Get in loser, we're reading BCLF
Better late than never!
Hello on this Friday afternoon, fancy seeing you here. Ya girl has had a week and I am very much looking forward for it to end because it means I’ll be attending ‘s Newsletter Party with Alicia. 5pm here I come!
Before we get to all of my bullshit, I want to highlight another newsletter that I absolutely love - . Matt writes really amazing thoughtful essays on everything from nihilism to psychogeography and most recently, mutual aid. His first issue on mutual aid is free and the rest are paywalled, but I donated a subscription to his newsletter that’s up for grabs. Mutual Aid has been absolutely essential for a lot of folks here in NYC and a lot of orgs have continued providing aid post-pandemic. Matt will do a better job explaining mutual aid than I ever could, so I really recommend checking out his newsletter! I’ve linked to his second issue below:
1. Noshing 😋
Another month, another Beef Fancy Dinner! This month we went to Eyval in Bushwick, which I kept seeing on top restaurant lists over and over. Could there actually be great Persian food on a random corner of Bushwick of all places? I don’t have much of a baseline for what good Persian food is, but everything we ate was delicious, the meal was reasonably priced (for Bushwick standards), and Beef and Lorenzo were full enough after that we didn’t need a second dinner (though we obviously got dessert).
Eyval’s menu is divided into small (dips and salads), medium, and large plates and this is something I’m seeing more and more at restaurants. It means you have to ask the server “how many plates is enough for X people” and they inevitably say something like “8 plates aka please spend $200 min.” I’m not great at sharing plates (Eden doesn’t share food!) but I’m working on it and that’s what we call character growth. Dishes are brought out as they’re ready and the timing happened to work out pretty well for us as we were never sitting too long in between.
We got the barbari bread to start and it was long enough to break off a nice chunk for each of us. Apparently it comes dipless and we didn’t know that, but our server told us that the Pumpkin Tahini dish we ordered would also make for a good dip and it fuckin did. My group berated me for having the audacity to order a vegetable dish, but they loved the Pumpkin Tahini. There were some pumpkin and onion chunks, but under that was a squash puree and pools of date vinegar topped with almonds and pomegranate seeds. This date/pomegranate flavor profile would appear multiple times throughout the meal and I wasn’t mad about it.
The larger dishes we got each came with a substantial amount of rice which was such a relief - there’s nothing worse than having to order separate rice and they give you a tiny ass bowl, like wtf am I supposed to soak shit up with? The chicken had a nice crispy layer despite swimming in a mushroomy jus. The menu had two lamb dishes, lamb ribs and lamb rack, and our most difficult decision was deciding which one we should order. We went with the rack and it was really good, though each piece was cooked a little unevenly. The cumin yogurt it was served with was soooo good. Though I have to say I think the angus short rib might have been one of my top dishes. It was so goddam tender and brought back that delicious date/pomegranate vibe of the pumpkin tahini we had earlier, with the addition of crunchy pistachios. I sopped up every last bit of that meat juice with my rice.
We opted to get dessert at nearby Bake Shop and while I love their desserts, I have a bone to pick with them! There exists a wonderful bakery called Little Cupcake Bakeshop and this place has a couple things that make them unique: pastel pink boxes, a strawberry cupcake modeled off the Good Humor bar, and the “best chocolate cake in the US.” Bakeshop also has all of these things! However, they have a separate instagram account that posts the most random shit (they’re never mentioned on the official Little Cupcake ‘gram) and their location isn’t quite the same vibe as the other Little Cupcakes. Despite this, the Brooklyn address is listed on Little Cupcake Bakeshop’s website. So I ask you: what the fuck is the deal here? Just admit you’re Little Cupcake Bakeshop!
Ugh. Anyways, we got banana pudding and a red velvet cupcake to go. Magnolia Bakery’s banana pudding is the best banana pudding in the city, hands down, but this one is also pretty solid. It’s less whipped and airy than Magnolia’s, but I feel like it makes up for it by including more banana chunks. The red velvet cupcake is one of my favorites in the city because the frosting isn’t too cream-cheesy or too sweet, which is a balance that most places simply cannot hit. The cupcake itself is also the right amount of moist and has a nice cocoa flavor. Little Cupcake and all of it’s off-brand affiliates also stock a lot of vegan options that truly taste just as good as the regular stuff!
2. Learning 🧠
NYC is home to tons of great food and one item that was [allegedly] invented here is red velvet cake (I also wrote Oreos and Mallomars previously). I say allegedly because like many things in history, this story is a bit complicated and is another great example of history being written by the groups with the most power. But let’s talk about the history of red velvet, what the has to do with NY, and where my favorite red velvet items can be found.
