Double egg cream!
Oh, my God—it's a double egg cream all the way! 🌈🌈
I wouldn’t be me if I wasn’t quoting obscure a video from the YouTube Golden Age. The Grape Lady literally oh oh ohs painfully through my mind once a month. Anyways, I guess the accidental theme of today’s newsletter is old stuff so strap on your compression socks, take some aspirin, and enjoy the ride! Egg creams will obviously make another appearance today, so read one of my most loved back issues to brush up on the fizzy drink:
Also as a reminder, I’ll be taking the last week of December off to spruce this place up a bit before turning paid subs on. In the meantime, I really want to hear from you! Read an old issue and tell me what you loved (or hated) about it. And tell me what you want to read about going forward. Should I finally watch Avatar? Should I eat at the Times Square Olive Garden? This is a newsletter for the people!
1. Noshing 😋
I’ve lived in NY all my life and somehow never had cheesecake (or anything) at Junior’s, a freakin institution. Junior’s has been on the corner of Flatbush and Dekalb in Brooklyn since 1950, named so for owner Harry Rosen’s two sons. They serve your classic diner-style food and of course, their famous cheesecake. In 1960 Harry Rosen worked with baker Eigel Peterson to create special baked goods and they created the formula for that classic Brooklyn cheesecake. So I was very excited when my friend Jenna texted me saying that her friend’s mom works at Junior’s and asked would I like to go - immediate yes.
I studied the menu beforehand (as one with anxiety does) and knew what I was ordering before I even arrived - latkes and an egg cream, duh.
The latkes were great! I was both happy and overwhelmed to see how huge they were. I’ve been to places where the latkes are the size of silver dollar pancakes and that will simply not do. Despite being so big, they were still incredibly crispy on the outside and just soft enough on the inside. These look like they might have been battered in addition to fried and I’m not mad about it at all. And because we were lucky enough to be pals with our waitress, we got to hear about an off the menu option - a latke brisket sandwich. That sandwich was huge and easily a 2-3 meal item, like a Katz’s sandwich.
The egg cream was also fuckin delightful. It lost a bit of its fizzy head on the journey from the kitchen to me (the restaurant is surprisingly gigantic) but was the perfect ratio of milk, chocolate, and seltzer. 10/10, would egg cream again. The cheesecake was a bit of a letdown for me, though this might come down to personal preference. It was very cheesy and thick, which I’m sure some people might enjoy, but I did not. It really needed the tart cherry topping to make it palatable for me (and the cherries were just so damn good). I’m much more used to the light bouncy Japanese style cheesecakes, so this just wasn’t my cup of tea.
Overall, Junior’s really has that classic NYC vibe and I’m glad I finally got to try it. Their prices are a bit high at first glance, but all of their plates are absolutely stacked so you’re basically paying for two meals. Next time I think I’ll order the latke brisket sandwich and eat it open faced so I can split it with Lorenzo. And of course I’ll get another egg cream.
2. Watching🍿
I saw Dream Scenario a couple weeks ago, the new A24 film where Nic Cage (as his character, Paul) is suddenly in everyone’s dreams. Though the film seemed like it would deliver a deranged dream walking Cage, it was instead a (pretty decent) commentary on viral fame and the inevitable pitfalls that come with it. I would have preferred the deranged dream walking, but again, I think that’s personal preference. Spoilers below, skip to the next section if you don’t want to read them yet.
Paul (Cage) is a college professor who has been thinking of writing a book about ants and is an all around not very cool dad. I love when Nic Cage plays “Dad Cage” and I think it’s one of his strongest characters. One day, he finds out that an old girlfriend has been dreaming about him, she publishes an article, and suddenly people all over the world are realizing that they’ve been dreaming about the same guy. Paul never really does anything in their dreams, he’s just sort of there, so this starts out pretty silly and harmless. Paul revels in his newfound fame the same way that a Boomer posting a racist meme on facebook that gets a lot of likes would - he thinks he’s suddenly cool and interesting and can use that acclaim to get his book published.
