I Hate Summit One Vanderbilt
and you probably will too
I don’t really have any benchmarks for what a “successful” newsletter looks like, but I’m truly so thrilled that after switching this to a paid subscription you all still seem to be here. My fear was always that folks would just say fuck it and drop off because of the change and whether you switched to paid or you’re enjoying the shorter free sub, I appreciate you reading the words that I write. I’m gonna keep the 15% off going for just one last week (seriously this time) in case you want to make the switch. You could spend $50 on an annual subscription here instead of wasting that money on today’s Explore feature: Summit One Vanderbilt!
I also learned that because of the switch to paid, only paying subscribers can leave comments on posts. That’s a load of shit but it’s a built in feature that I can’t change. I still want to hear from you, so if you receive this newsletter by email, you can reply to that email with comments. Or you can always hit me up on Instagram!
1. Watching🍿
Please skip this section if you don’t want any spoilers; I think this movie is a really wonderful watch if you go in blind.
I finally watched Saltburn and I really liked it. I’ve been no stranger in admitting that I like watching rich people suffer in movies and although this movie surely had rich people suffering, it was fairly minimal in how it was depicted. What I did really enjoy was watching Oliver (Barry Keoghan) just be a “feckin’ freaky little freak man-child”. Like I knew Oliver was up to some shit but you don’t really realize until the end of the movie what a fuckin ride he took the the Cattons (and us) on.
Keoghan is unique physically in that he’s short, so at first glance he seems a bit softer and you underestimate him, but the second he takes his shirt he’s fuckin ripped as shit so then you’re like “wtf is going on, everything I thought I knew is wrong”. And that’s basically Saltburn in a nutshell.
Similar to Poor Things, Saltburn has a lot to offer visually (aside from Keoghan and Elordi, I’m talking about mise en scene you fools). The story is one of duplicity and fuckery and these themes are illustrated with the constant shots that include mirrors and reflections in water. I know, it seems like something so simple that it’s dumb but I think Saltburn actually uses these tropes to great effect. A lot of the movie goes by before you actually know what Oliver is up to, so instead all of the reflections simply tease you by telling you that something is up with this guy but you don’t know what it is yet.
There’s also quite a bit of foreshadowing in scenes that I’m excited to discover more of upon rewatching this. During an early breakfast scene, Venetia tells a story about the poet Percy Shelley’s doppleganger: ”the housekeeper saw Shelley walk past the window and he waved at her, and when the housekeeper waved back at him, she remembered she was on the top floor and Shelley was in Italy. Hours later, Shelley drowned.” As Venetia tells this story, we see a fucking Felix (Jacob Elordi) doppleganger walk by the window behind her! This would be creepy enough, but later after Felix has died, the Catton’s butler asks the family if he should close the curtains while the coroner passes by with the body. The curtains get caught and can’t close, so the family must watch as Felix’s body passes by the same route that his doppleganger did earlier.
Venetia’s bloody bathtub death is also foreshadowed in the two scenes above. We last see her soaking in a tub (yes, that tub) in a lovely scene where she calls out all of Oliver’s bullshit after Felix dies. Moments later we see that she has cut herself and is now bobbing in a bathtub overflowing with blood. The shot of her laying with her head on the dock just above the water is nearly identical to how we will see her laying in the tub of blood. And then the red wine overflowing is pretty obvious (some things are obvious and that’s ok).
There was a lot of thought put into every shot in this film and the soundtrack was equally impeccable. I dare you to watch this movie and not have Murder on the Dance Floor stuck in your head (along with a loop of Oliver dancing naked through the halls of Saltburn). I’ve read some criticisms that the movie didn’t hate rich people enough or that it didn’t say enough. But like, not every movie is a deep social commentary, sometimes we just want to watch weird little people ruin someone else’s life. I wouldn’t go as far as Oliver did, but every time I pass a gorgeous NYC apartment I always peer in the windows to see what that life is like and think to myself “if the purge happened I’d definitely steal this person’s identity and move myself into their apartment.” So maybe Saltburn was just an opportunity for me to watch that fantasy play out.
2. Exploring 🛼
Last year I discovered the joys of being a tourist in my own city and I visited Rockefeller Center, the Empire State Building, and I rode the double decker tour bus! This year I let Lorenzo choose a tourist activity to do and he wanted to check out Summit One Vanderbilt. Friends, I hated it.
