Oh Cambodian, Where Might You Be

The search for Cambodian food in New York City continues. After some short but basically exhaustive internet research on the Cambodian community in New York, I made a guess that if there was Cambodian food to be had, it would be in the Bronx along Fordham Road. You can see my earlier post and the map showing how much time I had on my hands here.

I took a trip up there after work on Tuesday. As I walked along Fordham Road near the D train I quickly saw that the stores were all pretty high-rent places - national chain stores, fast food joints, and local powerhouses like Jimmy Jazz. A mom and pop restaurant isn't likely to be able to pay that rent. On the west side of the Grand Concourse, the stores get a little more local - cell phones stores, pizza joints, and bodegas. But still no Cambodian food. I couldn't find anything but Goya in the bodegas.

I must have looked lost, as I was soon greeted with "hey guy - whatcha lookin' for?" When I said Cambodian, my good samaritan just looked bewildered. But then I started getting some interesting leads. First I stopped in at St. Rita's youth program, which does a lot of work in the Cambodian community. The staff there told me that there was a Cambodian grocery a few blocks away, above the park on University. Very excited, I walked there, but it turned out to be a Vietnamese grocery. The owner pointed me towards Jerome Ave just south of Kingsbridge, where he said there was a larger Asian grocery that was owned by someone who is Cambodian. Once at Phnom Penh Market (2639 Jerome), the owner confirmed that she was Cambodian but said that they didn't sell any Cambodian food, just Thai and Vietnamese. This is the point in my fantasy where I would get invited to their house for some home cooking, but alas, that didn't happen. I also went and peeked into Phung Hung across the street (2614 Jerome), but their food appeared to be just Vietnamese. They were closed, so I couldn't investigate further, but this place might deserve a return trip.

Sadly, it seems that there is no Cambodian food to be had in the five boroughs. It almost (almost) makes me sad that the place in Fort Greene has shut down. It seems that I'm going to have to content myself with driving a few hours to Apsara's in Providence for their nime chow. Translation: heaven.

Gowanus Artists Are Agast

Coming up October 21st and 22nd is the annual Gowanus Artists Studio Tour (aka AGAST), now in its tenth year. In those ten years, they've grown from 15 artists to over 120.

On a crisp fall day, it's easy to get off at one of the nearby F train stops and amble from studio to studio. As in past years, if you get your "passport" stamped at four of seven locations, you can win prizes donated by local businesses. (Full disclosure: I won a lovely dinner at Aunt Suzie's a few years back - thanks guys.)

The multitude of street graffiti in the Gowanus area are not an official part of the studio tour, but are well worth checking out. Keep your eyes peeled for gems by elbow-toe, TO, cheekz, flower face killah, royce bannon, gore b, inkhead, metal-worker revs, and others.

more: photo tour of Gowanus [Bluejake]

Top CL Missed Connections Locations

Today on Gawker, where you should go if you want to find yourself on Craigslist's Missed Connections. The list reads like a compendium of how New Yorkers live. A whopping 35% of unredeemed moments occurred (duh) on the subway. And NYU bred more missed connections than Columbia. Is this because: NYU students are hotter? more wimpy than their up-town rivals at asking someone out? or more easily distracted from their books? You be the judge. Also: you've got an equal chance of a missed connection involving a cop, Home Depot, a barber, or a hypnosis show. There must be a link there somewhere.

Elsewhere: Gowanus Lounge on Gawker's line by line subway breakdown.

Open House New York Picks

My recommendations for Open House New York, which is this Saturday and Sunday. It's the third year of this cool event that lets you get a behind-the-scenes look at many of New York's historic private, government and corporate buildings. My picks here are some of the unusual places that you can't usually get access to.

Floyd Bennett Field
Ryan Visitor Center, Brooklyn
Sat: 9am-5pm; Guided tour Saturday at 10am.
Sun: 9am-5pm
Crowds used to gather at NYC's first airport to cheer pioneer aviators such as Howard Hughes. Take the rare opportunity to visit the site's historic control tower and the underground access tunnel that led to the runways.


