Waiting to Get There. Usually on the A/C/E in Chelsea, New York City.

  A photo of an example of a bust on a pedestal in a park.  I edited it so you can see what it would look like without the bust statue on top On the second Monday every month, there's this so-called "Pratstund" where a group of Minnesota Swedes and folks of Swedish descent have a Zoom where everyone speaks Swedish at wildly variant levels of fluency.  Somehow I got invited a year ago and I show up periodically. Meaning twice in total. The second time I made an appearance was last week. So I get on the video chat and the main Swede is talking about a BFD that recently transpired in their little town. It was front page news. It went down like this: The town had been founded by Swedish immigrants in the 1800s or whenever the Swedes were in the business of founding towns. There was one gentleman in particular who idk did a lot of founding-type work and so to honor him in the early 2000's, the town erected a bust of the guy and put it in the town square.  Five years later...

This morning at 11:30, so still the morning don't give me grief, I went down to Cafe Cluny to meet Anna. I knew I had to get there literally at 11:30 because Swedes are never, ever late. Pro tip - if you're having a party and you tell all the New Yorkers to be there at 6 because you know they'll all show up at 6:30... Tell the Swedes the party starts at 6:30 so you're not still in your underpants when they ring the bell. Cafe Cluny is kind of lovely if you can manage to get a table. The European tourists especially love it there. I made it down to the restaurant literally at eleven three zero, on the nose. My timing was impeccable although I might have jogged a little bit so as to not miss lights. Waiting on corners would have cost me a tragic minute which would not have gone unnoticed. We had a delightful brunch and Anna gave me a bag full of Swedish candy. I will admit I broke open the bag of candy on the walk home because who can walk around with Swedish candy and no...

 Graham crackers are delicious. Call this a PSA, because I forgot all about graham crackers. Only recently, some skilled advertising executive crunched all of my internet data and decided I'm the graham crackers type. And so I was reminded, multiple times, how essential the graham cracker is to a life worth living. Excellent flavor, lightly sweet, geometrically perforated.  Downside is they are not a crumb-free snack.  Graham crackers really are toothsome. This past Saturday, I attempted to cobble together the energy to walk up to the Transit Museum gift shop in Grand Central. This location of the gift shop, according to the website at least, is in fact open on weekends. Unlike the other location in FiDi, see the post from a few days ago about how we found this out the hard way. One reason I had such a nice time sitting around instead of getting my shit together and pursuing gift shopping was because, graham crackers. I'm wondering whether graham crackers have those addic...

 Wow I have had this blog a loooong time. Here's a recap of what I have been doing at the beginning of November for the past 15 years: November Blog post in 2008 :  finding shit on the street   over on 28th by the 1 train where my great grandpa had a heart attack and died. May that add cheer to your day. November Blog post in 2009 : a halloween party where everyone dressed up in costumes and it was really fun.  November Blog in 2010: going to a Lower East Side absinthe bar on Halloween that has long since closed November Blog in 2011: Swedish Club party , right after the most gigantic 11|11|11 corduroy club party that apparently I never actually wrote about, which is sad. November Blog in 2012: Pop telling stories about growing up in the Bronx November Blog in 2013: The pre-pandemic situation when I had lots of back to back meetings in Mid-Town and needed to find places to work for short stretches in between them. November Blog in 2014 : Terribly embarras...

  We had great seats for the baseball game. The third section up (300 level seats) were unexpectedly excellent. For his birthday, my pop wanted the whole fambo to go see a baseball game. I had more fun than I thought I was going to have, honestly. The weather was great, it was nice to see pop in his element and the whole experience was not nearly as exasperating and arduous as I had expected.  Don't get me wrong, the traffic in Philadelphia always sucks no matter when you go. But the stadium itself was very efficient and we got in and got out and the game was 2.5 hours, which is shorter than I remember. They have these countdown clocks now so the pitcher has like 30 seconds to pitch the ball and etc. No dicking around anymore is the bottomline and I'm there for it. We had decided to stay in center city and just kinda take the opportunity to spend the next day banging around downtown Philly, etc. I used to live there, afterall, and rarely go back... so everytime I do it's a ...

