What's up in NYC

Meghann and I are in New York City for a week doing research for my zine book. Although I was feeling a bit weary as I contemplated this trip (I've done so much traveling already this summer, and I'd like to spend a little time at home with Biffle), now that I've been here for a day, I'm energized.

Things I love about New York:

• The smell of street vendors' grills, where they heat pretzels and kabobs
• Music and dancing in the subway stations
• Street theater (tonight, two women in glittery tights and leotards started doing performance yoga in Union Square Park, and they weren't even that good!)
• The crush of humanity, so many people that it doesn't matter what you look like (or smell like). It's not quite anonymity--it's not that I feel invisible--more like it's just incredibly hard to be weird. Unshaved legs are old news in NYC.
• The food! So far I've eaten Tibetan curry, Ukranian blintzes, Indian candy, Japanese katsu, and a very fancy three-course dessert at the white restaurant featured in the pics below (called Chicken-licious. Not really, but almost.) On docket for later this week: pastrami on rye at Katz's Deli and street hot dogs. (Note: all of this amazing food is ours courtesy of the excellent restaurant scouting of Christy Burks, a high school friend who lives in New York.)
  

Christy, Joel, and I at Chika-licious.


Meghann and I were guest lectures in one of Christy's ESL classes this morning.
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The continuing saga of BUST magazine. The short version is that I've been emailing, phoning, and writing them since February trying to set up an interview with them for this week, and have gotten no response. Meg did make phone contact briefly last week, only to be told that we should email, which we did again, with no response. So today we decided to just show up at the BUST offices. Here I am, in the downstairs lobby, the ragged appearance of which led Meg to wonder if they hadn't responded to us because they're living in a war zone. One of the office interns recognized my name because she had read Catching a Wave, which was really gratifying. The editor of the magazine, however, did not appear to recognize my name or have any idea why we were there. But it does look like we might get an interview on Wednesday. If not, we are prepared to go camp out in the office.