "Southport" (South of Port Authority) when the 42nd St. redevelopment inexorably spreads there.

You want a taste of the old Deuce? Stroll our block of W. 40th between 8th and 9th Aves. after dark. Our building’s immediate neighbors included two porn shops, a greasy Chinese takeout for crackheads, the scariest bodega in Manhattan, the worst fast food joint on the planet and a bar. We passed a dozen more porn shops every day on our walk to work. How many porn shops do you need? Walking home every night we ran a gauntlet of filthy, mean-tempered crackies and drunks, plenty of hoze and lots of just generally bad-looking dudes up to absolutely no good. Every morning, we went out to the lovely aroma left by the bums who’d pissed on our front steps that night. Not to mention the puke in the gutter. Most nights around 4 a.m. we were awakened by the inhuman yowling of the crackies clustered on the parking lot under our window, who’d run out of cash and rock and were coming down loud and hard.

And that’s just our one block. There are several square blocks of good old-fashioned New York City degradation and depravity left in Southport, for you nostalgists willing to go look.

Best Second Chance

Graduate School

Tickled in Our Ivory Tower. During a recent visit to our undergraduate alma mater we bumped into a woman who had been in our art history class. She asked what we’d been up to these past few years. Graduate school, we told her, starting next week in fact, after several years of the "real world" of work. "That makes sense," she said. "You were always so good at school." Really? All we remember are binge eating, body dysmorphia and a constant misuse of the word "phenomenology," but we thanked her anyway. No, we thought later, we were not good at school, but this could be our second chance. This time around we’d go to office hours. We’d do all the required reading. We’d rewrite our term papers for extra credit. We’d ask our professors for recommendations before they forgot our name. We’d do everything right this time around because we’re lucky, lucky, lucky, so goddamn lucky to be in school.

Even as we write these very words we sit cramped in the back of a coffee shop, lovingly fingering our syllabus for "War, Peace & Strategy." Who could have explained to us how good we had it those four years of college? Parents and administrators colluded in one perfect system that assured us we wouldn’t have to worry about anything that would impinge on our ability to relax. It was as if they had sent us into the woods for four years with the sole task of polishing a stick.

We had no idea what it was like out there. People warned us but we didn’t listen. But now we’re back! We’re back to a place where doctors are free, shrinks are free, lifestyle is damn cheap and we can go home and take a nap most days of the week. Soon people will ask for our opinions on the IMF. We’re in fancy school! And afterward, when we leave this place, well-rested and bursting with self-esteem, loaded down with a master’s and a certificate proving our excellence in all things Slavic, the U.S. government will pay us, as experts, to shoot the shit with people just like us.

Best Annoying Form
Of Transportation

The NYU Bus

Busing Issues. We’ve all seen them around, clogging the streets and sullying the air–those purple and white "New York University" shuttle buses. The idea seems simple enough–flash your student ID, hop aboard and ride for free. Fine. But it wasn’t until early this year that we really started to think about those buses. And the more we thought about them, the more irked we became.

Who’s riding these things? And why? Are they afraid to walk the streets or ride the subway? Do they think they’re better than us? Are they precious, delicate flowers, too sensitive to bear the awful burden of life in this crazy town? Enfeebled in some way? If confronted, would they plead poverty?

First of all, if they’re going to NYU, they’d better not try to plead poverty. You have to wonder why some kids would attend NYU–clearly in part for "the New York experience"–only to ride around like some cowardly tourist. We also have to wonder how much money NYU is spending to maintain this fleet of buses in order to protect a bunch of sissies who daren’t bother themselves with something as gauche as "walking" or "taking the subway."

Goddamn little pantywaists.

Best Way to Feel Like a Scumbag

Expanded Syringe Access
Demonstration Program
Rite Aid, Westhampton Beach, NY

…and the Damage Done. We won’t soon forget the look on the frowsy old cow’s face when we stepped up to the pharmacy counter at the Westhampton Beach Rite Aid and asked her for some 1Ú2-cc insulin needles. A bag of 10, please. We were trying to be polite, urbane, well-dressed. We were trying to be normal, trying to ignore her look of disgust and dismay. She actually staggered back on her feet, shocked by the gravity of our request. We were used to this sort of reaction, for our loved ones–and our love for anyone definitely belonged in the past tense, now that we were getting high again–routinely buckled and brayed whenever we turned up, pin-eyed, lino-slick and brimming with false bonhomie. We’re longtime needle freaks, so we understand and expect pity and fear. We know that you plan on burying us. Or, at the very least, you plan on reading a small item about our sudden demise in the local paper.

But bitch, you work in a pharmacy that volunteered to take part in the Expanded Syringe Access Program. Pharmacies in New York state can sell anyone over the age of 18 a maximum of 10 syringes–all that’s required from the buyer is proof of age. If that. We know the law, friend, and this isn’t an illegal transaction.

After a few moments of rifling around in the back, she reappeared and slammed a bag of works on the counter.

"These are short spikes. You got any regular length ones?"

"Ten dollars," she huffed.

Ten dollars? In the city, or in Riverhead, a bag of 10 usually goes for $3.99 or less. And the Third Worlder behind the counter is polite. And Norah at the needle exchange on Allen St.–dykey, jaunty, infinitely patient Norah, who directs the sad, hurried traffic in and out of her office, who calls gizmos "flavors" and doles out advice on how to shoot up in a way that minimizes the risk of abscess and OD–now, she treats needle use like the sacred ritual it wants to be. "I know you’re dopesick," she says to us, as she hands us a package of needles and cottons. "So get out of here." We catch a look at ourselves in storefront glass as we beat a hasty retreat. Even a blazer, Fendi shades and a silk scarf can’t cover it up.

Meanwhile, back at Rite Aid, we were too ashamed and paranoid to continue the conversation, so we paid up, rushed out of the pharmacy, struggled onto our bike and cussed all the way back home to the bathroom.

Up until that afternoon of desperation–buying works in Westhampton! The treacly realm of stone-faced cops and anorexic moms the color and texture of blanched bone–the Rite Aid nazi had been friendly and flippant with us whenever we came in to buy nail polish and cigarettes. She always had a rash, funny remark about our tan, our clothes, our weight. Or lack thereof. But now she knew our game and we would never go back to that Rite Aid. The nerve of her! But what choice did we have? We were carless and out of works, as usual, and there was no way we were going to make it to the CVS in Riverhead, where junkies and steroid freaks in need of clean gizmos are in vast supply, and the girl behind the bulletproof glass doesn’t miss a beat when we ask for a bag of needles. We would be in the South Bronx tomorrow, re-upping our supply of dope and coke, and we would hit a Duane Reade, where they had the syringes we liked and a smile for us when they gave us our receipt.

Fucking short spikes, we groused, as we slammed another barrel load into our arm. Fuck her.

Strangely enough, after our Rite Aid disaster, even the drones at the city Duane Reades started to hassle us.

Sunday afternoon in Times Square, at one of the only open pharmacies in a 20-block radius: "What you want for," asks the Paki at the register. "What you need eye-vee needles for?" Fear and disgust in his eyes too.

"For our cat," we say tonelessly.

He takes this in. "Cat. Okay." Ka-ching. Thank you. You have a hoop you want us to slink through? We’re pretty jacked, but this prick is wrecking our high. Hey man, we got rights too. We watch this thought skulk in and out of our skull, and the next thought is an unpleasant one. It doesn’t go away: Woman, you sound like a pathetic junkie.

We get the fuck out of the neighborhood as quickly as possible.

Best Post-Goal Jersey
Removal By a MetroStar

Mamadou Diallo

Ya Gotta Believe! If you’ve watched any soccer, you know that the mania for stripping one’s jersey off after scoring a goal has caught on here in the States. But seeing what statement these players will make is half the fun. We’ve seen familial pride (a t-shirt with a photo of the player’s child) duke it out with religious fervor ("Christ Is Lord"), but it wasn’t until July that we witnessed a post-goal stripdown as a cry for help. When beleaguered MetroStars striker Mamadou Diallo scored on a penalty kick in a July 20 game against the New England Revolution, he tore off his jersey to reveal a handmade t-shirt that read: "NY Believe in Me." An arrow also directed fans to the back of the t-shirt, which read: "I Believe in You." Such pop psychologizing actually works wonders; Diallo led Major League Soccer in points per game by late August.

Best Cheesy 9/11 Tchotchke

Wink Wink. As longtime aficionados of religious kitsch, our favorite has to be Winky Face Jesus: a macabre, 3-D picture of Jesus’ face while he’s on the cross, his eyes opening and closing every time you move. On the heels of 9/11, we’ve seen a similar piece of kitsch: a picture of the Twin Towers on that same ridged, 3-D plastic that morphs into the Empire State Bldg. when you move. Think about how daring this is. Think about something else: after the first few weeks post-9/11, how many times have you seen the new southern Manhattan skyline on tv? Are we so frightened by the truth that the only way to see it is to be there, or buy this cheap tchotchke? Sweet, weeping Jesus.

Best Memorial Service
We Wish
Hadn’t Happened

Don Gilbert’s

Surf Surreality. The memorial service his loved ones threw for our friend and colleague Don Gilbert this August was like a movie scene. There was something unreal about it. Maybe it was just hard to believe it was happening.

It was on the wide, wide beach near his parents’ place in Long Beach, LI, on a Friday evening. The sun was trying to set behind purpling storm clouds rumbling overhead. Blustery offshore winds kicked up an angry surf. The attendants were a thoroughly Gilbertian mix of surfer dudes, rockers, a couple of junkies, a large New York Press contingent, family and neighbors. The priest was in short sleeves. They set up Gilbert’s surfboard standing on its tail in the sand with a portrait of him on it, and everyone put flowers around it. We left him a couple of smokes, figuring he might not be able to find his American Spirits wherever he is. Then we stood there looking at his photo, and told him how pissed we were at him for dying.