Incident #1: We went to see Home on Broadway with Casey who had gotten tickets at an exteremely affordable price. She's excellent when it comes to getting tickets at an extremely affordable price. Usually the deal involves making yourself available with correspondingly extremely short notice... like the tickets are for a show that starts in three hours. But yeah. That's why I heart living in NYC. Anyway, Tom and I go to the show. It's good! Casey goes to lots of shows and has a clear plan for how to properly commemorate the event: Casey's photos of Home on Broadway In contrast, here's the photo I took: Photo I took to commemorate the evening   Clearly one of us is better at commemorating Broadway performances we have seen.  You be the judge. Here's the main point of all this: During the curtain call, I notice that the older gentleman in the row in front of us crying real tears. He's wiping his face. And my heart went out to him because I could see how the pe...

Have you seen this thing with Flaco the Owl who escaped from the Central Park zoo going on a year ago? If you haven't you obviously don't live in New York City. At least in Manhattan, this owl has become our crowdsourced pet.  When I just wrote "crowdsourced pet" it reminded me of an embarrassing error I made once while reading a Swedish article. The article, written in Swedish, talked about a guy who crammed, what I read to be "the crowd's cat" in his pocket. I thought it was an article about animal cruelty or something. I mean, he jammed a cat in his pocket?  But when I mentioned this whole cat shenanigan to a Swedish friend of mine, I found out the hard way (ie when she laughed uproariously at me) that it was an article about a guy embezzling tax dollars. IN MY DEFENSE, the Swedish word for tax is "skatt" and the word for cat is "katt" so if you put the word for "crowd" in front, you can very easily see how you'd go f...

  Scandinavian House, Scene of the Happy Hour At 5pm yesterday, I walked up to the Scandinavian House on Park and 37th or something. I don't really understand the Scandinavian House, admittedly.  The have a security guard counting people who walk in, as well as an information booth.  They have a strange little shopping area with an array of mostly Scandinavian goods variously piled up and/or scattered about on shelves, tables and other horizontal surfaces.  They have a restaurant with a large seating area and an awkward bar that is less of a bar and more of a counter. Upstairs, they show movies, mostly on Wednesdays. I think there's a piano because sometimes I get notices saying someone is there playing the piano. They also occasionally show works of art or like, historical objects such as carved whale bones. idk. Maybe this is the whole point, it's a Scandinavian House filled with Assorted and Random Things Scandinavian.  Anyway, last night there was a Happy Ho...

 This whole thing started maybe last year. I joined a Facebook group for Swedish women in NYC. Agreed for sure that my whole application to join (ie "Answer these three questions") was semi-disingenuous since I'm not actually Swedish and I did omit this probably important bit of information. Also, I enlisted a legit native-born Swede to double check my grammar and spelling before I hit submit. But anyhoo, they let me in. Fast forward however long between my visits to Facebook, and I saw a post someone named Anna had put up there asking if anyone was up to meet for a coffee in Chelsea. The post was several days old and no one had replied. Of course no one had replied.  Swedes in general don't just go gallivanting off and have coffee with strangers. They like the idea of socializing, but really have no interest in meeting anyone. Lucky for Anna, Americans such as myself are totally cool with this whole meeting up with strangers thing, and so, a few hours later, I met h...

  birthday parties in bars Don't get. me wrong, I love a birthday party in a bar. You cruise in when you want, you leave when you want, you order what you want. It's very accommodating to guest peccadilloes and god knows I have a few.  Now, before anyone from out of town wonders how expensive it is for the host/hostess to arrange their birthday party in a bar, please do understand this is no open bar situation. It's a "celebrate a birthday at a bar where everyone has their own tab" situation. This is perfectly acceptable in New York City where we make our own damn rules of etiquette.  Speaking of rules of our own damn rules of etiquette, I was talking to Helen yesterday about how she will not be attending a Bar Mitzvah she was invited to due to a conflict. She asked someone who lives in Maryland how much $$ she should send as her gift to the birthday boy along with her regrets. The Maryland person said to send "something like maybe $36." Helen asked some...

