In Sunday’s New York Time’s, Jennifer Gilmore writes a compelling story about coming to know the generosity of her fellow New Yorkers. How? A fertility med drug deal with women whose health insurance plans happen to cover the “outrageously expensive fertility medications” she needs to inject herself with to try to get pregnant.

I admit I was touched by Gilmore’s essay; I was happy that she found a way to beat the system and get her hands on fertility hormones her health insurance should have covered in the first place.

“We knew what brought us here, the number of in vitro procedures we’d undergone and whether our bodies had responded well to the unthinkable amount of hormones we’d shot into them,” Gilmore writes. “We knew the grade of our surgically retrieved eggs, and whether they had been perfect little chickens, fertilizing properly.”

But it was scarcely a month ago that Alex Kuczynski’s rent-a-womb surrogacy article graced the cover of the New York Times Magazine, a story that similarly started with her discussion of fertility meds; in Kucsynski’s case, she was able to afford the tens of thousands of dollars for I.V.F.

Enough with these infertility stories that reinforce tired tropes about middle-class, thirtysomething women so “desperate to have a child.” My apparently rotting 29-year-old eggs start to shrivel with each cautionary tale.

Fertility Rites [NYT]

Her Body, My Baby [NYT]

Photo by Pete Barr-Watson via Flickr.

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I joined a small crowd in the seedy basement of a Lower East Side bar last night where the focus was not drinking but debating. The question: "Should we eat locally?"

For the past four years, Todd Seavey has hosted the monthly "Debates at Lolita Bar" on 266 Broome St. Past debates have addressed topics ranging from, "Did the government know in advance about 9/11?" and "Should we loosen term limits?" to "Does Christian rock suck?" and "Is it more painful to get dumped or do the dumping?"

In the dimly lit basement where onlookers leaned against wood-paneled walls and sipped drinks from the bar, Saifedean Ammous and Jesse Anttila-Hughes, both PhD students in Sustainable Development at Columbia, argued their sides in a traditional debate format.

"There's an inherent value in not eating something that's traveled halfway across the globe," said Anttila-Hughes, who told a horror story about soy sauce in China that had been made from human hair in his opening remarks to enforce his points about why knowing exactly where your food comes from makes so much sense.

"It's only because of advanced ways of producing and shipping food that we can think of food in these 'cute' ways," retorted Ammous later, whose main point was that local food is not bad, just not necessarily better than food from around the globe. "If people in New York City think they're 'doing good' by eating locally, they're either wrong or deluded."

Michel Evanchik, who moderated the debate, asked the room to vote for either side after the closing remarks. By a 14-9 show of hands, not eating locally won.  

"This is the first time I've heard this argued not between a stupid hippie and a stupid redneck," Evanchik said after thanking the participants.



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Dine with your dysfunctional family and give thanks: There are some bars in this city where you can have a beer with strangers after a long night gorging on turkey and relatives. Here's a list of a few places we've compiled so you can find a watering hole near you. And remember, you can always look for an Irish pub if nothing below suits you, since most of the pubs we talked to are staying open so you can pair the Tryprothan in your blood with a good pint.

In the East Village, visit 11th Street Bar, 510 E. 11th St. (betw. Aves. A & B), 212-982-3929.

A bit farther downtown you can stop into Good World, 3 Orchard St. (at Division St.),  212-925-9975.

For those in the West Village, Johnny's Bar, 90 Greenwich Ave. (betw. W. 12th & Jane Sts.), 212-741-5279, will be open all day.

If your bad luck has brought you to the border of the Dirty 30s, try getting a little luckier at Blarney Stone, 340 Ninth Ave. (at W. 29th St.),  212-502-4656.

Like Irish bars but stuck uptown? Hit Dublin House, 225 W. 79th St. (at Broadway), 212-874-9528.

Across town folks will be drinking their problems away at Finnegan's Wake, 1361 First Ave. (at E. 73rd St.), 212-737-3664.

