Normalized by tv (hello "Mad Men"), promoted by the restaurant industry, essential to covering vertiginous commercial rents, and induced by current world events: drinking is plainly on the rise, and it's not just in Britain.

The 'French paradox' pointing to the potential benefits of red wine notwithstanding, alcohol is probably best used in more moderate ways -- and definitely more moderately than the year-end dictates.  That's why today, I wanted to celebrate not a hyper-local eat.  But a hyper-local drink.

What I dip in there for is the following hyper-local eat of the day: a kale-apple-carrot-lemon juice.

Oooh wee!  Does this hit the spot.  I tell them to go easy on the lemon, but a little citrus foils the sweet of the apple and carrot and sets off the herby kale. I know that people love to throw shade on this leafy green. A friend, let's call him Herr Doktor T, likes to harsh on kale the way Graham Chapman harshed on Spam. That just means more kale for me.  Honest to goodness, there's only one way I don't like to eat it and that's sautéed.

Chop it to eat raw like Henry's does for its best salad (that link includes the recipe).  Throw it in a fritatta.  Or juice it to detox.  Kale is scrumptious. Oh, no, you won't hear me rag on kale. And while this juice treat probably clocks in at a small meal's worth of calories, at least it beats the nutritive value of a Unicorn Frappuccino.

Yes, you heard me. That's a thing. Or at least was a thing for a brief hallucinatory moment.  Its full name (trademarked, bien sûr) is Unicorm Frappuccino Blended Crème.  (I'm guessing that its purveyors cannot legally use the word "cream" when advertising it.) While I am not sure it qualifies as a beverage, it may qualify as entertainment since most of what I know I overheard in a surreal conversation about the Unicornuccino. 'It changes colors!'  'It's sprinkled with pink and blue fairy powders.'  Apparently it doubles as a fidget spinner-lava lamp.

OMG. Such is "food" in our day and age. It's enough to drive you to drink!

And drink you should:  at Cool Fresh Juice Bar.  Stop in and let me know what you order. It's the perfect hyper-local eat to kick off 2018.  You can't go wrong with a kale-carrot-apple-lemon juice.  It's what the gods drink when they run out of mead.  I swear.  And if you are attentive, you might even see it change colors.

Happy New Year!

P.S. Cool Fresh Juice Bar is supposedly open 8:30 am til 9 pm for when that hankering hits.  It'll set you back $6 for the smaller size, and while less entertaining than a Unicornuccino, it is less than half the price of an aperol grapefruit spritz with smoked jalapeño salt at some wannabe bar.  And much more delicious.

This concludes the December "Spread the Blove" month.  But you aren't limited to just December. If you enjoy these blog posts, tip off a friend, family member or neighbor any time.

By filling in the box below, new subscribers receive the latest posts about Bloomingdale straight to email.  There's more "hyper-local eats," more Throwback Thursdays, more treasures from the Vault.  And it's all coming in 2018.

YEAR-END WISHES

Dear Readers,

Why do these lights always make me happy! There must be some kind of serious hard wiring lurking within from millenia of humankind's sunworshipping ways, and it gets tripped this time of year. 

College Walk, all gussied up and glittering, is all that. At least for me.

This picture comes with warm wishes to everyone this season and heartfelt thanks for tuning into the Block Association blog.  May 2018 be as gentle and kind as 2017 was not.

More to come.

Best,
Caitlin Hawke

Forget to get someone in the neighborhood that perfect gift?  Turn him or her on to hyper-local chronicles here at the blog by forwarding this post.

December is "Spread the Blove" month. Subscribing to the blog is a great way to stay in touch between newsletters of the W. 102nd & 103rd Streets Block Association. Speaking of which the Winter newsletter is out. You should have received your copy.  A pdf will be posted on the website shortly.

Spread the blove...there's lots and lots more on tap here at the B.A. blog coming your way in 2018.

Remember: December is "Spread the Blove" month.  If you enjoy these blog posts, won't you share this with a nearby friend, family member or neighbor? It's a great way to stay in touch between newsletters of the W. 102nd & 103rd Streets Block Association. So tip off a neighbor who can then receive posts directly to his or her email by just filling in an email address at the bottom of each post.

