New York City is the food capital of the universe. Whatever its specific ranking from year to year according to the blogolisticlesphere, The Big Apple will never not be a foremost global culinary destination.  There’s also a New York for the natives and a New York for everyone else. That

I know two things about beer: I like it a lot. I can drink a bunch. And that’s, for the most part, it. I don’t have the deep knowledge of a learned cicerone, nor the hands-on experience of a brewer, nor the desire to be either of those things. I just love putting that liquid inside my body

Local Craft Beer Review: Now Youse Can’t Leave Double IPA, Bronx Brewery Every so often, you come across an ale that just does it for you. It slots into you like a Connect-Four piece. You know immediately, upon first sight, you’re going to love this beer. There’s an instant chemistry. A meet-cute o

Staten Islands . The Forgotten Borough. The county fittingly named after the bastard son of King Charles II still receives little outside fanfare – something many natives are both pleased with and angered by. Fair or not, if anything, it reinforces the idea of relativity. Only in the shadow of the

There are questions in life that surpass all others. The ones that seem to dangle above as you lie abed in pre-slumber reverie, thinking big thoughts, wondering big wonderings. Are we alone in the universe? Who or what created existence? Where do we go when we die? Then one question rises up and t

Aaaand good riddance, Columbus Day. Don’t let the “about freaking time” hit you on the way out. New York City public schools, as you may have recently heard, took the long-overdue step of replacing Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples Day. Naturally, some folks (mostly Italian-Americans and their s

If you’re anything like me, then you have a long-time weed dealer in New York City. Let’s call mine Dex. Since the day my cousin texted me his phone number in a pinch, Dex has supplied me through two boroughs, four jobs, five separate regular meeting points, a marriage, and, for each of us, the bir

The presumptive next mayor of New York City, Eric Adams, has expressed his desire to redesignate streets and buildings named after slave owners. Most likely to people who, at the very least, never owned other human beings. It’s an admirable, necessary, and belated endeavor and we should all be behin

When we procreators see evidence of our lives pre-children – be it a picture, memento, or some sexy underwear – we give it the same reaction The Winter Soldier gives Captain America when he first calls him “Bucky.”   You do become a different person when kids enter the picture. And you cer

Meet Sasha. One of the cougars in bronx ( puma concolor ). As of this writing, she is around eighty pounds and eleven months old – which makes her a pre-teen big cat. Like most cougars in bronx, she’s a carnivore, and a predator, and has a stronger bite force than a lion. Yes, that lion. Until re

You open your refrigerator. Before you is a ghostly sight. Stragglers, tramps, and echoes of foods past populate the sparse shelves and crumb-laden crispers. You need groceries.   In this day in age, what are your options? One, you can leave your home, reusable shopping bag in to

Covid-19 can affect your sinuses, your muscles, your respiratory system, your physical wellbeing. But it can also affect something else: basic social skills. Or at least it has mine.  Exhibit A of my derelict ability to intermix: daycare dropoff. I have a two-year old. His daycare is bu

They lead all sports fanbases in audible groans. They say things like “de-FENSE!”, “ Bing Bong” , “Fire Dolan”, and “Why did I waste money on tickets for this shit?” They love too hard. They lose too much. They are Knicks fans (of which I am one). And theirs is a tale of woe, exasperation, and inc

I used to live on Staten Island. This is a piece of information which can elicit different types of responses – apathy, confusion, respect, derision, grunting. Rarely is one of those responses wonder. My last apartment on the island, over a decade ago, was in a North Shore neighborhood that would

A study showed that a random person in the world is far more likely to be bitten by a New Yorker than a shark. That won’t come as a surprise to anyone that’s had or seen a heated moment on a New York City street. A bite is sometimes the best you could hope for. The very act of living among New York

On any given day, there are four million people traversing the streets of Manhattan. If you’ve ever been a part of that moving mass of humanity, you may have noticed something about Big Apple bipeds: they fall into groups. Before I go on, I cannot stress enough how little research has been applied

Let’s pretend I’m someone else. This other me wasn’t born into a generations-deep New York City tribe of team-specific sports devotees. He wasn’t raised with the idea that living and dying with the fates of his local franchises – The Four Traditionals, to be exact: Yankees, Giants, Knicks, Rangers –

I’m sure 5,000 years from now, during humanity’s new dawn, archaeologists will stand in wonder at Hudson Yards, along with the rest of New York’s charred/flooded/radioactive ruins. Its centerpiece – The Vessel – might even be considered an ancient wonder along the line of the Colossus of Rhodes or T

Humor-tinged editorial article for a culture e-zine.

Humor-tinged editorial article for a culture e-zine