We clustered around the priest on the sand. The very instant he started the service, those clouds began to pour. Umbrellas up, rain pounding, everyone getting soaked, and you couldn’t hear a word the man was intoning. Several people started shaking their heads and grinning at those clouds–"Fuck you, Gilbert, cut it out." And, of course, as soon as the ceremony ended, it stopped raining. His ashes were distributed among his family and closest friends, who tossed them into the surf. The rest of us threw flowers. Many of us shed tears. A friend of Gilbert’s set up a boombox and put on some Gilbert-type music–the Ramones, Iggy. Iggy was just singing "I am the world’s forgotten boy" when the boombox was knocked into the sand and quit. We figured it was Gilbert’s way of telling us to cut it out, so we took it as our cue to straggle up the beach in the wind-buffeted gloom, some headed for the LIRR station, some for a nearby dive for a few last toasts.

You’re not forgotten, boy.

Best Pick-Up Soccer

Astoria Heights Park
30th Rd. (betw. 45th & 46th Sts.), Queens
(R train to the 46th St. stop, walk two blocks north)

Don’t Forget Some Cash. Dress a softball team in day-glo orange and they might as well be nine giant pylons. This is sport? For those who despair to see Central Park given over to sluggards with leather gloves, there is little choice but to head for the boroughs. Astoria Heights park is not pretty–in fact it’s just a giant tarmac slab–but it’s livelier than a summer of Sundays on the Great Lawn. Go on the weekend between 3 and 4 o’clock. You’ll find women grilling chicken, men playing three-man volley and the best pick-up soccer in the city. The level of play is only middling (a lot of skill but a lot of big bellies too), but what makes the soccer stand out is the general decency of the players. They are mostly Colombians, Ecuadorians and Mexicans, and they are all quite gracious. Fights are rare, and if you’re willing to wait 20 minutes you’re almost certain to get in a game. Play is six-a-side, and don’t forget to bring some cash. Losers pay $2. It would be distressing not to have the money on you.

Best Bullshit Slogan, Apparel

Seven Jeans, "For All Mankind"

Mankind, My Ass. Seven are lowrise jeans that became must-haves for Manhattan young women last spring. They’re priced in the triple-digits. They don’t make them big, or even medium. In fact, no one with a waist that’s more than 32 inches around has a prayer of getting into Sevens. So obviously the "mankind" in the slogan doesn’t refer to all humanity. The jeans are for waifs with cash, exclusively. So "For All Mankind" must mean that the jeans are pleasing to all men. Therefore, men who like big, broad, rounded butts are what–not men? Not a significant contingent within mankind? We’d like to bring Seven’s executives down to our corner in Brooklyn, so the men who hang out there can explain in detail about what they call "The Badunkadunk." We think the fashionistas might find it to be a compelling argument.

Best Tip-Toeing Around an Issue

"9/11"

Euphemisms R Us. In the days and weeks following the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the euphemisms were flying fast and furious as newscastermen and normal people alike were scrambling to come up with a quicker, easier way to reference the events as well as various things surrounding them (remember when "Ground Zero" was "The Pit"?). "The Tragedy" was popular, as were "The Attacks," "The Unpleasantness" and "The Horribleness."

It took a few weeks for everyone to finally settle on "9/11"–it was neat, it was clean, it was handy–and now there’s no escaping it. Not a day has gone by when some news story or professional athlete or politician or movie star or guy on the train or television commercial hasn’t bandied about the term "9/11"–sometimes for no apparent reason than to make whatever gibberish they happen to be pandering seem more profound, somehow.

We blame Franklin Roosevelt. Yet despite his "Day of Infamy" speech, the attack on Pearl Harbor never came to be known as "12/7"–it was always "The attack on Pearl Harbor." Maybe we just don’t have that sort of patience anymore. Still, we would much rather hear people come right out and say "the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center" instead of the lifeless, bloodless and cold "9/11."

Best Reason No Mets Pitcher
Has Ever Thrown A No-Hitter

Karma from All Those Cheap-Ass Hits that Led to the World Championship in 1986

Is That Like the Curse of the Bambino? These same freakish anomalies off the Louisville Sluggers would infect the throwing arm of Mackey Sasser, who would have been the next John Stearns, and Keith Miller’s glove in center, as he would have been the next Tommy Agee. The same goes for Sid Fernandez, David Cone, Al Leiter, Pedro Astacio, Steve Trachsel and the long-departed Rick Reed–the reluctant Twin who is about to enter the postseason in Minnesota.

Best Place To Get Depressed

"Misery Mile" (The Battery to Canal Street)

Zip Over to the Vietnam Memorial If You Have a Spare Sec. If you ever wake up and discover that you’re just too darned cheerful, here’s a bracing way to bring you back to reality. Take a nice leisurely stroll from the Battery to Canal St. along the Hudson River. It’s a stretch of New York that columnist Jimmy Breslin rightly calls the "Misery Mile." Start at the memorial to all the soldiers and sailors killed in World War II and proceed north to the Museum of Jewish Heritage. As we all know, Jewish history is a euphemism for "endless joys and delights." After contemplating pogroms and Kristallnacht, stroll past the Irish Hunger Memorial to enjoy a facsimile of an Irish famine house. It’s a vivid reminder of the thousands who starved to death even while those British scamps exported butter and beef from Ireland. Next up is Ground Zero, about which enough has been said. By this time, your good mood should be completely evaporated, leaving you in the right frame of mind for visiting your lawyer to make out your will, for buying your cemetery plot or simply for breaking your neck at that trapeze school. Cheers!

Best Harassment of an
Arab in the Wake of 9/11

"It’s My Fault. Just Kick My Ass." He’s a nice guy who doesn’t want any trouble, so we won’t name names. But we’ll take a polygraph if anybody questions this story’s truthfulness:

It’s two weeks after the World Trade Center massacre, and we’re visiting our favorite pita place in the former shadows of the WTC. Maybe we’re gullible enough to think that we’re showing support for a local Arab-American. We ask if he’s had any kind of harassment.

"There was this one woman," he explained, "who came in from The New York Times. She kept telling me that she understood if I hated America. I finally told her not to come back until she wanted to write about my business."

Best Blurring of the Line

Headset Cellphones

Hearing Voices. First several times we encountered someone using one of those near-invisible cellphone headsets, it caught us off guard. When they said "Hello" as we passed, we of course assumed they were merely being polite, so we said "Hello" back. Then when they started discussing (with nobody in particular, it seemed) "next month’s business plan" and where they were going to meet for lunch, we quickly came to the conclusion that they were schizophrenic. We’ve certainly become familiar enough with people mumbling to invisible friends and demons as they shuffle down the street. But most of these people lately seemed to be dressed a little better than your typical New York bum. Maybe they just lost everything on the stock market, or maybe they’d scored at the Salvation Army. Who could tell?

Then we noticed the wire and the earplugs.

Our main gripe with the explosion of these "hands-free" gizmos (though for some reason the people who use them still insist on gesturing wildly) is the fact that it’s suddenly become more and more difficult–if not impossible–to tell the potentially dangerous insane people from the mere assholes.

Best Moment

Yankee Stadium, 2001 ALDS, Game 2

Smoke Those Bugs Out. Paul Verhoeven’s 1997 satire of American WWII movies, updated in accordance with Beverly Hills 90210 youth culture and interpolated into an American Empire’s future, was widely misunderstood when it came out. Now that the country is at war, the film’s black humor is even more biting, and more than a few scenes that five years ago seemed over-the-top have a ring of prescience. We very much appreciate that certain cable channels have seen fit to run Starship Troopers regularly for late-night audiences in 2002.

Exactly how brilliantly dead-on the film is hit us before that little revival began. It was October 2001, and a friend had scored playoff tickets. After a season of regular attendance at Yankee Stadium, Game 2 against the Oakland A’s was to be our first post-9/11 visit to the Bronx. We knew it’d be different. We’d knew there’d be a lot of patriotic displays and added security. But like every New Yorker who witnessed the massacre, we were on board for all of that. We also knew that the President was supposed to speak that night. We figured we’d miss it.

But Bush’s speech and subsequent press conference played live on Yankee Stadium’s video screen. The game was delayed for half an hour while the President repeated his "smoke ’em out and bring ’em to justice" promise over and over (every time, we involuntarily pictured Bush dragging Osama to David Justice). The playoff crowd watched quietly. We were an audience of 55,000 intently focused on a giant talking head with an "America Strikes Back" graphic under it. It was inappropriate to joke or talk, let alone suggest out loud that we came to the playoffs to get away from this nightmare for a few minutes. The most surreal moment came when Bush recounted a litany of American sacrifice through the ages. The Greatest Generation stormed the beach at Normandy. The President’s own generation faced Vietnam. Then he actually said the words "Generation X." Something like, "Generation X watched from the chillout tent at Lollapalooza while our Gulf War bombers struck with unprecedented accuracy…" You couldn’t react.
Best Conquering Nail

Salon & Sign of
Chelsea’s Overgentrification

Bloomie Nails
219 8th Ave.
(21st St.), 366-6199

170 W. 23rd St.
(7th Ave.), 741-0105

214 7th Ave.
(betw. 22nd & 23rd Sts.), 675-1516

294 8th Ave.
(25th St.), 646-638-2727

200 W. 18th St.
(betw. 7th & 8th Aves.), 366-4545

Further Gapification. We’ve always loved the convenience of the 24-hour bodegas and the wide range of restaurants in Chelsea. So when one of our favorite diners, Bendix, was shuttered this year to make room for yet another Bloomie Nails salon, we almost took out our shotgun to settle the score.

But seriously, even in a neighborhood overflowing with well-to-do gay men and straight women, four or five Bloomies–we lost track–is far too many. The Korean women running these joints provide great (but overpriced) manicures and pedicures, but when nail salons start taking over restaurants it’s a very bad sign for a neighborhood where rents–commercial and residential–have gone through the roof, and the only places more ubiquitous than Bloomies are luxury condos.