Old Croton Aqueduct Walking Tour
Sun: 9:30 am
Reserve a spot by emailing aqueduct@verizon.net. Meet at the SW corner of The Great Lawn, Central Park: benches between the lawn and the Delacorte Theatre
Walk the path of one of America's great early engineering achievements, and NY's first source of plentiful, pure water. Organized by Friends of Old Croton Aqueduct.


Ellis Island's South Side - reservation only Update - reservations are no longer being accepted.
Sat: 9:30, 11 am, 12:30, 2 pm, 3:30 pm to Sun: 9:30, 11 am, 12:30, 2 pm, 3:30 pm
Reservations: 212-363-3206 ext. 580. Meet at the information desk, Ellis Island Immigration Museum, Ellis Island
Tour the grounds of the abandoned Ellis Island hospital where 1 million immigrants were treated between 1900-1954. Wear sturdy, closed-toed shoes. No children under age 16 will be permitted.


Soldiers & Sailors Memorial Arch at Grand Army Plaza
Flatbush Avenue and Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn
Sat: 11am-4pm
Sun: 11am-4pm
NYC's grandest arch, built in the style of Paris’ Arc de Triomphe, commemorates the Union forces of the Civil War. Climb up to the roof for views of the surrounding park and skyline.



Grand Central Terminal
East 42nd St & Park Avenue, Meet at Main Concourse Information Booth New York
Sat: 10am-5pm
Sun: 10am-5pm
Tours with renovation architect 10 am & 12 pm, reservations ohny@bbbarch.com.
Tour the Beaux-Arts icon and learn its history and secrets.


Grand Lodge of Masons
71 West 23rd Street, New York
Sat: 10am-4pm
Sun: Closed
View the lavishly decorated rooms of the Freemasons meeting place, which reflect this ancient organization's unique history and mission.


High Line Cell Phone Tour
820 Washington Street, New York
Oct 7, 2006 & Oct 8, 2006, All day/night
Self-guided cell phone tour discusses various stopping points along the High Line, the disused freight rail currenlty undergoing conversion into NYC's first elevated park. Dial the main phone number 888-7-LOOK-UP starting Saturday, Oct 7th. Each stop has its own three-digit extension. Organized by the Friends of the High Line.
Also: High Line Viewing
Sat: 11am-5pm; Sun: 12pm-5pm
Project design presentations, 1-4 pm on the hour.
This disused, elevated rail viaduct is being converted to public open space. View the progress from the platform of a former meatpacking building.

Astoria Pool
19th Street & 23rd Avenue, Astoria
Sat: 10am-1pm
Sun: Closed
Meet at pool entrance at 19th Street and 24th Avenue. Tours at 10 am, 11 am & 12 pm.
Tour this 330-ft Art Deco pool's underground infrastructure with its innovative filtration system, orginal details and spectacular East River views.

Graving Dock Update

Tipsters reported to B61 Productions that Ikea began filling in the Todd Shipyard graving dock in Red Hook sometime last month. It had been thought that Ikea was waiting for approval from the Army Corps of Engineers before committing to tearing down the historic 19th century graving dock to turn it into a parking lot.

The Gowanus Lounge has a recent update on what Ikea is doing. In speaking to the Carroll Gardens Courier, Ikea's spokesperson pooh-poohed criticisms of the project and tried to make it sound as though the nay-sayers were all from outside New York. Blaming those craaaazy outside agitators is a common way of trying to rebut organizing, but it's an odd tack for Ikea to take when talking to a local Brooklyn paper.

When the question is "should Ikea come to Brooklyn?," there are strong feelings and good reasons on both sides of the issue. That's not the question, though (we're a little past that point). I go to the Gowanus Lounge for his incisive analysis:

We have many things to say about Ikea's offensive brush off of legitimate concerns, but will limit ourselves to a few: First, it's bad PR to broadcast blatant disregard for the community in which you are building. There are legitimate divisions of opinion regarding the Ikea Red Hook. There are strong critics that object to Ikea's location. There are strong supporters who welcome it. There are an awful lot of people in between, who don't think that a few compromises--like saving the graving dock--are so out of line.

