au currant

Dressing Windows

Two weeks ago, I started volunteering as a window dresser for Housing Works, a HIV/AIDS advocacy group that provides housing, healthcare and other resources to homeless New Yorkers living with HIV and AIDs. Part of what they do to fund their vital services is by operating Thrift Shops all over New York City, where they sell gently used designer items. Some very special items, such as a new pair of Manolo Blahniks, antique sterling silver tea trays, fin-de-siecle chairs, etc. are displayed in the windows and auctioned off online in an ebay-esque manner.  Last year, Housing Works raised $1,349,512 in their online auctions alone!

I volunteer on Sundays, at their West Village location, designing displays and dressing their show windows. Here are some of the windows I dressed:

                        
                     Valentine's Day theme               V-day Men's window
                                       

                                       
                                                Previous week

Volunteering there is a lot of fun. Rupert, the friendly manager sets a very positive tone and a bevy of volunteers mill about the place, color coordinating the clothing, rearranging the displays. One of the volunteers run out to get all of us drinks or cookies. We talk amongst ourselves on who has their eye on what (the volunteers get a discount at the end of their shift). Probably the most fun is where we sort the donated items and discover what label snobs we are...(Gap! No way! Ahh... Miu Miu, we'll put you on the mannequin.).

The volunteers are high school students, college students and locals from the area.  I'm having fun getting to know them individually - and at the end of my second day volunteering, I even earned a "hey babe" from the other volunteers. Several people complimented me on my displays and windows - but what really flattered me was that I had to continously dress the mannequins because shoppers would try on the ensembles I put together and ultimately buy them.

It's an odd sort of revelation - it's wonderful to volunteer and to have such fun while you're doing it.

I think many of us view volunteering as short, distilled moments of physical displeasure or boredom at the usually menial task, with mental pleasure at the cause... but I'm learning that it can be both physically pleasant and mentally gratifying.

If you'd like to volunteer at Housing Works Thrift Shops, click here.

       
245 W 10th St
(bet. bleeker & hudson)
212.352.1618

Come say hi sometime. I'll be there dressing windows.

USHIWAKAMARU THE GREAT

             

                    USHI WAKAMARU!!!!

Somehow I just want to yell that name.

Apparently, it's the name of an 12th century Japanese superhero. Now he's reborn as a delightful sushi restaurant in Noho, on 136 Houston St. between McDougal and Sullivan, saving me from my sushi doldrums and ho hums.

As a sushiphile, I've eaten at some of the sushi greats in the city - Masa, Nobu, Morimoto, Tomoe, Sushi Yasuda, En Japanese Brasserie, Sakagura, Jewel Bako, etc. While all those places merit a special place in the sushi pantheon, for quality, freshness and authenticity, I had settled on Tomoe. I've been a die-hard Tomoe fan for many years, standing in line for hours in the snow, ready with beers in the summers. Yet this unpretentious place, Ushi Wakamaru, has so impressed me that I'm naming it my favourite sushi place in the city. 

The fish is delicate and expertly cut so that it disintegrates on your tongue. The owner and chef Hideo has his fish delivered from Japan 2-3 times weekly and also uses local fish. Also, Ushi Wakamaru has some of the finest cooked appetizers presented in unexpectedly architectural detail. Among them is the cooked scallops heated on a giant shell over flames still licking the sides. The eggplant soup is also deliciously hearty - the miso soup is flavoured with shrimp heads.

The uni deserves a separate paragraph of its own. It's unlike any uni I have ever tasted - fragrant, juicy, salty, perfect. Usually, uni can be slimy and almost repellent when ordinary mortals prepare it.  At Ushi, the sublime uni is a result of excellent quality and expert preparation.

Upon ordering sake, the waitress brought us a selection of sake cups and asked us to choose. We ended up with charmingly mismatched cups.

