What makes a good bagel? in the New York Times. Agreed! Bagels should be crisp and heavy-doughed. I will have to make a few Saturday trips to the outerboroughs to check these places out for myself. (And while I’m at it, I’ll bring the missus to the Mill Basin Deli, where her cousins still crank out a good pastrami sandwich.)
Category: Observed (Page 18 of 24)
See if you can make sense of this: JetBlue won’t advance-book the last pet slot on its flightsâbecause it has to leave the space open for people who don’t book in advance.
I’m still trying to wrap my head around the policy. Here’s how it works. JetBlue permits three pets to travel in-cabin on any one flight. We called today to put our pet on a return leg from Florida on New Year’s day, only to be told that two pets were booked on our flight, and the third pet slot could not be given to us on the phone.
Why? Because that third slot is for use by airport personnel only.
And what do airport personnel do with that slot? They use it to aid owners who show up with animals unannounced and unreserved.
As a result, even though I followed protocol, and called a week in advance to bring my pet on a flight with space available for pet travel, JetBlue won’t book the pet travel because they need to see if a less prepared customer shows up and circumvents the policy.
On one level, this makes some sense. If I forgot to book my dog for a trip home, I too would want to slip on the flight with him. But JetBlue has taken this to an absurd extreme: yes, there is room on the flight; yes, you could conceivably fly with the pet; but no, you can’t determine this in advance. However, if I show up unannounced with my dog on New Year’s Day, and I’m the first person to do so on the flight, bingo! I can take him.
I can understand reserving theater seats for walk-up sales, but we’re talking about the transport of a live animal, one who will be in Florida and needs to get home to New York with its owners. JetBlue needs to either permit the advance booking of my dog or stop advertising a three-pets-per-flight policy that is a misnomer at best.
The message from JetBlue to me is simple: don’t bother following protocol. Just show up and demand to get on the plane. Yeah, because that will be fun on New Year’s. Looks like my dog is staying homeâand I’m flying American next time.
Update, January 2: After seven phone calls—more than one to JetBlue corporate headquarters—the pooch flew happily home. I still have yet to receive a decent policy explanation from anyone, though. And we will be thinking twice whenever booking JetBlue flights to Florida.
“[New York Yankees owner George] Steinbrenner so despises the Red Sox, whose president, Larry Lucchino, called the Yankees ‘the evil empire’ last winter, that he groused loudly last season when New England clam chowder was on the menu in the Yankee Stadium club restaurant.”
I started 9-to-5 freelancing on Monday (well, 9:30 to 6:30, really, but who’s counting?). As a result, I’m getting back in the habit of buying breakfast on the way to work.
When it comes to the morning meal, I’m something of a spendthrift. At lunchtime, where one can find differences in quantity and quality, I’m not as miserly. But breakfast—a buttered roll and a 16-oz. carton of Tropicana orange juice—is basically commoditized. I know how little each item can cost, and I refuse to overpay. Why spend two bucks on OJ when I can pay $1.50?
Nickel-and-diming myself at 9 a.m. has direct results. Compare the cost of my basic breakfast at Speedy’s, a handsome takeout place on the south side of Herald Square, with a breakfast cart and a bagel shop a block down Sixth Avenue.
Speedy's OJ $1.90 OJ, corner deli $1.50
" Buttered roll .75 Roll, 15th St cart .50
" Tax .17 No tax
----- -----
Total/morning 2.82 2.00
Over one week x 5 x 5
----- -----
Grand total 14.10 10.00
By going the inexpensive route, I save enough money in four days ($8.00 vs $11.28) that the fifth day pays for itself, with a dollar to spare. Do this over a 47-week work year and I save—ready?—$192.70. For two hundred bucks, I’ll walk 50 feet for that Tropicana.
Now, if only I could find a good deli around here with $3.99 turkey sandwiches.
Almost missed this one: New York City’s water is as healthy and safe as bottled water. It also tastes pretty good.
“There really is no reason to go out and buy bottled water in New York City,” said Jim Tierney, the state inspector general for the city’s water supply. “It doesn’t make economic sense. It’s 1,000 times the cost of tap water, and tap water is clean and healthful.”
Me, I keep a jug in the fridge only because it’s cold.
Jake’s prominent features of my graduate school experience report mirrors my own, right down to the HP12C calculator (but not the Dr Pepper; I drink Diet Coke and spring water).
I am in Athens, a wide-eyed tourist until my EMBA International Emerging Markets Global Study Tour kicks in tomorrow evening. So far I know the whereabouts of only one of my three dozen colleagues, and she’s asleep, so I spent the day meandering the city on my own.
First, the fun: Greece is visually stunning. The ruins and archaeology are awesome, in the classic sense of the word, and staring at the Acropolis from below is a thrilling experience. I had a nice lunch, spanakopita and all, and I like my hotel for the night, the Grecotel Athens Plaza. Tomorrow the class checks into the Grand Bretagne, which appears to be Athens’ equivalent of the Plaza in New York City.
However.
When packing, I opted for comfortable-American gear instead of mesh-in European attire, figuring I’d be traveling in packs of 30ish Yanks most of the time, so why not wear my jeans and Nikes instead of khakis and Campers?
Here’s why: I am a mark.
In four hours of strolling around Athens, I was approached no less than three times by opportunistic locals. First up was a chatty middle-aged man proud of his English, and his son goes to school in Texas, and why don’t you come see the car, jingle jingle, complete with following me halfway down the street when I declined and turned away. Next came the homeless man who nearly walked into me and tapped my shoulder as I went by, followed not long after by a trio of youngish women–nearly girls–the middle one of whom held her leering eye contact and talked Greek as I walked past. Not to mention our cabbie from the airport, a friendly and responsible man who drove us to our hotel without issue, then demanded a 25-euro fee when the meter read 10.63, to cover “toll, and tip, and you know.” And the FUCK BUSH graffiti on side streets (not that I blame them). And the yes-we’ll-help-you-but-notice-our-indignation tones of voice of most of the retailers I encountered, from the newsstand staff to the spanakopita woman.
Within 24 hours I will be reunited with my class, and I expect things to go more smoothly once we’re working as a group. For now, though, I feel like quite the Ugly American.
(P.S. Email and phone contact will be spotty until October 21. Have a great week.)
In New York, location is everything. Apparently, when the location is unavailable, piggybacking a name from another neighborhood will do:
~ The New York branch of London’s Soho House is not in Soho, as it is in the UK, but rather the Meatpacking District. One assumes Meatpacking House wouldn’t quite connote the right aura.
~ DT/UT, the “downtown uptown” coffeehouse on Second Avenue that brings the East Village to the East 80s, is opening a second branch—downtown.
~ Chelsea Paper is in fact in Midtown, on East 57th Street. There is a Chelsea Paper in Chelsea, but we won’t get into that here.
Let me know if I missed any. I assume many more exist.
The Key to a Successful Freelance Career: A Diary by Sarah Hepola, in The Morning News.
In related news, I’m still wearing yesterday’s clothes.
Sitting in the back of a taxicab earlier this week, I glanced at the partition and noticed the name on the cabbie’s hack license:
SUET NG
And I thought, Well, in this weather. …