All Killer No Filler

Stormin' through the city like my name is el niño

I’m coming off of an amazing and restorative weekend spent with 3 of my former coworkers turned best friends. They flew in from Canada and Denver and I showed them all of my favorite things and my feet hurt and my tummy is full and it was the best time ever. I’m immensely grateful to have such beautiful people in my life; tell your favorite people that you appreciate them!

In Big City, Little Friend news, I’ve been thinking about switching this newsletter to a paid model for a while now and I feel like the time is nigh! TBD on exactly what this will entail and when it’ll happen, but here’s what I’m thinking:
▪️All subscribers will still get a weekly newsletter on Thursday
▪️Paid subscribers will continue to receive all 5 sections - Noshing, Watching, Exploring, Learning, What’s Good
▪️Paid subscribers can also reach out get my help planning itineraries, whether that’s for friends coming into town to visit, an activity + dinner plans, somewhere to host your company holiday party, etc. I do this kind of stuff for fun (and also for actual work) so I feel really comfortable offering my recommendations here!
▪️Free subscribers will get a mix of 2 sections (I’ll rotate these so that it’s not always the same two) and they’ll always get the What’s Good roundup of NY news and events

I put a ton of work into crafting this newsletter every week (and I love it) and I’d really like to see where things can go from here. Subscriptions will literally fund me being able to continue trying new places and activities around the city, so you’re investing in me and in this newsletter and I really appreciate that 🥹

And as I’ve said a million times over - I want to hear from you! Tell me where you’d like me to go, ask me to do more research into that weird little trivia tidbit you heard, give me all of the feedback (I can take it 🤠). Substack does this cool thing where it shows me who my top engaged readers are and I will absolutely Oprah out some free subscriptions to folks who are consistently reading and commenting so please don’t be shy.

I’m gonna mull things over a bit, so expect a more concrete plan in a week or two! Until then, I would love it if you could forward this newsletter to someone who would enjoy it. Share your favorite issue with someone. Reach out to a friend you haven’t spoken to in a while and send them a little “thinking of you” message - it’ll probably make them very happy! Send me to your nerdiest friend - nerds dig me! 🤓

1. Noshing 😋

While things around here are still free, I’m gonna give you my ultimate dumpling crawl stops because I am nothing if not generous. I’ve taken lots of dumpling tours myself and I’ve been eating my way through Chinatown for almost 20 years (RIP my youth), so I’ve got a pretty big backlog of top notch spots. These are the 4 that I visited with my friends this past weekend and they’re all favorites for different reasons:

1. Vanessa’s Dumplings - Don’t write me off because I’m giving a popular one off the bat. Vanessa’s has been there for me for years and their prices haven’t budged too much. They started on Eldridge St in Chinatown and have since expanded to 8 locations, so they’re doing something right. I always get the fried pork and chive dumplings and a sesame pancake. Get the spicy sauce with the dumplings - it’s so flavorful and truly not too spicy. The sesame pancake is like the love child of a scallion pancake and paratha - it’s fluffy and crispy and absolutely smothered in sesame seeds. You can get it with a meat or veggie filling, but I love the pancake on its own. They sell frozen dumplings by the bag, which are great for storing in your freezer for quickie dinners.

2. Super Taste - They’ve also become extremely popular in the last few years and were the favorite dumpling of the tour over the weekend. Super Taste’s fried pork dumplings and rolled up like little taquitos instead of the classic crescent shape and this allows them to have much more surface area for crispiness. And again, you must add the spicy sauce! It’s not very spicy but it adds a ton of great flavor. Pro tip is to pour the sauce over the dumps, close the container, and then give it a shake for perfect coverage.

Super Taste - #1 in our hearts and bellys

3. Fried Dumpling - This place is a literal hole in the wall on Mosco St, which is itself a tiny side street that’s very easy to miss. These are not necessarily the most delicious dumplings on my list, but they are very good and you’re going here for the volume and the experience. They literally only make pork fried dumplings and you can get 13 for $5 (cash only). The woman working there cranks them out and will yell at you to order quickly and pay her, so be ready! Columbus Park is right at the end of the block, so walk over and find yourself a seat to enjoy your bounty.

4. Tasty Dumpling - Tasty is another place where you need to be ready to order and listen for your number to be called for pickup otherwise the staff will get annoyed. But that’s fine because they make great dumplings and it’s NY, you should be paying attention all the time anyways. What’s unique here is that they have a Northern China style pork and dill dumpling (it’s on a handwritten menu inside). This is something you don’t find too often here, so it’s a very different (and very good) flavor! Tasty is right around the corner from Fried, so have yourself a double feature and enjoy your dumps in the park.

