vip in the city

Snow day

The first major snowstorm of the season hit New York City today, forcing the cancellation of over 1,100 flights, including that of our friends SC and JG. (Weekend in Boca!) By 2PM, 5.6 inches of snow had accumulated in Central Park, the city’s biggest snowfall in two years; until that Friday, just 5.7 inches in total had fallen all winter, due in large part to the snowless stretch in January.

The Parks Department held a “Snow Day,” providing free sleds and Urban Park Ranger-led nature walks at selected park locations across the city. Almost 2,000 people participated in the event, in which 1,700 free cups of hot chocolate were served.

As adults, we don’t get many snow days. I put on my Doc Martens boots and trudged into the office.

Later that night, I met CS at the Laugh Lounge on Essex for the “L.E.S. is Indulgence” party, organized by The Lower East Side Business Improvement District. The organization, established in 1992, is dedicated to revitalizing Orchard Street’s historic shopping district.

No hot chocolate here; the beverages were of a decidedly more adult nature. Event sponsor, Zygo, promotes their signature liquor as “caffeine-spiked vodka.” Hmm, sounds familiar. More precisely, though, Zygo’s active ingredients are Yerba Maté (South American holly, used for tea), Guarana (South American berry, containing a substance chemically similar to caffeine), D-Ribose (naturally occurring sugar that is a component of RNA) and Tuarine (amino acid, best known as the stuff that gives Red Bull its wings.) If you’re looking for more flavor than kick, there are plenty of places around the city that offer infused vodka. Spirited hot chocolate, anyone?

We toured the tables set up by participants from the neighborhood: handmade truffles and caramelized butter toffee samples from Roni-Sue Chocolates, slick polish from Valley Nails, makeovers by MakeUpMania, and um, tips from Babeland…

Candy and vodka do not a meal make, so off we went in search of more substantial fare. Near hour waits at ‘inoteca and Schiller’s Liquor Bar just wouldn’t do. Luckily, there was Essex — at the top of our minds since SC’s birthday brunch — where we enjoyed a comforting repast of mac n’ cheese and potato latkes… just the thing for a snowy day.

Tags: Essex, Financial District, LES, snow, Trinity Church

John Oliver @ Symphony Space

After a light dinner at the not-so-divey Dive Bar on W. 96th Street — hey, I wasn’t about to cross the picket lines at Saigon Grill — we headed over to Peter Norton Symphony Space for the taping of John Oliver’s upcoming Comedy Central special (scheduled to air on April 20).

We both knew the drill and made sure to arrive early, queuing up for our spots in the cold outside the theatre. And it was a biting, bitter cold, too: the type that chills to the bone, and against which no amount of Starbucks skim chai latte could insulate us. By the time were given the go ahead to file inside, I was in serious need of some warming laughter.

Oliver rose to the occasion brilliantly, delivering the kind of sharp, smirking political commentary — offered in dry British tones, “with more authority than you’re used to hearing” — that makes him such a popular correspondent on The Daily Show. He proved a remarkably good sport, too: about fifteen minutes in, the AV crew lost power to the video screen on stage, requiring Oliver to backtrack and run through a rather lengthy segment of his act several times — with the exact same jokes and “spontaneous” inflection. No doubt a nightmarish scenario for any comedian, but Oliver’s chucklingly rueful gamesmanship earned him an enthusiastic round of applause at the end.

Giving full credit (or blame) to the “10-year old Indonesian boy” to whom he had outsourced his joke-writing, Oliver covered topics ranging from colonialism, how Americans view the rest of the world, the school track incident that led him to pursue a career in comedy over sports, his teary-eyed Pavlovian response to all images backed by cheesy 80s power ballads (looking at you, Divine Miss M) and, with fellow comedian Andy Zaltzman, offered a brilliantly loopy argument on how the erosion of civil freedoms is a valid homeland security strategy, as it eliminates the very thing which the terrorists find most hateful about our country, thereby making us less appealing a target.

Also, some trenchant observations about American culture, as epitomized by the existence of a market for the inflatable floating grill — a barbecuing device used for cooking inside a swimming pool. Oliver cited the ludicrousness of such an invention as definitive proof that in terms of the sheer force of consumerism, America has no peer. Take that, China!

The roots of conspicuous consumption may be traced to post-World War II-era prosperity. We — as Americans, and particularly as New Yorkers — live in a culture driven by “stuff,” where so much of our lives revolves around the acquisition of material things as markers of a certain type of success. I found this recent New York magazine piece particularly resonant: “The Upside of the Downside — Why the Recession May Restore the City We Moved Here For.”

Despite being aware of “how loaded we are, comparatively speaking, and not just loaded in that abstract compared-with-the-developing-world way… loaded compared with most of the people in this city,” I too feel the “psychic effect of living in a place that is so in thrall to money, so dominated by the monoculture of luxury that even if you’re not on the front lines, working for a hedge fund or whatever, the values encroach on your life.”

I don’t know. Maybe that MacBook Air commercial is just getting to me.

Tags: comedy, John Oliver, Symphony Space, UWS

Hot chocolate weather

The City Bakery, which opened on West 18th Street in 1990 and entered the pop culture pantheon with the Season 5 “Critical Condition” episode of “Sex and the City,” has been credited with introducing the city’s first designer hot chocolate. The über-rich, molten concoction — available by the cup ($4.50) or the shot ($2)… add another 50¢ for a homemade marshmallow — is made from a combination of milk, cream, and mostly European melted bar chocolate. No powdered cocoa here: it’s the drink that eats like a meal. The gourmet recipe has been named consistently among the city’s best — earning “four stars” from New York magazine and a mention in the recent New York Times piece on the city’s hot chocolate fetish.

During the entire month of February, as it had for the past 16 years, City Bakery held its own Hot Chocolate Festival, with a different flavored hot chocolate offered daily, in addition to the bakery’s signature blend.

Today’s flavor was “Darkest Dark Hot Chocolate.” Other offerings have ranged from the standard to the intriguing/pause-inducing, including Caramel, Cinnamon, Vanilla Bean, Ginger, Mango Tea, Banana Peel, Tropical, Lemon Licorice and Beer. There’s also a Chili Pepper — though for that flavor combination I like the new-to-my-neighborhood Jacques Torres’ “Wicked” hot chocolate, spiced with allspice, cinnamon, and ground ancho and chipotle chili peppers.

Then on to Aspen on 22nd Street for the Grand Marnier Après-Ski event.

I couldn’t have envisioned a more apropos venue than this Flatiron district restaurant-lounge cum retro ski lodge. Snowy forest photomurals — check! Lucite deer heads and white porcelain antlers mounted on wood paneling — double check! Central fire pit — you know it! Sexy snow bunnies wandered among the guests as a fake snow/foam machine whirred in the corner. I noticed bison sliders being passed around on trays, but in the spirit of après-ski, I made my way to the back bar where steaming cups of Grand Marnier-spiked hot chocolate were being ladled out.

As the boozy warmth spread through me, I wondered how well Aspen’s winter wonderland theme works the rest of the year.

Tags: Aspen, City Bakery, Grand Marnier, hot chocolate, ski