Blogging since 1998. By David Wertheimer

Category: Observed (Page 1 of 23)

Six-word reviews of the restaurants in my neighborhood

(With long-memory apologies to Paul Ford.)

Absolute Bagel: a bit far and worth it.

Au Jus: pretty decent BBQ, inscrutable portion sizes.

Blue Marble: a pricey little scoop, but yum.

Bosino: we tried it once, were underwhelmed.

Broadway Bagel: makes a solid egg and cheese.

Broadway Restaurant: fun there’s a greasy spoon nearby.

Cafe du Soleil: bubble dining was a pandemic highlight.

Cheesy Pizza: gloppy, sketchy, and not my style.

Famous Famiglia Pizza: Eli’s favorite. I’m not sure why.

Flor de Mayo: tried it twice. Got stomachaches twice.

Guacamole: now it’s called Pico de Gallo.

Just Pho You: meaning to try it, haven’t yet.

Kouzan: pretty decent Japanese, but no delivery?

La Vera: not bad, but not our go-to.

Lenny’s: best for their whole-wheat everything bagel.

Malecon: we order from Pio Pio instead.

Mama’s Too!: delicious, unique pizza. Try the pear.

Manhattan Diner: like Metro, but not as good.

Manhattan Valley Cuisine of India: Nate didn’t enjoy, but I did.

Metro Diner: Reliable, high quality diner. Excellent bacon.

Naruto Ramen: fine, but wish it was great.

Nobody Told Me: good food and unique summer cocktails.

Ollie’s: mediocre Chinese, displaced by Shun Lee.

Ozen: sixteen years and we’ve never gone.

Pio Pio: every time we order, we’re happy.

Popeye’s: they undercook their chicken for juiciness.

Regional: cute; we tried, but it’s meh.

Sal and Carmine Pizza: fantastic slice joint, a regular purchase.

Serafina: Italian. Reliable. Amy loves their focaccia.

Street Taco: impressive decor but for the weapons.

Shun Lee 98th St: sure, it’s franchised, but it’s great.

Super Tacos: a solid, authentic Mexican food truck.

Sushi W: great omakase in an unlikely location.

Szechuan Garden: we tried it once, were underwhelmed.

Sun Chan: college students say it’s good sushi.

A Taste of Ecuador: Riverside Park food truck; tasty empanadas.

Texas Rotisserie: so-so BBQ, but good lunch special.

Thai Market: great neighbor recommendation, a weekly staple.

Westside Market: a supermarket, but great tuna salad.

WingStop: we shouldn’t, but yeah, we do.

Wolfnights: fussy for the sake of it.

Drafted 2021/10/15 at 2:46 pm. Published with updates for openings and closings.

Busking

Instead of the usual musician or candy-seller, we encountered a gymnast performing for money on the 4 train this afternoon. With a boombox playing Michael Jackson and a mouthful of one-liners, he did one-arm flips and off the ceiling-mounted bars, then tried to entertain us as he asked for money.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “if I didn’t kick you in the head, you got nothing to be angry at.”

“Gentlemen, if you can’t do this, please donate accordingly.”

“Ladies, if your man can’t do this, please come to my place… it’s right by the subway and I have cable.”

Across from us, a 7-year-old boy turned to his mother: “We should go to his place.”

Drafted 2007/09/03 at 9:56 pm. Published unedited.

Sedecordle is the best -rdle

You’ve been playing Wordle the past few months, haven’t you? Who hasn’t? It’s a great little game, a couple of minutes of diversion, deep thought and great satisfaction. I play it almost every day.

To everyone’s delight, Wordle quickly spawned knock-offs, all in the open-source, free-to-play spirit of the original. I play a bunch of them. There are all sorts of variants, from words to maps to songs to movie stills. They all have their charms, and the internet is a little more fun as a result.

As someone who likes word puzzles, I’ve spent most of my -rdle gaming time on the letter games, espeically the spin-offs. Wordle begat Dordle, which is two wordles solved simultaneously; that led to Quordle, and the multiplying went from there: eight, sixteen, thirty-two, sixty-four. Many of them even use the same codebase.

You can play them in order, which is fun, or you can just hit the best ones: Wordle, the original, and Sedecordle.

Wordle is a brain teaser, great for all the well-documented reasons. Sedecordle is a puzzle: 16 words, 22 total guesses, each attempt painting in different parts of each grid. It is part word search, part crossword and part jigsaw puzzle, requiring dexterity and clever construction to find every word in time. It takes a few more minutes than Wordle, but like any good word game, the satisfaction that comes from completing it is great.

Sedecordle is inherently solvable, but not easy. I try to crack it in as few as 18 rounds, but I still lose outright maybe once a week. A word with multiple uncommon options (PATCH, MATCH, WATCH) can quickly undermine the day.

