flea at laff #8: red hook lobster pound.

snack: "connecticut style" lobster roll
drink: maine root blueberry soda

...& we're back. so some three saturdays ago, it was friggin beautiful outside. the sun was out in full force, but it wasn't uncomfortably hot, the air was dry without the typical NYC summer stab-me-in-the-face mugginess & there was a pleasant breeze about. it was one of the first days this summer where i stepped outside of my apartment & thought to myself "hell yeah, summer. this is where it's at." it really made me wonder why summer chose to treat us all so cruelly over the last two months. it was a perfect day to venture out & spend part of my saturday afternoon cramming food into my face at the brooklyn flea.

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flea at laff #7: mile end/crop to cup.

snack: the ruth wilensky
drink: large iced coffee

oh brooklyn flea! how i've (sort of) missed you! what's it been, like a month or so since we last played? i'm truly sorry. i've been slightly broke & slightly busy recently & visiting you just hasn't been in the cards. plus, after a bunch of visits to you this summer, i've determined that for me, you don't have that much to offer other than the food. no, i'm not interested in a bunch of plastic, marquee-sized letters. i think i'm all set with that sparkly prom dress as well. ditto for 75% of the other non-food items you have for sale. as much as i try to tell myself that some end table or old-timey soda shop sign is going to one day catch my eye & come home with me, i'm only kidding myself...it's mostly just junk.

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#115 - all points afar.

friday was like the little day that could. through a hookup through a friend with ties to the jay-z camp, a group of us were planning on going to the first night of the all points west festival, headlined by jigga & held out in liberty state park, in jersey city, just across the river from manhattan. so i could leave work mid-afternoon, i upped my game & got to work a full hour early at 9:30am. i swear i saw the sunrise en route to the subway. at work, everything went relatively smoothly. in fact, i propose five hour days from here on out, because the amount of work i got done by having to cram it into five hours was truly monumental. employers, if you are monitoring my blog, please take note. less hours = increased productivity. salary intact, please.

...so i got out by 2:30 & made my way back to brooklyn to run a few errands & relax at home whilst everyone else finished their days. i had thoughts of going to see ra ra riot, but eventually set a goal of getting there in time to see flying lotus (not safe for work/not safe for strobe haters) in the dj tent at 7:15. during that time, the group plan split into two pre-festival meetup groups, with one including the friend responsible for the hookup & the other including me & one other dude. also during that time, the skies opened up with some pretty impressively awful downpours, to the point where i, hater of umbrella-carrying, carried an umbrella on my journey to meet the aforementioned other dude where he was hanging out, at the apartment of a friend of his in battery park city.

when i arrived, the three of us hung out for a while, conversatin' & bumping a whole lot of jay-z. since the apartment was in battery park city there was a ridiculous view of the harbor from the bedroom windows. to make it even better, there was a sweet terrace type thing a few floors up, complete with bullt in grills & patio areas. once the doppler radio informed us we were in the clear rainwise, we ventured up there & from there, we had a clear view across the harbor to liberty state park, where we posited that vampire weekend was finishing up their set. since i love my phone's camera, i took a few photos of the environs, none of which included a view of liberty state park.



upon returning downstairs, we soon discovered, through a few phone calls & much resignation, that our entry to the festival was in jeopardy. awesome. apparently things were messed up for those relying on our particular method of entry & it was close to 8:30 & in the end, we had already missed every band but jay-z & MSTRKRFT anyhow. the other two dudes had other possible angles to entry, but i'd already had a few fun hours in battery park city, so i headed back to brooklyn to end my evening. jigga what? jigga no.