Hideo was very interested in teaching us about the fish and pointing out what we were going to have next and flavours to watch for. He was also very indulgently responsive - if I asked him about a certain fish, he'd tell me about it, and cut me some to sample and compare with the Japanese vs local market fish. As the night grew long (we had nabbed a 9pm reservation the night before to sit at the sushi bar in front of Hideo) and we all grew friendlier, there was a comical moment where Hideo wanted to tell us a Japanese idiom (and of course we didn't get it) when all the remaining patrons pitched in trying to translate in vain (Neatly perfect? Perfectly fitting? Fitting tight?). Altogether, it was a memorable and enjoyable evening.

Here are some tips to enjoying Ushi:

1. SHOCKER! They take reservations, unlike Tomoe. Ask to sit at the sushi bar.
    If you can nab it, sit in front of the owner/chef Hideo and chat him up.
2. Order the omakase $70 - it's an over generous sampling of what Ushi offers.
      (matter of fact, the waitress remarked astonishedly - you're getting two
        omakases for two people? It's A LOT of food! Turns out she was right.)
3. The tiny shrimp sashimi is juicy and sweet.
4. The uni is a must. Once you have it here, it will be such toil to have it anywhere else.


                              Here's a laughing Hideo and Schnapp:

                                       

                     

     and for dessert, some homemade grapefruit jelly (sorry it's half eaten):

                                      

It's the relaxed, authentic, un-messed with quality of Ushi Wakamaru that leaves me mesmerized.  Unadorned and elegant, the slices of toro inspire all manner of comparisons with Josef Hoffman's furniture design.

I think many of us have accepted for fact that for truly great sushi, we must mortgage the house. Having done taste comparisons of the aforementioned bastions of sushi, I can honestly say that the equation:

                                             fancy = quality

is rubbish. Ushiwakamaru is a sushi paragon to be had at a bargain - but it'll only stay a secret for so long. From the outside, it's easy to imagine that there are no superheroes here - but now you know to yell Ushiwakamaru!

Christmas in Death Valley

Somehow, the Cho family's Christmas tradition is to travel. Last year it was Mexico, on a spa resort, eating delicious roadside tamales and doing yoga on the beach.

This time, we went to Death Valley - an ironic way to celebrate the birth of Jesus, but hey - at least we got the desert climate right. There's so much arid, prehistoric beauty there. The vastness of the rocks, mountains and the sky just overwhelms you and makes you realise just how small a piece of the whole thing you are.

                             Dante's Peak, overlooking Badwater

                                    

                                  (click here for more pictures)

Review of Lullabies for Little Criminals

                                      

Lullabies for Little Criminals by Heather O'Neill is a hilarious and heartrending look at the life of a teenager navigating the critical transition between child and adulthood. The story follows thirteen-year-old Baby on the rough streets of Montreal, as she psychologically morphs from an immature 9-year-old to a dissolute seventeen in the space of a year.

The novel spends a lot of time on Baby's father, Jules, who is both lovable and despicable. At first, Jules is a loving junkie dad who shares playful rituals with Baby, like kissing her seven times for good luck before parting. Reading about Baby's father describing his childhood is like listening to your favorite drunk babble: "We had fried snowballs for dessert. I had one toy. It was a chair. My mother put a wig on it and told me to pretend it was a horse. I'd take my chair outside and ride it." But the book descends into a social worker's nightmare when Jules is sent to rehab after being charged with heroin possession, returning sober and terribly mean.

O'Neill introduces remarkably vivid characters: there's an unforgettably cool Linus Lucas, destructive but big-hearted Trevor, nerdy Xavier, and the handsome but violent pimp Alphonse. Although O'Neill depicts these characters carefully, they are vignettes without permanence, carefully rendered and then ripped out. No one seems to last in Baby's hyper-developing life.