The others? All worthy, just not as satisfying. Dordle is a great little trifle, as is Quordle (although their word choices are much more esoteric). The 32- and 64-word options are noble but more of an endurance exercise than a game; they use every single letter, and with patience it’s just a matter of filling in words. Octordle alludes to the promises of Sedecordle, but the eight word grid is not as compelling as sixteen.

So: sedecordle. Enjoy.

Twenty years past

Tomorrow is the 20th anniversay of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York. You know this, of course. This weekend, many corners of the internet will be commemorating the occasion.

I have never been one to look back on the event in great detail. Many people do (Anil Dash, for example, every year) and I appreciate their reflections without feeling much need or desire to add my own. I lived it, I wrote down my reactions in real time, and for me, that has been enough.

Speaking of which, my memories of the day and the week were chronicled here on the Ideapad, and I still recommend reading them; the page is both contemplative and raw, and it holds up. Also, for really raw writing about the event, my friend Adam’s firsthand writeup is chastening.

At the newsstand

It was a blazingly hot summer afternoon as I walked the dog. We walked down Broadway, where an electronic sign announced that both interstate lottery jackpots were around a quarter-billion dollars. I felt like daydreaming on my dog walk, so I stopped at the newsstand with the lottery terminal.

“One Mega Millions and one Powerball, please,” I said to the older man working the newsstand.

“One of each?” he said.

“Sure,” I replied, “maybe they’ll both come in.”

He paused a beat while the tickets printed. “One is enough,” he said.

Wasabi the Best in Show winner

Few things make me more giddy than seeing a Pekingese, so when a gorgeous Pekingese takes Best in Show at Westminster, I’m pretty much in peak dog-lover form.

This is Wasabi:

Yes! Make my day, my week, little new best friend of mine.

A winning Peke is not rare; it hasn’t even been that long. My previous BFF Pekingese Malachy won Westminster in 2012, and then there’s the (in)famous Danny, who won Crufts (the British equivalent of Westminster) in 2003, only to be accused of having had cosmetic surgery. He was exonerated, as all good pups should be.

Congrats to Wasabi, and thank you for starting my week off with a grin.

An incomplete list of the incomplete lists I’ve posted here over the years

An incomplete list of things our year-old Labradoodle chewed up while left home alone, July 2019

An incomplete list of things my son has figured out how to spin since discovering the Beyblade

An incomplete list of words starting with the letter “K” as suggested by the K-112 class at PS 87 this morning

An incomplete list of plot twists crammed into the 15-episode first season of ‘Smash’

An Incomplete List of Rock Stars I’ve Met in Unexpected Places

An Incomplete List Of Famous People I’ve Stood Next To In Public Restrooms

Things my dog has eaten

I also have a draft (incomplete) list of an incomplete list of animals we’ve been told our white-and-black Australian Labradoodle looks like (Dalmatian, cow, panda bear, etc.).

“You should have your own place in the internet.”

Hear hear! There’s a reason you can still read my twentieth-century writings, in their original format, at their original URLs, and it has everything to do with many of the points in this essay about blogging on one’s own website. (Not that you should read my old blog posts, but some of them are still fun.)

Deep in the era of essential/evil/ephemeral social media, having your own little corner of the internet is still a wondeful thing.

(Via Longboard)

Day 67

Yesterday my wife and I had a brief argument over what day of the week it was.

I’ve started adding little things to my calendar just to keep track of time. Normally, it keeps track of what I do: non-work activities, kid stuff, social plans. Now, of course, most of that is shot. A few weeks ago I looked at my calendar and saw nothing. And suddenly, I had no idea what went on those days. It was unsettling.

We joke about how life has become a blur, how days of the week no longer have meaning, that maybe I need to bring back the “Feels Like” Forecast, only it won’t say anything. But it’s true: without pacing, life really does blur together, sometimes for good (two-week vacation, anyone?) and other times, not.

So now my calendar includes the mundane. “Finish jigsaw puzzle.” “Costco delivery.” “Cronchy potatoes.” Things that otherwise wouldn’t matter, but now do. Because they give life structure: meaning, progress, momentum.

I am grateful for work, for my wife’s work, for my kids’ school, not just for the obvious (growth, interaction, income) but because we benefit from the pacing. Even intra-day: when the boys have class after lunch, the whole day feels better, because there’s a reason for them to engage in the afternoons. Yesterday they managed to while away 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. in sprawling online playdates, more or less, and came out of them dazed and blinkering. Should we spend the summer in WFH and without camp, we’re going to have a robust activity schedule. Again: structure.

As with my last post, though, I have little to complain about. The boys are doing great in school, the missus is producing amazing things, the dog has learned how to fist bump, our extended family is safe and sound. I’m at peace with the monotony while we await our emergence from it.

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