#115 - all points afar.
snack: homemade beef jerky
drink: yuengling lager



but! while i was there & doing the getting to know of the friend's friend, a mention came of this here blog & its content & the friend's friend, quite hospitable as he was, offered me a piece of homemade beef jerky from a jar on the kitchen counter. there were a dozen or so pieces of jerky remaining out of a jar that probably held 100 or so pieces. apparently my friend had emptied most of the rest of it on a previous visit. it was that jerkilicious.

since it was homemade, i inquired about the story behind the jerky. according to our host, the best beef to get for jerky is from key food, as it's cheap & of acceptable quality. i'm pretty sure this jerky was made of beef from there. either that or he really wanted to drive the key food thing home for some reason. it was spiced with peppercorns, vanilla & something asian that i believe, in a tribute to wayne's world, was called "cream of sun yung guy." not really though. something asian, but definitely not that...so yeah, damn good jerky. from the jerky-induced conversations surrounding its consumption, i've learned that it's not that big of a challenge to make jerky, so i may give it a shot one of these days.

whilst prepping for what i thought was going to be all points west, i repeatedly revisited yuengling, a beer that i'd previously imbibed back in march during tv month. since i was eventually headed for liberty state park, it made sense that i'd be drinking a beer from the country's oldest brewery. go freedom! go freedom to drink many lagers in good company! anyway, our host had a fridge full of them, so once i exhausted the only guinness (erin go bragh!) in the fridge, i went american.

as far as cheap beers go, yuengling's wonderful. i still hold fast to my opinion that i'll pay a buck more for a yuengling if it means avoiding a bud. yuengling's headquartered in pottsville, pa, home of the crimson tide & the county seat of & largest city in schuylkill county. the beer has a friggin eagle on the label! OMG patriotism orgasm! anyway, it made me not care so much that i never made it to the festival. on the upside, i'll have more energy for ac/dc in albany tonight. second row! my heart and/or ears and/or brain may explode. stay tuned for results.

#102 - friday night shenanigans.

this past friday, i was relaxing around the apartment post-work & got a phone call from my pal mike weber. i know mike from back in my days at ny press, where i was an ad sales dude & he was an illustrator & eventually, the art director. his ny press cartoons were always densely amazing, but the moment he's infamous for is when his draft cover of the paper, with the placeholder headline "joes blows fucky fuckball" accidentally went to press, prompting a massive half-assed attempt at a recall by the publishers. we hang out fairly often these days & recently he's created the "interactive social contract," a "user generated database of philosophy and law." basically, you create laws & the community-at-large votes them up or down. the interface/navigation on the site is pretty damn awesome.

mike's one of those outgoing, gregarious types, someone i definitely enjoy hanging out with (except for during his EXTREMELY belligerent moments), as he makes friends with folks wherever he goes, which provides a nice complement to my initial shyness & recent introverted nature towards people. i have a vivid memory from a few years back of exiting a bar to join him for a smoke & finding him outside, already chatting with two cute girls.  as i stepped outside, he remarked, "shawn, i've found us wives." that definitely broke the ice. we've been trying to perfect the making friends & meeting fine ladies team technique for a while now (i've been extra introverted until recently), but i think we finally got it down on friday.

...so after not hanging out for a little while, he just got a new phone & new bike, so decided to make his way down to park slope for some almost-summer drinking fun on the neighborhood's bar patios. our first stop was at commonwealth, home of the best jukebox in all of brooklyn. people are friendly there, but are often engrossed in the group of friends they come with. we didn't make any friends on the patio, but did spend a little bit inside chatting with three sisters, two of who were cute twins. mike got one of their numbers & when we were leaving, we got in a conversation with a girl out front, who mike exchanged numbers with. future park slope hanging out buddies?

after a few drinks there, we made our way down the street to the gate, one of the neighborhood's best locales for both tasty beers & a decent crop of attractive & interesting park slopers, who fill the patio during the warmer months. we never made it out to the patio, as mike struck up a conversation with two girls near the bar. they were cool, but after a while of chatting, one was tired & although she toughed it out for a while, they eventually they took off...& mike got one of their numbers. more future park slope hanging out buddies? we'll see. if so, it's already shaping up to be a pretty fun summer.