Best Proxy Setting for
The Arab-Israeli Conflict

24 Hrs. Mini-Mart in Flatbush

Where Else? Flatbush, ethnically speaking, doesn’t make sense. Once a Jewish enclave in central Brooklyn–like Brownsville–the neighborhood is so ethnically agglutinated that the phonecard storefronts on Coney Island Ave. are inscribed in Arabic, the second language of choice at Andries Hudde Junior High School on Nostrand Ave. is Creole (ahead of Spanish, or Spanglish) and some of the most fearsome criminals are Russians come too far north of Kings Hwy. to be up to any good. The people’s voice in Washington is the House Floor-rapping freak Major Owens, whose cardinal achievement is, pending Dick Armey’s retirement, having the most bizarre name of any congressman. Nesting in the crags of Midwood High School’s Bedford Ave. facade is a family of parrots, Caribbean emigres who also haunt the bell tower of nearby Brooklyn College.

Yet, as in Williamsburg, the Jews aren’t giving up on Flatbush. Roots to the place run deep in the Jewish consciousness, especially in the concrete of Ocean Pkwy. and Coney Island Ave., and most visibly in the Pale of Settlement known as Ave. J. Yeshiva of Flatbush–alma mater of such Jewish sages as Leon Wieseltier–is still there, overshadowing a library branch where payess-rocking asthmatics in thick glasses borrow Chaim Potok novels and old baseball books. Mention Flatbush to Jewish residents of, say, Washington, and the most likely response is a wistful, "Yeah, that’s where my father’s from." The dancehall posters might monopolize the brick walls of the Junction, but on Ave. J, it’s all ads for the new Uncle Moishe & the Mitzvah Men disc and Meir Kahane’s despicable ponim.

Unlike in Borough Park, where the Satmar Hasids dream of the day when Yasir Arafat dunks his toes on the beaches of Tel Aviv, the Jews of Ave. J are determined Zionists. The deli counters host change cans where customers can donate quarters toward the purchase of, uh, "dogs" to defend West Bank settlements. There’s a Jerusalem II pizza parlor (but do yourself a favor and eat at Di Fara’s instead). And just like in Israel, the black-veiled women pushing baby strollers don’t get lingering stares, but their presence is subtly noted.

Now, this is Brooklyn, after all, but the tension makes a lot more sense after two years of intifada and one year of a crater in Lower Manhattan. Determined to stick our finger in an open wound, we make sure we buy our Israeli papers and magazines at 24 Hrs. Mini-Mart, an Arab-run newsstand and bodega. Sure, you can get your copy of The Jerusalem Report at the Jew-staffed places across the street or next to the subway, but we’d prefer to pick up our Ha’aretz at a place where we can look an Arab in his eyes and see a Flatbush resident. The closest we may get to shaking hands is when we exchange money, but judging by the looks on each of our faces, at least we know where each of us stands. In a place this bizarre, peace is possible.

Best Corporate Name Change

Union Square Bank
20 Union Square E. (15th St.)

Best Everyman

Joseph Gray Jr.

Not Even Black or White. About a month before the terrorist attacks, an off-duty policeman named Joseph Gray Jr. ran over a family in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, killing a pregnant mother, her eight-month-old fetus, her four-year-old son and her teenage sister. The tragedy was a deep-trough moment for the NYPD who were, as yet, far from heroes in the eyes of the public. Each day following the accident seemed to produce another infuriating revelation as to who this cop was and what he was up to on the day in question. Gray, you will recall, claimed that construction barriers beneath the Gowanus Expressway overpass made it impossible to see the Herreras, who he said darted out in front of his van at the last second. It was already hard fact that he’d been drinking all day. In addition, his immediate and seemingly callous claim of innocence did not square with eyewitness reports, which had the family crossing from the other side of the street in plain view. Gray, innocent? Nobody was buying it.

How does a defense team get that kind of client off? They didn’t. Not even close. But in the nine months between the accident and the jury verdict that found him guilty of four counts of second-degree manslaughter, they did manage to cultivate a credible image of Gray as a monumental underachiever. This was not difficult to do. It was the only thing they could do. The raw material was already there, everything from the disheveled, Elmer Fudd-like appearance to the litany of incompetence. His driver’s registration status at the time of the accident: expired. Why he refused to take a sobriety test: he suffered from vertigo and touching his nose would cause him to lose his balance. His whereabouts prior to the accident: a strip club. How many hours he’d been awake prior to the accident: at least 24. His relative sobriety: stink-ass drunk. The list goes on.

At the trial, we noticed that Gray’s defense team seemed to be proactively ceding the character question. Aside from winning a pretrial ruling that forbade mention of the Wild Wild West strip club by name (a move we believe backfired), they did not go out of their way to try to build the man up with character witnesses and such. If anything, Gray’s lawyer, Harold Levy, seemed to be passively promoting the idea of Gray as one of life’s losers. Seeing the robust, tan, impeccably dressed Levy next to the sallow homunculus Gray only reinforced this idea. (Similarly, Gray’s wife, who was present and prominent throughout the trial, smoked her husband in the looks category.) There may have been a purpose in playing to the diminutive. For when all was said and done, the circumstantial and forensic evidence, damning as it was, fell short of proving that the Herrera family had crossed from the unobscured far side of the intersection.

What the highest stakes in the legal case boiled down to was stories. Gray’s story versus the eyewitnesses’ stories. And what the defense strategy may have been leading to is this: If you could believe in Gray as a born loser, destined to a fate of perpetually subpar achievement, then you might also accept that he was capable of experiencing colossal bad luck, that the accident was, in fact, an accident. In other words, yeah, we can’t say all that other stuff isn’t true, but our guy’s a bad-luck-Harry and this was a tragic mishap.

This, we assumed, was all that Gray had had to go on. But it wasn’t. About two weeks after he killed the Herreras, as Sunset Park mourned and controversy brewed, bringing wider scorn and implication upon the NYPD, an elderly neighborhood resident by the name of Israel Perez walked into the 72nd precinct and said that he had a story to tell. He’d witnessed the accident, he said, and it had not occurred the way everyone was saying. Specifically, Perez said that he was walking along the southbound side of 3rd Ave. and that he clearly saw the family cross from underneath the overpass, just before they were struck by Gray’s van.

Perez made a terrible witness. Ornery, derisive of the process, he refused to follow instructions given to him to wait out full translations into Spanish before he began speaking. When questioned by the defense, Perez’s time on the stand was mildly amusing and largely distracting. In the cross examination, he defiantly tacked "Sir" onto each response to the female assistant DA, got angry and confused and seemed at times to gainsay his own testimony. Perez’s story went down in flames.

In talking with the print and tv news folks it was not difficult to discern a general presumption of guilt. Joe Gray’s was the first trial we’d attended. Often, we felt like pikers in their company, lacking that old salt, see-enough-of-these-things-and-you-know-how-it-is sensibility. But then the dailies have long since moved on. We still think about Joe Gray. We’ve done enough bad things in our life to know how certain behavior, and assumptions about that behavior, can wind up implicating a person that one time it isn’t his fault. And so while we don’t know, we still do wonder what exactly motivated Israel Perez to come forward after the fact and contradict his neighbors. We don’t doubt that Gray is a poster boy for denial, or that he was drunk at the moment he struck the Herreras, or that he deserves time away for just being himself. But as to which side of the street the Herrera family crossed from–there, we’re really not sure.

Best Place to Wish You
Hadn’t Run into
That Guy You Know

206 Video
206 E. 14th St. (betw. 2nd & 3rd Aves.)
917-534-0377

"Hey, There’s Sex Going on Here!" Things seem pretty normal when you first walk up the stairs to 206 Video. The place is like any other porn shop–except for that one area toward the back, where all those guys have gathered. Wander over to see what’s so exciting, and discover that 206 Video is more than a porn shop. It’s also the most popular place in town for guys to join other guys in video booths for...well, you know what guys do with other guys in video booths.

On a Saturday afternoon, the men will be circling that area like planes waiting to land at O’Hare at Christmastime. They’ll be deceptively normal-looking men, too. We aren’t saying that there’s usually anything abnormal about gays. The deception is in how this store has become a particularly popular place for married men who crave the occasional masculine company.

Maybe they’re telling the wives that they’re just heading into the city to look at some light fixtures.

Best Manhattan Real Estate Deal

Manhattan Ave.

Move on Up. We left for Brooklyn for all the right reasons, and we left Brooklyn for all the right reasons, too: we were sick of the commute and we were looking for cheaper rent. "Cheaper rent?" we can hear you mumbling. "By cheaper rent you mean cheaper by Manhattan standards, right?" That’s what we thought, too, before we stumbled across the miracle that is Manhattan Ave.

You may have already noticed that Brooklyn is no longer cheap, not by Brooklyn standards and not by Manhattan standards. Welcome to the new New York real estate market. In this market, your landlord-to-be may offer to pay your broker’s fee and your first month’s rent. Price-negotiable is no longer an urban myth relegated to million-dollar apartment sales. And, as we discovered, it is possible to find a better deal in Manhattan than in Brooklyn, if only you know where to look. Take our situation, for example: we wanted a place on the Upper Upper West Side, anywhere from the 90s up, a place for, say, $1200 a month. Our brokers at first showed us the kind of places we expected to find–fuzzy little studios, grandmas’ attics, fire hazards–ugly little apartments hidden in beautiful buildings or on overpopulated streets. Then we noticed a spate of apartment listings on or just off of Manhattan Ave., well within our price range but offering the kind of amenities we’d given up hope of being able to afford. With irrepressible optimism we called one of the brokers to show us what sounded too good to be true: a real two-bedroom apartment with an eat-in kitchen and a very acceptable living room for $1550 a month. We told him we’d take it on the spot, and when we went to sign the lease we found that we were getting a $600 discount. We asked the landlord what was going on. "The legal rent is $2154 a month," she told us, "but you’re getting the preferred rent." Turns out that since the place is rent-stabilized, landlords often charge only a small percent increase for a new tenant even though they list it for what they would be getting in a regular market. We didn’t really understand all the details, and didn’t ask too many questions.

We found out that there are a number of new or renovated buildings in the area that are renting for similar prices. The landlords, we think, are trying to lure gentrifiers (i.e., Columbia students) into the neighborhood with the promise of cheaper rent. It was a similar situation at our previous apartment in a building that had just been built near Ave. D–those were the months before the East Village blew up, and people were scared to go past A. But we like this better: we’re one block from Central Park, we’ve got food stores on either side of us, transportation nearby, old men sit out on chairs all day and kids, dogs and students round out the neighborhood, making this the first real one we’ve lived in since we’ve moved to this city.