By Caitlin Hawke

Enjoy the nine hours, fifteen minutes and eighteen seconds of daylight on Thursday.  For you lightlovers, it's all downhill from here!  By the 31st you get three more minutes of daylight, and so it goes. 

Solstice 2017. 

How will you tip your hat to the dark today?  Now that you can take a break from flipping latkes, spinning dreidels and running around on the season's forced spending spree, why not come out and sing at the Block Association event.

And now I leave you with images seen in the neighborhood during our pre-winter lead in to the solstice.  We've already been dusted three or four times with a suspicious white powder.  Audrey got hers (below) and the skies have been hoarier than usual. Thanks to neighbors Bob Donohue and David Ochoa for these shots.  I need to go waterproof my old boots but in the meantime say to old man Winter: Bring. It. On!

After all, it's the only route to the vernal equinox.  And I am all about that.

Remember: December is "Spread the Blove" month.  If you enjoy these blog posts, won't you share this with a nearby friend, family member or neighbor? It's a great way to stay in touch between newsletters of the W. 102nd & 103rd Streets Block Association. So tip off a neighbor who can then receive local news directly to his or her email by just filling in an email address at the bottom of each post.

Love the Blog?  Spread the Blove!

By Caitlin Hawke

I blogged this earlier in December but here's your reminder that Thursday is Solstice Caroling Night with Your Block Association!  On December 21st at 7 p.m., come meet up at 865 West End Avenue (on the west side of WEA at W. 102nd Street).  You can download a songsheet right here.

Details in the flyer below and an outro of lagniappes for those readers who like youtube videos.  Make sure to click on the title of this post to view it online or the videos will not load for email subscribers!

And to paraphrase Tiny Tim, see you waiting for the sunlight, loving the moonlight, having a wonderful time!

Email subscribers: remember to view the lagniappes below, you'll need to click on the blog title or go here.

Tiny Tim's Livin' in the Sunlight, a Maurice Chevalier cover

"Your Night with My Day" -- James Taylor's little-known ditty from his first album on Apple Records, the Beatles label, circa 1968

From the famous Nashville sessions, Bobby D. and Johnny Cash sing "You Are My Sunshine." If you think Bob Dylan can't sing, think again! Happy Solstice, Bloomingdalers.

Remember: December is "Spread the Blove" month.  If you enjoy these blog posts, won't you share this with a nearby friend, family member or neighbor? It's a great way to stay in touch between newsletters of the W. 102nd & 103rd Streets Block Association. So tip off a neighbor who can then receive local news directly to his or her email by just filling in an email address at the bottom of each post.

Love the Blog?  Spread the Blove!


By Caitlin Hawke

Building on the prior post about the loss of Mom & Pop and the vagaries of vacancies, this post is about one specific closure.  Covered by the West Side Rag last month, the shuttering of Joon's Westside Fish Market was felt like a body blow around here. Joon's stood on the southwest corner of W. 98th Street and Amsterdam Avenue until November 6th. But it had been in lease turmoil for months, with no certainty of retaining its space (and indeed a kosher Japanese restaurant is moving right in).

The WSR story caught the eye of filmmaker Christopher Ming Ryan. Chris co-owns Wheelhouse Communications. In his spare time he makes films for himself.  This closing, he thought, should be documented.  And so, for Joon's farewell, Chris grabbed his equipment and headed over. The result is a gem of a short film "Disappearing NYC: Joon's Last Day" that I first saw in the Rag (again, thanks Avi).  It exposes a sad story about less than level dealing, but it also holds the mirror up for each of us to look into since we -- with our new-fangled habits -- probably precipitated the loss.

I reached out to Chris, and he agreed to be interviewed.  It turns out that Chris is a born and bred Bloomingdaler.  Though he moved away as a grown-up, his parents continued to live on Broadway around W. 98th Street, and this kept him connected to his childhood streets. He gave me permission to repost his film below and kindly agreed to answer some questions (for the interview, keep scrolling down).  His four-minute documentary is a parable for our changing times.  And more than anything it captures the personal toll that a closure can exact on faithful, hardworking employees.

