Thought for Food

Blood Splatter Mural on the Roof of the Met (via nevver)

Huh.

“I’ll never forget the day Marilyn and I were walking around New York City, just having a stroll on a nice day. She loved New York because no one bothered her there like they did in Hollywood, she could put on her plain-jane clothes and no one would notice her. She loved that. So as we we’re walking down Broadway, she turns to me and says ‘Do you want to see me become her?’ I didn’t know what she meant but I just said ‘Yes’- and then I saw it. I don’t know how to explain what she did because it was so very subtle, but she turned something on within herself that was almost like magic. And suddenly cars were slowing and people were turning their heads and stopping to stare. They were recognizing that this was Marilyn Monroe as if she pulled off a mask or something, even though a second ago nobody noticed her. I had never seen anything like it before.”

- Amy Greene, wife of Marilyn’s personal photographer Milton Greene (via beautilation, mandarinorientalnewyork)

Is Avenues the Best Education Money Can Buy?

My mom sent this to me and let me tell you, this scared me more about raising kids in New York than anything I’ve ever heard or read. And M. IS a Dalton legacy! (And for the record: public school and proud of it. Though my parents always made sure to get me into the ‘good’ public schools — first Spanish Immersion, then the state arts school.)

First, a bit of background. Avenues is a new, for-profit private school catering to:

entrepreneurs and tech millionaires, talent agents and fashion designers, Katie Holmes, hedge-fund managers and artists who refuse to live above 23rd Street.

(Yes, Suri goes there.)

It’s the kind of place with a Chuck Close self-portrait on the wall and endless parent meetings about feeding the kids too much bread. All this can be yours for $43,000 a year. That is, if your kid can get in. Admission is somewhat easier than the old-school private schools but only somewhat (good god, how many zillionaires can one city hold??).

…but for many among a new generation of wealthy New York parents without legacy roots at Horace Mann or Brearley, Avenues, without any legacy of its own, was a welcome option. Trinity accepted only 3.6 percent of nonlegacy, nonsibling kindergarten applicants for entry this fall. (By comparison, freshman acceptance into Harvard was 5.8 percent.) Jacquie Hemmerdinger, from the A.P.A., recalls trying to get her 4-year old twin daughters into Dalton for kindergarten. When they went to the parent interview, the admissions director, Elisabeth (Babby) Krents, held up the essay Hemmerdinger had written about her girls, covered in red ink. Who wrote this? Krents asked. “I got all hot and sweaty,” Hemmerdinger says. “I thought it was a bunch of typos.” Krents then told her that it was the best essay she had read that admissions season. (“I teared up,” Hemmerdinger remembers.) Her girls scored well on the kindergarten entrance exam, and Krents told her that they also fit the school’s need for diversity. She and her husband, a real estate developer, lived in a sprawling Georgian revival house on a tree-lined street that happens to be in Queens. Either way, they never got into Dalton. Avenues was happy to take them.

The thing that makes me laugh the most about that is that just living in Queens is considered diverse.

“A place belongs forever to whoever claims it hardest, remembers it most obsessively, wrenches it from itself, shapes it, renders it, loves it so radically that he remakes it in his own image.”

—Joan Didion 

(via kateoplis, thegooglymoogly)

Hey remember when M. and I used to do cocktail events? We’re doing ‘em again! If you’ll be in town over Memorial Day weekend, come join us on Saturday afternoon for kelp cocktails (kelp courtesy of our friend Bren) and snacks by Chef Dave of Louro and the supper club Um Segredo.

And if you can’t join us this time but want to stay in the loop on future events or private consulting/classes/events, please use our contact form here. Cheers!

evoenyc:

We’re delighted to announce that on Saturday, May 25th, we’re holding an Evoe cocktail event — the first in more than two years. Inspired by a trip to Brendan Smith’s innovative oyster and kelp farm, the Thimble Island Oyster Company, we’re featuring kelp-infused spirits in a variety of cocktails.

We’re calling it (what else?) “Drink Like A Fish.”

Now, we know what you’re thinking….

Kelp cocktails? Really…?

Really!

Kelp and seaweed-infused spirits add appealing umami-rich flavors to both sweet and savory cocktails . They’re especially fantastic with aquavit and carrot juice or mescal and sherry — all of which you’ll get to try.

Since we like to offer a bit of education with our aperitifs, we’ll discuss the principles of incorporating unusual ingredients in your cocktail repertoire, so that next time you find some interesting new liqueur on your travels you’ll be able to mix it fearlessly with the spirits you already have in your home bar.

As for Brendan, he’s a rock star of the local and sustainable seafood movement — if don’t believe us, check out The Wall Street Journal and Lucky Peach — and he’ll tell us about his unique “3D” approach to ocean farming and why we should all be eating more kelp, in cocktails and beyond.

Finally, Chef Dave Santos of the acclaimed West Village restaurant Louro will create an inspired menu of kelp and seaweed snacks.

The details:

• You must RSVP and space is limited, so please email us at info@evoenyc.com if you’d like to join us.
• Price: $45. Includes a variety of kelp and seaweed cocktails by Mayur and snacks by Chef Dave.
• Location: Louro, 142 West 10th Street, West Village.
• Date & time: Saturday, May 25th, 2-4 pm (note: this is Memorial Day weekend).
  

Please note! We’re offering cocktail consulting services for both the professional and private client; please see our new website for more information.

Broad­way: 1000 Steps

Mary Miss is an artist whose work seeks new means of engag­ing the pub­lic in the world around us. In the course of her career she has expanded from tem­po­rary site instal­la­tions to larger scale trans­for­ma­tions of infra­struc­ture. She’s cur­rently work­ing on an ambi­tious project for New York City called “Broad­way: 1000 Steps,” that will explain New York’s new green ini­tia­tives — many of them part of PlaNYC –at mul­ti­ple sites along Broad­way. The goal is to make New York’s for­ward progress even more tan­gi­ble to citizens.

Mary Miss explains:

I thought if artists, over a period of time, could incre­men­tally work on this cor­ri­dor, peo­ple could begin to see the city not just as the home of Wall Street, not just a 19th or 20th cen­tury place, but really a city that’s look­ing to the future. I also thought it would really be an inter­est­ing way to get the ini­tia­tives of the city’s PlaNYC down at the street level so that peo­ple could have access and begin to under­stand issues that were being talked about between city depart­ments. How do you get the sup­port of citizens?

As I understand it, we will soon be seeing installations along Broadway that highlight the unseen or unnoticed efforts toward sustainability that are right under our feet or above our heads — the green roofs, the LEED buildings, composting, urban farming (or potential places for urban farming). Keep your eyes peeled….

meredithbklyn:

poster from the real Electric Circus, which Joan visited in last week’s Mad Men

Think about it.

datanews:

WNYC’s Data News Team mined the city’s dog license database to map, list and make a game out of the Dogs of NYC.

Also, hot new dog-naming trend alert: downtown streets.

In my short life as a dog owner, I have already met two Mercers and two Bowerys.

(via meredithbklyn)