If you're in north Brooklyn, both The Mark Bar, 1025 Manhattan Ave. (at Green St.), Brooklyn, 718-349-2340, and The Richardson, 451 Graham Ave. (at Richardson St.), Brooklyn, 718-389-0839, will be open. 

And in Queens, the Cafe Bar, 32-90 33rd St. (at 23rd Ave.), 718-204-5273 will everything for your no-work-on-Friday drinking and mistake-making spree.

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Extremely Hungary is a festival celebrating Hungary, yes. But Jakab Orsós, the director of the Hungarian Cultural Center who has worked as a journalist, television host and screenwriter, knows that festivals are boring.

"We all fall asleep when we hear the word festival," Orsós said last night at the center, just north of Canal Street, where supporters gathered to celebrate the festival's kickoff in January. "And I hate boring art." So Orsós has organized what he promises will be a not predictable and not boring extravaganza.

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Mayor Michael Bloomberg was on hand Tuesday, Nov. 12 for the opening of the AIDS Design and Development Laboratory in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. It may be many years before an actual vaccine is discovered, and it may just happen in Brooklyn. Greg Bocquet, Heather Grossmann, Michele Hoos and Paul Stephens report.

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Public transportation to certain parts of Brooklyn can be a real pain, but there's a new bus in town and—get this—it will take you to "the heart of Brooklyn" for free. So, if you've never been to the far-flung but worth the trip Brooklyn Museum, Prospect Park Zoo or Brooklyn Botanic Garden, you now have no excuse.

The Heart of Brooklyn (HOB) Connection includes three programs: Target First Saturdays Shuttle, Saturday Scene, and Museum Mile to Brooklyn Style. The Museum Mile to Brooklyn Style loops between two locations in Manhattan and a number of Brooklyn's cultural destinations.

The Saturday Scene shuttle is free transportation from Williamsburg, Red Hook and Bay Ridge to Downtown Brooklyn. And the Target First Saturdays Shuttle brings passengers from the Brooklyn Museum's First Saturday event (the museum is free to visitors from 5 to 11 the first Saturday of each month) to local restaurants in the area. Check out the HOB Connection web site for times and routes.

There's the artwork, the zoo, the newly opened children's museum—all of our different treasures," said Ellen Salpeter, director of Heart of Brooklyn, an organization that encourages tourism to the cultural institutions near Grand Army Plaza. "We want to unlock them for as many people as possible."

In addition to direct transportation, people who ride the 32-passenger shuttle will benefit from an onboard tour guide and coupons. Take that, G train!

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When artist Martha Friedman sculpted a seven-foot tall waffle out of metal, resin and foam for the Public Art Fund's latest exhibition, "Trapdoor," I'm sure she wasn't thinking about Barack Obama.

But when I spoke to Rochelle Steiner, curator of "Trapdoor," I found myself making the waffle-Obama connection. The show, after all, has a theme of the unexpected and change that resonates during this week in history that we as a nation managed to elect Bammers president.
"Each one of these pieces has a sense of transformation exemplified in it," Steiner said. "You don't expect to see a waffle that's seven feet tall."

"Trapdoor" also exhibits new commissions by Ethan Breckenridge, Francis Cape and Sara Greenberger Rafferty. Rafferty's empty tank with ropes at the bottom is presented as a record of an imagined performance. Breckinridge's sculpture "I'm OK—You're OK," composed of 100 functional furniture dollies, rises to 16-feet outside the center. Cape's On Main Street, one of his two free standing sculptures on display in the lobby of the center, includes what appears to be a fragment of a table and part of a shelf, fused with sections of wainscoting and portions of walls.

This is the PAF's 16th year showing work at the MetroTech center in Downtown Brooklyn. Since some of the sculptures will be on display outside, check out the exhibition before it gets too cold.

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After watching the election results projected on a screen in front of the Adam Clayton Powell Jr. state office building in Harlem, Naomi Johnson, 19, rejoices.  "This is mine," said Johnson. "This is ours. This is for our ancestors."

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It's not all about national politics today. Check out this video that details Craig Schley's attempt to unseat Rep. Charles Rangel.

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