[Remember: If you are reading this as an email subscriber, you'll need to click on the blog post title above or click here to see the videos below.  It's worth your click!]

 
There's a lot more to say about this and a lot more we're going to have to do together as neighbors and voters to ensure we're living in a community that values neighborhood and is a fair dealer when it comes to small business.  We've done it before thanks in part to efforts of Block Association members.

For inspiration on this front, I caught up with Chris.

Q&A with Christopher Ming Ryan

Caitlin Hawke: Chris, you made a beautiful short film documenting the closing of Joon's, the Mom & Pop fish store at W. 98th Street on Amsterdam Avenue.  Did you have any personal connection to that store?
Christopher Ming Ryan: Thank you for the remarks. No personal connection. I grew up on W. 98th and Broadway so this particular part of the Upper West Side is home to me.

Caitlin: I understand your film about the last day at Joon is part of a bigger project. Can you say more?
Chris: I can't get into the details of the proect too much because we are just beginning. I have spent some time in Greenwich Village documenting the scene on Bleecker Street. Generally, if I hear of a Mom & Pop that is being forced to close, I'll go down and investigate with camera in hand. I've been a producer/director of marketing and communications videos since the mid-90's. About six years ago, my company Wheelhouse Communications invested in film equipment, and I hated to see the cameras and lights in my storage closet sitting there idle when I didn't have paying jobs. I started making short films with collaborators that I hired in professional jobs, and I began editing the films because I didn't want to pay anyone to do it. I keep returning to the theme of celebrating "old school" ways of doing things. You can see some of my past work here.

Caitlin: I noticed your film's title "Disappearing NYC." Do you have any connection to the great Jeremiah Moss, aka Griffin Hansbury, author of the blog and book Vanishing New York?
Chris: I have corresponded with Jeremiah Moss, and I'm well aware of his work. I just finished his book, Vanishing New York, which is terrific and puts hyper-gentrification into a context. His advocacy is so important and he has motivated lots of people like me to gather, protest, and do outreach about the issue of saving Mom & Pop stores.  In 2015, when Moss was getting a lot of press for the #SaveNYC campaign, I first reached out to him and created this PSA for the Small Business Survival Act. The last image should have probably been Katz's Deli but, hey, I'm an Upper West Sider!  I'd love to collaborate with him.

Caitlin: In a poignant way, your film makes a compelling case to shop locally.  The store manager Polo's loss of his job at Joon is deeply felt by the viewer. And we are connected immediately to the people who give life to small businesses.  What do you think shopping locally in this neighborhood (or others in the city) will look like in 5 years?  In 10 years? 
Chris: I don't want to speculate. As Jeremiah Moss says, people created this problem -- people can fix it. Thinking that this is just evolution or the ways of capitalism is the wrong way to think. Advocacy can do a lot. We should celebrate small victories like the new rollback of the Commercial Rent Tax. Small incremental changes like restoring the original look of the Hotel Belleclaire on Broadway and West 77th Street on the surface looks like a grain of sand when it comes to change. But, more grains will turn into piles, and soon we'll have a castle.

Caitlin: We've had cyclical outcries to protect small business owners by instituting policy changes.  But I am unclear about whether there's any progress except the recent rollback of the Commercial Rent Tax. What is your understanding of the issues and what could be done to reverse the tide such as move toward commercial rent control, vacancy taxes, etc.?  I know Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer is a big proponent of small retailers and trying to protect them.
Chris: I recently attended a town hall with President Brewer, State Senator Brad Hoylman, Jeremiah Moss and Tim Wu. There were not a lot of answers. There was a lot of looking at the ceiling, shaking of heads, and blaming the whole thing on Albany and the Real Estate Board of New York (REBNY). Borough President Brewer has her heart in the right place, but it seems to me she has been resting on the laurels of her work in the City Council when she introduced and succeeded in putting in zoning laws on the UWS. The Small Business Survival Act which she helped write up as a Council staffer has been languishing for over 30 years. I don't know if it's ever been put up for a vote. I found this article in Our Town that shows that MBP Brewer wants to focus on smaller steps.  I'd like any steps at this point.
 
