dh » new york

How to walk or bike the Triboro (Triborough) (Robert F. Kennedy) Bridge

dh — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 02:59:13 +0000

This image would have been quite helpful in my trek from Manhattan to Queens. Find me, Google!:

Bem Bolado: Brazilian kilo food in East Harlem (CLOSED)

dh — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 06:09:39 +0000

This review is a little delayed, but I must do my small part in creating a web presence for the scarce non-churrascaria Brazilian food scene in the City. Note: you may also find this listed online as “Bolado Bem.”

Note also: it closed :-( (some time before March 6, 2008)

I’d previously mentioned Brasilianville in Queens. The wonderful (if woefully Brazil-deficient) Nueva York alerted me to Bem Bolado, on E. 106th and 2nd: a kilo food/pizza place in Manhattan? Of course I had to check it out.

After a little tinkering with Hopstop it became clear that, short of timing the M4 bus miraculously (on a traffic-free weekend), walking would be the fastest option. The temperature was in the 40s, so I walked [110th from Columbus to 5th without being passed by the M4]. From the circle at the NE corner of Central Park, I walked down 5th to 106th before cutting across, under the MetroNorth tracks at Park, to 2nd. Things got “Spanish” in a hurry, but it wasn’t hard to find the awning over Bem Bolado (Brazilian flags help).

Unlike Brasilianville, there was no churrasco. The salad bar wasn’t there, and the steam table was small. Nothing I tried (rice, beans, greens, farofa, standard chunks of meat) was worth the increasingly expensive stamp to write Brazil—however, those few basics were there and they were… competent? workmanlike? something like that. It was definitely the highlight of my outing: I walked down to the Guggenheim after lunch and I’m not sure the exhibit was worth my waiting in line for my free ticket. So: tolerable, Brazilian, in Manhattan, and (the overriding virtue of kilo food) cheap. Minus one star for being out of guaraná.

The couple eating behind me waxed euphoric about the pizza. I wasn’t going to waste my effort on Brazilian pizza in New York.

34 Street / Penn Station

dh — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 03:17:05 +0000

A lady in a motorized wheelchair—gray-haired, but not too old-looking—zoomed by in front of me, between me and the subway trackbed, faster than I thought those usually go. In retrospect, I’m not sure if she was awake; I didn’t get a look at her face. My friend and I exchanged raised eyebrows.

We had gotten off the 2 on the uptown local platform. The 2 was running local, as it has every weekend for ages, but we still needed to shift over to the 1 to get back home.

I heard a shout from an MTA worker. I glanced left: the lady in the wheelchair was perhaps ten or fifteen yards away, now between the columns (a couple feet inside the platform from the trackbed) and the still-present train. Then she hit the side of the train as it started to pull out of the station. I was uselessly frozen, watching, as bystanders approached but stayed back, fearful of the train. Awful snapping noises echoed, whether from her wheelchair, from the train’s normal operation, or from worse. I couldn’t tell. The train continued to pull out, and the sounds grew louder as it picked up speed. I willed the train to stop and didn’t think of shouting, but it would probably have had the same effect at that point. Somehow, it threw her from her chair, and tossed her horizontally toward the platform. What looked like the middle of her back caromed against one of the columns, a few feet off the ground, and she fell. The 2 cleared the station.

My friend ducked around a corner so she wouldn’t have to look. From that distance, I couldn’t see anything, but I heard people making calls for help. What seemed like a few minutes passed, with no professional help joining the cluster of riders at her side on the platform. One berated MTA workers for the lack of help, and said that she was alive. I looked away, too.

The 3 came and went on the same track. Service was unaffected. A policeman arrived.

After another minute, the disembodied voice of the MTA reminded us that the 1 was running on the express track. We went down through the underpass, and as we came back up to the express platform we looked straight across the tracks at the scene. My friend gasped and turned, scalded, back toward the downtown side. The lady wasn’t moving—but who knows if she had been before? The uptown 1 arrived, mercifully blocking our view, and we boarded.

Update: two news stories:
Fox
NY Post
If the Post’s claim about disrupted service is true, it happened after we’d left.

Cloisters, cruises, cuisine, crushings, credit card cancellations

dh — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 02:52:14 +0000

On Friday, classes having been moved out of the way, I visited the Cloisters with a friend. It’s very convenient from campus: it’s the last stop uptown of a bus line. Our IDs got us in for free, which was a good price: I’m not sure how I would have felt about paying the suggested $10 for students (or $20 for “adults,” whose company I thankfully haven’t joined for these purposes). These prices include admission to the main Met, but that’s kind of silly: the Met requires a few weeks of visits.

