18 Arhans, Never Enough
Okay, let's start with the Buddhist Nun today.
For years, I had passed this little storefront on Centre Street -- vegetarian food, a few people inside, rumored to be a shrine of some sort. I wrote it off as Hare Krishna and headed down to Excellent Dumpling House for my lunches. A few years back, though, I accompanied a couple of friends to 18 Arhans and was Totally Blown Away. No dish cost more than five dollars, the food was great, and the small Buddhist nun who ran the place sold this great bottled honey green tea that I could never find anyplace else. What's more, after I went back twice more, she had remembered my name.
Now that I go there about twice or three times a week, I've begun to notice that she remembers everybody's name, though a lot has changed about 18 Arhans since I first ate there. She and her partner had to raise prices to about $6.50 a dish, which is still way cheap, as far as I'm concerned. There's more seating, and a wider selection of beverages (I think I actually saw cases of Pepsi there the other day), though she now makes her own green tea drinks and stopped carrying the delicious bottled stuff that I still can't find. Business has soared lately, and I'm not sure whether it's due to the subtle changes in the decor or just the gradual exponential growth from word-of-mouth advertising. Still, the nun takes everybody's order and continues to make little jokes about the total ("Eight... Hundred... Dollars") as she shuffles back to her seat in the back of the room, across from the giant iron axe at the shrine to the warrior bodhisattva Guan Gong. I don't really ever see anybody at the shrine, but I always look over at Guan when I'm done eating my mock kung pao, if that counts for anything.
I'm not a vegetarian, but I am in love with 18 Arhans. It's one of those places you wish would branch out to other locations but that never will, if only because it's too hard to replicate a bunch of little nuns who know your name.
chinatown-ish , food-ish by tangentialist at 06:41 PM on 24 Jan 05 | Perm-a-link | TrackBack (0)
My Dad Thought I Said "New Yorker"
New York Magazine has published a photo I took on the L train as part of their coverage of the impending ban on photography in the subway system. This is great, for two reasons:
- It doubles the number of publications that have printed my photographs.
- It's not the National Enquirer.
I went ahead and bought two copies, and encourage you to skip out and grab one yourself -- if only to support a publication with such refined aesthetic tastes as New York. When I first told my parents about this, they were really excited for about half an hour, thinking I had said "The New Yorker". Whatever -- it's a step in the right direction (hear that, Conde Nast? I'm coming for you.)
I am, as always, available to surreptitiously photograph you on the subway system, or in somewhat less crowded environs of your choice.
UPDATE: Whoa! Also, check out the flickr homepage for this same shot! You may have to reload, but the Goethe quote alone is worth it. Damn! New York, flickr, and the Enquirer! Beat that, Walker Evans!
flickr-ish , photo-ish by tangentialist at 06:44 PM on 17 Jan 05 | Perm-a-link | TrackBack (0)
MacWorld: Oh, Buddy
under the mac mini
Originally uploaded by kenyee.
So, I geeked out this morning, as I do this morning every January, and followed the harrowing live text coverage of Steve Jobs' keynote at the MacWorld Expo in San Francisco. My brother, in the truest nerd fashion, was there, acting as my twitchy nerd eyes and ears.
I won't go into too much detail, beyond pointing out how childlike I become when new Apple products are announced, but mark my words:
Apple turned a big fat corner today. Every new product announced at the keynote (the Mac Mini, in particular) was expertly crafted to align the iPod market with the Macintosh computer. In short, they might finally capitalize on all this iPod hype. Apple stands to realize the computer-as-appliance vision that the Macintosh was designed to fulfill, and that's pretty great.
P.S. I'll take a Mac Mini and an iPod shuffle.
apple-ish , geek-ish by tangentialist at 01:14 AM on 12 Jan 05 | Perm-a-link | TrackBack (0)
Resolved: Teany To-Go Seems Awfully Redundant
Moby's music is like a lot of memories I have of early rave culture, in that I remember it feeling really good, but that the buzz wore off quickly, and now I wonder why I ever consumed it at all. That having been said, he is by all accounts a nice guy, and he bears the unquestionable mark of the Old School Producer. I'm just a little sad that he's one of just a few producers from that time to achieve a lasting commercial success, if you accept "threatened by Eminem" as commercial success. (Not long after the debacle I passed Moby talking to an admirer who had expressed his concern; Moby responded, "I just don't understand why he was so angry".)