Caitlin: I understand you grew up in the neighborhood and that your parents lived here until they passed away.  What was life like here during your childhood and how did it change over time and for your folks who remained here?  Do you recognize the old streets? 
Chris: I grew up on W. 98th Street in the 1960's and 70's. Our neighbors were artists, musicians, social workers, and teachers, and I don't remember one lawyer, doctor or Wall Streeter. We spent a lot of time in Riverside Park, the public library on W. 100th Street between Amsterdam and Columbus, and in movie theaters (matinees were 75¢).  But let's not kid ourselves. There wasn't a lot of diversity. In our building, the only person of color was my mother who was Chinese. Everyone was Caucasian. I'm sure the landlord forbid people of color to rent in the building. The big change happened in the mid 80's when they tore down the Riviera and the Rivoli at 96th and Broadway and put up the Columbia apartment building.

Caitlin: Do you have a lot of ghosts when you look at new storefronts but see old "friends"?
Chris: No ghosts really. I miss the cobble stones on West End Avenue. I miss old people who were all dressed up on the Broadway malls. I miss the movie theaters. The neighborhood has kept its character, but its soul is gone mainly because it's not a place for the middle class anymore. One thing I get a huge amount of nachas from is that my kids love the taste of Sal's pizza.
 
Caitlin: What were your favorite shops growing up? 
Chris: Well, speaking of Sal's....Every Friday night we would have Sal's. Saturday night we would go to various haunts: Hanratty's (Honey-dipped fried chicken, Carol King on the Jukebox and Mucha posters on the wall), Eastern Garden (those green steps transported you to a timeless place), Harbin Inn (great spareribs), Willouby's (which was this old bar my Dad liked that Dock's took it over and now there is pricey vegetarian place). We often went to The Library for the comfort food and the warm pumpernickel bread on the table. Sometimes we ventured to 79th street to Tony's Italian Kitchen. Growing up, I loved Berman Twins where in the basement they sold model kits of planes and rockets. We shopped at Morris Brothers on W. 98th to get our Mighty Mac coats in winter and our names sewn into our undershirts and underwear for camp in summer. I miss the Chinese laundry on the corner of W. 99th and Broadway that would wrap your items in brown paper and string. They would ring you up on an abacus. Cake Masters was a daily addiction for my mom. I miss the simple Saturday night entertainment which for me at 10 p.m. was getting the Sunday Times on W. 96th street and devouring the Arts & Leisure section. You start with the counting of  Hirschfeld's "Ninas" and then study the movie ads, then the articles.

Caitlin: Yes. Wow, I think your reminiscences are going to touch a lot of people. Did you ever go to the Metro theater? I find that old landmark to be a painful example of a changing streetscape, as it sits empty, right in the shadow of Ariel West and Ariel East whose newer storefronts are also often empty. Overall those towers left gaping holes in Bloomingdale's Broadway commerce over the last decade.
Chris: The Metro had many incarnations. I remember seeing The Towering Inferno there in the '70s. Then, they chopped the place up into a few screens and later on they returned it to its original glory and played art films. In the '80's, I saw The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover there with my girlfriend (our second movie together) who became my wife.
 
Caitlin: Thank you for looking back with me. It's always a pleasure to meet a neighbor of longstanding.  Let's end by looking forward.  What is your New Year's wish for New York City?
Chris: Shop less on Amazon. Shop more on Broadway.

Remember: December is "Spread the Blove" month.  If you enjoy these blog posts, won't you share this with a nearby friend, family member or neighbor? It's a great way to stay in touch between newsletters of the W. 102nd & 103rd Streets Block Association. So tip off a neighbor who can then receive local news directly to his or her email by just filling in an email address at the bottom of each post.

Love the Blog?  Spread the Blove!


By Caitlin Hawke

Anyone who has lived here for, say, over 10 years knows of the sea change at the retail level on Broadway.  Gone are the fabulous mini-neighborhoods of the Upper West Side.  I have recollections of typical Saturdays running around doing my local errands, dropping snow boots off to be waterproofed, buying a fillet of salmon at a fish monger like Joon's, or a lamb shank at Oppenheimer Meats, stopping in at the greengrocer on the east side of Broadway for veggies and then across the street at the Korean deli for a bunch of flowers before heading home to prepare dinner for friends.  Or a winter Sunday afternoon spent at the Metro or Olympia cinemas.  Or a lazy morning at a local coffee house like Au Petit Beurre, contentedly watching Broadway walk by while other patrons idled around playing backgammon.

