It's corn!

I can't imagine a more beautiful thing

I’m writing this after a morning volunteering with Red Hook Initiative. My coworkers and I worked on their farm across the street from the Red Hook Ikea and helped make compost and pick vegetables. I picked jalapeños and ate them straight from the vine and they were crunchy and delicious. If you’re ever looking for an organization to volunteer with, I can’t recommend RHI enough. They were super easy to work with and they work that they do to support the community in Red Hook is absolutely amazing. My team grabbed Thai food at Somtum Der (delicious) after farming and then I walked a few folks over to Steve’s Key Lime Pie. Red Hook is one of those rare places in the city that has been allowed to stay weird because of its isolation and the more I learn about it the more I love it.

Fortune and Glory, kid

1. Noshing 😋

We got a bonus Beef Fancy Dinner™️ this month! We made an impromptu trip to Flushing last week and ate at Juqi, which is famous for their Peking Duck. This is a dish from the Imperial Era in Beijing and it’s traditionally served in a very fancy manner that makes you feel like you’re a very important person. I didn’t go to Beijing when I was in China so I was excited to try the duck at Juqi since they serve it with all the bells and whistles.

They bring the whole ass duck out to your table and it gets sliced up right next to you so it’s fresh AF. The meat is super tender and the skin is mad crispy. It’s also not as fatty as duck can be sometimes, which I loved because I hate the little fatty pieces of meat. Once one guy started carving our duck, another guy brought a fuckin treasure chest to our table and started opening the drawers and I was not expecting this at all. Inside the drawers were thin pancake wrappers and julienned vegetables. There was also a sweet bean sauce that we used to make little duck rolls. Our server showed us how to pack a roll and roll it up with our chopsticks and I have never seen Beef and Lorenzo more focused on anything in their lives. Despite their best efforts, they consistently overstuffed their wrappers and had to resort to simply shoving everything in their mouths.

So much focus, zero skills obtained

The whole duck was $109 and it was honestly the perfect amount of food for 3 hungry people. But of course we got other food too, the highlight of which was the lamb. It came out on a sizzling platter, which white people fuckin love, and was filled with spicy cumin-y lamb, peppers, cilantro, and onions. I really wanted to get the mashed potatoes in the shape of a bunny, but the boys insisted on getting the squid ink fried rice. We had no idea that it gets lit on fire when it arrives at the table and while that was a fun surprise, it’s something I’d skip next time.

Beef eats lamb

Juqi is located in the newish Tangram Mall in Flushing and I think we got really lucky getting a table because when we left there was a huge line of people waiting. The good news though, is that there’s a pretty good food court right around the corner so there are lots of excellent food options nearby. Beef was eyeing Matcha Cafe Maiko so we got ice cream there for dessert. You can’t go wrong, but their matcha/ube swirl slaps.

2. Watching🍿

I saw the Five Nights at Freddy’s movie and it was….not great. I haven’t played the video game it was based on, so I can’t judge it against that, I’m just looking at it as a regular ass movie. Now I went to more birthday parties than I can count at Chuck E Cheese when I was a kid, so this absolutely hits that nostalgia factor for me. The fucking rush of winning enough tickets for the prize I wanted is unmatched and the bloodcurdling screams that would emanate from kids who were begging their parents for more tokens is part of my memory soundtrack along with all of the beeps and boops of the games. And the pizza - it’s so bad it’s good! The only thing I love more than Chuck E Cheese is the idea that a bunch of animatronics house the souls of murdered children and come alive at night to fuel their insatiable hunger for flesh. I should have loved this movie.

I was led to believe that Mike (Josh Hutcherson) would have to survive five nights at Freddy’s, but he really just kind of hung out and slept for 4 nights and then spent one night engaging in some light survival and puppet fighting. And in the end he sort of befriended the puppets? The main mystery of the film was “who kidnapped Mike’s brother” and we spend way too much time watching Mike dream about that event over and over, trying to glean any new details. In the end we do find out who took his brother, but it’s disclosed in a brief line of dialogue and feels pretty unsatisfying.

I thought I was gonna see some puppets throw down and fuck people up, but the action mostly took place in cutaway shots, leaving the audience with a gory Titanic handprint on a door as the only evidence that murder happened. We don’t even spend too much time with the puppets, which is a shame because they’re pretty fuckin cool (and made by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop).

Overall, I felt like the story got itself stuck in cut scenes rather than in actual gameplay. There was so much exposition that somehow said so little. I can imagine it’s hard to adapt a video game to a movie because gameplay tends to be very unique depending on the person playing the game. Super Mario Bros only really had one way to get to the princess (and a couple hidden warp pipes), but games now literally provide different dialogue options or cut scenes depending on the choices the player makes. It seemed like the FNAF filmmakers only using the base story materials in their plot rather than accounting for the myriad of actions and choices that can happen in between those static plot points.

Listen, I have to say it - Willy’s Wonderland did it better. And they did it with Nic Cage not speaking a single goddam line! If you’re a fan of the video game, I’m sure there are a bunch of fun little easter eggs that’ll make it an enjoyable watch, but overall I think FNAF is something to skip. Just watch Willy’s Wonderland instead.

This isn’t my review for Willy’s Wonderland, but I stand by it

3. Exploring 🛼

I finally went to the Queens County Farm Museum! I’ve been wanting to go here for years because I absolutely love corn mazes and their corn maze is supposed to be a-maize-ing and dear reader, it was.