Best Public Information Officer

Stephen C. Sautner
Manager of Conservation Communications
Bronx Zoo

Never Kiss a Gorilla. Inspired by the clever subway ad campaign touting the new animal babies at the Bronx Zoo, we loaded up the camera bag with plenty of film and rode the 4 train all the way uptown, on Memorial Day. Which was a very bad idea. Going to the zoo was not a bad idea. Going on Memorial Day to take pictures, however, was idiotic. Every parent in the Tri-State area had the same idea that day: go take Junior to see the monkeys. Bad as the crowd was, we’re suckers for newborn zebras and quacking ducklings and baby baboons, which are cuter than human infants any day, so we plowed our way through a swarm of bawling, bored miniature humanity, who were forced to gape at the bawling, bored spawn of other species. (The four-legged youngsters were much more pleasant to be around than the hypermiserable Jasons and Jennifers.)

The big draw at the Bronx Zoo is the gorilla house. There is nothing wrong with springbok, mind you, but some dumb-ass antelope doesn’t have the same Aww, lookie! factor as a family of lowland gorillas. We waded through the herds of migrating parents and finally got into the plexiglas tube that pipes through the gorilla habitat. It was as crowded as rush hour with hundreds of people jostling to see the oblivious gorillas. With millions of shorties banging around, getting an unobstructed shot was murder.

But then it happened. One of the bigger gorillas, squatting down in front of the sellout crowd, reached behind herself and, like a soda jerk making an ice cream float, produced some personal Carvel, which she then nonchalantly proceeded to munch. Monkey see do, monkey do: the other gorillas saw it was snack time and decided they’d make a fresh afternoon nosh of the junkiest of junk food too. Pretty soon, most of the gorillas were dining on yesterday’s dinner. Pretty icky business, but there was an upside–the human hordes cleared out, leaving the place empty enough to get some good shots of the less-peckish gorillas.

Curious as to why the gorillas would pass up some nearby tasty oranges in favor of a fairly desperate "treat"–have you ever been that hungry?–we sent an e-mail to the link on the Bronx Zoo website to ask about it. An hour later, we had our answer, courtesy of Stephen Sautner, the Zoo’s p.r. guy. "According to Drs. Bill Weber and Amy Vedder who have studied gorillas in the wild," Sautner wrote, "they do occasionally eat their own dung. The reasons are unclear, however." We’ll buy that as an explanation. Animal behavior at the zoo may be plenty strange, but it’s nice to know that authoritative answers to the public’s questions are only a polite, informed and timely e-mail away.

Best Way to Make $250/Hour After Your
Parents Divorce and Your Father,
Contradicting Earlier Promises, Cuts You Off

Female Wrestling

Lady Adonis. "But is it sex work?" we asked our mother, who was trying to help us find a part-time job. All she did was put her hand out and wave it side to side, as if to say, "Kinda." "Don’t you think it will hurt our future career?" "Nah, in this day and age, it’ll probably only help you." "But don’t you think it will fuck us up toward men?" Here Mom gave a sly smile. "What? Don’t you think you’re already fucked up toward men?"

All that training we put into being a future rich person, all for naught. Hours racked up in Upper East Side townhouse restaurants where we sat up straight and ate perfect food next to people who scared us. And now here we are reading Maxim for career advice. We’re just not equipped for moneymaking, see, because our dad told us we’d never have to worry about it. We can’t emphasize what a shock it was to have him tell us, at 25 years old, that we’d have to learn to be self-sufficient.

"Isn’t it too late for that?" we asked him. "We’ve already been ruined. We have no idea what it’s like on the outside." But Dad’s tightening his fists, or as they say in economics, he’s exploring optimal responses to changing circumstances. Well, gee. There must be plenty of things we can do to make money. We can be stockbrokers, for example. Or we can put on a string bikini, outfit a midtown studio into a ring and wrestle stockbrokers. Yeah, that sounds like more fun. In the meantime, if you need to find us we’ll be collecting loose change out of our old jacket pockets.

Best Software Bug

The 000 A.M. Hour On the New Subway Trains

Zero Hour. A Dorito-littered cubicle, somewhere in America, mid-2000:

Daniels: Um, McCullough, we have a problem with that MTA subway project.

McCullough (minimizing a window of Internet porn): What?

Daniels: Well, something got lost in translation with that Chinese timing module. Now, between 12 and 1 a.m., the clocks we’re designing for the new subway cars say it’s zero-zero-zero a.m.

McCullough: Really? Do they do that between 12 and 1 in the afternoon?

Daniels: No.

McCullough: Well that’s really cool! Leave it in!

Daniels: Cool! I thought so too. It’s awesome! We’ll leave it in.

Best Sign That the Banks Are Fucked

Tightass Appraisals

A.P.Rggh! Recently, a friend who decided to sell her apartment (two-bedroom co-op, EV) encountered an unexpected obstacle. Pricing her place in line with the market, she put it up for sale and found an offer/buyer she liked soon thereafter. A month later the would-be buyer phoned to tell her the deal was dead. Evidently, in preparing the mortgage, his bank refused to appraise the apartment for more than 70 percent of the asking price. To get the loan, the buyer–whose credit history and income were not a problem–would have to put up a 31 percent down payment versus the 15-20 percent that’s been the norm of the last five years. He didn’t have the cake.

We told this story to a broker who deals mostly in condo sales. Her response was, "The banks aren’t appraising. It’s been happening a lot lately." As to why they’re not appraising, she explained that with their stock prices down and their other businesses in the toilet (M&A, investment banking) some banks are taking advantage of a killer housing market to get a hold of the thing they need most: cash. One way to get cash is to require higher down payments upfront. And one way to do that is to appraise low, in spite of fair market value. So our friend’s is a cash-grab story that has everything to do with today’s record-low interest-rate environment. Only so far, we’ve seen no mention of any of this in the media. Perhaps Chris Byron would like to take it from here.

Best New Summer Destination
for Unrepentant Swine

"The Cokeskills"

"Look Out, Mama, There’s a White Boat Coming Up the River..." Calling all militias. This is not a test. The scumbags are coming. Having needed only 15 years to destroy the farms, bucolic beauty and peaceful lifestyle of the East End of Long Island, the Hamptons are moving north. Current enemy communications indicate a major incursion into the town of Hudson, in Columbia County, just a short drive from the Catskills. Other bases of operation include Rhinebeck and Woodstock. Begin immediately movement of paramilitary personnel to these locales for a major initiative to head off these evil interlopers. You have been warned. Enemy collaborators include WWD, New York magazine, The New York Times and Time Out. We have obtained early intelligence of the latter’s planned war guide to subdue the peaceful highlands. Our intelligence is not yet complete, but early communications report the following upcoming TONY cover: "High In Columbia! WHERE to get the best drugs! HOW to maneuver your SUV drunk through icy mountain roads (and look GREAT while doing it)! WHO to call to flush the bulimia vomit from your septic tank!" Our media spies also report that MTV is planning a "Spring Break from Woodstock" special, with legions of Damon Dash wannabes kicking mad bass with Limp Bizkit’s Fred Durst along Rte. 28 as they "chill in the ’skills." Word.

Not on our watch, you fucking ignorant bitch-ass scumsucks. Listen up: we are buying guns, lots of them. And the first time you and your evil breed honk your horns and scream your coke-maddened vulgarities on our streets, we will level our 30-aughts and blow those squinting, smug, pug-ugly smirks off your disgusting, coke-smeared faces. We will firebomb your sick clubs and level your whorehouses. You will rue the day you fucked with us. Seriously. We’re going to kill you. And yes, that includes you, Billy Joel.

Best Way to Run Away & Join
the Circus Without Leaving Town

Trapeze School New York, LLC

Hudson River Park, West Side Hwy. (betw. Vestry & Franklin Sts.)
917-797-1872, www.trapezeschool.com

With the Greatest of Ease. Almost everyone has aspired at one time or another to join the circus, but it’s never to be a clown or an elephant dung picker-upper. It’s always something cool instead, like soaring above crowds on the trapeze. Now New Yorkers’ wildest dreams have come true atop a Hudson River Park-situated trapeze, right next to the roaring traffic of the West Side Hwy. Ex-professionals teach you to swing, drop and, most importantly, hang on like a pro, while onlookers stare in awe of your aerial acrobatics. They also throw in some lingo along the way, so you can impress your friends with authenticity when you tell them about it later. Advanced classes even execute moves you never mastered in yoga–like the one-handed takeoff–one story above the safety net. A two-hour class runs $45-$65, and though more expensive than a ride on the Coney Island Cyclone, the trapeze school definitely feels safer.

Best Office Building Doorman

Leo, 350 Park Ave.

Hey, Guy, Howahyuh? With tightened security in office buildings, we’ve become connoisseurs of doormen, as we have to check in at most front desks. The best we’ve seen is this guy Leo at 350 Park Ave. He looks like a balding leprechaun and has a slight Long Island accent. Clearly on the job for years, he loves his work. Makes eye contact and smiles at everyone. "Hey, howahyuh?" he calls out and waves. The old-timers tease him and exchange family updates, while newcomers pause, taken aback by this gentle blast of unwarranted friendliness. Leo represents the best of old New York, where self-respect and manners mattered, no matter what your place in life. If only a fraction of workers in service jobs, not to mention the stream of white-collar workers he greets so warmly every morning, shared his work ethic.

Best Free Entertainment

Trash Fires

Higher and Higher, Burnin’ Through to My Soul. We were turning the corner from 5th St. north onto 2nd Ave. when we first smelled the smoke. It only took a second longer before we found the source–the wire trash can on the opposite corner was in flames. This was no smoldering trash fire, either–these were big, bright flames dancing in every direction.

Now, trash fires are usually no big deal, especially in a town like New York. Something’s always burning here. After a while, you get used to it. But for some reason that afternoon, everybody stopped to watch. Young couples, fratboys, old people. Suddenly, that trash fire was the most fascinating thing happening in New York City.

