Paul Smalera

Today my New York Press review of Meskel, a cute Ethiopian spot in the East Village, ran. If injera's your thing, if you (doro)wat some good eats, have a read. Thanks!

Imagine, if you will, that you live next door to Henry Kissinger. He waves hello in the halls. He puts mail of yours that he accidentally received back into your mailbox. But you can’t get out of your mind that you live next to Henry “War Crimes” Fucking Kissinger.

Well, that’s actually not my essay at all, but imagine you lived next to Kissinger in 1970 rather than today. And imagine he decided, one day, that you, and everyone else in the building, were the enemy. That’s a little closer, but still nothing like my essay in this week’s: New York Obsever- New Yorker’s Diary. You’re going to have to find out what it’s about for yourself. I hope you enjoy reading it.

The New York Times has been the latest to join the blast email hip–city-guide masses, with their entry Urbanite. If anyone could possibly be unfamiliar with the concept, these guides are little email compediums of the best press release flack of the day, having to do with either New York City, restaurants, shopping, drinking, clubbing, whatever. But the point is, if you subscribe to one, the information is supposed to be useful, delivered in a "my cool friend who lives downtown" sort of voice and, most of all, accurate.

This morning, I was surprised to see Urbanite say that Kampuchea Noodle Bar, the "Momofuku killer" that Grub Street, Gawker, strongbuzz and others have been covering, was set to open Wednesday, today. That's because I called a week ago and they said they would be open Thursday, tomorrow.

Errands took me by Kampuchea tonight anyway, and there was just a little sign apologizing for the confusion, and promising they would in fact be open tomorrow, but not, dear Urbanite, tonight.

The moral of the story is, everyone knows the New York Times wants to replicate Daily Candy's success and be worth a cool $20 million. Uncorrected errata do not help thy cause or stock price.

(By the fucking way, how did email lists get to be worth $20 million beans? I mean, people, it's an e-mail list. I know the big guns are involved in this round of dot-com 2.0, but still, some of the numbers are out of hand. I'm not gonna say there's going to be a correction, but this sucka's goin' down.)

But, New York Times, if you found out, during the day, as you almost certainly did, that Kampuchea would not be open tonight. The correct thing to do would be to inform your subscribers that you erred. The incorrect thing would definitely be to let your readers walk over there only to find shuttered grates and a small note apologizing for your mistakes.

Ever move somewhere and crash your moving van into a bus? No? Really? It's totally the rage. To learn about how sweet moving-van crashing can be, read my column, The Welcome Wagon in this week's edition of The New York Press. 

If so, please stop by a new website I just finished up for a very important client of mine, my girlfriend, Wendy Ploger. Her site will speak for itself. I'll just say that I'm very pleased with the results and think her pictures are wonderful. See them here: www.w-stop.com . 

So today Grub Street, New York magazine's food blog, had a cute little success story about GalleryBar's ability to score a liquor license thanks to some tricky manipulations by the landlord. Apparently the landlord evicted 13 Little Devils, a bar, but somehow retained the liquor license that 13 L.D. got from the New York State Liquor Authority.

 Problem #1: 13 Little Devils' License was subject to a complaint from Community Board 3, because the license was granted without even so much as one meeting with the board, which has to approve EVERY license application, in theory, before the state actually grants the license.

 Problem #2: The landlord kicks out 13 Little Devils and creates a new entity, 120 Orchard LLC, which retains possession of the liquor license. Huh? Again, the board should be voting on this transfer. Now the people who got the license originally have absolutely zip to do with whoever is operating with it.

Problem #3: GalleryBar rents the space from the landlord, and in some arrangement or deal, now uses the license that belongs to 120 Orchard LLC, which, in all likelihood, the actual operators of the GalleryBar NEVER applied for.

 Problem #4: The Community Board voted yes to approve license transfers and modifications to the transferred 120 Orchard LLC license, apparently ignorant of the fact that the license was ill-gotten. So any case for the license being obtained without proper oversight goes right out the window.

Look– GalleryBar sounds like a cool place. But why couldn't the license have been gotten the right way? I hate to say the "system is screwed up, man," but it sort of is. Liquor licenses are getting passed around like the town bicycle these days. And eventually the people who originally got them are just gone, and if the point of a license is regulate the type of people and business selling liquor (no crimes, no tax problems, no weird business loans), then what's the point of letting a license change hands without any sort of oversight?

How to Score a Lower Eastpacking District Liquor License - Grub Street - New York Magazine

My friend Marcos Salazar is in Sunday's Washington Post Magazine, and it seems he has a thing for textiles. Have a look: Save & Splurge - washingtonpost.com.

The other day I was whisking my own tarragon, mustard seed, lime, mango viniagrette, and as I reached for the aged champagne vinegar, I thought, "what the fuck am I doing?" It turns out David Kamp has my answer. What I, nay, what we, all of us as a country are doing, is classing it up. But why? What's wrong with Wonder Bread and Hellman's? Those are 2 of the 5 ingredients in an kick-ass BLT, the food of the gods and my choice at diners nationwide. David recently asked visitors to his blog what they thought of the title of his book. I was delighted to weigh in, and he was delighted to highlight my delightedness to weigh in. How delightful. 

Want to know what witty title prompted my witty rejoinder? Click on the link above, or buy his excellent book here. PS, David also authored The Rock Snob's Dictionary: An Essential Lexicon of Rockological Knowledge which, as a formerly aspiring Rock Snob, I love. I say formerly aspiring not because I achieved Rock Snob Nirvana (get it?) but because I just gave the hell up. I was sick of being outgunned by the emaciated nerds who run every record shop in the universe. Now I just bow down, offer alms and humor them while I plunder their superious knowledge to aid me in my shopping.

So, you're in New York City, you're walking to work, thinking, "Damnit, I am so sick of that secretary who always answers the phone in the exact same fake chipper monotonous voice, I am just gonna…", but ho, what's this on the sidewalk? A crisp new Benjamin Franklin!  

Friend, call out of work today, before you do harm to yourself or others, and heed my advice for a manifestly decent day of eating, seeing and doing. $100 A Day Winners - Gridskipper

That is all.