Dumplings, a park bench, and excellent company

2. Watching🍿

I recently rewatched Blue Beetle and it’s probably the only DC film I actually enjoy (aside from The Flash, which controversies aside, was mostly enjoyable). I think it’s a real shame that the box office numbers weren’t great because this is such an improvement over the other stuff that’s been made in the DCEU so far. And that’s no small feat because Blue Beetle is a weird fuckin character that couldn’t have been easy to translate to film.

The story follows Jaime Reyes (Xolo Maridueña from Cobra fuckin Kai!), who accidentally fuses with an alien artifact known as the Scarab. They form a sort of symbiotic bond (like Venom) and we often hear Jaime arguing with Khaji-da (the Scarab) because they sometimes have different goals. So, that’s weird. But what I loved the most about this movie is that it really cared about its characters and (to me, a white person) felt very intentional about how it incorporated Jaime’s family and culture into the plot.

Jaime and his family live on the outskirts of the Miami-esque Palmera City and the film immediately paints a picture of the wealthy/working class divide. What’s also evident is that Jaime comes from a tight knit family and a place where neighbors look out for one another, which is immediately contrasted with the familial tension between the wealthy Victoria Kord (Susan Sarandon) and Jenny Kord in their servant-filled mansion. A theme in this film is that Jaime’s family is his strength and we get to see that play out multiple times, sometimes comedically.

One scene that was beautifully shot was Jaime’s initial transformation into the Blue Beetle. The director, Ángel Manuel Soto, said that he wanted to create a sort of The Fly, but for children, and I think he succeeded. The scene has those body horror aspects, as Jaime is thrown onto the ceiling, black good enveloping his body and even creeping into his mouth. All the while his family is screaming as they watch his clothes burn away, leaving a weird blue exoskeleton behind. The absolute icing on the Cronenberg cake though was Jaime looking at his reflection in the (I think) Virgin of Guadalupe painting. Jaime’s demonic glowing yellow eyes perfectly lined up with the Virgin’s and this was such a beautiful shot that is my Roman Empire. We’re so used to the stereotype of families shunning one of their own when they become “different” in some way. In Jaime’s case, he’s literally a weird alien symbiote bug that could easily have caused fear and created a rift between his more religious family members, but they worry about him and love him and rush to his side to aid him and that is fucking beautiful.

I literally scoured the internet for a still of this shot and couldn't find it, so combine these images in your head and you'll get the idea

There are so many intentional choices made in this film that build up Jaime to be a truly unique and fully fleshed out being, rather than just a stereotype. You can tell that the director had a big hand in shaping the story and that by the grace of Gotham the higher ups at DC just let him run with it (this feels like the Taika Waititi effect). The dialogue felt like real things people would actually say and I appreciated the subtle nod to Mortal Kombat. Also George Lopez is in this - I forgot about that guy and he’s great!

Blue Beetle certainly isn’t the best movie out there, but it’s the only DCEU movie I’ve willingly watched more than once and I really hope that we get to see more of Jaime’s story.

3. Exploring 🛼

Where do I even start? I made my friends trek nearly 25 miles with me over the weekend and we saw so many things! I would love to tell you about The Met Cloisters, a fabulous little museum all the way at the tippety top of Manhattan in Ft Tryon Park. This museum is such a gem and it’s really worth the trek to the north end of the A line.

The Cloisters is named not for the bivalve pokemon, but for the open arcades that make up this museum and the monasteries that its construction was based on. This structure was built in 1933 and evokes classic Medieval castle-like architecture, while housing a large collection of The Met’s Medieval art. And literally all of this museum is art - the doors, windows, arches. Sometimes it’s hard to know which door you’re allowed to open and which is from 1500. There are also multiple gardens throughout and one provides an awesome vantage point overlooking the Hudson River (which is :chefs-kiss: during the fall). The art is some of my favorite because folks in the Middle Ages really had no idea how to draw, but that didn’t stop them from trying.

“Hey Steve, you’ve seen a lion before right?” - “Of course, they’ve got those fancy little mustaches. I gotchu fam.” - Oh Steve…

The museum is probably best known for its collection of Unicorn Tapestries 🦄

This scene goes through my head every time I hear the word tapestry, so now I bequeath it unto you

These aren’t the sparkly happy unicorns that graced our Lisa Frank trapper keepers though - these tapestries depict folks hunting unicorns. See, old-timey people believed a lot of things and one of those things was that a unicorn’s horn could detect the presence of poison and purify water. Royal folk were always scared that people were trying to poison them (can’t imagine why) so this was kind of a big deal. However, since unicorns aren’t real (maybe?), hunters would actually come back with narwhal tusks claiming them to be unicorn horns. The Cloisters has a ton of unicorn tapestries on display, including one that may look familiar to fans of the Harry Potter movies…

“The Unicorn in Captivity” hangs outside of the Room of Requirement!