But things take a turn when people start having bad dreams about him. Paul is now attacking people in their dreams and the public quickly turns on him. The movie is trying to depict the fallout of parasocial relationships in a simultaneously literal and abstract way. People Paul has never met are suddenly afraid of him because of their dreams and even his former students, who knew him IRL before the whole dream phenomenon, now suddenly hate and fear him. There’s a pretty funny scene of a Paul exposure therapy support group filled with people who literally book it out of the room when he shows up.
Of course Paul reacts how any Boomer in this situation would - he cries victim and makes the narrative about him, lashing out at people and refusing to make accommodations for folks who are literally (albeit not rationally) terrified of him. Sure it’s not his fault people are dreaming about him, but it’s happening how it’s happening and he’s gotta tread accordingly. Sure I hate capitalism, but I still have to go to my silly little job to make money so I can afford my apartment. At some point you have to accept some of the absurdities of life and the vicious cycle of viral fame is one of them.
The ending of this film really faltered for me. I wish it had ended after the silly dream tech commercial where we see Paul finally enter his now ex-wife’s dream dressed in the Talking Heads suit. That really would have made Paul’s story come full circle in this film that I would like to rename: Boomer Goes Viral.
3. Exploring 🛼
My trip to the Brooklyn Seltzer Museum was inspired by Jane August, who has made it her mission to visit every museum in NYC. She recently visited this bastion of the seltzer arts and I knew I must also make the journey on the J train to Cypress Hills (which is infuriatingly not the birthplace of Cypress Hills the hip-hop group). They only offer tours on Fridays at 1pm and I thought that this would be the perfect Black Friday activity. I bought my $25 ticket, which includes a tour of the museum and an egg cream at the end.
The museum is an active seltzer filling station and was imagined by Alex Gomberg, who I believe is the 5th generation of Gombergs to run the space, and created in partnership with students from Teachers College, Columbia University, and NYU. His dad, Kenny, runs the tour and has an absolutely amazing wealth of knowledge about the seltzer business. We got to see all of their old equipment, learn how seltzer is made, and watch as Kenny filled bottles on the old machinery.
Back in the day, seltzer was delivered to folks’ doorsteps, just like old-timey milk deliveries. Seltzermen were essentially independent deliverymen - they would bring their bottles to a filling station and then deliver the glass bottles to their customers. I recently learned that my great-grandpa was a seltzerman in Brooklyn!
The secret to fizzy seltzer is really in the old school glass bottles - they have a nozzle that keeps the fizz trapped inside, unlike plastic screw top bottles that let out that little pfzzzzzz every time you open it. A lot of the original seltzer bottles made in Czechoslovakia are still in rotation and we were able to compare those and the newer US made ones. A fact I found super interesting was that folks in Argentina fuckin love seltzer and are one of the biggest consumers. This sort of makes sense because a bunch of Eastern European Jews went to South America in the late 1800s and seltzer is the drink of my people. To make sure the Gomberg’s seltzer in NYC is Kosher for our local Jewish population, they use special paper filters to sort out the tiny crustaceans that are found in NYC drinking water (🦐 eek!)
After touring the museum, we were taken to the gift shop to procure our egg creams. Alex popped up behind the counter with seltzer, milk, and U-Bet chocolate syrup ready to go. I noticed that he poured the seltzer over the back of a spoon, rather than straight into the glass, to create that beautiful foamy top. Then he got to mixing and was handing out egg creams like a Jewish Oprah! I of course bought an old seltzer bottle (they sell bottles that are no longer in use due to small defects) and a bottle of U-Bet so I can try to replicate the drink at home. It was a good day.
4. Learning 🧠
I know I know, I didn’t write about the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade last week but honestly, what more could I have added that wasn’t already on “top 10 things you didn’t know about the parade” lists? I’ll make up for it this week by writing about a peculiar aspect of Macy’s - the million dollar corner at 34th and Broadway. When Macy’s wanted to build their flagship store at Herald Square in 1902, they ran into some beef with another department store that resulted in a silly little quirk on that corner that isn’t super noticeable unless you know what you’re looking at.