We have nothing against Ikea, per se. We have dealt with execs at existing Ikea locations and have found them to be decent and community-minded people. On the whole, we find Ikea's corporate behavior less troubling than, say, Wal-Mart and other huge firms, but we think Ikea's position on the graving dock is wrong and its attitude is nothing short of arrogant. (We'll leave aside its brutish demolition of historic buildings, of which we're not big fans either.)

Hear, hear.

Photo: Inauguration of the Todd Shipyard Graving Dock from the Brooklyn Historical Society.

Long Island City to be Green-Roof Leader

Silvercup Studios, the home of Tony Soprano, now has another claim to fame. It's the site of the largest green-roof in New York City, and it may soon become the anchor for a neighborhood of green-roofs.

Metropolitan Magazine reports this week that Long Island City is an opportunity waiting to happen. It's not a particularly healthy place to grow up, with a high incidence of asthma and very few parks. But it's loaded with flat roofs that lend themselves to rooftop vegetation. Put enough of these rooftop parks together and they can help lower the heat index, make the air cleaner, and reduce storm-water runoff.

Landscape architect Diana Balmori, the Long Island City Business Development Corporation, and the owners of Silvercup Studios worked together to make the Silvercup green-roof a reality. They planted the roof this summer - right in the middle of the heat wave. Since they included a monitoring station, they'll be able to track the effectiveness of the green-roof. Could be, Long Island City will feel a little bit cooler next summer.

Tourists Are Not Permitted Beyond This Point

Photo of the Day, courtesy of NewYorkology.

A New Pizza Competitor: Bings

You can add bings to the category of on-the-go New Yorker-friendly foods. Bings are sesame seed-encrusted discs of dough filled with anything from spicy pork to mustard greens to red beans. My favorite description is from NY Magazine, which says they look "a little like a sesame-seed bagel that got run over by a taxi." Yeah, pretty much.

The owner of Flushing's Unique Pastry, whose well-deserved nickname is "The Flushing Bing Lady," just opened up a new restaurant called Roll and Dough on W.3rd at 6th Ave in the Village. From the reviews, it sounds like quality hasn't suffered at all in the transition from Queens to Manhattan, which is commendable.

I ran across Roll and Dough the other day when I was looking for a post-beer bite for my subway ride back to Brooklyn. It was tough to choose among all the varieties, but I ended up going with the pork and chive bing. It was a little colder than I would have liked (I learned later that they can toast it for you), but the filling was savory and the right proportion of filling to dough. At $1.50 to $1.95, these deserve to be your go-to food when you need a break from pizza. And in a bit of random but interesting information, one Chowhound reader reports that each variety of bing has its own sesame seed pattern. That's a whole new kind of Braille to learn.

Roll and Dough, 135 W. 3rd St., nr. Sixth Ave.; 212-253-2871.
Reviews elsewhere: Gothamist; Ed Levine Eats; Chowhound; NY Times on her Flushing restaurant.
Photo by roboppy.

Finding Diamonds on the Floor

Evan over at Two Dishes But to One Table is a New York City high school teacher, which brings him into contact with the unexpected, strange and delightful on a daily basis. This week he found notes for entering the underground switching yards of a subway junction on the J, M, Z line of the MTA discarded on the floor of the biology lab (click image to see it larger). The writer is clearly well on his way to star membership in the vast community of train-obsessed New Yorkers.

Which reminds me that over at To-Do List, Sasha Cagen has reams and reams of lists that strangers have found lying on the street, sidewalk, or grocery floor. Or, as Sasha describes: wish lists, work lists, honeymoon ideas, cliches to avoid, boys/girls you have kissed, vocab lists, shit lists... Call it the anonymous poetry of the street.