Nobody was having quite so much fun, though, as the homeless guy who apparently started the fire. He was standing directly over it, staring down into the billows of black smoke and flickering orange flames. Pretty ballsy, considering how hot it was that day, but he seemed absolutely transfixed.

Then some frantic do-gooder had to ruin everybody’s fun by going and calling the Fire Dept.

Best Neon

McHale’s Restaurant
750 8th Ave. (46th St.)
997-8885

Getting Lit at McHale’s. The gaudy lights of Times Square are there by fiat. It’s zoning laws, not corporate giddiness, that give birth to those big ugly signs. Most of them are soulless things; they are there not as things of themselves but serve instead as some community redevelopment’s symbols of Times Square.

They say the neon lights are bright on Broadway, but the lyricist was off by one block. To see the real jazz neon of New York, you need to forget the tourist-sanitized blocks and look for the parts of the theater district that haven’t been improved to death. The film noir neon lights of McHale’s (itself a beer-and-burger joint of distinction) are romantic in a turn-your-collar-to-the-drizzle way. Find your way to the stagehand union’s favorite place for a shooter via that brilliant red "BAR" sign to get drunk, watch a game or simply enjoy for a second longer a piece of unreconstructed New York.

Best Reason Not to
Leave New York

We’re Living History

Go Ahead, Bite the Big Apple. Many of us lucky enough not to die on 9/11 felt something for the first time: a direct, physical connection to history. History books won’t properly convey how it felt to watch those planes smash into the towers with the naked eye. Or run from that wall of smoke and debris. Or simply wonder how or if we were going to make it home that night. We inhaled the stench of death and destruction long afterward. Held our breaths at every jolt on the subway. Gazed at color copies of the doomed plastered all over town.

This is a small fraction of the real history we’ve lived. How does it feel? Like nothing we’ve ever read in a history book. There’s no substitute for living here–a troubling thought now as much as a prideful boast.

Best Sneaky Police Tactic

Undercover Cabs

NYPD Ruse. We first heard the siren as we were sitting by the front window of a downtown bar, drinking and watching the people walk by.

We hardly paid any attention at all when a car pulled over to the curb and stopped–until we noticed that the car that pulled up behind it wasn’t your typical blue and white cruiser, but instead a yellow cab with a flashing red light on the dashboard.

Two undercover cops got out of the cab and gave the driver a ticket.

We’d never seen this before, but had to admit it’s awfully clever. Regular undercover police cars aren’t that hard to pick out anymore–just take a look at the license plate. But a cab? Who’d pay any attention at all to a cab until the siren kicked in and the flashing red light appeared?

Since then, we’ve seen a few undercover cabs in action, and they always take us by surprise. We don’t know how long the NYPD’s employed this tactic, but we’re willing to bet it’s been awfully effective.

There’s even one unspoken advantage to this strategy–it’s now probably a lot easier for young black males to catch a cab in New York City!

Best Local Yoga
Girl Made Good

Jennifer Connelly

Some Beautiful Hands. Are you a teacher, we asked her, after she gave us an amazing assist in child’s pose during a swampy afternoon open class years ago at Jivamukti. The woman had the touch: firmly sliding one hand up our sweat-slick back, once she reached the nape of our neck she gently raked her fingertips through our damp hair. At the same time, her other palm inched down toward the base of our spine, where it squashed against our sacrum. A scant millimeter from the cleft of our bum. Our spine pinged and popped languidly; we probably grew an inch or more from her doughty-deft ministrations. Such great strides all of us were making in our yoga practice!

"No, I’m not," she replied, with a surprised chuckle. Not quite a don’t you know who I am chuckle. More flattered than not.

"Not what?" we said into our sticky mat.

"A teacher."

"Right."

In truth, we knew who our yoga partner was. Professionally, at least, this Vermont midwifely-looking creature with the stupendous bosom, gimlet eyes, delicate crow’s feet and bushy Miss Scarlett brows was Jennifer Connelly, the not A-list actress who haughtily candied up some ghastly Nick Nolte film and Lord knows what other forgettable flicks. We were simply trying to flatter her, make some conversation. Because it was obvious–her tender, studied touch was the giveaway–that she was a nice person. We couldn’t wait to get home and tell our roommate Twin Ray–who liked to say her name at night, in a silly strangulated voice–that Jennifer Connelly lobbed some seriously healing touch our way today.

In any case, Twin Ray and I agreed: watching her on film caused both of us to experience a modicum of shame that was not unlike the feeling we derived from trying not to stare at the overdeveloped girl in our seventh-grade class, the scapegoat who must hump the weight of both a busted rep and a cherry intact: she was all tits, watchful eyes and hornet waist. Boobs like those grow on certain cerebral girls. Unlucky, un-A-list girls. Boobs of betrayal. Stardom can’t stick to chests like theirs.

And then, like all eighth-grade virgin slatterns, Jennifer stopped coming to class. Eventually, we, too, stopped coming to class. In the long span of time that followed, we would occasionally think of Jennifer Connelly and wonder if she was getting any work. And then, last April, at one of our low points, we saw A Beautiful Mind when we went to Ft. Lauderdale with our grandparents to lick off some serious wounds. The month prior, we barked with joy when Jennifer Connelly–the boob-free, Balenciaga-ed version–swept up to the lectern to claim her movie prize. Normally, watching a former yoga partner win an Academy Award would inflame us with jealousy, but her victory made too much sense: she lost the boobs, turned up the pilot light that illumined her swarthy-pale fields-of-Eire stare, and sweetly, pointedly buffeted her character against Russell Crowe’s meathead tics. "Stunning," my grandmother said, as we watched the movie. "She is simply stunning." We silently agreed.

Her transformation from DD cup to A-list was cemented when her moist visage was recently slapped on the cover of Vanity Fair. Both proud and sad that our Jennifer Connelly was now a big cog in the machine, we eagerly devoured the vignettes about her weight loss, her craft, her hunger for privacy, her boobs. We showed Patrick the magazine, and told him what she was to us, and indirectly, we were telling him what we might mean, or meant, as well: we had the opportunity to do yoga with her when.

Our timing wasn’t on: both of us were several hours into a long fry on the beach and Patrick’s attention span was even more brittle than ours. He flicked his eyes at the cover, grunted and went back to inspecting his split ends. Miffed at his boredom, we sulkily tucked back in to the fat magazine. Moments later, we, too, lost interest. She isn’t our Jennifer Connelly anymore, we thought, rolling over to take the sun head on. She’s someone else.

Best Subsidized
Post-9/11 Salve

Jazz

Bird Lives. The airing of Ken Burns’ middlebrow Jazz in early 2001 helped rekindle our interest, sure. The documentary blockbuster included armloads of great performance footage. But it was 9/11 that sent us back for our first extended browses of the jazz racks since college. Firstly because it was so obviously time for a change. Secondly because some of what we’d been listening to in the summer of 2001 suddenly seemed trivial or irrelevant. Thirdly because almost all of our favorite rap and rock is aggressive, if not downright angry. At home, now, we wanted music to help calm our nerves.

Our problem with jazz had always been that even at its most raging it remained cerebral, civilized.

The Lincoln Center Tower Records stoked the flames of our enthusiasm. The store kept an amazing post-PBS-series sale going all throughout the fall and winter, all the way until March of 2002. It seemed like the majority of CDs in the section (one of the most complete jazz selections in town) were going for $10. Even some that were marked higher came up $9.99 at the register. We were pleased to find out that a lot of jazz on CD sounds better in the 21st century than it did in the 20th, due to meticulous remastering. (Rhino’s reissues of Coltrane’s Columbia output could even compete with the vinyl.)

The men who work at Lincoln Center Tower’s section are serious jazz aficionados. Yes, of course they’re nerds, but they’re pretty personable, and great to have around when you’re shopping. For the first time in our music-collecting lives, we were buying stacks of discs at a time, and returning to the same store to discuss them with the clerks before unearthing more treasures the following weekend. It was a great hobby for those rough months. Raging, yet forever civilized.

Best Un-Subsidized
Post-9/11 Salve

Working Out and Drinking

Not Simultaneously. It’s a tie. We’re not going to try to explain it, but we want it documented that everyone we know, ourselves included, exercised more and consumed more alcohol in 2002. We don’t know if these changes cancel each other out. We suspect that bar and gym owners have noticed, but can’t imagine they’ve compared notes and discovered it’s the same exact people who are using both services much more than before. It’s obviously a complicated phenomenon. We don’t get it. It doesn’t necessarily make sense. Yet it’s happening on a massive scale.

Best Tourist Attraction

The Pit

Broken Heart Land. Things are still broken downtown–we feel it like the dull pain in a missing limb. What’s heartening is we’re not alone: millions of Americans have flocked here to mill along the wooden observation decks and gaze into the concrete hole that was the World Trade Center. They don’t understand our everyday connections, how we would walk out of that Borders in the North Tower and admire the sun setting on the massive buildings. But their faces say it all: tears, confusion and anger. It’s a rare occurrence for tourists to come here and feel something more than alien amusement. Now, they come to better understand what was lost that day, and recognize that our city is not Mars, but as much the heart of America as anywhere else.

Best Losing Streak

The New York Mets

At Least They’re Good at Something. All hail the Amazin’s who, in early September, skid into a ghastly 15-game losing streak at home, effectively ending any hopes of a playoff berth for the postseason. The losing streak forced the problems that the Mets have into the white-hot glare of daily copy so everyone could see just how bad they are. A mediocre season and a close third-place finish wouldn’t have done that. But like a drug addict or alcoholic, the 2002 Mets needed to hit bottom if they are ever going to get better.

Here are some of the problems. The Mets worked on beefing up their lineup in the offseason while failing to help out a weak pitching staff. Then the pitching staff comes through and the lineup fails. Mo Vaughn, with a batting average of .257 at this writing, is not even hitting his weight. Jeromy Burnitz is just horrid with a .219 BA (and that’s pretty high for him this season)–he’s so bad he’s not even underachieving. What do you do with this lousy millionaire and his hefty contract? The Mets should eat it and cut him: good riddance to bad wood. Their other "new" player–Roberto Alomar–is the one underachieving, but still has a .270-ish average. Keep Alomar and cut the other two and maybe the Mets can rebuild.

