It's Gonna Be May
Happy May to all who celebrate
Thank you all for the BCLF birthday wishes last week! Some people were confused and thought it was my actual birthday but isn’t it painfully obvious that I’m a Virgo?
We’re back to our usual programming with some really fun stuff this week. I’ve been sitting on today’s Learning section for a while now so I’m excited to be able to remove that bookmark from my browser. Free subscribers will also get to read about The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare and see many images of big manly men. Paid subscribers get a real fucking treat with a pretty big feature on visiting the north end of Roosevelt Island and I also write about some treats I picked up from a Japanese bakery.
This weekend I’ll be dog sitting for the first time in my life (classic Elaina, I’m always doing her favors) and will be living in Kips Bay for a bit! If you know of any good eats or fun places to visit, please send them my way. I’m both nervous and excited to cosplay as a dog mom and would love to hear about favorite parks good places to walk a dog on the east side.
1. Learning 🧠
Moving in NYC is stressful, but would you believe me if I told you it actually used to be worse? Once upon a time the city celebrated a little thing called Moving Day and it was an awful day “celebrated” on May 1 that no one liked and was memorialized as such in the New York Atlas in 1849:
Day of trouble—day of chaos/Day of toil for man and “dray-hoss;”/What confusion! Wha a rumpus!/On the sidewalk bedpost bump us/All are moving, helter skelter/Women scold and fume and swelter
If you haven’t already guessed, Moving Day was a weird ass tradition dating back to colonial times. On February 1, known as "Rent Day", landlords would tell tenants what their new rent would be and since there were even less rent increase protections back then than there are now, rent hikes were sometimes absolutely insane. Then, on May 1, all leases in the city expired simultaneously at 9:00 am, causing thousands of people to move apartments, all at the same time. So yeah, now that poem makes a bit more sense - rumpus!
May 1 was a significant date for the Dutch because that’s when folks left The Netherlands to explore The New World. It also marked the start of the Dutch trading season known as Handelstijd. After being a sort of unofficial thing for many years, Moving Day was eventually codified into law by an 1820 act of the New York State Legislature. The ruling basically said that if no other lease end date was specified, all housing contracts were valid to the first of May. And so every May 1 the streets would be gridlocked with carriages carrying folks belongings. And naturally, folks took advantage of this. Drivers charged astronomical prices for folks to use their carriages for transport and farmers from Long Island and New Jersey would even travel into the city to rent out their wagons on that day.
But all awful things must come to an end (I hope). Eventually a second Moving Day on Oct 1 began to take form, as that’s when folks would move back to the city from their summer homes. This second Moving Day, combined with a lack of “able bodied men” during WWII and the creation of rent control(!), naturally created enough hurdles to sticking to this strict schedule. By 1945, Moving Day was no more.
I don’t know who ever really thought this was a good idea, but can you even fucking imagine if we did this now? I recommend reading some of the firsthand accounts available on Wikipedia because they are just wild. Anyways, wishing you all negligible rent increases, no broker fees, and good fortune when apartment hunting 🙌
2. Watching🍿
I recently saw The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare and it taught me something about myself: I like watching big beefy men kill Nazis. This shouldn’t have been too surprising to me as Inglorious Basterds is the only Tarantino film I can sit through. I also grew up watching Indy fight Nazis over and over on my VHS copy of Last Crusade (👵🏻). As soon as I saw a sweaty Henry Cavill laughing maniacally while shooting a giant gun in the trailer for this movie, I was fucking hooked. This was going to be a goofy action filled Nazi massacre!
It turned out to be a bit less action filled than I wanted as most of the middle of the film took place on an excruciatingly slow boat journey. The movie tells a fictionalized version of Operation Postmaster and that story involved a lot of time on a boat in the 1940s on the way to sink (or as it turns out, capture) other boats. I fuckin hate boats.
Despite the second act lull, I really enjoyed the action that was in the film. It’s directed by Guy Ritchie and it is pretty fucking British in style, which is to say that all jokes are told with a stiff upper lip and everything is incredibly casual. Near the beginning, Henry Cavill and his team of beefcakes have to break one of their friends out of some sort of prison. When the initial plan goes astray (which would become a pattern), Cavill simply shrugs it off, says something along the lines of “cheerio, let’s just go in there and shoot folks all willy nilly alright” (this is what British English sounds like to me), and the men basically stroll through the Nazi encampment and shoot machine guns in the most casual way I have ever witnessed. It’s a striking contrast to a lot of the frenetic action we see in movies today (like in Monkey Man) and I think it’s actually quite hard to pull off because it goes against how we’re used to witnessing action scenes in American cinema.