Getting the Most from Restaurants, from eGullet

eGullet is one of those great websites that I don't visit as often as I should, and where I always spend way too much time surfing through when I get there. On my last visit I found a posting by Steven Shaw, a James Beard Award-winning food critic, that's chock full of tips about getting the best a restaurant has to offer, starting with those all-important, impossible-to-get reservations. It's an excerpt from his new book, Turning the Tables: The Insider’s Guide to Eating Out.

On reservations: Every night at a popular restaurant is like an overbooked airline flight. . . It's that careful balance between genuine enthusiasm, flattery, and exhaustion that makes extra seats magically open up.

On getting treated like a regular: Although each individual meal at a top restaurant should be excellent, most seasoned veteran diners take the long view. To them, eating a first meal at a restaurant is like a first date: it's a preview that helps you decide if you're going to want a second date.

On ordering: There's no way to become a food or wine expert overnight, or even in a year. But you don't need expertise. All you need is enough confidence to ask questions.

On the wine tasting ritual: The wine service ritual is romantic and entertaining, but it's mostly pragmatic. The main goal is to determine whether or not the wine is "corked." . . . The wine service ritual is not, however, intended for you to see if you like the wine.

On getting good recommendations that aren't just up-selling: the more specific your questions are the more likely you are to take the server off script. "What's good?" is not nearly as effective as "I have X, Y and Z preferences; what's good?"

I think I'll be trying a lot of this advice out soon. Check out the comments too, there's a ton more info and conversation there.

NYC Subway Map Mash-Up

I just discovered a great NYC map mash-up -- OnNYTurf has overlaid an accurate and hand-drawn map of the NYC subway lines onto Google maps, making it way way way easier to find the closest subway station to wherever you're headed. It even includes the PATH train. (Jersey, don't say NYC never gave you any love.) This site is nuts. They're getting ready to add station outlines so that riders will know where station entrances and exits are.

This is going to be really useful when I'm out trying to get to one of the places in my pocket eats guide (which, for the uninitiated, compiles the best of Chowhound and other food blogs into an interactive map with reviews, for the five boroughs plus Jersey).

Tacks Off the Beaten Track

In recent weeks, many cyclists have reported flat tires from tacks laid down on the West Side Greenway. The problem appears to center around Riverbank State Park, which is between 137th and 145th Streets, but reports of so-called 'tack attacks' range as far south as 68th Street and as far north as the George Washington Bridge at 181st Street. Transportation Alternatives estimates that as many as 200 cyclists have gotten flats from tacks in this area. There have also been reports of tacks around the downhill on River Road and the nearby Sewage Treatment Plant, as well as in New Jersey's Palisades Park.

What's being done? The Parks Department has requested increased patrols and sweeping of the West Side bike path, and has reported the problem to the Manhattan Parks Commissioner's Office.

Because this is considered 'criminal mischief,' it's appropriate to call 911 if you see or (worse) ride over tacks. You can also call 311. In addition, you should call the appropriate local police precinct. Courtesy of Noah at Transportation Alternatives, here's a list of the west side precincts:

20 Precinct - W.59th to W.86th St: 212 580 6411
24 Precinct - W.86th St to W.110th St: 212 678 1811
26 Precinct - W.110th St to W.135th: 212 678 1311
30 Precinct - W.135th to W.155th: 212 690 8811
33 Precinct - W.155th to W.181st: 212 927 3200
34 Precinct - W.181st to Harlem River: 212 927 9711

More:
The Bicycle Saboteur of Riverbank State Park (NY Mag)
Video report (CBS)

Small Win for Critical Mass, Truth, Protest Rights

The National Lawyers Guild reports that charges have been dismissed against legal observer Adrienne Wheeler, who was assaulted by Assistant Chief Bruce Smolka on February 24, 2006, the night of a Critical Mass bicycle ride. Video Wheeler and the National Lawyers Guild – New York City Chapter (“NLG-NYC”) provided to the Civilian Complaint Review Board in March shows that, wearing plainclothes, Chief Smolka grabbed Wheeler from behind as she rode her bicycle past him and dragged her to the ground by a chain locked around her waist. Chief Smolka did this without identifying himself as a police officer or giving any warning. NYPD Officer Alfred Ortiz then issued Ms. Wheeler a ticket in which he swore he personally observed her ride a bicycle the wrong way on a one-way street – statements he admitted Friday were false.