In Lullabies, O'Neill unleashes her talent for painting visceral experiences with simple words. Her descriptions of heroin-induced hallucinations are fascinating: a marble found on the ground contains a tiny horse, pigeons converse in flawless French, a cricket is "nothing but a safety pin that believed in God." The descriptions are so engaging they take the readers into a trip of their own. But the frivolity and fun of Lullabies turns decidedly gloomy as the adulteration of Baby accelerates, and the effect seems heavy-handed. O'Neill's strength lies in absurdist comedy and levity, not piteous accounts of destitution. She's at her best when writing plainly, because the circumstances she describes are so powerful and quietly sad. For instance, when Baby receives a note full of death threats, she is so starved for attention that she carries it "around like a poem" in her pocket. Baby's self-reflection towards the end of the novel is heartbreaking. "Some people even smiled at me as I walked by. They didn't know. How would they know I was a messed-up, ragged, dirty, nasty thing?"

The most impressive part of Lullabies is the way O'Neill captures the magic and joy a child's imagination can conjure even in the bleakest situations. She depicts squalor with humor, panache , and pride. O'Neill carefully renders the very palpable personality of a too-young thirteen-year-old -- over-confident, under-ripe, and vulnerable, fluttering precariously towards adulthood.

Small is Beautiful

Here are some restaurants I want to check out soon - all small in size, tucked away and cozy.

(photo and listing lovingly bitten off from newyork citysearch, thank you citysearch!)

Petite Crevette

Photo by Oscar Perez

144 Hicks St (Cross Street: Between President Street and Union Street)
Brooklyn, NY 11231View Map
(718) 855-2632
Directions: F; G at Carroll St

A Brooklyn favorite for ultra-fresh fish is reborn in Carroll Gardens.

http://newyork.citysearch.com/profile/44408646/brooklyn_ny/petite_crevette.html

Frankie's 17 Spuntino

17 Clinton St (Cross Street: Stanton Street)
New York, NY 10002View Map
(212) 253-2303
Directions: F at Delancey St; J, M, Z at Essex St

The Italian sputino hops the Brooklyn Bridge and brings its charm to the Lower East Side.

http://newyork.citysearch.com/profile/41912575/new_york_ny/frankie_s_17_spuntino.html

Knife + Fork Restaurant

Photo by Oscar Perez

108 E 4th St (Cross Street: 2nd Avenue)
New York, NY 10003View Map
(212) 228-4885
Directions: F, V at 2nd Ave; 6 at Bleecker St

Fresh Greenmarket flavors fortify pan-European fare in the East Village.

http://newyork.citysearch.com/profile/41918646/new_york_ny/knife_fork_restaurant.html

Boop Oop a Doop!

                                 

This Halloween I was Betty Boop, boop-oop-a-dooping all over town~ from a Brooklyn loft party with great music (and insanely long bathroom lines) to the Pussycat lounge in Tribeca. I made most of my big round face and shimmied and Charleston-ed. The best part of the night was when "Big Spender" (my 18 bun*) came on and I got to be a campy little thing, Jessica Rabbit-style.

I kinda want to cut my hair short now.

                        Compare Betty Cho with the original:

                               

Click here for more artsy/vain-y photos of Boopy Cho.

*18 bun - in Korean, for some reason or another, 18 bun (bun = number) means your favourite song to sing/karaoke/generally make a fool of yourself.

The End of the Quest for Soufflé: Capsouto Frères

                                     

I'm a huge fan of soufflé. And not those ubiquitous, sloppy chocolate 'flourless' cakes that attempt to pass as soufflé. I scoff. Too many times all over New York, at reputable and even delectable restaurants - my hopes have been dashed by the muddy wonders masquarading as soufflés. It's as if restaurants who care about the aesthetic placement of rabbit, shallots and champignons on a plate with carefully dusted pepper, couldn't be bothered to do a proper soufflé, which when done perfectly, is crisp yet relenting to the slightest touch of a cool spoon, inexorably moist and airy, as if kissing the breath of a beloved. 

I've finally found a place in Manhattan that creates such beautiful soufflé that puts a delightful, epicurean moan to one's lips. It's a bit of a trek, but so very worth it.

It's Capsouto Frères - a relaxed and romantic bistro in West Tribeca, 451 Washington St & Watt St. - one block east of the west side highway, one block south of Canal St.