I immediately ran into trouble purchasing tickets - there’s a NYC resident option that gives you a discount ($5 off), but no matter what I did the discount dropped before I could checkout. I begrudgingly gave in and paid full price ($42) like a fucking n00b and prepared to “Awaken [my] senses with three levels of immersive space that will challenge, inspire, and thrill.” I was not challenged, inspired, or thrilled.
Upon arriving we waited in a long line (which I expected). Halfway through we were told to look at a camera on the ceiling and smile (the obligatory souvenir photo they would try to charge me for later) After putting little trash bags on our feet to protect the floors, we took yet another photo whose purpose was a mystery until a bit later. Something to know if you go here is that it gets very warm and bright in the space because it is literally all mirrors and glass, so dress accordingly (they have sunglasses you can borrow).
If you like observation decks, this one is so so. I say that because while you do get a really nice view of Manhattan and especially The Empire State Building and The Chrysler Building I ask - at what cost? One Vanderbilt claims to be created “by New Yorkers for New Yorkers” but which New Yorkers are they referring to? Certainly not me or any other New Yorker that has any regard for the city’s architecture or geography or history. One Vanderbilt was completed in 2020 and is currently our city’s 4th tallest skyscraper which is great if you’re interested in having a big dick contest, but awful if you’re hoping to enjoy a skyline filled with actual nice looking buildings. Take this “gorgeous” view from 1V for example:
Taller and taller buildings are going up all over the city and obscuring what were once spectacular views. You can barely see Central Park anymore because of stupid Billionaire’s Row and other super tall skyscrapers in progress. Most of these buildings are lightly occupied and instead serve as yet another way for rich people to play with their money (couldn’t they just keep bitcoin and leave the rest of us alone).
That said, you do get lovely views of some buildings from SOV. But precisely because of its existence, now you can only see some buildings after paying to attend this tourist trap. Views of these buildings from the ground are being blotted out as they’re surrounded by taller buildings. And I get it, NYC is a city of skyscrapers. But we made air rights and historic districts and landmarks for a reason!
Anyways, the rest of the exhibit was absolutely dull AF. Remember the picture we took earlier? There was a room where we were told our face would appear in a projection of clouds on the wall. But the image was so fuzzy and mixed in with other people’s faces that I barely saw my mug for more than a second. The whole thing is basically great if you like mirrors and shiny/reflective surfaces, but that’s really all it has to offer. There are much better observation decks in the city that offer good views and history and I hate that I supported SOV financially. If you have $50 burning a hole in your pocket, please do anything else with it (like possibly pay for my newsletter so I can help you avoid other garbage tourist traps?)
3. What’s Good 😎
Are you a regular GrowNYC Greenmarket shopper? Their Winter Warrior program has begun and runs through March 31. Get 10 card punches for 10 visits and win a prize!
I’m grateful to have a long weekend coming up for MLK Day! I learned that the Apollo Theater (which is the most perfect theater I’ve ever been to) is hosting free events on Jan 14 and 15 to celebrate Dr King’s work.
Bow Bridge in Central Park has reopened ahead of schedule! The planks were looking pretty shoddy for a while but now they’re all refreshed and you can get back and forth to The Ramble easier.
Ashley informed me of an interesting LPC-related tidbit - in 2019 The Strand Bookstore fought against getting their building landmarked. While I believe this process generally operates on good intent, it’s important that we recognize that not everyone benefits equally from that good intent.
Think Chinatown has a Chinese New Year focused photo exhibition going on. The opening reception is on Jan 17 and the photos will be on view through Feb 25.
4. Learning 🧠
Today is National Milk Day, something I only know because the company I work for creates a milk product (it’s cool, try it). And because I’m me, of course I know of a milk story related to NY history. This story is pretty nasty though and if talk of babies dying, cow’s tails falling off, and pus make you queasy, then be grateful for today’s paywall. I’m talking about the Swill Milk Scandal!
In 1850s New York, it was becoming increasingly popular to supplement, or even replace, breast milk with cow’s milk. Breast milk is really fucking cool, but there were numerous benefits to switching to cow’s milk: it liberated women from having a baby constantly stuck on their boob, some women simply can’t breastfeed, and perhaps the biggest benefit was that women could keep their salacious boobies covered and fit back in their corsets (men loved that last one). But by this time NYC was quickly losing farmland and carting milk from upstate was expensive and difficult. Thankfully a solution arose - crowd cows in tiny pens, feed them swill, pay off politicians, and voila, milk!