Velvet cakes date back to the Victorian Era and these were cakes that had soft rich crumbs vs the bigger crumbier crumbs of white cakes so they were fancy. It became popular to add cocoa powder into a cake mix and the reaction of the cocoa powder with the acidic buttermilk is what created the rusty red color. Folks eventually began adding beet juice for a more vibrant red and for moisture. Various red velvet-ish recipes had been floating around for a while but it has become widely regarded that the first known recipe for "velvet cake" appears in "Good Things to Eat," a 1911 cookbook by chef Rufus Estes, who spent the first part of his life enslaved. This sort of flew under the radar though until a baker at The Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in NYC made a cake that was clearly inspired by this original recipe.
The Waldorf-Astoria began popularizing red velvet cake in the 1920s and it became a huge sensation. Folks would travel far and wide to try the “Waldorf cake” and when one lady wrote to the hotel to ask for the recipe, she received a handwritten recipe along with a $350 invoice. Not all heroes wear capes and this lady was so mad about being charged for the recipe that she started telling everyone about it. This is how the recipe began truly spreading and it found a big footing in the American South.
The red color immediately made red velvet cake popular with Black communities, especially during Juneteenth. Red foods are typically eaten during Juneteenth because the color carries various meanings depending on who you ask. It’s also fitting that the cake made its way back to the south since it was really adapted from a recipe published by a former enslaved person! The red color also became much more accessible after Adams Extract Co began selling colored extracts, along with butter and vanilla extracts.
Red velvet’s popularity slowly declined, but saw a big resurgence after the movie Steel Magnolias came out in 1989. Magnolia Bakery was the first bakery to bring red velvet back to the masses here in NYC and now you can generally find red velvet (and blue velvet and any other color) options everywhere. The red velvet cupcakes at both Magnolia Bakery and Little Cupcake Bakeshop are excellent - both are very rich and moist and their icings have just the slightest tang of cream cheese. Probably my favorite red velvet item, though, is Peter Pan Donut’s red velvet donut. It’s a delicious thicc cake donut with a thin layer of sweet glaze and it costs a very reasonable $2!
3. What’s Good 😎
Tiny Arts Supply is hosting a bird walk around the Ridgewood Reservoir on Sunday. Listen, I know it’s cold AF out but the weather is supposed to warm up a tiny bit by Sunday and be sunny, so maybe it won’t be so bad. Also I feel like birdwatching has become cool? Or have I just become old?
Tangram Market (home of the treasure chest of duck I ate) is having a Japanese Winter Market on Saturday and Sunday. There will be crafts, decor, and of course food!
It’s Must See Week(s) in NYC! From Jan 16 - Feb 4 you’ll find tons of deals on tickets for attractions, museums, performing arts and tours across the city. This is the time to attend that expensive tourist trap or go to the museum that never offers discounts or see a freakin ballet!
Speaking of deals - The Whitney is now offering free admission on Fridays! Fridays were previously pay-what-you-wish but that made people feel guilty so now it’s just free. Go see that art.
Foster Sundry is partnering with Bushwick Ayuda Mutua to host a clothing drive for migrants and asylum seekers. Donate all of those stupid branded beanies that you’re never going to wear and pick up some damn delicious meat while you’re at it! La Cantine is also collecting wintery clothing (including shoes) and they’ll give you a free drip coffee with your dropoff!
I really want to gatekeep Rolo’s because it has blown up so much since Jeremy Allen White went there, but they’re truly delicious and you should go eat their hamburger. Additionally, they’ll have some Valentine’s Day specials going on from Feb 14-17 and I will fight you for a reservation.
4. Watching🍿
“Raise your hand if you have ever been personally victimized by Regina George” 🙋 I saw the new Mean Girls musical movie over the weekend and I do feel personally victimized by it. I’m definitely not the target demo for this movie (I hate musicals, I’m ambivalent about Mean Girls), but Ashley asked me on a movie date and there’s no one I’d rather not enjoy watching this movie with.
