New Year's Resolutions

My friend told me the other day that our friend impressed him with his New Year's Resolution for 2009: he's resolved not to change anything. This comment stayed with me as I set out for my early January escapade to New York City last week. My intention with this trip was to eat my way through the city with great friends, laugh wholeheartedly and often, and remind myself why I choose to live in Cambridge and not there.

I'm happy to report that I was successful on all three fronts. The trip started off with a bit of a shaky start as I had neglected to remember that my car was covered in a sheet of ice from the bitter storm we'd received last week in New England. Once free of the shackles of arctic debris, I popped into my local Brazilian bakery and picked up some coxinhas for myself and my riding companions. They are so wonderfully anti-Atkins, and for the trip we had planned, we were going to need to lubricate our livers with as much grease and caffeine as our stomachs could handle.

I proceeded to pick up two of my favorite people: Danny Giddings and Rogerio Rocha, my buddy/bartender extraordinaire and my Brazilian buttercup/star server/hair dresser/DJ/confidant respectively. Our home base in New York was the recently converted Williamsburg warehouse apartment of our friend, Lindsay, a former star server at our restaurant who is now dead to me because she is no longer my employee. Kidding aside, the combustible nature of this foursome was palpable.

After a Zoolander-esque car ride filled with giggles, Rick Astley, WHAM!, harassing cell phone calls to Lindsay of impending doom, and a memorable pitstop at a closed gas station in Connecticut where two toothless truck drivers in Carhardts were met with Roger's frosted tips and propensity for belting Mariah Carey tunes, we arrived in Brooklyn. This is where New York started to intrique me. Our first stop was a lovely little bistro called Cornichon where the owners clearly have not been made aware of the recent economic crisis. Their wine list was short and sweet and nearly at cost. Their portioning for food was extreme. A chartuterie and cheese plate with three meat mountains, five hunks of cheese, a vat of duck liver pate, and all the cornichons you can eat for $18 was enough to keep up there well longer than we'd anticipated. I felt like we were cheating them, but then when the bartender started asking us to explain to her what she had served us I felt validated in our gluttony. We were given too much food and to compensate for the overage we educated the bartender.

Following our appetizer spree, we moved directly across the street to an aptly named dive called Trash Bar. On a rare chance that I am able to indulge in what they call a vacation, I have a tendancy to be very interested in the moment but my concept of time is completely lost. That said, it hadn't stuck me that it was a Sunday until promptly upon entering Trash Bar we were met with a feisty bartender who told us not to waste our money at the jukebox because "church is going on inside." Apparently, the owners of Trash Bar have figured out, rather ingeniously, a "marriage" as it were with a local sect of beer-swilling Christians who pay good money to rent out the stage space in the back of the bar every Sunday to hold their church service. There is a full service bar with a bartender devoted [sic] to the congregation who keeps them with a steady supply of heavenly tator tots (the signature freebie "tapa" of Trash Bar).

At this point, we had been in New York for about three hours and hadn't even touched foot in Manhattan. Already, however, I was starting to see the genious that is New York. It hasn't changed anything but it's changed everything at the same time. New York is its own product. Its marketing strategy is stunningly simple: let the consumer decide. Then, show up and collect. New York for me is a Tom Waits song. One that jumps to mind is "Step Right Up."

"We need your business, we're going out of business
We'll give you the business
Get on the business end of our going-out-of-business sale
Receive our free brochure, free brochure
Read the easy-to-follow assembly instructions, batteries not included
Send before midnight tomorrow, terms available,
Step right up, step right up, step right up
You got it buddy: the large print giveth, and the small print taketh away
Step right up, you can step right up, you can step right up
C'mon step right up"

And we are thrilled to step right up. I know I am. But only from time to time. Cambridge is a different kind of Tom Waits song. It's more of a blanket. This city, in terms of its hospitality at least, has everything on offer in a very transparent way, dissimilar to New York where an earned hospitality exists I feel. There's a great little snippet from Waits' "Nighthawks at the Diner" album where he talks about calling himself up and taking himself out, mostly because he knows he's always around and available. That is exactly the way I feel in Cambridge. I can call myself any night of the week and find myself happy against any backdrop. There is a welcome mat at the stoop of every restaurant, bar, museum, and home that I wander into.

Maybe I should lay off the Tom Waits for a little bit, but if there's one thing I learned on my trip to New York it is to be unabashedlysentimental about the place you call home.