Paul Smalera

For the last six months, after only two successful trips to the Daisy May’s cart that roams Midtown West roughly between 44th and 50th Streets, I’ve been dying for a pulled pork sandwich or some beef-tip chili, but DM pulled their carts off the street for the cold New York winter. I can understand that. Working a cart in the dead of cold must HURT, even if the cart operator has unlimited access to that chili.

But Daisy May’s, it’s MAY already. Time to either pull down this inane message about the carts not being back until spring or FESS UP, and tell us why you’re keeping us Midtown office drones pulled away from our pork. Don’t make me wait for Daisy Damned July to not have to venture to 11th Avenue for some pig. Or at least drop these guys a line so we all know what’s going on. Deal?

I’d like to briefly report something I just noticed. When I started this job in January, I went to the supply cabinet and got four pencils, four pens, and a highlighter. Through massive amounts of work in the period since then, I have yet to fully extinguish even one of my pencils. (I rotate them so they are all roughly even in length.) I even added two coveted Mirado Black Warrior Pencils, and two red copyediting pencils to the collection, but have yet to put them into the rotation. I’m waiting for a big assignment to do that.

I am a model of efficiency.

I do have a bit of a love affair with Vegas. After three days there, I get sick of it, but I invariably find myself wanting to return. So I was thrilled when I had the chance to to the back page “Room with a View” for May’s issue of Condé Nast Traveler, the Hot List issue. I wrote the blurb for an awesome picture of a suite I’ll probably never stay in: The Cherry at Red Rocks Resort. $10,000 a night, can you afford it? Room with a View: Condé Nast Traveler. (NB: This was a nice gatefold, and bylined, in the printed issue; c’est la vie.)

Also continuing in my role as Traveler’s Quizmaster General (ok, I gave myself that title), I try, this month, to teach my fellow statesiders about our neighbors to the north, eh? See if you can tell  a canuck from a poutine: Interactive Quiz: Conde Nast Traveler

Another week, another clip. Read my meandering feature on the east side of Broome Street–its history, its culture, and its future. For out of towners, Broome is one of those little streets on the Lower East Side that, while part of the whole, also looks like a microcosm of all of New York. Ok, there are alot of streets like that. But Broome is more interesting than most. Read: New York Press.

It’s true, computers are made of very bad things, and for a long time, we consumers, and we corporations, have ignored what happens to those bad things after we’re done with them. But since 2007 is the year of the Greening, it’s no longer so easy to ignore where our detritus ends up. In fact, Apple godhead Steve Jobs recently announced their initiatives in cleaning up our digital trash, strongly noting, in response to Greenpeace’s nonstop pestering, that they’ve in fact been way ahead of the pack for a number of years now. I wrote a small piece on it for Portfolio.com.