Those were the days of lower commercial rents, to be sure. (They were also the days before etailers and mega-chains.) And each 10 blocks or so had a micro-economy, the backbone of which was a squaredealing Ma and Pa, business owners who knew their clientele and ran their own show.

We are quite fortunate in that there are still quite a few Mom & Pops left between W. 96th and 106th Streets on Broadway (see my P.S. below). Some are merchants of longstanding, anchoring their corners. Others are more recent arrivals.  We need them all. But each time we lose one, it hurts. I'll write more on this in the next post.

So, have you, like me, been walking up and down Broadway and other of our avenues wondering both how do those small businesses that still exist hang on, and where have all the erstwhile Moms and Pops gone to work now? The vacancies are so bad that the New York Times ran a November 19th editorial about why New York's -- and particularly the Upper West Side's -- storefronts lie dormant.

It ain't pretty.

Is there some baked-in incentive in commercial real estate to keep stores empty and subvert basic supply-and-demand tenets?  What happened to rents that fell until a tenant was found?  Has it been replaced by "hedge fund urbanism" a speculative way to keep rents high?  What is going on here?

But it's not just the empties.  Further changing our streetscape, national chains have doubled since the last survey ten years ago; these chains now occupy 40% (up from 17% in 2007) of the storefrontage along the UWS stretch of Broadway. As rents rise, the presence of national and local chains will continue to be strong -- who else can afford unregulated and artificially-inflated commercial rents? (Yes, supply-and-demand subverters, I am looking at you.)  Methinks there is a connection.

Relief might be in reach. Starting in July 2018, the threshold that triggers the Commercial Rent Tax (CRT) in Manhattan will double thanks to a brand new City Council reform.  So any business whose annual rent is below $500,000 will not have to pay CRT.  This is definitely a step in the right direction with some 2000 businesses poised to benefit from this tax relief.  But without even more protections, we might as well all help Ma and Pa pack. 

Seriously, $500,000 is the rent threshold for the CRT.  Think about what a small business would have to gross just to cover half that overhead: it's 3500 fresh juices at $6 a pop every 30 days.  Or the monthly sale of 1000 lbs. of salmon fillets.

Just. To. Pay. Rent.

I'm not saying every cobbler, juicery or fishmonger pays a quarter mil in rent each year, but many small businesses do. So we ought not be surprised when they go *poof!* when a massive rent increase hits them.  And, more importantly, we need to do our part to support them while they are still here both with our wallets and our voices.

There are a lot of bloggers chronicling disappearances, especially this one, the gold standard, by the indomitable Jeremiah Moss. I also appreciate that Mom & Pop news outlets like the West Side Rag keep us abreast.  Its founder and editor, Avi, has been bringing attention to commercial rent issues when he gets the chance, and the Rag's column "Openings & Closings" often cites rent hikes as the culprit that precipitates the death of a shuttering business. The tumbleweed storefront often follows in swift succession.



P.S. This is a big topic.  So my next post will have more on the theme of the loss of Mom & Pops, with a hat tip to Avi over at the Rag whose coverage led me to my next topic.  Also, for a future post, I am thinking celebrating the Mom & Pops on Broadway and Amsterdam from 96th to 106th and on our side streets from West End to Amsterdam.  Have a particular favorite? Send me an email and tell me why  you're a fan: [email protected].  Better yet, send me a photo of the shop's facade.  Mom & Pop's should be small owner-run, independent one-offs, i.e. not chains or franchises and no corporate backing.

Remember: December is "Spread the Blove" month.  If you enjoy these blog posts, won't you share this with a nearby friend, family member or neighbor? It's a great way to stay in touch between newsletters of the W. 102nd & 103rd Streets Block Association. So tip off a neighbor who can then receive posts directly to his or her email by just filling in an email address at the bottom of each post.

Love the blog? Spread the blove.