                            

I sat outside on an Indian summer night, under the Lillet parasols, admiring the juxtaposition of Tribecean warehouse-land and the civilized interior of Capsouto Frères. I eagerly awaited the arrival of the hazelnut and raspberry soufflès while sipping a Lillet blonde.

The very engaging server brought the soufflès and carefully dipped into the crisp top with a spoon, then drizzled the raspberry coulis and praline creme anglaise sauces into the small crater. I was giddy with delight when I saw that it was a proper soufflè. How do I describe the taste? It dissolves in your mouth like foam, yet the top layer and the crust is slightly brunt and with crystalline texture of remnant sugar. The raspberry coulis and hazelnut creme are harmoniously matched and did not overpower the delicate soufflè.

I merely went for dessert and drinks - they are more than happy for you to drop in for only dessert. However, they have a wonderful game menu, if you like quail, sweetbreads, patè, lamb, etc. There's also a prix-fixe of $35, which is a total bargain, given the selection and quality of the menu, the atmosphere, the service, and conversation with the sharp-witted owner, Samuel. He told many stories - one of which started, "He found himself to be an intellectual, when in fact he was just a cynic..."

Capsouto Frères is celebrating their 26th year this year - go help them celebrate. I'll be returning shortly to have their chocolate soufflè.

Capsouto Frères
451 Washington St. (Watts St.)
Manhattan, NY 10013
212-966-4900
http://www.capsoutofreres.com/

Big Urban Game Sunday: Area/Code hits Pier 40

                          
                        mappy map                           phone interface

Another kickass Sunday spent competitively running around the West Village, courtesy of the ingenious folks over at Area/Code.

Crossroads is a two player strategy game based on New Orleans Mardi Gras culture. Two players, Sun and Moon, compete to capture 24 or so intersections with GPS enabled cell phones (provided) in the West Village/Tribeca area:

                                    
                                          cell phone screen

while running away from this dude:

                                    
                                             BARON SAMEDI
                                        SPREADER OF CHAOS

The object of the game is to run to an intersection and capture it with your presence (your GPS phone records your location to the server). It plays like Othello - the Sun is yellow, the Moon is blue, you do your thing, the intersection pops up in your colour. The sneaky, chaotic Baron Samedi comes by and flips all your hard work into, guess what? Your opponent's colour. The Baron likes offerings, so you can leave things for him on your opponents corner and he'll go do your dirty work. Avoid the Baron, he'll hunt you down, time you out and eat your offerings. All in a zippy, competitive 30 minutes.

Schnapp and I played against each other. I sprinted around town and felt very important while people looked at me like I was insane. I'd make a mad dash for the intersection and not cross. I'd hide from the invisible menace, the Baron Samedi. I'd stop for 30 seconds, with my phone held high up in the air, 'capturing' the crossroad. All in a miniskirt.

did I mention I won? 10 to 7. 10 crossroads captured to 7.

Granted, Schnapp was wearing flipflops and that don't make much for running gear. Eh, I'm a bad winner. So there. Big fat raspberry to the loser. :P

Crossroads is the perfect way to spend your weekend afternoon. It's right by the water, you finally get to know the West Village better (stop getting lost there, you've lived in New York for how long?), you get to win. For good measure, make some impossible bet to raise the stakes. There's a trapeze school, free kayaking on the pier, as well as a strip joint near by if you need ideas.

Essentials and Tangents:

It's on Pier 40, on the west side highway. It's hard to find. Pier 40's quite big.
It's the southmost pier, after the parking lot, after the kids playing soccer. There's a sign that says 'the good life' (in bloomingdale's font, no less!) - who are the folks sponsoring the game - turn right there and walk all the way down. You'll pass the free kayaking school. Balloons mark the spot. Also, see this map:

       
               
Directions on how to play this game

The Gothamist wrote a thing about Area/Code's Minnesota project.

Cheerios - say hi to Frank and Kevin for me.