The NYT called this a “perfect airplane movie” and I can sort of understand where they’re coming from. I should note that I have egregiously low standards though when it comes to watching poor quality movies on tiny screens (I grew up pirating films on Limewire, what do you want from me?). However this review was based on the quality of the story, not the quality of the picture. The story is very simple and that’s actually what I liked about it. I’ve watched so many movies where I actually don’t understand what the characters’ mission is and I kind of just stick along to watch the action hoping that I’ll eventually understand everything at the end. Yes, there was a lot of expository dialogue when Henry Cavill and his band of merry men weren’t shooting Nazis, but I found it to be helpful rather than excessive.
Ultimately, this movie was really fun and I learned a thing about WWII that I didn’t previously know while watching big muscley men talk in silly little accents. That’s a solid win if there ever was one!
3. What’s Good 😎
The weather this time of year can be pretty unpredictable (a beautiful 80 degree day followed by rain? wtf?) so it’s always nice to have an indoor plan on standby. I love this list of Free Museum Days for exactly that! Most NYC museum will have free or pay-what-you-wish days available and while yes, they do tend to be more crowded at these times, you should still take advantage! Pro tip: some museums will make you reserve free tickets, so check ahead!
This Saturday Popup Grocer is having a @nazliandco pop-up, with slices of sheet cake and mini cakes available from their new spring/summer menu. This event will undoubtedly get crowded but also - cake!
New friend Allie is hosting a Visual Artist Spotlight on May 16. 5 artists will be featured in the Gallery section and 10 artists will flaunt their skills in a visual artist open mic session; each artist has 7 minutes to create art on the spot for the crowd!
Places selling smashburgers are absolutely taking over the city (a new spot literally just popped up in a gas station) but I’m not mad about it. If you’re a burger baby, consider popping by the Smashed Burger Block Party on May 18. A $70 ticket will get you burgers from all 6 vendors and while this seems expensive up front, consider the prices of burgers nowadays and do the math.
If you’re more of a ceramics girlie, you can stop by The Brooklyn Ceramic Arts Tour from May 17-19. It’ll feature local artists, studios, galleries, and businesses across the borough, opening their doors to the public for a variety of exhibitions, workshops, demonstrations, artist talks, and ceramic sales.
Dominique Ansel just released their cronut flavor for the month and while I would normally scoff at such basic things, y’all - it’s strawberry pandan! If you don’t want to wait in line like a noob, just order ahead for pickup or delivery.
And a personal plug for a friend of mine: my pal Susie started a home delivery focaccia company and recently released Bread of the Month boxes! If you love bread (and who doesn’t) head over to Jennie’s House and get yourself a little treat.
4. Exploring 🛼
I took a trip with Lorenzo to Roosevelt Island a couple weeks ago because the whole F Train construction debacle of early 2024 is behind us! It was, however, peak cherry blossom time so the tram ride over was packed. We did see cherry blossoms, but I was surprised that the crowd from our full ass tram car basically disappeared as soon as we started heading to the north end of the island. So I’ll leave you with one picture of the Yoshino trees and then I want to talk about what’s on the north end of Roosevelt Island and why it’s worth the trip (I found something that I bet no one else is talking about).
As fate would have it, a newsletter I recently started following,
, released an edition about Roosevelt Island the morning I planned to go! Rob did an amazing job detailing the history of the island, so I’m not even going to bother. Instead, I’ll take you on a little journey to the north end of the island! Roosevelt Island is super walkable (it only really has one road) but you can also take the free red RIOC bus that does loops around the island if your feet need a break. My path of choice for traversing the island is to arrive via the tram, head south along the water, and then loop up the east side to walk the island counter-clockwise. I don’t have a solid rationale for this choice, it just makes sense to me.Walking through the middle of the island is, itself, an interesting experience. Roosevelt Island was always sort of meant to be a utilitarian space - fit as many “undesirables” there as possible - so it makes sense that a lot of the architecture leans brutalist. The residential buildings there were built in the 1970s after all of “the horrors” but they’re still pretty simple and geometric with none of the art deco flourishes you’ll see just across the river. Something nice about the residences, though, is that they all have little paths cutting through them to provide water access, which reminds you that you are in fact on a very skinny little island.
The brutalist middle of the island is a nice contrast to an older and more ornate structure that you’ll find near the northern tip - The Octagon.