By Caitlin Hawke

I am going to keep it simple today.  December 8th is seared into many a New Yorkers' mind.  I got a chill looking at the front page above. The GOP was prepping a transition to the White House.  There were Russian hijinks on the international stage.  A man was shot in New York City.

John Lennon. Gunned down outside the Dakota.  If you were a New Yorker, you can't forget it. If you weren't yet a New Yorker, you know exactly where you were when you heard the news 37 years ago.  It doesn't matter. We were all New Yorkers that day.

I don't want to get too heavy. But we still need elegies in the face of senseless violence. I am reminded of a statistic I read in the paper: since the song below was written in '68 we've lost more Americans to gun violence than to the battlefields of all the wars in our history. Then again I suppose it's all in how you define "battlefield."

In remembrance of 12/8/80, I offer up an extremely rare gem: Clydie King and her husband Elston Gunn (aka Blind Boy Grunt, aka Robert Zimmerman) covering Dion's 1968 hit "Abraham, Martin and John" by Dick Holler.  A stripped down, harmonic, elegiac duet.  I mean for it to stop us all in our tracks.

On this raw day, thirty seven years late, I give you a power couple and a song I dedicate to the memory of a long lost neighbor.   

Roll on, John.


[If you are reading this post in an email subscription, to load the video you'll need to click on the photo or go directly to the blog page.]

Remember: December is "Spread the Blove" month.  If you enjoy these blog posts, won't you share this with a nearby friend, family member or neighbor? It's a great way to stay in touch between newsletters of the W. 102nd & 103rd Streets Block Association. So tip off a neighbor who can then receive local news directly to his or her email by just filling in an email address at the bottom of each post.

Love the Blog?  Spread the Blove!

By Caitlin Hawke

When the words famous and Xi'an are used in the same sentence, most people think of Emperor Qin Shi Huang's mausoleum and the awesome 2,200 year-old terracotta army that ferried this first Chinese Emperor to the big unknown.

In other words, food is not the first famous association that springs forth.  But Xi'an Famous Foods (XFF) is out to change that in NYC, taking the city by storm with a "chain-let" of nine shops.

At present, the XFF just south of W. 102nd on the west side of Broadway is the northernmost outpost of the lot.

I knew about their original store, a slice of a shop on St. Mark's Place back in the day when hipster food options weren't encroaching this far up.  Hard to believe that was 12+ years ago.  A couple of times, I dropped in for some hand-pulled and scrumptiously chewy noodles.  The ones I liked were knobbly and drenched in spicy oil, tossed with ground lamb.  The noodles were a great once-in-a-while treat, but you gotta wanna ingest all that spice, sit on a stool, and get tossed all around by the hubbub.  The thrill wore off quickly.

Then, a new XFF opened exactly four years ago on December 7, 2013, in Bloomingdale.

Gratuitously, the XFF website disparages the neighborhood it moved into claiming the stretch of Broadway was "not so happening."  And, golly, thanks to all those followers who came crawling from four corners to support them here in lil' ol' Bloomingdale.

The French have an expression for this perfect inelegance: "cracher dans la soupe" -- literally to spit in one's soup and figuratively to express contempt for something from which you derive a benefit.  The site reads like an apologia for their cost-benefit analysis that this affordable rent district (albeit deathy, deathly unhip) was cheap enough to make it worth impinging on its clientele's comfort zone and profitable enough to take the space.   I've seen trash talk of gentrifiers all over the city, and it is cringe producing.

I remember moving to Bloomingdale in the 90s after falling in love with the community and admiring the quiet stretch of Broadway only to have a friend tell me she got a nosebleed over 96th Street, or was it 86th Street. She lives near DC now -- outside the Beltway -- in altitudes that are favorable to her fragile nasal condition.

So to Xi'an, I say: embrace your community and blunt the "edgy" a little.

Whether Xi'an in fact moved north due four years ago due to the city's commercial rent climate or whether it led the nouvelle noodle vague, it has since been besieged by newcomers, many nipping at its heels for best cheap eats. Around B'dale today, if you throw a stone, you'll hit a stone hotpot.  Each new eatery on the stretch between 96th and 116th seems to have an Asian flair, an upscale price point, a chowhoundy vibe.  With Columbia reaching ever further southward, appealing to masses of undergraduates is now a must to stay alive if you are slinging fast slowfood.