Korean by Korean

A guide to excellent Korean food for when you want to be the only in-the-know white person surrounded by a sea of asian people:

It's 4:30am the bars are closed and you're hungry:
Kun Jip on 32nd St. between 5th and Broadway (north side of street, near the middle)

It's where all the Koreans bustle - there's always a line. Open 24 hrs day, it makes for an excellent stop for grub on your way home from clubbing. Try the galbi (marinated rib bbq). The dolsot bibimbap (stone pot cooked rice with mixed vegetables) is excellent here. And after you're done eating, why not relax for awhile at Juvenex, a neighboring non-sketchy spa that's open 24 hrs? Liz Ko and once got over our hangovers there.   

When you want to initiate Korean cuisine virgins and they're the scene-y bunch:
Woo Lae Ok in Soho

The decor is decidely sleek, modern, in shades of blues and grays and there's not even a whiff of tell-tale bbq burning. This is where Koreans come to entertain non-Korean clients who want to try that 'nouvelle asian cuisine.' The food is good, not entirely authentic, and pricier than k-town, but that's the Soho tax. It's nonetheless a good option for those who want to have an upscale korean dining experience.

It's cold outside and nothing but soup can warm you up:
Gahm Mee Ok

Open 24 hrs, this is the place to come when you're feeling a bit sick-y and want soup to warm you up. They are famous for their sullongtang - an oxtail broth with rice vermicelli, thinly sliced beef and rice inside. I'd ask for the rice separately and eat it alternatingly with spoon and chopsticks, accompanied by kimchi or kakduggi that they slice at the table for you. And - ask for bori-cha - it's barley tea, served free of charge - quite possibly the chosen drink of koreans all over the world. We drink it hot in the winter, cold in the summers.

More to come...

guard the list with your life. You don't want the spots to go the way of day old fish.

Phillips Fall Contemporary Auction

                        

Last night, I was at the Phillips de Pury Auction House to attend their fall Contemporary Art exhibit. It kicked off last night amidst champagne toasts and lemon cucumber vodka tonics and goes on until next Saturday Sept. 16th when the auctioneer's gavel comes out.

I like Phillips a lot. It's not like the other auction houses Sotheby's and Christie's (no offense, I like you guys too) as seen by media (American Giggolo anyone?). True to it's new location in the meatpacking district, it houses eclectic art - one might even say hipster art. I did see a lot of Marc Jacobs being worn. And just like the art, also eclectic was the audience. Some young, some beautiful, some artfully distressed (like the gentlemen with chewing gum spread on his shoe - I hope it was on purpose), other plain wacky and insane.

The selection of art was also interesting - with the more valuable works housed on the third floor gallery and part of "Under the Influence" exhibit, and the more accessible (both in content and price) housed as part of Saturday's @Phillips (not unlike Christie's East and Sotheby's Arcade).

There were many Eames pieces for those who care - at very good prices. Cindy Sherman's nudes at reasonable prices, Warhol at ridiculous prices. The jewelry was innovative and quite affordable. Which brings me to my next point - my bid:

AMANDA NICOL   
LOT 48                              

A Sterling Silver Chain Bracelet

Designed as ten rows of fine trace link chains,
gathered by silver bead terminals, completed
by a polished silver sliding clasp, mounted in
sterling silver, length 7 inches.

ESTIMATE: $120 - 250

So next Saturday, I'll be on the phone, on the other side for a change, having a pretty young thing be my advocate, bidding on the bracelet on my behalf. Sweet.

Phillips is a great place for a young collector or anyone who is interested in art, but somewhat intimidated - to go. It's welcoming, it's really like a cocktail party, and it's in the booze joint of meatpacking. Dress in your own vintage gear, wear loud colours artfully, or just buy something at Marc Jacobs or (gasp!) Urban Outfitters and strut. Trust me, the truly wealthy dress and act insane. No one will know the difference.

Phillips de Pury & Company is located at 450 West 15th St. and 10th Avenue. Please don't bid on my bracelet.