This structure, now part of a luxury apartment complex (of course it is 🙄) is all that remains of the former Lunatic Asylum that once housed folks with horrible illnesses such as “hysteria”, “can’t speak English”, and “is a woman.” It seems like NYC will turn anything into apartments I can’t afford at this point and every time I pass this place I wonder if the rich people inside know that the building is likely haunted AF. Nearby, there are public tennis courts that anyone can reserve, a Community Garden that is open on weekends, and a very small and overgrown dog park that Lorenzo made us rest in.
After you’ve been walking for a while, the tippy top of the island will provide you with a very welcome spot to rest. I didn’t realize it until I was there, but the top of Roosevelt Island hugs Hallett’s Cove (as mentioned in Astoria, Ahoy!). But the main attraction at the north end is The Girl Puzzle, a monument to the fantastic humanitarian work that Nellie Bly did in the late 1800s. Bly famously feigned insanity and got herself admitted to the asylum that was on the island where she uncovered the abhorrent conditions that folks were being kept in. After her release, she published an exposé in The New York World and a book called Ten Days in a Madhouse which prompted the asylum to implement more humane measures (it still mostly sucked though).
This art work features a bust of Bly (pictured) surrounded by the faces of other women who have endured hardship. Each of them has a small plaque with a QR code you can scan to listen to an audio story (and I recommend that you do). The faces are rendered in partial sections that appear like giant puzzle pieces and as you walk around the site you can see sections of the faces come together at different vantage points. There are also a bunch of mirror balls around that you can take silly pictures with 🪩🕺
Once you begin the journey back around the west side of the island, you’ll spot a bunch of benches that look pretty unremarkable.
They’re whispering benches! You may have heard of some of the more famous “whisper spots” in Central Park or Grand Central and I think these must be new because I can’t find them officially listed anywhere. Nonetheless, as soon as I saw these I made Lorenzo stop and whisper sweet nothings to one end of the bench while I cupped my ear at the other - for science! And it worked! Because of the specific curve of the bench, sound from one end travels perfectly to the other. It’s a very fun architectural quirk and I was so excited to discover these benches!
One final fun discovery you’ll see on the west side of the island is actually in the water - it’s The Marriage of Money and Real Estate statues. If you feel like you’ve seen these before, it’s probably because you’ve gotten off the subway at the 8th ave/14 st station and seen this artist’s other work - Life Underground. Both sets of sculptures are by Tom Otterness are are criticisms of capitalism. If you visit during high tide these little guys might be fully underwater!
Anyways, Roosevelt Island is a weird and wonderful place and if anyone reading this lives there or knows someone who does, I would like to speak with them.
5. Noshing 😋
Since Roosevelt Island doesn’t have a whole lot of food options available, I made sure Lorenzo and I grabbed a little snack from the mainland before heading over. I’d heard great things about Postcard Bakery in the West Village and really wanted to try their fruit sandwiches! They’re a Japanese bakery by the same folks who run Nami Nori and their menu is entirely gluten free. I’m very lucky to not have a gluten allergy (that or peanuts and I would be absolutely miserable) but I love Japanese (not too) sweets and fruit sandwiches sounded like the perfect treat to go.
The space is pretty tiny but the bright bold decor makes it feel really welcoming. I was surprised to see that they had sodas and fruit milks on their drink menu so we knew we had to try one. I’m an absolute sucker for a melon soda and when they handed me a gigantic fucking cup of melon soda topped with whipped cream I was verklempt. The big cup did make it a bit hard to mix up the melon flavor syrup but I’ll give you guys my secret tip for mixing big drinks like this: you just fucking blow bubbles. Drink a little off the top so it doesn’t overflow and then go back to being 5 years old and blow bubbles in that drink. It mixes up any flavor syrups hiding at the bottom perfectly. Lorenzo used to laugh at me for doing this and then he tried it and is now a convert. You’re welcome.
I didn’t tell Lorenzo that the sandwich bread was gluten free until after we finished eating and he said he never would have noticed. The bread was definitely less fluffy and a bit more crumbly than traditional milk bread, but it honestly tasted great. I think the gluten free bread would actually hold up with the cream a bit longer whereas sometimes milk bread can get a little smushy. These sandwiches were the perfect little treat and I definitely want to go back and try more stuff from Postcard.
I’m one of the people living in the Octagon. In fact, I was drawn here by the building’s story and history. I think living here is pretty cool—it feels like stepping into a piece of history and becoming part of its story.
baffles and befuddles me that they'd take the literal asylum where they tortured people and turn it into luxury apartments! pretty much sums up real estate in a nutshell