Macy’s was originally located a bit further downtown on 6th ave + 14th st, but they wanted to build a bigger store further uptown to follow along with the city’s expansion. Then owners Nathan and Isidor Strauss began buying up land and had acquired nearly an entire city block when they met their white whale - the corner of 34th and Broadway. They engaged in a verbal agreement to pay Alfred Duane Pell $250k for the 1,154 square foot corner but little did they know that Henry Siegel was about to fuck shit up 👏
Siegel owned the Siegel-Cooper Dry Goods Store, which was located near the original Macy’s on 14th St and like an evil Lex Luthor, he wanted that fuckin land so he could own the biggest department store in NYC!!! So Siegel made his own deal with Pell to buy the corner for $375k. But rather than use that soon-to-be heavily trafficked corner to, I don’t know, advertise for his store, Siegel wanted to use it as a bargaining chip to get Macy’s to sell him their old space so he could expand. Macy’s basically told Siegel to go fuck himself and built their store around the corner. That’s right - there’s a little corner chunk of Macy’s that is simply missing because they don’t own the land on the corner.
What’s even more fucked up is that Macy’s eventually acquired advertising rights on that corner in 1945 and went on to do the absolute pettiest thing - they wrapped a billboard around that corner building that declared “Macy’s: The World’s Largest Store.” If you look at that corner now, you’ll see a giant red shopping bag emblazoned with that phrase. If you look really closely, you’ll notice that the shopping bag is wrapped around and sits atop a totally separate building on that corner. It’s basically a giant fuck you billboard that looks like it’s a part of the Macy’s building.
5. What’s Good 😎
Do you like ice skating? I’m not a fan of gliding around in a circle with blades strapped to my feet, but to each their own. There’s a new ice skating rink under the Brooklyn Bridge Emily Roebling Plaza this year. If you’re more of an indoor roller skating type of person, the Oculus in FiDi has a wintery roller skating rink you can visit.
Speaking of winter stuff - lots of stores along 5th ave have their holiday lights up! My favorite website, Untapped Cities, is also offering two Holiday Decor tour dates. With Open Streets it should hopefully be a bit less crowded to get a glance, but what shall you do if you have to take the inevitable bathroom break during your viewing? Local hero Got2goNYC has you covered with bathroom options.
Lots of our NY Christmas trees were lit this week, with a few continuing into the weekend and next week. Skip the usual suspects and attend a smaller tree lighting. It’ll be just as nice and you won’t be smushed in a crown, watching the tree lighting from the phone of the person in front of you. Here’s a fun fact: this year’s Rockefeller tree was donated by none other than Matt McGinley of the Gym Class Heroes! What ever happened to those guys??
If you’d rather stay inside and away from crowds, Sunrise Sunset in Bushwick is hosting a Knitting Club Night on Dec 7. You can hang with other knitters and get $1 off drinks all night!
One more for my Bushwick friends - Bushwick Ayuda Mutua x Freda are hosting a Holiday Toy Drive on Dec 1. Donate toys to receive a free hot toddy (alc or not) and jam to some good tunes from 7-10pm.
Excellent Halva-makers Seed & Mill are hosting a Hanukkah Market this Sunday on Dec 3. Tickets are $18 and you should really pick something up because Hanukkah starts pretty early on Dec 7 this year. If Hanukkah isn’t your jam, on Saturday Dec 2 The National Museum of the American Indian in FiDi is hosting a holiday market featuring items by Indigenous artists.
Apparently the circus is coming to town? Flip Circus will be in Williamsburg from Dec 1-10 and will feature clowns, acrobats, and jugglers - no animals!
Finally, a bit of news that is probably only sad to me and a handful of other Bushwick residents - the Burger King at the Knickerbocker subway stop is being renovated and turned into a boring “modern” BK. It was one of the last BKs that featured retro car shaped tables and Hollywood photos and someone in the linked article rightfully described it as a UNECO World Heritage Site. I am devastated.
Eden, I read the Gym Class Heroes tree article you linked and said, "Wait, what?" after every sentence. There is so little I understand. The world is a beautiful place, I guess.
Omg I didn’t know about the seltzer tours!! I must go