I grew up on Eastern Long Island so I spent a lot of childhood autumns getting lost in corn mazes and as I got older either the corn mazes I visited got worse or I just became a bitter adult who hates everything (the jury is out). I’d heard that the Queens County Farm makes an elaborate maze each year, but the difficulty of taking public transportation there always stopped me from going. But not this year - I spent all of October attending other people’s events and goddammit I was going to have some agency over my life and do one thing to make myself happy!

Happiness is a glazed donut

Upon entering the farm there’s a little farm stand where you can buy fresh veggies and apple cider. We were absolutely parched from our travels and oh boy did that apple cider hit. We saw people with donuts and immediately made a beeline to the farm store to procure some. Apple cider donuts are another thing that seemed to be more delicious in my memory because the last few I’ve had from greenmarkets around the city weren’t great. These donuts, however, were fabulous - they were appley, moist, and covered in a thin layer or not too sweet icing. We enjoyed our apple based bounty, said hi to some of the farm goats, and made our way to the maze.

This year’s maze was in the shape of a barn and tractor and the path was so thoughtfully made! The corn is tied back with different colored ribbon depending on where you are in the maze picture, so that’s helpful in navigating. You can also find 9 maze puzzle pieces in mailboxes throughout that you can put together to form a map. And there are little “kernels of knowledge” on signs throughout the maze that have facts you can use to complete a crossword puzzle. I love a maze, but I love a maze with additional activities within it even more. This honestly reminded me of my all time favorite Batman episode, Riddle of the Minotaur and I had so much fun.

The view from Victory Road. Did I mention the weather was absolutely perfect that day?

Unfortunately the maze is now closed for the season, but it usually opens the last week of September and runs through October. They also host some nighttime sessions and I think the maze would be really hard at night. The farm hosts events through the winter though, with a food drive and wreath making workshop coming up.

4. Learning 🧠

A few years ago I was given the task of organizing an offsite for some of my coworkers, so naturally I made them walk around the West Village with me and learn about the history of the area while eating delicious treats (yes, I am available for corporate offsite planning and I would love to take your team somewhere fun). We passed by numerous building with historical significance, we ate reuben sandwiches, and eventually we stopped in front of 13 Commerce St. The building had a small plaque affixed to it and we all leaned in to read it:

NYC has a lot of fun easter eggs like this (I’m a big fan of our spite buildings, I’ll write about those!) but after doing some research I found 1) Things did happen here and 2) this plaque is a joke found in lots of cities across America.

13 Commerce St is known as the Noah Bigelow House and it was built in 1826. It’s one of a row of brick homes in the area that once housed working class families and now sell for prices in the millions. Rev Noah Bigelow’s large family lived in #13 for quite some time and on August 4, 1849 the patriarch died in that home. The family members moved out little by little and the property was eventually transferred to Charles Pell - he had married one of Bigelow’s daughters who had sadly passed away shortly after. The house changed hands a few more times and was most recently listed in 2008 for $5.25 mil.

I wasn’t able to confirm which of the inhabitants put this plaque up, but the joke seems to be something that started around the 1980s. The meaning behind the plaque is up to interpretation. Perhaps the inhabitants were bitter about living amidst so many buildings in the historic district without a solid story of their own. Or maybe it’s just a comment on how we feel the need to assign meaning to everything. As someone who loves to read every plaque I pass, I really enjoyed discovering this little gag.

However, I do feel like #13 has a bit of a chip on its shoulder because it happens to be situated right next to 11 Commerce St - The Washington Irving House. Most folks know Washington Irving for the Legend of Sleepy Hollow, but he actually has a pretty sick connection to something decidedly NYC related - he’s the reason we call the city Gotham! But that’s a story for another newsletter….

5. What’s Good 😎

• I’m sad that I still haven’t taken the A Train to the Rockaways and it’s something that I need to prioritize next summer. The DOT and RISE recently added a fun little Subway Sea Serpent art piece that you can see along the ride!

• A couple new parks just opened! Fresh Kills Park in Staten Island was previously the sight of the landfill so big that it could be seen from space. The North end of the park is open to the public. Fall Kill Trail in Prospect Park is also now officially open. This area was previously fenced off, but folks kept traipsing through it so the park said fuck it and made it an official trail. And if you’re wondering why so many of our parks have “kill” in the name, it’s because “kill” is similar to a Dutch word that means “little stream”. How cute.

• The Dinner with Friends ticket lottery is open for the month of November! I haven’t been lucky enough to attend one of these yet, but they look really fun.

• I’ll never stop singing the praises of That Dinner Thing and they’re hosting a Friendsgiving on Nov 12.

• One of my favorite scavenger hunt groups, Watson Adventures, is running a hunt on Nov 3 at the New-York Historical Society. Tickets are only $15 and you should definitely spend time in the museum after the hunt.

• NYC has some local elections open right now! Make sure you know what’s on your ballot and please take the time to vote.

• I’ve been poring over this NYC Neighborhood Map that the NYT released and it scratches every little niche in my brain. If you don’t have a NYT subscription let me know and I’ll hook you up so you can take a look. I love the social and etymological aspects of neighborhood delineations and I need to talk to someone about this.

  If you’ve made it this far, I would love to hear from you! What do you enjoy about this newsletter? What sucks? Are there any seasonal or holiday things you’d like me to cover? I want to travel outside of my bubble and see and do new stuff!

  

  May you be as happy as Lorenzo about to eat a whole roast duck