New York stories keep popping into my head and since I'm currently more interested in doing physical things than I am sitting here and banging out another long post, I've decided to just write the individual snippets as they come.
One of the places my dad used to take me and my sister was a quaint little Spanish restaurant on the west side. I asked about it, and looked it up, and eventually found it on 13th St. between 7th and 8th Ave. We always called it "the spanish restaurant" and so it was a little surprising to discover it's actually called "Spain Restaurant." Too simple, I thought.
The inside of this place is a very cozy little dining area that used to be an indoor bath, I think. It's got a high cieling with an old skylight covering it. It's also an echo chamber, due to the small size and tiled walls. It's probably most well known for its paella, which is a largish pot of shellfish and rice basically. It's delicious, and I remember this restaurant had it in spades.
Well, maybe not so much. The paella I got there last week was decent enough, but there was a little bit of a Red Lobster feel to the food. The textures were too flat and the flavors too muted for me to really rave about it. Shame, really. The place was also packed with 3 parties of barking dogs that required that I scream my conversation to Rebecca, who was eating with me. Double shame.
And they didn't take credit cards.
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All over NYC there is "st*p bush" grafitti. The star there is just a dot. It's very stylized, and it was disturbing to see how ubiquitous it was. It is on probably every block in the city at least once. Even Bud Light ads don't have that penetration. It made my resolve to find the core organizations of active liberal radicalism even stronger. Would that it would be as easy as it is for conservatism.
Posted by Matt at August 6, 2003 12:20 PMread more »