It was kind of like the Musée Nationale du Moyen Age, which I saw in early 2006, down to the fantastic unicorn tapestries, except much smaller and in a much prettier location. The undeveloped stretch of the Palisades across the Hudson in New Jersey was really nice to see after a month in the city, and the gardens, terraces and gray “cloister” walls were perfect for a sleepy equally-gray morning outside of school.

Thai Market’s $7 lunch special, afterward, was surprisingly good. The som tam (green papaya salad) was not as conflagrant as I’ve grown to expect, but as I’m getting over a cold that was probably a blessing in disguise. The beef with basil was competent. My friend’s pad thai and spring rolls were… well, pretty boring, but there wasn’t anything wrong with them.

Also this week, I took a Brazilian music cruise on the Hudson last Wednesday. It wasn’t my scene (unless, as a professor has suggested, we all become middle-aged after paying tuition deposits), but I got some nice views and had good company. It was a rough few days for others in the area, though: a nearby subway stop was roped off for a couple hours to clean up the blood from a stabbing, and the next day an unfortunate old lady wound up under a van in the middle of an intersection. After a few friends and acquaintances lost their IDs the weekend before, I’ve started trimming down my wallet and key chain to essentials.

“Crèpes on Columbus,” at 107 or 108 and Columbus, was not bad. The savory galletes (I had a complète, and a friend had some fancy creation involving shrimp) came with a very nice salad and were great in their own right, and the sweet crépes were OK. Unfortunately, the prices weren’t so delicious: even with the Euro at $1.39, New York comes out behind about threefold.

Brazilian Day 2007

dh — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 07:19:33 +0000

As I’d feared, the Manhattan Brazil day was long on corporate and short on Brazil. The vast majority of the street fair—at least 70%, and almost everything uptown of 47th St—had nothing to do with Brazil. The same smoothie stand, gyro booth, reggae CD shop, etc. repeated ad nauseum, with the occasional Hispanic food booth.

About 1/2 of 46th (“Little Brazil”) St. was actually Brazilian. Guaraná, pasteis, salgadinhos, doçes (at just two stands!), and feijoada were on offer. I had a “prato feito” Minas style for lunch: some pork, rice, and collards. It could have been worse, but it was nothing special. Rounding out my consumption for the day were a brigadeiro, a couple cocadas, several overpriced cans of guaraná, and a piece of (unexciting, cold) pão de queijo. Overall, disappointing, compared to the pictures of the past festivals in Newark. I guess the entertainment on the stage at 43rd might have been interesting, but I was never there with anyone who was interested in it.

5672

Brazilian Day Festivals in the NYC Area

dh — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 03:31:41 +0000

This Labor Day weekend, there will be no less than three Brazilian Day festivals in the New York City area (commemorating Brazilian independence). They are these:

From the 31st-3rd in Newark (free shuttle buses from Newark Penn).

On the 2nd in Manhattan (Little Brazil, around 46th St. and 6th Ave.), details here.

On the 3rd in Astoria, on 30th Ave between 29th and 41st Sts.

Brasilianville Café and Grill, Astoria

dh — Sat, 25 Aug 2007 22:21:09 +0000

Today I had lunch at Brasilianville Café and Grill in Astoria, Queens. It’s a kilo restaurant, of the type that’s very common in Brazil, although it bows to America’s Imperial sensibilities and vends food by the pound. Food from the salad and steamer bars is $3.99/lb; churrasco (Brazilian barbecue) is $6.99/lb. I had a very sad encounter with Diet Guaraná Antarctica—a pale shadow of the real thing, which I found at a nearby convenience store—and the food from the steamer table, although it hit a soul food spot, probably wasn’t the best I’ve eaten.

The steak, though… and the linguiça (a type of sausage)… mmm. I could taste the fat, and it was wonderful. At just $7/lb., even taking into account the “subway tax,” the meat made for a worthy meal. I have been enjoying my food coma this afternoon.

That area of Astoria had lots of interesting-looking food: we passed Ecuadorian, Bosnian, Bulgarian (well, that was a liquor store) and other Brazilian restaurants. Good trip. I’m going to try some Jersey-made guaraná I picked up, and I’ll report on that soon.