 Here's the deal - the Swedes are really into moonshine. They're all down in their basements the whole long winter tinkering around with their witches' brews -- which they will unleash on guests and I can tell you from personal experience. You must drink the concoction. It is super rude to refuse.  It's all very complicated the whole what-do-you-call the-moonshine. The most known example is Aquavit but Aquavit is moonshine flavored with caraway or dill as the "dominant flavor." Then there is "brännvin." Best I can gather, if the spices are not caraway or dill, then it's not Aquavit, it's brännvin. Which brings us to snaps. Not schnapps, that's a whole other conversation, we're talking snaps. I'm pretty sure snaps can either be Aquavit or Brännvin. It's any varietal along these lines with one distinguishing feature-- it is potent enough that it must be served in very small glasses.  This is my understanding.  Which may be hilar...

  There are 100 pictures just like this in the dusty and slightly damp photo album I just found in the basement from when I was an exchange student in Stockholm.  I spent a lot of time in clubs that year surrounded by fantastic amounts of very stiff Swedish hair.  I scanned the whole photo album and sent the scanned pages to some of the individuals pictured. Then I spent half the day pretending I remembered way more than I actually do about the events depicted. For example, Annika texted, “OMG! That was Eva’s birthday party. She's not in any of the photos because she got really drunk and spent half the night throwing up in the bathroom!” Umm yeah, haha. So funny…, Not sure if it speaks more to the sad state of my memory, or, the metric ass ton of nights I was out at a club with Milla until 4am, thus rendering any and all individual goings-on fairly indistinguishable.  I remember Swedes passed out drunk on tables, like a lot. Some tall skinny blond kid lying on a tabl...

We kicked off the evening over at the Norwegian Seamen's Church. Right now, it's their holiday fair . In case you are wondering what's on offer at the jule marknad, it's mainly knit goods, candy and Christmas trolls made out of organic materials such as reeds and sheep pelts. We bought dish cloths because I love this kind of dish cloth. They're Swedish of course but none of the Norwegians seemed perturbed by this thematic inconsistency. Or cultural approbation if you want to go over the top. Bente pointed out a sweater similar to one that her mother had knitted her. It had trim that was red with some designs woven into it. It's not a Christmas sweater. It's a regular old sweater in Norway. I don't tell Bente, but it does have a little bit of Christmas flair. And it's being sold at a Christmas market, so there's also that. Bente wore this sweater to work one time mid-February and someone from Long Island told her it was a nice Christmas sweater.  ...

Eric the Vampire speaking his native tongue Color me surprised that one time watching True Blood when Eric the Vampire and Godric the Vampire launched into a conversation speaking their native Vampire language. As I read the subtitles, it occurred to me that I didn't need to read the subtitles. Because I could understand them. Eric the Vampire was speaking Swedish, which in that moment I understood to be the Language of the Vampires. Godric, a super old vampire, said his lines with a godawful American accent, but sure. We can overlook this minor detail.  I was convinced that Swedish was the secret language of Vampires until the scene where come to find out Eric was once a Viking and Godric originally met him while doing something that involved sprinting about shirtless in Scandinavia in the winter. So apparently they speak Swedish with each other during heartfelt moments and/or when Godric is about ready to engulf himself in flames. So anyway, then I had to change my LinkedIn profi...

  Happy Tom with his Birthday Cake You know they're good friends when somehow the conversation takes a left turn from "Ghost in a Shell " to "Ghost in the Mouth" and everybody just goes with it. We were up in Hudson at Helen and Matt's along with Wanda and Derek. "Ghost in a Shell" if you aren't familiar, was originally a manga series that became a Major Hollywood Production starring Scarlett Johansson. The Ghost in a Shell means basically a cyborg with a tiny bit of human left in the brain. "Ghost in the Mouth," as per the committee around Helen and Matt's table, is when you get a tooth implant with a bone graft. The "bone" in "bone graft," should you not be up on such things, refers to the bones of dead people.  That's right.  When you get a bone graft they grind up the bones of cadavers into powder and stuff it in your jaw. Sorry for making you choke on your coffee if you didn't know that already. I ...

