Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

are coming to Big City, Little Friend

I’ve resisted making some changes to this newsletter despite knowing deep down that I’ve been on an unsustainable path. BCLF takes a lot of time to research and write and using my brain to pump out 4 distinct sections each week is taking a toll. I’m certainly not at a loss for content, but the pipeline from my brain to the “page” is filled with many additional hours of reading articles to make sure I’m giving you as much accurate info as I can, re-reading and editing my work, and searching for the perfect gifs (this last one is important). There have also definitely been occasions where I wanted to really dig deep and focus on one thing, but I don’t want one section to overshadow another, so I’ve settled for providing a surface level account.

That said, I’m going to experiment with something new. Instead of writing 4 short sections, I’m going to write 2 long-ish ones each week and keep the event roundup. I’m also going to get rid of the paywall. I’ve seen other Substacks offer paid subscriptions without paywalls, allowing folks to opt into paid subscriptions based on the merit of the writing, and that feels right to me. I truthfully hated hiding anything behind the paywall and limiting who could leave comments and one day when I have time I may go back and open up all of my past newsletters. Some of the shit most of you missed is fucking mint.

So if you like what I write and you appreciate the time and effort I put into BCLF each week, I would love it if you would grab a paid subscription. I’m obviously not paying my bills with this newsletter, but the fucking glee I experience when I get a new subscriber is truly priceless and this side dough also helps pay for my exploits which I in turn write about for you! It’s truly so fulfilling to have you all read my writing and your subscriptions and likes and comments show me that you like what you’re reading; it makes me feel like I’m not screaming into the void.

Pictured - me actually screaming into the void during my regularly scheduled screaming times each day

1. Noshing 😋

I found myself back in Chinatown while picking up Beef’s candles from last week (he arrived late so they didn’t solidify in time). It was a beautiful day so the area was packed AF, but lucky for me most folks were lined up at the new boba place, Chicha San Chen. I wasn’t crazy enough to join the line, but I definitely want to try this place once the hype dies down a bit. The shop has been awarded what’s referred to as the equivalent of three Michelin stars by the International Taste Institute and I’ve heard folks compare it to Yi Fang, which is my current go-to. 🔜

Lorenzo and I ate at one of our standbys in the area - Kong Sikh Tong (KST). This place usually always has a wait, but we got lucky and were seated within about 15 minutes. KST is a Hong Kong style cafe and I think the best way to describe their menu is to equate it to an American diner in that there’s a pretty wide breadth of items available but the chef is somehow good at making all of them. KST’s menu contains casseroles, sweet toasts, noodle soups, curries, pastas, and a bunch of tasty drinks. They’re also pretty affordable, though make sure you have cash on your because they don’t accept credit cards.

Lorenzo usually gets a pan fried noodle and this time he got the XO noodle with pork chops. XO sauce is a delicious Chinese hot sauce made from chilis and dried seafood chopped really fine (usually scallops or tiny shrimp). It has a really nice balanced flavor with the seafood bringing almost a non-smoky umami smokiness, if that makes any sense. If you like Asian-style hot sauces, I highly recommend Diana Kuan’s Red Hot Kitchen cookbook; I’ve made a bunch of her hot sauces and accompanying recipes.

KST uses thin ramen noodles for their pan fried noodle dishes and I love that they retain a nice bite to them. They also managed to have just the right amount of oil and starch in the dish so that the XO sauce clung right to the noodles. The pork chop pieces are pounded thin and coated in a nice layer of crispy cronchy panko. I love the texture combo of soft noodle + cronchy pork and XO sauce is a great choice here because it’s not so wet and soupy that it de-cronchitizes the pork.

XO sauce is great, but show some respect to the literal captain of crunch

I’ve been trying to eat a bit more plant-based lately so I opted for the mapo tofu with rice (yes it still comes with pork crumbles, I’m not a perfect person). Y’all, this mapo was good. The tofu wasn’t so soft that it fell apart completely; I like my tofu to remain somewhat cubed and not just smush. The sauce was just goopy enough to help the pork crumbles glob onto the soft tofu cubes so I got a little bit of both in each bite. And while I certainly could have handled more spice (HK food is generally not super spicy), the numbing mala sensation was on point. Good Sichuan peppercorn isn’t really super spicy, but it creates that unique numby tingly sensation on your tongue which I personally fucking love. Also - props to KST for serving their food in bowl-plates for easy scooping.

All plates should be bowls, all bowls should be plates

One thing I love about HK cafes is their fucking HK style milk tea. I generally don’t like my tea super sweet, but HK milk tea perfectly balances the sweetness of the condensed milk with the strength of the black tea. However, I opted for a different drink this time: their red bean ice with coconut milk. A thing about me is I fucking love dessert beans and what could be better than a nice cold coconut milk with the addition of red beans for a snack in each sip? The coconut milk was also great at mitigating the little bit of spice that was present in the mapo tofu.

Lorenzo also got himself a fun little drink: the pineapple ice with pineapple soda. No surprise here, but it was pineappley AF. It had lots of shreds of actual pineapple mixed with pineapple soda, so even though it was probably 70% artificial, it tasted like actual fresh fruit.