But I digress.  Let's get back to why XFF has made it to the neighborhood food feature I call "Hyper-Local Eats."

Years back, I thrilled at the idea of having XFF's handmade noodles on my home turf.  We ordered in a couple of times, ate there once or twice.  All good.  Still somehow Xi'an didn't become a go-to spot.  Yet they've endured.  So today I turn the other cheek despite how bossy they can come off in their pursuit of converting us all to the pleasures of noodlehood:

After visits to Szechuan Garden and their delectable cumin lamb dish (which I should say is not the dish it was when I wrote about it), I found that its combo of heat + lamb + cumin is something I love.  And I recalled that Xi'an has another contender along the same lines. 

So I write in celebration of a very special Hyper-Local Eat: Xi'an's spicy cumin lamb burger.  A nosh under $6 that is truly, maddenly, deeply satisfying.

Caveat emptor: it is fiery.  But if you tried and liked Szechuan Garden's cumin lamb (an earlier Hyper-Local Eats feature), the Xi'an burger clocks in at approximately the same heat.

This burger is, in fact, not a patty, but it does have a bun, which I'll get to shortly. The sandwich is a hill of shaved slices of tender lamb roughly chopped into a coarse picadillo-like or sloppy joe-ish filling that is then spooned into the bread pocket.

How does it taste?  First salty. Then tangy. Then a rage of cumin and fire mix with the gamey lamb.  Melted onions and snappy jalapeños round out the chewy hash to which an accelerant of chili oil is added just to make it pop.

Not even an ice-cold Coca-Cola can tame the tongue when this hits.

Enter the bun. It sops up the spicy drippings and provides a firewall to your tastebuds.  The bread is not a bun you know.  It's a denser cousin of an English muffin whose nooks and crannies went missing or seized up. Without a hint of richness, the bun stands bravely by to foil the oil.

If you think you can tolerate this degree of hipness mixed with this degree of heat, the spicy cumin lamb burger is a fine, fine eat in the neighborhood.

Now XFF, if you would just drop the pretense and lean into the fact that this wonderful community existed before you and will continue long after you are gone, in the interim we could all live together in umami harmony.

By Caitlin Hawke

Remember: December is "Spread the Blove" month.  If you enjoy these blog posts, won't you share this with a nearby friend, family member or neighbor? It's a great way to stay in touch between newsletters of the W. 102nd & 103rd Streets Block Association. So tip off a neighbor who can then receive local news directly to his or her email by just filling in an email address at the bottom of each post.

Love the Blog?  Spread the Blove!

I should explain that I gave up holiday decorations long ago after being traumatized by my first NYC roommate. I rented a room from a woman who couldn't let go of the trimmings well into March.  It freaked me out a little.  But then I moved and was liberated by the thought that I could take the holidays on my own terms.  I know some folks feel quite strongly about these year-end festivities.  So forgive me for saying that my ideal is to revamp everything and celebrate them like the quadrennial summer and winter Olympics: Thanksgiving once every four years, and your choice of December holiday once every four years. With two years off in between for reflection and absence aplenty to make the heart grow fonder.

But one event I refuse to leave unobserved is the winter solstice.  I'll even celebrate a solstice twice a year.  Unapologetically. (Some people in my family celebrate them four times a year, but that's another story.)

The solstices are the most enduring and common observances in the whole wide family of Homo sapiens sapiens.

In stark contrast to the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade which has devolved into an unwatchable infomercial saturated with product placement, the actual solstice remains untainted by consumerism.  That, in my book, is something to sing about!

So this December 21st, on the heels of that traffic-stopping eclipse which reminded us of our puny place on the third rock from the sun, come into the streets and sing.  Come mittened. Come gloved. Come sing with your neighbors, known and unknown.  Sing on your streets!  Sing under windows and on stoops. Stand in the doorways and block up the halls. Sing out loud. Sing out strong. Sing off-key. Sing joyous or blue. Sing 2017 out.

And sing back all the light we cannot see.

Save the date and see you out there!
Thursday, December 21st at 7pm at 865 West End Avenue (W. 102nd Street).

To download a songsheet, click here.