Party Mix

I am rarely lucky. Okay, I'm NEVER lucky. So when I open up a bag of Party Mix and find only one pretzel, I know the thrill will be quickly followed by a grand piano falling outta the sky onto my head. - XMASTIME

Utz' are the best of the party mix chips, if only because the other versions are mostly fucking pretzels.- XMASTIME

"You can survive your Office Crush seeing you walking around with one bag of Party Mix, but for god's sake boy, don't let her see you with TWO of them."- XMASTIME

THIS ARTICLE about Party Mix is making me mad nostalgic for my old Brooklyn neighborhood, particularly this sentence:

I’ve lived in the same New York City apartment for over 15 years, which means I have made [consults abacus] somewhere in the neighborhood of 400 billion trips to my corner bodega. Jorge’s Deli is practically an extension of my home. Everyone there calls me “boss,” except the one dude who calls me “big guy.” I call everyone “my friend.” They know they’ll keep the change, but they still offer it anyway.

That's exactly how things were at the bodega around the corner from 100 Metro was for my 14 1/2 years there. You'd get a bacon, egg & cheese on a roll, peruse the chips rack and settle on Party Mix for the variety, grab a Daily News and then spend the next 15 minutes cursing at the heavens over the amount of fucking pretzels in the goddam Party Mix bag. 

Here's the bodega I must've visited over 2,500 times from 1998-2012.

I'm not an "only in New York, people, only in new York!" guy, but it's hard to describe to people just how much your nearby bodega is a art of your everyday life there. Yes, even if they sometimes fuck up your sandwich.

Anyhoo, here's my old gang, we used to rob bodegas. I miss these guys!

Headline du Jour

When I first moved to New York, one of the things I loved were the outrageously clever headlines that were on the back of the Daily News; I always wished I could be the guy whose sole job it was to come up with them. A favorite I still remember was the Chuck Knoblauch bonehead play in the 1998 World Series. - XMASTIME

Ah, NYC. You still got it! I mean, the Giants getting some attention? !?!?!! hahahahaahaa!!!!!!!

Dream Jobs

When I first moved to New York, one of the things I loved were the outrageiously clever headlines that were on the back of the Daily News; I always wished I could be the guy whose sole job it was to come up with them. A favorite I still remember was the Chuck Knoblauch bonehead play in the 1998 World Series.


Nowadays, I'm falling in love with the guy who gets to put together the Drudge Report main headline, which right now looks like this:



How awesome is that? "okay, what's the headline?...ooooooh, I have the perfect picture...TIM GEITHNER'S EYES!!!!!" You can almost picture dude hitting "POST" and then rolling back in his chair and pointing to his buddy across the room with two words: "NAILED it!" It could only be better if they had a 360-degree camera, and we could roll over to see that he is in fact staring down a collection of small banks, cowering in the corner. "We hafta go to the bathroom! Can we go to the restroom please??!??"

I'm loving it.

BROOKLYN @ 25

[XMASTIME NOTE] I moved to Brooklyn 25 years ago this past January; throughout the year I'll be noting things, no matter how small they are in reality, that I remember & associate with those first few days/weeks/months of living in the greatest city in the world.

Linda McCartney died 25 years ago today. I'm not gonna pretend I really knew a ton about her other than her being Paul McCartneys wife (and the unfortunate target of assholes like Howard Stern making fun of her singing as a member of Wings), but even then we all knew how crazy it was that their marriage lasted almost 30 years, and surely would have gone another 25+ if she'd lived. She married the world's most eligible bachelor when he was only 27, and according to Paul they spent exactly one night apart (the only thing that kept them apart was apparently a prison in Japan). And those of us who loved him so much also noted with a grimace that she died of the same disease as his mother did when he was only 14. 

I have a picture in my head (where else would it be) of being in a restaurant/cafe thingee reading about her death in my beloved Daily News, but I can't for the life of me remember which place I was at. Ah well. And of course now all I can think of is how crazy it is that she was only 57 when she died. I'm sure at the time I thought she was about 100 years old, but I guess any of us lucky enough to keep going in this life know how that feels. 

On January 1, 1998 my buddy Ryan and I packed ourselves into my Jeep Cherokee along with everything I owned in the whole world (which consisted solely of hundreds of books and multiple copies of every Ramones record) and drove three hundred and eleven miles from Tappahannock, Virginia to Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where, after Ryan drove my Jeep back to Virginia, I'd begin a new life that would stretch over the next fifteen years. I still miss it every day. 

My Heart is the Bodega in the Street

I hate when people say "only in New York kids, only in New York!!" but I feel like the corner bodega experience really IS unique to New Yorkers. The day I moved to Brooklyn was the first time I'd heard the word, and my first memories of my first one one are of me flyin' & Rrthur (YES, ladies, THAT Rrthur!) and Mrs. Rrthur buyin' another 6-pack of Budweiser tallboys; within a week I felt I'd had at least a "good to see you again, friend!" nodding relationship with the Koren owners.

From an article a few years back:

I’ve lived in the same New York City apartment for over 15 years, which means I have made [consults abacus] somewhere in the neighborhood of 400 billion trips to my corner bodega. Jorge’s Deli is practically an extension of my home. Everyone there calls me “boss,” except the one dude who calls me “big guy.” I call everyone “my friend.” They know they’ll keep the change, but they still offer it anyway.

That's exactly how things were at the bodega around the corner from 100 Metro was for my 14 1/2 years there. I'd get a bacon, egg & cheese on a roll, peruse the chips rack and settle on Party Mix for the variety, grab a Daily News and then spend the next 15 minutes cursing at the heavens over the amount of fucking pretzels in the goddam Party Mix bag. 

Here's the bodega on Grand & Berry (right across the street from Kam Sing - magic corner!) I must've visited over 2,500 times from 1998-2012.

Here's my old gang, we used to rob bodegas. I miss this crew! 🤣

(l-r: me, Poochie, Diggity-Dawg,
Bubble Up, Tutti, Frutti)

Shit I almost forgot the entire reason I started yammering about bodegas - there's a short film coming out about "bodega relationships: 

A new short film that debuts Tuesday tells the stories of relationships that develop inside New York City bodegas.

“Gut Punch” follows a New York City resident, named Dan, who is looking to buy probiotics at a local bodega. From there, the movie explores friendships created at these neighborhood hubs.

Enjoy! And you're welcome, Earf!

What I MIss About NYC

When I first moved to New York, one of the things I loved were the outrageously clever headlines that were on the back of the Daily News; I always wished I could be the guy whose sole job it was to come up with them. A favorite I still remember was the Chuck Knoblauch bonehead play in the 1998 World Series. - XMASTIME

Sigh.

 

Things I MIss About NYC

When I first moved to New York, one of the things I loved were the outrageously clever headlines that were on the back of the Daily News; I always wished I could be the guy whose sole job it was to come up with them. A favorite I still remember was the Chuck Knoblauch bonehead play in the 1998 World Series. - XMASTIME

Now this one's a double-dip!