Posts Tagged ‘NYC’
December 5, 2010
Are you a poetry fan? Jane Rosenberg LaForge (my wife) and three other New York area writers — Lisa Marie Basile, Britt Gambino and Jim Meirose — will present a free evening of poetry and fiction this Saturday in Chelsea.
Jane is promoting her second chapbook, “Half-Life,” from Big Table Publishing. It is drawn on experiences with cancer in her family (her mother died in November 2009 and her sister in July 2010, while many of these poems were being written and revised). (I wrote last year about Jane’s first chapbook, “After Voices,” now in its second printing, about growing up with a deaf father.)
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Posted in New York, Paper & Ink | Leave a Comment »
Tags: After Voices, Books, Britt Gambino, Half-Life, Jane Rosenberg LaForge, Jim Meirose, Lisa Marie Basile, NYC, Spark Art Center
June 5, 2010
It was painful to pass so close to Stumptown at the Ace Hotel without stopping, but I was glad I did, finding myself off the lobby of another boutique hotel, the Gershwin, in a different temple to caffeine — Birch Coffee. I had been wanting to visit after noticing it on The Times’s list of the best of the new coffee cafes. It was love at first visit.
The decor gave me a warm feeling right away. True, you’re not going to find a half-dozen varieties of obscure single origin coffees from as many countries, as you would a couple of blocks away, but there are chairs and stools, something Stumptown eschews. And food. And wine. And beer. And a lending library upstairs.
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Posted in Coffee!, New York | 2 Comments »
Tags: Ace Hotel, Birch Coffee, Coffee Labs Roasters, Coffee!, computers, drinks, espresso, Flatiron, Gershwin Hotel, Guatemala, India, Monsooned Malabar, Museum of Sex, Nicaragua, NYC, NYT, Stumptown
May 29, 2010
Bad news: Now closed.
For the longest time, lovers of single-origin high-end culinary coffee in the upper Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood have had to travel downtown for beans. Even this place is a bit far from the West 50s.
Now comes B. Koffie.
The new shop drew a fair amount of attention when it opened earlier this year as the first place to offer a disposable a French-press-to-go cup.
I went to see that and try it out, but I was more interested in the selection of single-origin beans, all imported from Africa.
The beans are sold in Mason jars, the ones made by the Ball Corp., the type that my parents used to use for canning preserves, sauces and pickles.
If you return the jar for a refill, you get a discount, the barista told me.
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Posted in Coffee! | 6 Comments »
Tags: Africa, African coffee, B. Koffie, Coffee!, espresso, FAEMA E61, French press, Hell's Kitchen, Mason jar, NYC, Rwanda, XPress Cup
April 29, 2010
From time to time, I have complained that Midtown lacks any good coffee, apart from the bitter, over-roasted offerings of the many Starbucks outlets. That’s not quite fair.
There is one exception that stands out in this wasteland: Empire Coffee & Tea, on Ninth Avenue, about a block north of the Port Authority.
I wandered over there on my lunch break not too long ago, had a latte and picked up some beans for home and the office.
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Posted in Coffee! | 3 Comments »
Tags: Aeropress, Africa, Barack Obama, Coffee!, Empire Coffee & Tea, espresso, NYC
April 4, 2010
I have a new device. No, not that device. Or that one. No, this is a Nespresso Aerocinno.
I saw one at a friend’s house on a trip to Los Angeles last winter. This thing is amazing. Usually I’m content to take my espresso or coffee straight, but every once in a while I want some foam and froth.
I have managed to steam and froth milk with various steam-shooting attachments on espresso machines over the years, but it was usually a big mess, and the results were mixed.
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Tags: Apple, Blogging, Blogs, Café Grumpy, cappucino, Coffee!, computers, drinks, foam, iPad, Nespresso Aeroccino, Novo, NYC, Pandora, soy, technology
March 21, 2010
That was the first real winter we’ve had in New York City in a while, but I’m still glad to put the days of snow and winter jackets behind us. I’ve been engaged in a bit of apartment-organizing, having finally bit the bullet and paid for some storage space. There is some stuff we didn’t want underfoot but I couldn’t bring myself to throw it out. Some old computer equipment, some books, the comic collection from my misspent youth in the 1970s, my complete collection of Spy, furniture that we might put in a big summer house if we ever buy a big summer house. I fueled the weekslong effort with cups and shots of this coffee from Stumptown.
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Tags: Coffee!, drinks, espresso, NYC, Stumptown, Thumpology
February 16, 2010
A sign of a good coffee, I think, is that you can drink a full cup readily without any added dairy, soy or other coolants and flavorings. Most of the time I drink espresso, which generally works as a concentrated shot to the stomach and central nervous system, but on a crazy snowy day — we’ve had a lot of them in New York lately — I like to linger over over a regular mug made with the refurbished Jura, which is still going strong nearly two years later.
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Tags: Coffee!, computers, Coopac Cooperative, drinks, espresso, iPhone Apps, Jura-Capresso Impressa F9 Espresso Machine, NYC, Rwanda, Spa Castle
December 20, 2009
I was too busy for blogging these many weeks, but I was drinking coffee, and so my record here will have a gap. There was a roast from Verve that was quite tasty but is no longer available, and I made it through a couple of rough weeks with the delicious Peet’s Holiday Blend, which my wife carried back from Los Angeles.
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Tags: Buddha's Brain, Café Grumpy, Chronic City, Coffee!, Costa Rica, drinks, espresso, Jonathan Lethem, NYC, Peet's Coffee & Tea, Rick Hanson, snow, Twitter, Verve Coffee Roasters, zazen, zen
September 28, 2009
It is a little known fact that coffee improves your objectivity as a journalist. O.K., I’m kidding.
I don’t believe in “objectivity” and usually avoid the word. It sounds like an impossible God-like standard. Most people who use that term are setting up a straw man. I prefer terms like balance, neutrality, fairness. And conventional newspaper journalism can certainly reach conclusions, so long as they are supported by evidence, and qualified.
This just happens to be a topic on my mind and in my Twitter stream. The fairness/objectivity debate is in the air.
I work for a news organization that promises fairness and ethics. Like Buddhist enlightenment and perfection in general, they may not be attainable. The value to the reader comes from aiming for the worthy goal, without fear or favor, bias or prejudice. Even the best newspapers print corrections every day, but they still set accuracy as the standard. We don’t give up because perfect accuracy is unattainable.
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Posted in Blogging, Coffee!, Social Media | 1 Comment »
Tags: balance, Blue Batak, Café Grumpy, Coffee!, espresso, ethics, fairness, journalism, neutrality, news media, newspapers, NYC, NYT, objectivity, politics, Sumatra, Twitter, Verve Coffee Roasters
Are you a poetry fan? Jane Rosenberg LaForge (my wife) and three other New York area writers — Lisa Marie Basile, Britt Gambino and Jim Meirose — will present a free evening of poetry and fiction this Saturday in Chelsea. 