Fortunately, Moby also moonlights as a Wise Investor Of Record Loot. His Lower East Side teany storefront has done remarkably well for itself in its two and a half years of business. It's a pleasant, low-ceilinged sort of place, with very-good-if-overpriced tea and an assortment of cakes and scones, and is a good cafe in its own right. What makes teany remarkable, though, is the Moby Effect; this tea house, located off the well-beaten path of LES foot traffic, has outperformed and outlasted most other coffeeshops in the neighborhood, and not because of the slow service (Moby is a very attentive server, I should point out, when he works there). His name is nowhere on the storefront, or the menu, but seemingly by mere association, the place has raked it in.
All this is really just to explain my astonishment that partners Moby and Kelly have rented out the storefront next door as a teany to go, which will be devoted to the radical notion of tea in paper cups. It opens this Friday, a mere two blocks from Sugar Sweet Sunshine, who also sell a very fine cup of tea, if somewhat less mysterious, and not brewed by Eminem's erstwhile mortal enemy.
Your reward for reading this far shall be a picture I once took of Moby and DB that was published in the National Enquirer:
Lower East Side-ish , electronic music-ish , food-ish , moby-ish by tangentialist at 08:11 PM on 11 Jan 05 | Perm-a-link | TrackBack (0)
Playtime
Gothamist was kind enough to distract me into seeing Jacques Tati's Playtime at Walter Reade Theater on Wednesday. It had been years since I had first seen it, on VHS, and I immediately bought two tickets for the final showing at Lincoln Center. I was really psyched about this screening, as I had almost forgotten about the film, and the new print is spectacular -- a far cry from the crappy VHS transfer I had seen back when I first moved to the city.
Riding the uptown train, I tried to recall some of the film's best moments. Playtime is the kind of movie you finish watching and immediately tell yourself always to remember how totally brilliant it was, but there's so much to remember that all you walk away with is a sense of its massive scale and hilarious detail. I was thrilled to discover just how little of it I did remember; I might watch Playtime a thousand times and still not pick up the all the delightfully still passages, the chaotic crescendos, or the squishy vinyl chair references. It was a great experience to be able to watch Tati bumble around with 268 of my closest friends.
Playtime is mind-blowingly excellent, and retains a fresh sense of modern delirium even today, three decades after Tati first blew six million Francs on what was, at the time, a gorgeous commercial failure. The new Janus print is fantastic; hopefully they'll have a good reissue of the Criterion Collection DVD soon.
film-ish , review-ish by tangentialist at 06:08 PM on 07 Jan 05 | Perm-a-link | TrackBack (0)
CameraMail: Putting Red Tape To Good Use
Kyle Van Horn and Justin Ouellette have some fun with postal workers. Justin documents the outcome:
On the 22nd of December 2004, Kyle Van Horn taped a disposable camera to a piece of black foamcore and inscribed upon it the following message: 'ATTENTION POSTAL WORKERS! Please help us with our project. As this camera travels across the country we want photos of all whom it encounters. Please take a photo before you pass it along. Thank you!'
This little project handily improves the reputations of both disposable cameras and postal workers. I have to say, though, that I'm surprised at the apparent lack of ass photos.
(Via VERBA.chromogenic.net.)
photo-ish by tangentialist at 09:01 PM on 04 Jan 05 | Perm-a-link | TrackBack (0)
Happy New Year, Now Back To Work
Once again, New York lucks out with reasonably tolerable weather on New Year's Eve. Good for the folks in Times Square, but equally pleasant for those of us capitalizing on free house parties in Brooklyn (this year's house parties brought to you by Dale, Dalia, Damien, and the letter "D").
Jon, of True Swamp fame, thinks this year is the peak of the New Year's Eve Freeloader Cycle, indicated by a relative dearth of house parties and masses of aimless revelers (like me!) wandering the streets of North Brooklyn. Next year, we should be headed for richer pickings, as bored New Yorkers decide to "just do it themselves" instead of sitting at home and watching Regis Philbin sweep up Dick Clark's sumptuous Rockin' Eve confetti. I promised Damien free attendance at my next two NYE house parties, with no BYOB obligation, in an effort to shore up my wilted New Year's karma.
Here's to a very tangential 2005, with pastures green and pockets deep for all and sundry. Keep on keepin' on.
brooklyn-ish , new year's eve-ish by tangentialist at 02:38 PM on 03 Jan 05 | Perm-a-link | TrackBack (0)