First I ask: why did we get another Mean Girls movie and why was it a musical? I had no idea a Mean Girls musical existed and while I’m not mad about that particularly, I am mad that we’re getting a movie adaptation of said musical. Musicals are fine on stage but they very rarely transfer well to film and there’s a fucking reason for that: one of the main tenets of filmmaking is “show, don’t tell.” Movies are a visual medium (duh) and successful movies take advantage of that by portraying a character’s journey and feelings by giving us glimpses into their lives and letting us draw conclusions from what we see. This technique assumes some level of intelligence of its audience and figures that if we see someone crying, we know they’re sad; they don’t have to say (or sing) “I’m sad.” But with musicals - all they do is fucking tell you what people are feeling and what’s going on, and sometimes without actually showing the thing they’re singing about. It’s just a bunch of people dancing around telling me that a thing is happening and how they’re feeling (and therefore how I should feel) about it.
But let me be clear: I didn’t just dislike this solely because it was a musical. I disliked it because it was a bad musical. I can enjoy movies with songs when those songs are bops. Nightmare Before Christmas? All bops. Josie and the Pussycats? Wall to wall bangers. But this? Not only were the songs not good, but most of the singing was also not great. Angourie Rice was not a memorable Cady in any way and basically talk-sang everything in a way that was not nice. And sorry to any Renee Rapp fans, but I was not a fan of her Regina George. Her “my name is Regina George” song was sultry but cringy in a way that felt both out of character and off putting. Regina is a catty bitch and not someone who should be Billy Eilish mumble singing about being a “massive deal.” Regina wouldn’t claim to be a big deal and talk about it all the time, she simply would be.
Cady and Regina aside, I did think the supporting cast absolutely carried this film. Janice and Damien were always my favorite characters and they were mostly enjoyable; their opening song gave “Lindsay Lohan’s band in Freaky Friday” vibes which I loved and it was unfortunate that it was immediately followed up with Cady singing a snoozer about being sad in Africa. I loved the actors who played Karen and Gretchen (Avantika and Bebe Wood); I would join the Plastics if it meant I could hang out with them and Rapp’s Regina couldn’t sit with us. Maybe I’m just in a different place in life than I was in 2004, but I really identified with Gretchen this time around! The movie actually did a great job of providing her character with motivation and we get to experience her disillusionment with Regina. Karen was an absolutely delightful idiot and her Sexy song was actually pretty funny.
The fact that I haven’t been able to pull a single gif from this new movie is really all the proof that you need that it sucked. The only good parts were the carryovers from the original and even then most of them were delivered as if the cast were being held at gunpoint. I think it actually pained Renee Rapp to tell Cady to “get in loser” because it looked like we got the 45th take of her saying that line. It turns out that when it comes to Mean Girls movies, the limit does in fact exist.
5. Exploring 🛼
Beef was very excited to have an extra Monday off this week (he’s a mailman so he only gets the big Federal holidays off) so he came back into the city so we could go to the Museum of Illusions. I visited this museum in early March 2020 and it was one my last outings before Covid closed everything. The museum was inexplicably crowded then and it was still crowded now and I truly don’t know how this little museum has persisted in the city while so many other things have closed. It’s not a bad museum, but it wouldn’t have been my pick to survive the pandemic.
Tickets are about $30 and you definitely want to buy them before going (at least if it’s a peak time/weekend). You’ll still have to line up outside beforehand to get a wristband and then at the top of the hour everyone with tickets for that time slot are let in all at once. I think the main issue with this museum is the crowding because it’s very tiny and for a lot of the illusions to work, you need enough space between you and the poster or object or whatever. Most of the museum’s walls are covered with various hidden image posters or pictures of things that look differently depending on the angle. Some are cool and some I just didn’t get no matter how long I looked at them.
The best part of this museum are some of the trick rooms they have set up. Even though I read every plaque that explains the illusions, I still can’t wrap my head around how some of them work. One room is all slanty and makes it hard to walk straight. One room has mirrors so you can sit at a table and it looks like there are more of you sitting around the table with yourself. Another room has a cool perspective trick that makes one person look super tiny (a common movie trick used in Lord of the Rings and Elf). You can spend a solid 30 minutes here and pretty much see everything, but you have a full hour to explore. This certainly isn’t a destination museum, but if you’re in the area and have a little time to kill it’s kinda cool and you’ll get some fun pictures.
Okay, I fully agree with your assessment of Regina. Regina in the new movie was aware of her status in a way that was insecure, where Regina in the original was very much the opposite. And I agree that it is not a good musical (I think most theatre kids agree about this too, which kind of surprised me that they made it into a movie). I feel like in a good musical, songs are hokey and maybe tell more than they show, but at least they tell something that can resonate with the audience (we're in a big Hamilton soundtrack phase over here and Nora and Murph are NOT throwing away their shots, I'll tell ya!). These songs didn't give us anything to connect with. The Holloween song was the only really fun one!