It looks like Bobby Valentine has to go. We’ve grown to like him, and it’s a shame that he has to be sacrificed, but blood must be shed and Bobby V. is looking more and more like the lamb led to slaughter. The good news is that, whatever happens from here on into the offseason, 2003 has to be better than 2002.

Best Reason to
Go To Wilmington

The Blue Rocks Mascot, "Mr. Celery"

Our Favorite Stalker. We’ve grown to care less and less about who actually wins and loses at any sporting endeavor. But our childhood fascination with odd mascots has deepened over time. Give us the Wichita State University Shocker (a grimacing shock of wheat) or the St. Joseph’s University Hawk (which must flap its wings for the entire game without a break) over the contest itself any day.

This year, we found the most bizarre mascot we’d ever seen–and in the Class A Minor Leagues at that. The Wilmington Blue Rocks’ "Mr. Celery" is the ultimate truth in advertising–a wickedly grinning stalk of celery. His popularity in the First State has warranted a new and improved costume this year, but Mr. Celery had his origins as a recycled costume salvaged from their food services company. Better yet, the Rocks heighten the sheer vegetable impact by allowing Mr. Celery to appear only when the home team crosses the plate. When that happy event occurs, Blur’s "Song #2" cranks up and Mr. Celery is released from a tunnel near the home dugout. He performs a brief wobbly jig and leaps into the arms of a fan or two before he disappears again–until the next Blue Rocks tally. We say let the big boys strike or play. Down in the Minor Leagues, a big foam celery stalk is dancing.

Best Confirmation that
New York Is America

The August Nevada Forest Fires

Maybe He Dropped a Cigar. From tens of thousands of feet up, the smoke is pearly white, downy as the clouds. We had to crane our neck nearly out of position to follow it down to its point of origin, since our seat was right atop the plane’s wing, so it was directly in our line of vision. The trail gets darker as it twists closer to the ground, until right in the mouth of the impact, where the smoke singes with a red ring around it like a cigarette. It’s a disgusting thing to watch, and it was so wretchedly familiar we wondered if it had been spewing pieces of paper out into those wide, geometric swaths of green and brown. There were firefighters down there, too.

Behind us on the plane, with Nevada burning below us, two women were talking about Bill Clinton. "He’s making $9.2 million a year from his speaking engagements and he expects you to pick up his legal fees." "It was obstruction of justice. You or I would go to jail." "What’s really amazing is how he slithered his way out of everything." "Well, he’s a charmer." They kept this going for half an hour. God bless America, but thank God as well for the parts of New York that have nothing to do with America anymore.

Best 9/11 Opportunism

Rose-Colored Glasses. She seemed like such a nice girl back when she was wandering through that empty apartment while Ethan Hawke directed the camera. Today, however, Lisa Loeb seems a little bit harder. But she could still sound optimistic while being interviewed in the spring 2002 issue of Women Who Rock. Times were hard for Lisa while various corporations absorbed her label, but she found some things to keep her busy during the year.

Loeb worked on "improving the quality of [her] life," as the 33-year-old songwriter told approving journalist Tom Lanham. After talking about the time she spent remodeling her house, learning Spanish and baking, Loeb also added this sunny observation: "[A]fter 9/11, I think people are now a lot more open to hearing real music played by real musicians. People wanna hear real music, real voices, and real stories. The timing is right for that."

Well, how nice for Lisa. Judging from the sales figures for her Cake and Pie album, though, the public was mainly open to hear all that realness from Bruce Springsteen.

Best Replacement
For the Krishnas

Greenpeace

We Told You Before–NO! There was a time, two years ago, say, when you’d run into one of them every so often–a fresh-faced youngster holding a clipboard who would stop you at the corner and ask if you had a minute to hear about what Greenpeace was up to. We could ignore them and everything was fine.

Suddenly, within the past year, they’ve started spreading like some sort of fungus or plague throughout the city. They even got themselves uniforms. And they’re everywhere– sometimes three or four on a single block. Each and every one of them fresh-faced and dead-eyed as any cult member, each one of them undyingly chirpy. Each one of them reciting the same mantra over and over and over again–"Got a second for Greenpeace today?"

We didn’t then and we certainly don’t now. Hell, we’ve even taken to crossing the street to avoid them–only to find three more waiting on the opposite sidewalk! At least the Krishnas just danced along their merry way, not bothering you unless you started in with them. These envirocultists make us want to club a few baby seals.

Best Public
Cellphone Embarrassment

Shut Up, Chuck. There’s something about the sociopathology of public cellphone use, we find, that renders older white folks the most obnoxious users. Not quite sure what that is; it’s got something to do maybe with the fact that younger people have grown up using them and display more natural etiquette, while the cell is still kind of strange and alien to older users and they don’t know how to act right with one in public.

Whatever. So a few weeks ago we’re at a late showing of Sex and Lucia at the Sunshine. Theater’s full. Movie’s just starting when some idiot’s cell starts ringing. People groan. This older, rather distinguished-looking gray-haired white man at the end of about the third row stands in the aisle and starts talking in a normal (i.e., too loud for a movie theater when the movie has started) conversational voice. "Hello? Hel-lo? Yes? Where are you? Where? I’m in the theater. I said I’m in the theater. The movie theater."

People all around the theater start groaning louder, and chuckling. A couple people hssst him. He’s oblivious. One of the Oblivias.

"I’m in the third row. Right side. No, the right side. I saved you a seat. Sex and Lucia. Sex and Lucia. Yes, inside. Third row. Right side."

The whole theater is openly grumbling or chuckling at this idiot by this point, but then comes the punchline:

"What? Charles. Charles. Right."

People burst into raucous laughter and sarcastic applause. "Sit down, Charles!" someone calls out. "Turn it off, Charles!" someone else tells him.

Charles finally sits down, having made a total ass of himself. We get too wrapped up in the sex onscreen to notice if his date, the one who didn’t seem to know his name, ever shows up.

Best Reason To Despise Bohos

Faux-Respect for Firemen

One of Our Best Friends Is a Fireman. Here’s something we’ve never heard: Village bohos or other assorted whitebread NPR types simply praising firemen. Life just doesn’t work that way–the same way we’ve never heard any of these pampered clowns say something gauche like "I love America" and just leave it at that. No, it’s always something like, "What happened on 9/11 was a sad reflection of American imperialism, which takes nothing away from the brave firemen who died that day." Or "I love America, in spite of all the gun-owning flagwavers," not grasping how many gun-owning flagwavers ran toward their deaths that day.

You want to know the truth? You don’t care about firemen, and you don’t love America. America is an abstraction to you. You love this fantasy world of empty culture you inhabit, removed from any real emotions and clinging to the First Amendment as your only vestige of patriotism. Please stop using firemen as a pitiful attempt to hide this sad and transparent fact.

Best Oblivia

No Man Shares My Island. "Oblivia" is our all-purpose, non-gender-specific nickname for those New Yorkers so wrapped up in their own little worlds that they don’t even notice they’re making themselves complete pains in your ass. Oblivias are the ones who get to the top or bottom of the escalator and then just stand there. The big fat ones who stroll v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y in groups of four or five, blocking the entire sidewalk. The ones who push past you to jump into the elevator, then stand in there staring at you with no expression as the door closes in your face. The ones who bang their strollers into the back of your legs, over and over, on line somewhere, completely unaware. The ones who walk directly into traffic without looking or thinking, as though they come from a land without cars, traffic lights or pedestrian signals. The ones who sit beside or behind you on a commuter train and yammer the entire trip on their cells AT TOP VOLUME about the inane, mundane trivialities of their lives. And then sit there yelling, when the train enters a tunnel, "HELLO? HELLO? CAN YOU HEAR ME? ARE YOU STILL THERE? HELLO? HELLO?"

Our best but by no means only representative of the Oblivias this year was the woman who was approaching the drug store’s revolving door from the street as we approached it from inside. She was talking, of course, on her cell. When she got to the revolving door she put her hand on it, but didn’t push; Oblivia wasn’t finished with her conversation yet, and the whole world had to wait until she was done. We stood on the inside, looking right at her through the glass. She stared back at us blankly, seeing but not recognizing us as another sentient being. Yammer yammer yammer, blah blah blah, standing there, holding the revolving door. Finally we said fuck it and pushed our way out. When the door started to move she jumped, startled–nearly dropped her cell–and, as we passed her, had the fucking balls to glare at us like we’d done something rude.

Fuck you, Oblivia. Next time we’ll push you down that escalator you’re blocking.

Best Alibi for Mo Vaughn

No Dugout-Step Incident on Opening Day

Mo Better Mo Next Year. Nothing to do with strip clubs for the Mets’ biggest bachelor. Blame it on the railings on the Shea Stadium dugouts. They prevented Mo Vaughn from spraining his ankle while chasing a foul pop, like he did the past two seasons in Anaheim. This allowed him to justify his lack of production for the rest of those two seasons. This year, local scribes and tv types like the otherwise brilliant Budd Mishkin at NY1 insisted that Vaughn needed to lose weight, that that was the root of his problem. On the contrary, he just needed to not be playing next to an ego-inflated second baseman named Roberto Alomar, who came with all the women’s tennis trimmings but decided to abandon his clear-cut path to the Hall of Fame by having a shitty season while playing in the biggest media spotlight of his otherwise quiet career. Maybe one of those Hirschbeck umpire dudes was right about Robby–but word to the Flushing Faithful, look for Mo to hit 40 home runs next year when the Mets will manage to climb into third place in the NL East.
Best Scene from

The New New Times Square

Times Square for Replicants. Now that Disneyfication is over, what are we left with in Times Square? Well, from 7th to 8th Aves. on 42nd St., we have Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum, that giant off-kilter clock, those two movie theaters with the epileptic-nightmare lighting, a half-dozen tickers for sports and stocks, some of the largest billboard space ever conceptualized (which might advertise works from the Met, or giant sharks or out-of-focus theater dancers), and teeming humanity made impossibly small by the digital cornucopia above them. It’s the future. We don’t even need to be high to walk around and realize it’s the future.