#102 - friday night shenanigans.
snack: valor dark chocolate with orange
drink: oskar blues brewing mama's little yella pils



when mike first showed up to my apartment, we were just going to head straight out to the bars, but there were only five minutes left in game seven of the pittsburgh-detroit stanley cup final & i was engrossed, so i ran downstairs to let him in & we headed back up to watch the rest of the game. i only had one beer left in my fridge, so we split that & finished what was left of a bar of valor dark chocolate with orange. valor is a spanish company who, if their website is any indication, enjoys loops of soothing spanish guitar.  who doesn't though?

mike & i both had the same reaction to the valor bar. it has an odd gumminess to it, due to the gelatinous orange pieces sprinkled throughout the bar.  luckily, we both enjoyed the gumminess & the dark chocolate.  personally, i enjoy it when the fruit's that prevalent in the mix.  anyway, it made for a nice, quick snack while we watched the last few minutes of the game.

i poured that only beer--a oskar blues brewing mama's little yella pils--into glasses & we split that as we watched the red wings lose the stanley cup to the pens.  oskar blues is a colorado based company that makes a solid series of canned beers & out of the ones i've tried, my favorite is the dale's pale ale. on top of being the tastiest canned beer i've ever had (sorry, guinness), it's part of a specific positive brooklyn backyard cookout experience from a few summers back...& it's hard to top nostalgia when it comes to choosing a beer.

as for the mama's little yella pils, it has more flavor than most pilsners, which are often essentially malty water.  the only drawback was that it was so light & smooth-drinking that we were both done with our respective six ounces within a matter of minutes, even before the hockey game ended.  as such, we had to spend a good five minutes sitting there on a friday night without a beer.  it's not something i'm proud of.  on the other hand, our meeting people teamwork from that evening...now that's something to be proud of...meeting people is easy!

snack away! #10 - nacho mama's nachos.

every winter, new yorkers walk begrudgingly from their homes to the subway to their work, slipping on slush all along the way. they ask themselves why they’re not living somewhere warmer. they forget the “sun and fun” of the rest of the year. then suddenly, the groundhog predicts the spring, trees begin to bloom, and even more suddenly, the summer comes.

we’ve just entered june and the weather has been amazing so far this spring. we’ve already had three sunny, ninety-degree days. summer in new york means so many things to so many people. on top of the parks being filled beyond capacity, events are happening all around: red hook ball field's open, central park hosts summer stage concerts and even the brooklyn kids switch from skinny jeans to skinny shorts. one more thing unique to new york, or at least dense urban areas: rooftop parties.

...so when we (nachos NY) were invited to a rooftop party in williamsburg celebrating nachos, we jumped on the L train with avocados and chips in hand. a lot of credit has to go to cathy erway of not eating out in new york. she set up the wonderful combo for the evening--fresh veggies on the nachos and nicey-and-spicy margaritas. we can’t give her all the credit though. when it came time to fire up the grill, we got down and dirty with the guacamole and were ready to pile it on.

snack away! #10 - nacho mama's nachos.
guest blogger: rachel anderson (nachos NY), new york, ny

snack: white & blue-corn nachos with asparagus, cheese, ramps & tomatoes
drink: spicy margarita



on white and blue-corn tortilla chips, we freshly shredded some smoked cheddar and jalapeño jack cheeses. i am not normally a fan of the white cheese on my ‘chos but the spiciness of the jalapeño jack made me forget my prejudices for one night. in addition to the cheese, we threw on some tomatoes, asparagus, and ramps for good measure.

with all the ingredients ready, we threw that baby on the grill to cook. the grill gave our dish a smoky flavor, but we did have an issue with burnt chips. if you are going to utilize the grill for nacho-related goodness, be aware that the bottom of your pan can burn quite easily.

to go with our delightfully smoky 'chos, our bartender (and owner of the apartment) set up a lovely bar made out of a shelving unit in his apartment. being that this party was planned slightly ahead, he was able to infuse a tequila with a hot pepper, giving us a special spicy margarita. this duo gave no relief to the tongue.  it's summer in the city though, so we say "bring it on."

rachel anderson is the senior correspondent of nachos NY, a blog dedicated to the hunt for all information nacho.  check them out at nachosNY.com.