What NYC lacked in pasture space, they certainly made up for in whiskey distilleries. A byproduct of whiskey production was swill, or leftover grain mash, and distilleries figured out that they could double dip and use this waste to feed cows and make milk. It wasn’t particularly nutritious though and it made cows very sick; they often contracted sores and diseases and their tails allegedly sometimes fell off. Right off the bat, you know that the milk these cows are producing isn’t going to be good. It was described as a "bluish, white compound of true milk, pus and dirty water, which, on standing, deposits a yellowish, brown sediment.” 🤢 But fear not, because these “dairy producers” added chalk, flour, eggs, and Plaster-of-Paris(???) to improve the color and texture ☠️
Naturally, babies that drank this shit didn’t so so well. They developed explosive diarrhea, mortality rates soared, and doctors kind of just shrugged and said “idk babies just get sick, ya know.” Robert Hartley tried to expose this practice in the 1840s, but he was a big Temperance guy so no one wanted to listen to him and they went to far as to accuse him of simply having an an “anti-distillery agenda.” In 1858 Frank Leslie has slightly better luck calling attention to the swill milk when he published exposés in his illustrated newspaper. He attacked Tammany Hall’s politicians directly, but Alderman Michael Tuomey was beign paid off by the whiskey distilleries to look the other way. Initially known as Butcher Mike, he would soon come to be known as Swill Milk Toumey and I maintain that the only good thing that came out of the Trump presidency was his penchant for giving people old-timey nicknames like this.
People sort of cared at this point, but tainted milk was still on the market for quite a while. Eventually the New York state legislature issued some milk regulations in 1862 but big change didn’t happen until 1906 when Congress passed the Pure Food and Drug Act. Construction on Central Park was also happening during the whole Swill Milk debacle and one building in the Children’s Area of the park was The Dairy. It was conceived of as an open air snack stand that also sold fresh untainted milk and was supposed to have cows in the basement, but it’s unclear if the milk old here actually was better than anywhere else.
Anyways, I’m a soy milk girl myself 🫛
5. Noshing 😋
I ran out of my favorite cracker (which feels like the whitest thing to say?) and had to make a trip to Woodside to restock. I don’t know what it is about Skyflakes that makes them so good, but I bought 2 tubs from Fil-Am Food Mart so that I would have crackers for dayssssss. Don’t worry though, this section won’t be about crackers because when in Woodside, you eat Filipino food! This time Lorenzo and I tried a new-to-us place - Renee’s Kitchenette.
Renee’s serves Pampangan Cuisine and while sisig is always a part of our order, it was especially so here because that dish originates in the Pampanga region of the Philippines. It is an impossibly delicious stir fry of a bunch of pig bits - jowl, ear, belly, liver - and it’s slightly citrusy and vinegary and topped with an egg. Sometimes restaurants only just pork belly in their sisig and I fuckin hate that because 1) it erases the origin of the dish and 2) you don’t get the texture that the jowl and ear provide and that’s the best part. Renee’s sisig was delicious, though I do feel like it needed a bit more vinegar.
We also got tokwa’t baboy, which is something I really love and a great example of Filipinos adding pork to every dish (it’s a tough cuisine for vegans). Tokwa means tofu in Tagalog and the dish consists of big fried cubes of tofu mixed with pork belly and/or pork ear (the baboy of the name). Then they add in some peppers and onions and douse the whole thing in a vinegary soy sauce. It’s a tasty appetizer that I don’t find often so I always get it when it’s on the menu.
Another item that’s on most Filipino menus are silogs - a portmanteau of sinangag (fried rice) and itlog (egg). These are popular breakfast dishes consisting of a meat and rice topped with egg. My favorite is tapsilog but Lorenzo loves longanisa so he got longsilog. I’m not a big sausage girly and this one was a bit too sweet for me, but he really enjoyed it. The area of the Philippines that Lorenzo is from, Tuguegarao, is known for having garlicky longanisa but we’ve only ever been able to find sweet longanisa in the US. If you have the garlic longanisa hookup holler at me!
Another bonus I just realized about dining in a Filipino restaurant - the Christmas decor! Filipinos fuckin love Christmas and their trees go up as soon as the month ends in Ember. There’s always so much hype for Rolf’s and other restaurants that go hard on holiday decor and flop when it comes to food. If you’re looking for a good ass meal and some holiday decor, visit a Filipino restaurant!
Bad news: I loved every word of your Summit One Vanderbilt review, and now I want you to do more awful things and describe them similarly.