This whole adventure went down in ancient history. Way before 9/11 and cell phones.... The tunnelbana, aka Subway, in Stockholm Maybe a week before I was supposed to fly home after living in Stockholm for over a year, gypsies stole my passport. I was riding in the tunnelbana, aka the subway, and my handbag was on the floor in between my ankles. As the subway pulled into a stop, I saw a really little kid dash out the door. Turns out, the bastard had my wallet in his hot little hands. The gypsies trained their kids to crawl underneath the subway seats and take people's wallets out of their handbags. I wish someone had mentioned this slightly earlier. My passport was in my wallet. Furthermore, I had no other identification except for a chewed up college ID. I was concerned about my chances of success if I attempted to use it to board a plane. I say this not just because it's unlikely that college IDs pass muster for international flights, but also because the photo on the ID was t...

When I was out power walking down the east-side esplanade with Alex like an OG, he told me he was learning Irish. He called it Irish, not Gaelic. I forget why the term "Gaelic" is currently a no go. I asked Alex why he was learning Irish. He currently speaks German, English and Norwegian. Irish seemed like an unlikely candidate for a fourth language in all cases. But especially in this case since his girlfriend is Columbian from Columbia. Alex had his reasons. Which basically all amounted to he just wanted to learn Irish. Alex asked me if I was going to learn another language, which one would I choose. I had to think on that. Even without a Columbian girlfriend, Spanish seems to bubble up as the sensible option. But then again ... I have been reading these poems by a Sulfi poet named Hafez who lived in Iran in the 1300s. Many people I have encountered on the Interwebs complain early and often about the translation of these poems. They say that the translator of the...

...you get spam in two languages.  My email is a veritable fiesta platter of irresistible offers pouring in from all across the globe. How heartwarming to be loved by parties near and far -- who are clearly exceptional at tracking my whereabouts online and/or offline. So kind of them to offer, but obviously I have no need for a home alarm with so many concerned citizens all over the world privy to my goings on.

We were walking up Allen Street in the LES, Wanda, Derek, Tom and I. Suddenly (cue symphonic audio clip) I spied Bon Bon , the Swedish candy store. The thing with Bon Bon is that I don't actually know where it is. I just go in every time I walk by. It is difficult to resist the allure of salted licorice. Seriously. So we enter the establishment. There's one definite thing I like about Bon Bon compared to its arch rival candy shop Sockerbit in the Village: Actual Swedes work at Bon Bon.  Meanwhile, Sockerbit is staffed by what appears to be an endless stream of college kids from like Cleveland. It's cognitive dissonance to the max and kind of a let down. I like to order my Swedish candy in Swedish. It's weird to know more about the candy on offer than the cashier. Like how to pronounce it. Anyway, when we go in, fantastic news. A Swede is behind the counter at Bon Bon. He's like 23 with all the vestments of a hipster. He immediately starts messing...

Last week, I was in Stockholm for a grand total of 3.5 days for my class reunion. Sara had suggested I stay my first night at the Radisson Blu, which she said was right where I'd get off the ArlandaExpress terminal in the central Stockholm train station (T-Centralen) and therefore super convenient.  But when I got off the ArlandaExpress train, which was high speed, quiet and clean -- everything New York trains can't seem to manage in their wildest dreams -- when I got off the train and looked at Google Maps, the Radisson Blu seemed kind of distant. Seemed like I need to walk down the main drag and then go around the bottom of the station or something. I set off.  And fifteen minutes later, had walked in a giant circle ending up about 20 feet from where I was before, right out front the Radisson Blu. I'm going to blame it on jet lag. The Radisson Blu was basically in T-Centralen.   I went up to my room, dropped off my suitcase and headed back down to T-Ce...