“Falsely swearing in a complaint – even a traffic ticket - is an actual crime punishable by up to a year in jail, while traffic infractions and the like are categorically not crimes,” said Simone Levine, Wheeler’s lawyer. Levine, who helped coordinate the NLG-NYC’s mass defense efforts during the Republican National Convention (“RNC”) in August of 2004, testified before the City Council that the NYPD had targeted more than a dozen legal observers for arrest and prosecution during the RNC. Speaking for the NLG-NYC, Gideon Oliver, who has represented hundreds of the more than 650 people the NYPD has arrested on the nights of Critical Mass rides since just before the RNC, explained that “the NYPD has been at this for two years now and Chief Smolka and other supervisors appear to have developed strong personal investments in singling out legal observers for arrest and prosecution, likely because legal observers have called attention to repeated instances in which NYPD officers, not bike riders, have endangered the public safety, including by removing people from moving bicycles without warning.”

Officer Ortiz was accompanied to traffic court by Lt. Joseph Caneco, the head of Operations for Chief Smolka’s command, Patrol Boro Manhattan South. Lt. Caneco told the judge that Ms. Wheeler’s was “his ticket” and demanded to testify, but the judge made him wait outside the courtroom instead of offering him differential treatment. The judge then called the DMV in Albany and obtained a different version of the ticket Officer Ortiz had given Ms. Wheeler. Under oath and faced with that document, Officer Ortiz acknowledged having sworn under penalties of perjury that he had personally observed Ms. Wheeler riding her bicycle, although he had not, and agreed that it was unlawful for him to have signed the ticket at all, noting that he had been acting under his Lieutenant’s orders. After the judge dismissed the case for those reasons, Lt. Caneco demanded to amend the judge’s ruling. Rebuffed, Lt. Caneco and a group of top cops promptly stormed out of the courthouse.

Wheeler does not know the status of her CCRB complaint. Another CCRB complaint was lodged against Smolka in May of 2005 after he grabbed and arrested a woman for allegedly riding her bicycle on the sidewalk in Union Square Park on the night of a Critical Mass ride in April. Wheeler is not hopeful even two substantiated complaints would curb Chief Smolka or other top cops. “Commissioner Kelly has consistently given passes to supervisors against whom the CCRB substantiated RNC-related complaints,” Wheeler noted, “and so much for the NYPD’s commitment to internal policing.”

Oliver said that the City Council and the Office of the District Attorney were responsible for turning a blind eye to widespread “testilying” in what the DA considers “protest cases” since the RNC, and called NYPD brass to task for putting rank and file officers in the position of having to choose between following orders and perjuring themselves or telling the truth under oath, thereby risking prosecution for having made unlawful false written statements. “Top ranking members of the NYPD, habituated to having their orders followed, do not have a leg to stand on when judges insist on following the law,” said Levine. “If we want the police to stop breaking the law,” added Oliver, “we must not only protect legal observers like Adrienne, but also watch the police ever closer. Responsible government requires that kind of accountability.”

More at NLG, OnNYTurf.

Estoy detrás

I'm back from a couple of weeks in Guatemala where I was studying Spanish and taking photos. The photo set can be seen here.

Two other pieces of photography news: I have some photos in the Brooklyn Arts Council's Here Was New York show (below, left). And I have some photos in the September issue of GO NYC magazine, in their Summer of Love photo essay (below, right). It's been an exciting month!

Brooklyn Ramblings is on Vacation

I'm off for some well-deserved R&R. I'll be back and hopefully posting away wildly the week of September 17th.