Best Improvement of
a City "Improvement"

Choppers. Those giant croquet wickets the city claims are "bike racks" have been bugging the hell out of us ever since they were first installed. We’re sure they seemed like a good idea–they’re convenient, and they’ll keep people from chaining their bikes to front gates, or scaffolding or parking meters.

Problem is that nobody uses them. And being, as they are, dull silver in color, they have a nasty tendency to blend in with the sidewalk, becoming essentially invisible to pedestrians. Combine that with the fact that they’re of just the perfect height to catch you across the kneecaps, it didn’t take long to realize that this recent "city improvement" was not only an annoyance–it was a health safety risk.

It seems we’re not the only ones who feel this way.

Two of these silent killers were installed on 3rd St., directly across from the Hells Angels’ clubhouse. So imagine our delight in discovering one day that someone (though we won’t guess who) had the good sense to grab a hacksaw and remove both "bike racks," shearing them off flush with the sidewalk. There. No more bother.

Our only hope is that someone in the streets department (or whoever’s responsible for them) has the good sense to hire this civic-minded individual to go around the city and finish the job, making New York a much safer place to live.

Best Reason To Live In Bed-Stuy

It’s Not Park Slope

Screw You Bobos, Give Us the Hobos. The stonewashed pink baseball cap should have tipped us off. It was a hot summer afternoon, and a few of us were playing frisbee catch on the glorious ballfields in Prospect Park. Shirts off, hotdogging, sweat running down our backs. A 40ish guy came up and asked if he could join us, and soon he was pulling off some wicked air bounces, finger-flips and between-the-legs catches. The man’s wife, holding their infant, stood just on the edge of the field, watching intently. How great, we thought: a whole frisbee family!

We were impressed with the guy’s skills, and were just getting our groove on, when the woman called the guy over and began giving him a dressing-down about the kind of "impression" he was making on the child. And what about the baby’s safety? The man’s smile disappeared, his chest sank and he waved at us nervously that he was out of the game. But that wasn’t enough for the vile termagant, who continued to glare at us with hate in her eyes. Finally, after a beautiful bomb that caught an updraft and banked gloriously to the southwest just a few yards from where the woman stood, she began telling us to stop playing. Our friend reasoned with her ("Well, ma‚am, this is a playing field, after all, and perhaps not the best place to hold your baby..."), to no avail. We ignored the mommy monster’s aggro-estro attitude until we were ready to repair to the nearest bar, but not before the bobo trolls bounced little Parsonage or Sage or Rehoboth off to the nearest daycare center, making ooga-booga noises all the while. It was almost too perfect: a Brillo-haired shrew with birth-control glasses, barking orders at a deballed, Teva-wearing daddy with all the patrician authority of Big Bird. Yup, we were in Park Slope, all right.

After a few pints we walked back up Underhill, to Washington, and hung a right on Fulton. Some skullcapped punk spat in front of us as we walked by his incense table. A wino with amazing Einstein hair asked us for a cigarette. A tinted Maxima rolled menacingly by, blasting "Heads High." We took a deep breath and sighed. It was good to be home.

Best Way to Watch the
Sunrise on the Beach

Pines 2002, Aug. 3, 2002

A New High. Being somewhat detached from the party scene for the past year or so, we were thrilled when a sweet older gentleman asked us to be his date at the East Coast’s most spectacular and memorable annual circuit party–Pines 2002, on Fire Island. Taking the place of the now defunct Morning Party, Pines 2002 benefits (tickets were $150 a pop) the Fire Island Pines Property Owners Association and the Stonewall Community Foundation.

After spending the day primping and preparing our cowboy-themed outfit–complete with blue bandanna, cow-print hat and various leather accouterments–we were ready to party. We spent six hours on the dancefloor shaking our ass to the glorious spinning of DJs Billy Carroll and the Aussie Paul Goodyear. Surrounded by more than 2500 beautiful gay men, we flirted our way around the dancefloor–which was set up right on the beach–up until 6 o’clock sharp the next morning. At which point, as the sun rose majestically on the beach, the music stopped. We looked around and thought, "This is paradise."

Best New Post-9/11
"Hunk" Demographic

Chefs

What’s Cookin’, Hot Stuff? Ye horsey women of the Upper East Side, waiting at your VIP table for the chef to come out of the kitchen and introduce himself–what’s that you’re thinking as he’s wiping pig brains on his apron? Admit it. We know that look. Damn, we’ve given that look. That look–that look that says, "Finally! Someone who’ll know how to fuck me."

Invited to a James Beard dinner, we were, and the women–we swear many of them were wearing jodhpurs–took their wine into the galley kitchen to watch the famous chef ladle cilantro-encrusted poisson cru into soup spoons. "A little something," he was saying, "to amuse the mouth." Ya, we’ve seen it all before. At this very moment we’re imagining t-shirts proclaiming "Chefs Are the New Firemen" laid out on the sale rack at Urban Outfitters. Ladies, your poolboys have grown into chefs and cowboys.

In the way that last year’s fireman fetish had everything to do with rich New Yorkers’ relationship to money and class, and the media’s relationship to rich New Yorkers, and what that meant after 9/11, our love of chefs keeps, as they say, this very particular "national dialogue" going. And that national dialogue is saying that America likes its men greasy and blue-collar. But we think the chef trend particularly is a good trend. Because on a day-to-day basis, we generally prefer food to fire.

We’ve cobbled together a merely inexhaustive and informal survey of all things foodie that have popped up in the past year: First, the Food Network’s new status and prominence spearheaded, of course, by Iron Chef reality tv (Watch Japanese men devein foie gras!); the Anthony Bourdain school of gonzo journalism; Frankie & Johnny at the Clair de Lune–a Broadway show about sandwiches; Patricia Volk; The New Yorker’s food issue, the best in recent history. Fiction editor Bill Buford writes about working in Mario Batali’s kitchen at Babbo, and the way he describes it, kitchen life sounds awfully like an episode of M*A*S*H or a sitcom in which wry, overworked people put out a magazine. And Batali stands in the center of the mix, like an Alan Alda or a benign editor-in-chief who is not averse to the occasional practical joke but is still meticulous where nice things for rich people are concerned.

In Gosford Park, when Ryan Phillippe’s character looks around the table of butlers, maids and footmen sitting around the basement facsimile of their masters’ table, and asks, "How many of you grew up in service?" it made us think about restaurants in a way we hadn’t before–as places deliberately recreating an old-fashioned class structure. In this business of food service, people are hired to watch and wait on you in the shadows, and at the tiptop the chef rules, a king of his own efficient underworld, with appetizers.

Best Recycled Signage

"Go"
73 8th Ave. (betw. 13th & 14th Sts.)
496-1200.

No Chi-Lights. New Yorkers really are lazy, especially when it comes to making signs. Ever stopped to think about the number of Sharpie-scribbled signs you see in a day? Every day we note some handwritten signs, usually with improper English, in our bodegas, at the laundromat and in windows of token booths. We always get a laugh from the signs hung in stores along St. Marks Pl. promoting body piercings. But one that struck us most recently is the illuminated sign hanging outside Go. The new resident in the Chicago Blues club only lights up the "G" and the "O" of "Chicago" to advertise itself. If Go can’t afford a proper sign, we wonder why they opened in the West Village. Maybe they enjoy the nostalgia. Anyway, if it doesn’t work out as a club, maybe they’ll reopen yet again, as a salon serving Chi.

Best Neighborhood To Avoid

Williamsburg

"L" to Hell. Everyone in his right mind knows to avoid Williamsburg because it’s overrun with white kids with overdeveloped senses of entitlement. In a way, these facts on the ground are all one needs to know. But they are proximate causes. Peel away the thin skin of its obnoxious present to get a glimpse at Williamsburg’s core, and things look even worse. Understanding the mechanics of what happened there makes it even more justifiably loathsome.

The truth is that Williamsburg sucked before the brats got there. There’s nothing about wealthy young Caucasians in particular that quote-unquote ruined it. The Hasidic parts of Williamsburg are just as off-putting and crucial to avoid as the Bedford Ave. drag, while neither Crown Heights nor Ave. B is quite so repellant. It’s something about Williamsburg in particular that feels spoiled. It starts with the geography.

Williamsburg was poorly planned. The waterfront warehouses and sad, low buildings of the neighborhood will always appear unwanted. No matter how high real estate prices skyrocket, those structures will evoke all the urban splendor of an ash can. Williamsburg is one of the only places in New York City where the principles of city design were ignored. The density feels like a no man’s land between city and village. The way the blocks are laid out makes pedestrians feel like rats in a maze. The scale is somehow inhumane. The building types and uses were insufficiently mixed, and the sense of segregation carried over to the present. You can feel it as soon as you get off the L train there. There’s an emptiness.

Your average New Yorker senses emptiness and wants to get back on the subway as soon as possible. But certain personalities viewed Williamsburg as a blank slate, onto which they could project their own ideas of what a New York neighborhood should be. Any such notion is doomed to result in something inferior to an actual neighborhood, which enjoys the communal benefits of diversity and spontaneity. The amalgamation of more and more people who misunderstand this crucial fact of urban life–that its benefits flow from participation in an evolving social fabric, not hubristic attempts to create a mini-society from scratch–compounds the problem ad infinitum.

The tragedy of Williamsburg is not that New Yorkers could be so stupid (you knew that), but that one lousy corner of the city was so particularly lousy it couldn’t muster up enough local identity to defend itself. Which means that, effectively, it really was a blank slate. If it had been one-legged Native American polo players who had decided to colonize Williamsburg, the place would have ended up exactly as ugly as it is now. Colonization is flat-out ugly.

Best MTA Screwup

The V Train

Aww, Vuck. It could’ve been great. At least the idea behind it was great. Add a new train to the subway system–one specifically designed to ease the overcrowding on the jam-packed E and F lines. Almost an "F Express," it sounded like, to listen to the MTA’s description.

Once it was put into service, however, what we ended up with was less an "F Express" than another shuttle train. Worse, a shuttle train that moves slower than the original.

Sure, you can always get a seat with plenty of room to stretch, but that’s because nobody rides the damn thing. And nobody rides it because, in the end, you’re probably going to have to transfer back to the F at some point anyway.