The staff at KST are always super chill despite being basically slammed all day. They asked if we wanted dessert but I think the addition of our fun drinks really filled us up. We usually opt for one of their toasts as a shared dessert/side dish (I love the ovaltine or peanut butter) but today I was simply too full of dessert beans.

2. Watching 🍿

I saw a bunch of movies the last week while I was off cat sitting and now that I have more space to write, I’m gonna write about them all! I also have a pro tip for folks who want to go to Alamo Drafthouse and drink tea. I know this is a niche subset of people, but these are my people. I want to be cozy and drink a hot tea while watching a movie but Alamo only has coffee on their menu. However, you can simply ask your server for a mug of hot water and they’ll give it to you! And it’s free! You just have to bring your own tea bag but if you’re the target audience for this PSA then you probably carry around an emergency tea bag already anyways.

Proof of tea and proof of cat - meet Patches

Let’s start with the movie I was least enamored by: Furiosa. It’s been struggling at the box office for a variety of reasons, least of all that it just wasn’t as epic as Fury Road. Fury Road was like a game of Mario Kart on speed; it was fucking great. Charlize Theron’s Furiosa was absolutely the breakout character of that movie, but this prequel telling her backstory simply didn’t live up to the hype. Don’t get me wrong, Anya Taylor-Joy and Chris Hemsworth were both great in their roles (though Hemsworth’s prosthetic nose was very distracting to me). The story just felt disjointed and a lot of the characters’ actions didn’t make sense to me.

Chris Hemsworth had *fun* in this role

Furiosa is traded to Immortan Joe by Dementus and becomes one of his baby brides, but she escapes almost immediately. We see absolutely no reaction from Immortan Joe despite him seeming to really fucking want Furiosa. And then later in the movie when Furiosa and Immortan Joe meet again, he makes absolutely no mention of her escape and barely gives any indication that he even knows who she is, despite calling her by her fucking name. Shouldn’t be be mad? Also, I feel like we barely got to see Furiosa’s relationship with Praetorian Jack but like suddenly she would give up going back to the Green Place for him? Are we jus supposed to assume all of this character development is happening between cuts because I’m not fuckin seeing it.

And unless you’ve seen Fury Road, the ending of this movie will make no sense. It’s kind of like how the ending of Rogue One was basically just there to queue up The Force Awakens; the ending of Furiosa more or less leads right into Fury Road. I know we live in a prequel and sequel hungry world, but I feel like we got enough of a sense of Furiosa’s character in Fury Road (she 100% overshadowed stupid Tom Hardy’s Max) and I don’t feel like this movie really provided any more backstory or lore that I was craving. For a character driven movie, there was surprisingly little characterization.

Truly all I kept thinking the whole movie

Now let’s talk about a couple movies that I loved for different reasons: Babes and I Saw The TV Glow.

I Saw The TV Glow is the second film directed by Jane Schoenbrun and if this movie was any indication, I absolutely need to watch their first. This is a movie fully built on vibes and if you wanted to watch something with a straightforward literal story, this isn’t it. Folks who grew up in the 90s will probably form the strongest connection with ISTTVG, although upon further reading I learned that a lot of the story is somewhat of an allegory for the experience of growing up trans. I can’t really speak to the trans angle personally, but I am firmly a 90s kid who grew up obsessed with tv shows and fantasy, so this hit deep.

The loose story of the film is that two characters, Owen (Justice Smith) and Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine) bond over their shared love of a tv show called The Pink Opaque (the name being an homage to an album by Cocteau Twins). The Pink Opaque is as much Buffy as it is Are You Afraid of the Dark as it is Twin Peaks, which is to say it is everything I watched and obsessed over as a child. Just seeing the blurry footage of this fake tv show and the fucking font that seemed to be the font in the 90s took me back.

An episode guide, a heavily paper mache'd villain, bucket hats. Welcome to the 90s

I absolutely used to get lost in stories when I was younger, mostly as an escape from a stressful living situation but also because I was desperately trying to figure out who I was an the answers didn’t seem to be in the real world (from what I’ve read, the trans allegory sort of follows this interpretation). I remember most kids being interested in going on dates or school dances, but I was more interested in whether Sakura would capture all of the Clow Cards or when my X Gene might awaken so I could gain cool powers. I couldn’t relate to the real world to some degree and it was easier to examine life through the lens of these fantastical stories. I still fucking do this today; I’m constantly making sense of my feeling or others’ actions based on familiar situations I’ve seen in movies. I am Abed.

I won’t spoil where the rest of the movie goes, but just know that if you try to use logic to figure out what is actually real, you won’t get anywhere. Not in a convoluted David Lynch kind of way, but it just doesn’t do you any good to try to figure this movie out. Experience it, let yourself get lost in the characters’ minds, feel what they’re feeling, and whatever conclusion you come to at the end is valid based on your lived experiences. And if you like ISTTVG, I highly recommend checking out Syfy’s old Channel Zero series; the first season was my favorite and is most similar.