The Cloisters is a pretty small museum that you can probably cover fully in 2 hours, unlike The Met which you could not cover in 2 years. And something cool I learned - locals can share their pay-what-you-wish discount! So if you have friends coming in from out of town, they don’t have to pay the $30 general admission. And if you’re visiting NY and you don’t have a local friend, now you do 😉

4. Learning 🧠

Most of NY is pretty easy to get around in because of the street grid pattern! Once you familiarize yourself with how the grid works, you’ll be traversing the city like a pro. This is all thanks to the Commissioners’ Plan of 1811, which created the street grid that we know and (mostly) love today.

If you look at a map of NYC (we’re talking Manhattan here), you’ll notice that the streets below Houston are pretty wiggly, but above Houston they’re pretty organized (with some exceptions). When NYC was first settled by the Dutch in 1624, everyone sort of crowded around Lower Manhattan. As things got crowded folks spread out a bit more, but they mostly stayed concentrated on the southern tip of the island, with the exception of some wealthy folks building fancy homes uptown. Because of this, streets were drawn up haphazardly in an as-needed fashion and they were organized however landowners wanted them to be. Naturally, this was a mess, so the city decided they needed a plan to account for future population growth.

You can see that the streets at the bottom are very squiggly and then things straighten out as you head north

Led by chief surveyor John Randel Jr., the plan created 11 major avenues and 155 cross-town streets still used today. Folks spread out all over the city and marked where these streets would intersect by hammering survey bolts into the ground. Some homes were razed or relocated to accommodate the new pattern and the diagonal Broadway was kept despite it basically being an aberration when it comes to creating tidy streets. Today, 5th avenue runs down the middle of Manhattan from Harlem to Washington Sq Park and bisects our east and west streets. Some of the other avenues change names as you go uptown, 4th ave only runs for about 6 blocks, and there’s a 6 1/2 avenue, but other than that things mostly make sense.

The surveyors actually ended up doing more work than necessary though, because this grid plan came into effect about 40 years before Central Park was planned and this is where one of my favorite historical artifacts comes into play! Within Central Park there is a bolt from the surveying that took place in 1811. It’s the most random little thing but the fact that it persisted after all of these years, and amidst the insane construction that ensued to create the park (it’s all built, nothing in there is natural!), is so freakin cool. It’s the only one that’s been found and it’s one of those bits of history that’s remained mostly hidden because folks don’t share the location in order to preserve it. If you want to look for the bolt when you’re in the park, I’m happy to give you some way finding tips!

Yes, it’s just a rusty bolt in a rock but it’s an *old* rusty bolt in a rock and that’s what makes it cool!

5. What’s Good 😎

• Open Streets are coming back for the holidays! On Dec 3, 10, and 17 from 12-6pm a big chunk of 5th ave will be open to pedestrians. This is pretty helpful in alleviating the crowds there to see the holiday displays at Macy’s and whatnot and I wish they would offer more dates or longer hours.

• If you didn’t get your fill of murder mystery events during October, I have great news for you because Last Place on Earth is hosting a Christmas themed Murder Mystery on Dec 2 because someone killed Santa!

• The Bryant Park Holiday Market has been open for a bit now, but my favorite holiday market at Union Square opens this Friday Nov 17! This is the market that I always went to in college so some of it is surely nostalgic, but I feel like this one has better vendors than Bryant Park.

• I’m a big fan of George Motz (I got burgers via his burger slide during the pandemmy) and I’ve been keeping an eye on his new restaurant, Hamburger America. I’m so happy that it’s now in its soft opening! Keep an eye on their Insta for opening hours over the next few days while they’re still finding their footing.

• In other exciting food news - the founder of the beloved City Bakery has returned with a popup at Urbanspace Vanderbilt! City Bakery was known for their amazing hot chocolate and I was so sad when they closed down in 2019. You can get their famous hot chocolate at the Color of Chocolate popup and I can’t wait to go!

• In non-NY-specific news, I recently learned the history of Veteran’s Day from

  Better Strangers
  (which we “celebrated” over the weekend). It was originally Armistice Day and I really like the origin better than what we’re stuck with now.

🤘🤘🤘