Displaced - Emma Carlson

As you may have noticed, Displaced has been experiencing some technical difficulties recently. We’re in the process of upgrading some of the features on the site and trying to decide if those upgrades might just be easier if I shifted platforms entirely.

Couple of the changes in the works? Font size, for one. Don’t rush out and get new glasses - we have been messing with it and, no, you haven’t gone crosseyed. We’ve also been trying to simplify the commenting process to allow regular and non-spammers through the net and still keep spam out. It turns out that net may have been tightened too far, so if you haven’t seen your comments posting, I sincerely apologize. We’re on the case.

It’s been a little rocky and I appreciate everyone bearing with the chaos.

New content’s been a little low of late too, I know. I’ve been absorbed in other work lately. That combined with navigating the challenges of the late stages of our first pregnancy, the blog has been sadly neglected.

We’ll get back on track here shortly on all fronts. Thanks for your patience!

R has a beard, a moustache and long hair. He’s a good-looking guy though, trust me. His furry choices don’t resemble the current Brad Pitt iteration of facial hair or the hipster full beard mistake. He’s Mr. Trim and he knows how to work it. Here’s the thing though: babies don’t like it. I think it’s in the clown category for them. It’s unfamiliar and unfamiliar equals scary. Like beets for me.

We have a one-year-old friend who is otherwise pretty placid, but when he spies R, he goes quiet, assesses for a moment and then his small face crumples.

Our own baby will arrive in a couple of months and we’ve been considering the situation. My thinking is that our child will swing the other way. Not gay (well, maybe gay - who knows?) but hair-friendly instead of hair phobic. After all, what else will she know? R’s the man in her life.

That’s the good news. But you know how girls supposedly end up dating guys who look like their dads? That’s a little creepy all to itself, but now I’m worried she’ll wind up with a preference for the shady end of R’s spectrum, like a.) terrorists, b.) drug dealers, or, worst, c.) hippies.

I’m not sure what to do to prevent her from subconsciously being drawn to kicking it with the Taliban, stoners or the cartel. Maybe we’ll paper her room with stills from Mad Men. Or we could run Magnum P.I. in a loop in the nursery to get her clued in to the retro ‘stache vibe. Or, I guess, we could just hope she’ll swing the other way and go for clean-shaven blondes just to spite us.

I need to start crossing stuff off my anxiety list. This is right behind, “Don’t let her fall off the deck,” and, “No drinking bleach.” I think that’s my priorities in order, right?

(Thanks, Swiss Miss, for the onesie tip-off.)

There was supposed to be snow in Manhattan while we were there. Washington got snow. Philadelphia got snow. New York? Horizontal snow at 4AM that added up to an inch, melted by morning. Sigh. Then it snowed wildly the day after we left. Double sigh. No snow dose for me. It was bejesus cold though and that means comfort food.

In the interests of full disclosure, I collect comfort food all over Manhattan even when it’s 85 degrees outside and the thought of carbohydrates repels your average resident. Freezing winds and grey skies just make me look less crazy while I’m going about my usual business. And it convinces R to join me, which is always nicer.

First stop, Clinton Street Baking Company for pancakes. Their pancakes are already reviewed as the best in New York but every February they take it up another notch by declaring Pancake Month and offering different over-the-top pancake confections every few days. Like pancakes with fresh blackberries, pecan streusel and warm apple butter or chocolate and blood orange pancakes with candied orange glaze. Sadly, all these tasty offerings + cold weather make getting a table well nigh impossible. One hour and 45 minutes wait in 12-degree weather? Forget it. (I have less and less patience with popular places that take no reservations. The least you could do is offer some of the tables up for people who think ahead. Stupid pancake people.)