We’ve suggested it before–if the MTA really did turn the V train into an express and run it into Brooklyn (the tracks are already there), then they’d see ridership quadruple overnight. Lord knows we’d ride it every day.

But given that it’s such a simple and logical idea, we won’t be holding our breath.

Best Reason To Avoid Amtrak

Penn-Montreal, 12/29/01

Comment Dit-On "This Sucks" En Quebecois? All it takes is one bad, bad trip, and a romantic who still justifies her love for American rail will be forever embittered. Come on, who doesn’t want to live Madonna’s quest to "make love in a train cross-country"? Who are the dreamers among us who still have a clawhold on visions of red velvet, oystery sconces and smiling darkies resplendent in white linen? Who still fantasizes about the sexual locomotive thrum and train as subtext for plus ça change and the passage of time? Who is still sweetheart defiant in the face of reports of shrieking derailments, broken bones and noxious chemicals spurting from bashed-in semis crossing the tracks at the wrongest time? The numbers of train lovers are being whittled down with every marathon Amtrak ride.

We know the truth now. Passage of time, our ass: plus la meme chose is more like it. We have seen Amtrak at her slobbering, farting, dirty-nightie worst. For many years we were only doing the Penn-Albany run, which is a tea dance. A scenic whiz along the Hudson and before you can finish one September magazine, you’re chooching into the capital city. Easy peazy. The rail between Manhattan and the capital is desperately well-tended, in order to keep the hardcore quickie commuters from engaging in full-on train rage. But once you start grinding north of Albany, the pleasure is gone in short order.

Montreal via Amtrak’s Adirondack line on the last week of the year–swathed in our ranch mink, hobble skirt, pumps–perched atop our great-grandmother’s suitcase on the platform in Albany, we conjured images of Monroe, little girl startled as the locomotive hooted steam onto her ankles. We glanced at our watch only once and the Adirondack pulled in and halted, exactly on time. And then Rory, who had boarded at Penn, pitch-poled off the train, his too-tight oxford breached across his paunch. A dark wedge of gin stained his chest and the lap of his khakis. "Babe!" he screamed, eyes nearly swollen shut. "Where the hell are you? They’re already out of Bombay Sapphire!"

The dream is over. We trotted up to him, embraced unenthusiastically and he whispered into our hair: "The Canadian car is packed with chinks. This is gonna be a nightmare."

The dream is really over. Even worse, Rory wasn’t exaggerating. After we boarded and looked around, we realized that every seat in the Montreal car was taken. And if we were going to be making love as we rocked past Lake Champlain, we were going to have an audience of Korean students and disillusioned, squirmy American oldsters. Thirty seconds into our trip and the car already smelled of Cheetos, Lysol and failing deodorant. Two words: bar car.

Rory was also right about the Bombay: he had already wiped out the supply. We moved on to $7 ham ’n’ lard sandwiches chased with thimbles of Smirnoff. Somewhere, an infant was screaming. One hour. Two hours. Saratoga was maybe in our distant past. Another vodker, this one tasting like a Russian bar girl’s tongue. And then it dawned on us.

"Honey?" We’ve got our cheek pressed to the hot, scuffed plexiglas.

"Yes, my dove?"

"We haven’t moved in like 45 minutes."

He burped an affirmative and we winched around, noting the half-moons of sweat darkening the bosom of our beige silk shirt. "The fuck are we?"

Turns out we were halted somewhere around Fort Ty. A blast of near Arctic air rocked the car and a garbled voice came over the intercom. Years of translating subway Hutu made it possible for us to understand: Passengers caught smoking in the bathroom will be ffffzzzzzzz. I repeat there is no smoking anywhere on this train.

"Yeah! Yeah!" hissed an anorexic in clogs in the row ahead of us. "The nerve! Wrecking my air!" She looked around for confirmation and got none. Cigarette smoke is wrecking her air? Apparently she has yet to inhale, let alone visit, the unisex aft latrine; five hours into this forced march, Champlain is darkening on the other side of the plexiglas, and the floor surrounding the toilet is slick with vomit, urine, feces and tissue. The toilet–which isn’t really a toilet, per se; it’s more like one of those squat aluminum urns you see in a jail cell–has given up and gone on instant replay. The option to be ffffzzzzzzed sounded pretty good. We wouldn’t have been surprised if a porter put a bucket in the middle of the aisle and told us to make like our relatives who had been torn from the Krakow ghetto and gassed for their efforts.

We don’t remember customs, but something tells us we weren’t blacked out enough to cause a ruckus. That’s good. We are welcomed into Canada. You think Montreal is just on the other side of the border? Think again. We’ve got another two hours of aching fluorescent light, colicky screams and slow, socket-grinding yowls of metal. And now all the booze is gone. Or we’ve been cut off. Or now that we’re in Canada, Amtrak can’t sell us proofage. Or so said the weary stiff behind the till in the bar car. A nic fit is causing our viscera to shrink back from our skin, thirsty vampire-like. The car smells like an endocrine system gone terribly wrong. Just before we are overcome with the urge to do something unspeakable, the Adirondack lurches into its final resting place on the outskirts of Montreal.

We check our watch. We’re hours, hours late. No smoking on the platform? Watch us. With a cigarette and suitcase in one hand and Rory in the other, we negotiate a cab and return to civilization. To Montreal: the most profoundly middle-class city in the galaxy. An instant home away from hell.

Not surprisingly, the trip got exponentially better. Boutique hotels, rabbit terrine, rivers of the so-prole-it’s-haut Veuve Clicquot, billowy king beds, frigid snowlight and the almost laughable romantic charm of Quebec City, which we reached by way of Leaf Rail, or whatever the Canadians call their superior rail system. On the Leaf, we could buy sandwiches and Molsons off a cart that passed right by our seat, pushed by a silent French Canadian who was probably really grateful to have a job. We didn’t have to sway down the aisle in search of snacks. By New Year’s Eve, the indignities of Amtrak were a distant memory.

We were too ruddy, plump and relaxed to dread the journey back to Manhattan. Again, it was horrible, but we did see a few eagles and hawks wheeling over Champlain. A porter tried to entertain our car with some standup comedy. He’ll be playing to poker faces on the outside, too, when he gets laid off tomorrow.

Best Reason for
Brooklynites to Go Postal

The MTA

Take the A Train–If It Ever Comes. After more than a decade living in Manhattan, we succumbed and joined the hipster diaspora to Brooklyn this year. Our place is ideally situated for a quick subway commute, two short blocks from the A/C stop at High St. in Brooklyn Heights. A 2/3 stop is only a few blocks farther away. We consoled ourselves that getting in and off of Manhattan was going to be a snap.

What a bringdown. This will come as no news to longer-term Brooklynites, but we’ve been shocked to find that subway service in Brooklyn is as appallingly, enragingly, maddeningly fucked-up as it is in Queens. The MTA operates as though subway service to the boroughs is an afterthought, a sop to the poor, dark and immigrant masses huddled east of elite, white Manhattan. Service on the A, C, L, 2, 3 and nightmarish G–just to name the lines we’re familiar with–is frequently interrupted, curtailed or rerouted with an ill-logic that seems to be a direct and conscious insult to users. After about 11 p.m., we’ve waited in sweltering Manhattan stations up to 40 minutes for an A or C home. It’s terrible on weekends as well. It’s as though the MTA is trying to make us crazy with frustration, or at least daring all Brooklyn commuters to own cars and drive them over the already crowded bridges every day.

And don’t tell us it’s longterm 9/11 fallout. Older Brooklyn hands tell us differently. Subway service in Brooklyn blows.

Best Coach

Herman Edwards, New York Jets

Two-Timer. For the second year in a row we gotta give it up to Jets head coach Herman Edwards. This year he wins it because he gets New York City. Plus, he took Vinny and the Jets pretty far last year and this season they’re looking even better (don’t let the shoddy start fool you). During the exhibition season Edwards had his charges bitch-slap the Giants at the Meadowlands–so crucial in the New York football wars.

But we like Edwards not just for his football coaching skills, but because the man is just flat-out cool. He’s got that slim hawklike thing going on while he paces the sidelines like an undercover narc, just biding his time. And the man speaks his mind. In a recent interview he goofed on the organization that pays him by saying the Jets are a nomad team: they play at Giants Stadium in New Jersey and practice at Hofstra U. on Long Island, yet they’re called the New York Jets. To bring the Jets back to the fold of NYC, Coach now has the team stay at the Marriott down by Ground Zero. You gotta like a coach like that. Plus, if any of his overpaid players want to whine, Edwards can tell them to look out the window and just shut the hell up.

Best Fashion Trend to
Avoid with All Your Might

The Return of the Flipped-Up Polo Shirt Collar

All We Need to Know. With all the awful and dismaying fashion trends afoot this year, it was hard to choose just one winner. Belly shirts on people who really shouldn’t be exposing their bellies, those butt-crack-exposing jeans and the unfortunate return of parachute pants among them. But one, we must say, stood head and shoulders above even those.

Why in the hell middle-aged men who were there the first time and should certainly know better have suddenly started flipping up the collars of their polo shirts is far beyond us. It was an embarrassing preppie mistake the first time around, and now it’s just plain wrong.

Yet it’s everywhere–in bars, on the subway, at the DMV, in the grocery stores. And the men who are doing it inevitably also decide to walk around with their sunglasses perched atop their foreheads, with the inescapable cellphones glued to their ears, yapping away with an astonishing obliviousness to the chortles they’re getting as they pass.

On the bright side for the rest of us: there are few better ways imaginable for someone to announce to the world, "Hey! Look at me! I’m an asshole!"

Best Unexpected Pleasure

The New Q Trains

Express Yourself. Don’t tell us it’ll end! Don’t remind us that one day we might not be able to zip from Times Square to Union Square in two stops, and get from Union Square to Park Slope in a mind-bending four stops! Let’s face it: the express Broadway trains are the most reliable, best air-conditioned and reasonably populated units in the city; they also run express even late at night, shaving a half-hour off a 3 a.m. commute. If we start making a stink now, maybe we can convince the city to keep them running if and w