Lots of neon and bisexual lighting throughout

Babes, on the other hand, hit pretty close to my current reality and not just because the main character’s name is Eden. Yes, Babes is about having babies but it’s mostly about friendships and what happens to those friendships as folks begin to go down different paths and expand their lives. This movie was also very fucking funny. If you like watching hilarious women speak genuinely funny dialogue that was written by women and not Judd Apatow, this is it.

Eden (Ilana Glazer) currently takes 4 trains from Astoria to the UWS to see her pregnant friend Dawn (Michelle Buteau) because the two are BFFs and that’s what you do for your homie. These are two people who grew up with each other and are Dominic Toretto’s legal definition of a family. When Eden gets pregnant she expects Dawn to be there for her every step of the way like she was, but having a second child is very taxing for Dawn and a rift soon grows between her and Eden as their priorities shift and their idea of what constitutes a family changes.

Let me preface this by saying I am not subtweeting any of my friends with what I’m about to say: I am at a point in my life where I’m watching a lot of my friends make big life decisions that (rightfully so) don’t involve me and I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t difficult for me at times. I don’t have strong familial ties, so my friends are my family, and as they get married and have kids and move to the suburbs there is (rightfully so) less room in their lives for lil me. Watching this happen to the Eden on the screen really affected the Eden in the movie theater seat!

That you, Dom?

I struggle a lot with people infantilizing me or invalidating my accomplishments because I’m not hitting the “traditional” milestones of having kids, getting married, etc. To most, movie Eden might have looked like a goofy burnout but I saw a woman who dressed how she wanted, was an unconventional business owner of 4th floor walkup yoga, and was open to new experiences and meeting new people on a whim by sharing subway sushi. Those aren’t childish traits, they’re fucking admirable!

These two ultimately have an (unrealistic) but happy ending in which they move just a few blocks from one another so they can raise their babies to be friends. Le sigh, if only

Lots of folks are comparing this to Bridesmaids, but I think Babes was better. To me, Bridesmaids put the funny in the front seat and the heart in the back. It might just be because I connected with the story of Babes so personally, but I really felt like the script did a good job of conveying the characters’ emotions while still giving us really funny moments. And as much as I love Hasan Minhaj, he played an amazing backseat husband. He never outshone our leading ladies and it was really interesting to have a male character playing the “straight guy” in a women-fronted comedy. In Knocked Up, for example, the story is told from a completely male point of view and Katherine Heigl is relegated to a shrew (her words, that I agree with). In Babes, Hasan Minhaj is the one who often has to spout the less funny grounded lines that bring our girls back to reality and it’s about damn time a funny man reels it in and plays second fiddle to some funny ass bitches.

In short: skip Furiosa, see Babes (I laughed and cried during this movie), and see I Saw The TV Glow (if you don’t mind not having a clear resolution).

3. What’s Good 😎

• I’ve been trying to spend lots of time in NYC Parks and just outside in general, despite my allergies trying to kill me. This Sunday, Red Shed Community Garden in Williamsburg is hosting a day of fun activities! Join them for Open Garden Day, which will feature a bird walk, crafts, and a clothing swap.

• Uptown folks looking to get outside, I gotchu! Ft Tryon Park wants you to Hike the Heights on June 1 (National Trails Day). This event is totally free and a great way to get moving and see the scenery of the top of Manhattan.

• One of my favorite NYC Instagram accounts, Shiloh in the City, just launched walking tours! Her inaugural tour is a Weirdest Buildings of Midtown Manhattan Tour and for $25 it is an absolute steal. This is on my to-book list!

• TIL that every year Bryant Park hosts a giant game of musical chairs. This year’s game will be on June 3 so make sure you register if you want to sashay your way to the Winner’s Circle!

• Think Chinatown is a really great org that hosts Chinatown Block Parties throughout the Spring/Summer! The next one is coming up on June 2. DJs will be providing tunes throughout the neighborhood and folks are encouraged to grab food from the small businesses nearby.

• BCLF dinner party favorite That Dinner Thing is back and opening up tickets for their June dinner on June 2. Set a reminder to join the lottery for their 2nd bday party dinner - here’s a sneak preview of their developing menu.

• I don’t really care about sports, but the fact that we are only now integrating numbers from baseball’s Negro Leagues into baseball's existing records is dumb AF. I mean, it’s about time, but why were the two separate to begin with? Prepare for idiots to get upset that there’s a new #1 leading hitter in town.

• Devastated that I’m only hearing about this now, but The City Reliquary is hosting a Miss Subways contest on May 31. Tickets are only $30 and still available if you want to watch. This is an inclusive all-gender competition where 8 contests will vie for the transit tiara and subway sash by answering questions about their subway line of choice and demonstrating a wide range of skills, including burlesque, comedy, singing, and puppeteering. Also - Bernie Wagenblast is one of the judges!

I asked Lorenzo to describe his XO Noodles and this is what he gave me, just so you know what I’m working with here. Like I said, this newsletter is a lot of work.