So we cabbed over to Momofuku Noodle Bar for some ramen goodness instead. Not that waits there are often much better, but we got lucky, hitting the sweet spot between the early eaters and the late lunchers. Momofuku gets a lot of press already, so I don’t need to tell you what a hot ticket their pork buns are or their ramen or just a seat in any of the locations in general. David Chang’s East Village empire consists of the Noodle Bar (er, noodle specialties), Sämm Bar (oddly ham-focused + oysters), the Milk Bar (take-out bakery and small savories), and Ko (newest posh destination, impossible to get in, voted Best New Restaurant last year by Time Out). He’s opening Má Pêche downtown later this year.

The menu can be off-putting for a non-foodie, featuring a lot of words like “belly” and “tendon” and “skate” and other things that don’t sound either edible or yummy, but push on: nothing looks like what it is and everything is ultra-flavorful, so it’s worth a little courage. The house ramen is indeed delicious, a big bowl of slightly chewy noodles nestled in a rich broth with a perfectly poached egg, pork, seaweed sheets, scallions. The ginger scallion noodles, albeit broth-less, are equally comforting and have a little more kick. You can’t go and not get one of the buns and if you’ve never been, you should start with the pork ones, two to a serving. They’re not the doughy blobs you get on the street in Chinatown. The soft steamed bun is a partial wrap around super-tender slices of pork, scallions, crunchy pickled cucumber and a ridiculously tasty hoisin sauce. They’re legendary and deservedly so.

If you don’t like crowds, are toting bags, a baby or your bushels from the farmer’s market, you shouldn’t hit Momofuku until you’re over it or unburdened. Seating is at bar tables or shared tables, period. We sat sandwiched between two mid-40s ladies trying to lunch and two guys who turned out to be chefs themselves. We talked to the chefs. One is a side man at Morimoto (you know: Iron Chef Morimoto) and the other is the executive chef at Seasonal, a one-Michelin-star midtown restaurant specializing in modern Austrian cuisine. I know, right? What the hell is modern Austrian? Here’s the thing: Austria is a huge hospitality industry machine. They have hotelier schools, excellent restaurants and lots of great hotels. Think of Wolfgang Puck. And this guy, Eduard Frauneder, is all up on the entrepreneurial food thing too. The food looks amazing and we’re definitely going. Anyplace that serves spätzle State-side has my vote.

Afterwards, we braved the wind for a couple blocks to collect crack pie, strawberry milk and a cornflake chocolate chip marshmallow cookie at Momofuku’s take-out Milk Bar. Breakfast cereals provide the base and inspiration for a lot of the offerings, like the cereal milk soft serve, which is fine by me. Predictably, I can’t get enough of the crack pie which is essentially just pie base without the interfering fruit or nuts: sugar, butter, eggs in a chewy layer over crumbly cookie crust. It’s a good thing Momofuku’s so far into the East Village or I’d be stopping by there all the time like the addict I am. I thought about buying a whole pie, but at $40 it’s a commitment. (You can tell I’d make a really bad crack addict.) I might have to serve it at my wedding though.

I love New York in winter even if I can’t have my snow.

“A city can’t be too small. Size guarantees anonymity—if you make an embarrassing mistake in a large city, and it’s not on the cover of the Post, you can probably try again. The generous attitude towards failure that big cities afford is invaluable—it’s how things get created. In a small town everyone knows about your failures, so you are more careful about what you might attempt. Every time I visit San Francisco I ask out loud “Why don’t I live here? Why do I choose to live in a place that is harder, tougher and, well, not as beautiful?” The locals often reply, “You don’t want to live here. It looks like a city, but it’s really a small village. Everyone knows what you’re doing” Oh, OK. If you say so. It’s still beautiful.” - David Byrne

This is exactly why I don’t like San Francisco. Not that I’ve failed a lot publicly here, but it feels insular and homogenous, like a sprawled out small town masquerading as a real city. Give me New York’s anonymity any day.

Full article here.

(Thanks Swiss Miss!)

OK, so if someone asked you, “Do you want to go to the Friars Club for dinner? It’s fish night, so there’ll be 90-year-olds on oxygen wearing lobster bibs in the corner,” what would you say? You’d say, “Hell yes, I want to go to the Friars Club! Let me grab my chest-high pants and I’ll meet you at the front door!”

The Friars Club, for those of you not in the know, is a members-only club in midtown Manhattan that is most famously host to the Friars Club roasts where old-school insult comedians say terrible, sometimes funny things to and about some poor celebrity sap who has to just sit there and take it. (Between you and me, roasts make me cringe more than they make me laugh, but I seem to be in the minority.) Membership is invitation only and is all show biz types. Carol Channing, Milton Berle, George Burns, Billy Crystal type place. Heavy on the comedians but including Frank Sinatra and his ilk too.

The place is so much more than we could have every hoped. It’s like a Poconos resort threw up 1950-1955 all over the place. It’s a five-story mansion with curved carved staircases, tiny elevators, ornate dark wood paneled walls, a billiards room, a sauna, and headshots everywhere of all the famous members, from Jerry Lewis to Tom Hanks.

No cell phone usage is allowed: if you need to take a call - I’m not kidding - they bring you a cream-colored rotary phone and plug it into the jack in the banquette. Every table has one. Think Rock Hudson/Doris Day. Each bathroom has an old-school glass pump with blue mouthwash in it. The men sport big rings. The ladies have all had face lifts. It is, in a word, awesome.

So we went for dinner.

The waitstaff wears ill-fitting polyester suits and when you ask about their red wine selection, they say, “We have a burgundy, a pinot noir, and a merlot.” None of this modern bullshit about grape blends organically grown in Australian or Argentinian or Sonoma going for $12 a glass. You’ll order by type and you’ll like it.

The dinner menu’s the same. Appetizers? Shrimp cocktail, crab cocktail or salad with blue cheese. The shrimp cocktail comes with red cocktail sauce. Same for the crab. None of this frou-frou garbage with anise-seed consomme and sea nettle foam. You’re having the shrimp, you get the shrimp. That’s it. Fuck you.

Dinner? Steak, lobster, roast chicken or sole. And that’s exactly what you’ll get: nothing else, just a giant 20-oz. steak, a freakishly large 2.5-lb. lobster or the largest sole I’ve ever seen. It’s like they were bred at Costco in the steroids aisle. If you want sides, you order them but no one’s bringing you your fish on a pressed disc of maple-glazed pork molars. Spinach? Steamed. In a white dish. Done. Potatoes, brocolli or french fries. Enjoy. No white asparagus, no bamboo stems, no essence of baby swamp grass.

Dessert? This is the best part. Peach melba. That’s right, there’s a place in 2010 that still serves peach melba. Vanilla ice cream, peaches (listed as fresh but clearly Del Monte cling from a can), and raspberry sauce served in a cocktail glass. Brownie. Or ice cream. I was really hoping that a bowl of Jell-O might be an option, but no such luck.

I gotta tell you: everything was really good. Straightforward, uncomplicated and tasty. It was kind of refreshing. Don’t knock 1952, people.

I’m going home later this week. Maybe I can get a ride…

Maybe naming him Rimbaud wasn’t such a good idea.

(Dwell, February 2009)

This is a brilliant, brilliant site. Check it out: Unhappy Hipsters.

(Thanks, Nicole, for the tip-off!)

Setting aside the fact that its job is to wake me up, it keeps doing it with the most depressing news. (I have, naturally, chosen the NPR news as my 1 of 1000 choices.) The health care plan’s demise. The election of a Republican in my home state of Massachusetts. The Supreme Court’s latest blunder (corporations are people?) Plane crash in Africa. The death toll in Haiti.

I could turn the blame on Obama, on his disappointing lack of specific leadership (like providing the Keystone Kops in Congress with a healthcare blueprint to start from or using his popularity to fulfill campaign promises like allowing gays in the military) or his misreading of how to manage Washington’s self-interested, over-tanned criminals…sorry…Senators, but, as far as I know, he can’t make natural disasters like earthquakes and Rush Limbaugh (yet), so I’m just going to be steamed at my alarm clock. Like I always say, “Shoot the messenger.”

Stupid clock.