New York Is Dead

Coming back to NY is always nostalgic, but as the city continues to get more expensive, and only cater to the wealthy, more and more of old NY disappears. In once affordable, interesting, artsy neighborhoods like Soho, Greenwich Village and The East Village the assortment of artists and countercultural misfits have been replaced with hipster yuppies that dress like Weezer and the teacup poodle set.

Great places like 99X (where I bought my first pair of Doc Martens), The New Music Distribution Service, and Rocks In Your Head already closed over a decade ago, but each time we return to NY the list of iconic NYC places that are still open gets shorter. Religious Sex already closed a few years ago, as did Second Coming Records (where I bought about 40-50% of my entire 80s and early 90s record collection). Accidental CDs Records and Tapes is now gone as well. And while CBGB's demise and the troubled decline of the Limelight have been well chronicled by many, the death of a slew of smaller clubs and bars haven't been, such as the excellent experimental music venue Tonic and the wonderful Avenue A dive, The Korova Milk Bar. On this trip the death list continues to grow: Love Saves The Day (which will keep it's New Hope, PA store open) is closing in January and Pongsri Restaurant is gone without a trace. Urban Outfitters has become so much a clone of The Gap that its previous existence as a quirky NY venue is pretty much moot. So many small art galleries and music venues died when Soho became an upscale shopping mall, I can't even remember most of their names -- and the larger, wealthier galleries wiped-out most of the remains of the Meat Packing District club scene. Meanwhile, entire working class neighborhoods like Hell's Kitchen no longer exist.

A few survivors still hanging on: Exit Art, The Kitchen, Bleecker Bob's, Trash & Vaudville, The Strand, St. Mark's Sounds, and Forbidden Planet, Katz's Deli, East Village Books, and St. Mark's Bookstore. If you're in New York, help keep these places open by giving them your business. There might be no way to make NY affordable for working class people, artists, writers and musicians again, and bring back its cultural vitality, but maybe a few vestiges can be kept intact.

UPDATES: Mondo Kim's is also closing, leaving only a video sales shop on 7th. Their entire rental collection will be given to any NY film school or rental shop that agrees to continue to allow Kim's customers to rent from them.
And yes, by New York I mean Manhattan. In fact, I basically mean Soho, East Village/Lower East Side/Bowery, Greenwich Village/Chelsea/Meat Packing District, and environs. Even though I lived in Brooklyn for a few years, and Williamsburg / Greenpoint seems to be thriving -- that's all new stuff as far as I'm concerned. And while I'm all for new stuff that's interesting (i.e. not corporate cookie-cutter crap), I miss the old New York.

Home For The Holidays

I'm in New York visiting family for the holidays. Since living in California and working a demanding (time-wise) job means I rarely get to see them, I will most likely be back to the blog in 2009.

Sonoma County Wine

Anu and I went up north Sunday, into Sonoma County, Napa's lesser known sibling region. While everyone seems to know about Napa wines these days (we recommend V. Sattui, Praeger Port Works, Heitz, and Grgich), Sonoma is only starting to get the recognition it deserves. There are too many really good wineries up there to list them all, so I recommend repeated visits, and a trip to the Sonoma County Harvest Festival (each October) to sample a range. Here, however, are a few of our favorites:

Amphora
Winemaker Rick Hutchinson is a heck of a nice, friendly guy, and Amphora is one of the best places around to go for barrel tastings because of that. Rick makes one of the only Chardonnays I'll even drink at all, never mind enjoy, and his reds include excellent Zinfandel and Cabaret Sauvignon, as well as Merlot, Syrah, and Pinot Noir (all varietals I don't normally care for that much, but all of which are excellent at Amphora -- I've even bought futures on Pinot and Syrah there). We drink way too much Amphora wine to really have a favorite.

Suncé
Hailing from Croatia, winemaker Frane Franicevic makes California wines in an old world style. While I'm not normally a big fan of non-German whites, their Pinot Gris is particularly good (as are their German style whites: Riesling and Viognier). Their reds include a particularly good selection of California-Italian style wines: several Zinfandels, Barbera, Sangiovese, and also a very good Bordeaux-style Meritage wine, and several Pinot Noirs. My particular favorite on the red side is the Meritage, though really even their least interesting wine is above average. The staff is friendly, and Suncé's barrel tasting days also involve good food as well as great wine.

Camellia Cellars
Winemakers Bruce Snyder and Chris Lewand run a small, homey shop and are also friendly folks. Camellia makes some good Zinfandel, Sangiovese, Syrah, and even a Dolcetto. Their blends, Damio Grazie and (when it's available) Lost Barrels, are both excellent. Lost Barrels is a favorite of ours, though that blend is always an experiment and is only available when Bruce decides that he's got a blend worth releasing -- and that's not every year.

Deux Amis
This small winery run by Phyllis Zouzounis and Jim Penpraze specializes in Zinfandels -- they have five different Zins, one Pinot Noir and one Petit Sirah. You can really taste the difference between their Zinfandels, and all five are good. Tasting is by appointment only, though, so call in advance if you're going up to Sonoma and want to visit this winery. It's worth the bother.

Martin Ray
Formerly Martini and Pradi, Martin Ray has restored the M&P red jug wine, and while it is no longer unsulfited, it still tastes very much like an Italian working class table wine, which is great. The large jug wine is, in my opinion, superior to their smaller jug wine called "Red" in the fancier bottle. They also have a good Cab and some other decent wines, but the jug wine is really the main reason we go to Martin Ray.

Trendadue
Another winery that we go to primarily for one thing, Trentadue carries the sparkling wine that the once great, now defunct Topolos / Russian River winery used to sell (it is made by the same winemaker, who was a subcontractor to both wineries specifcally for this sparkling wine). Trentadue also has one of the few Rosé wines that I can drink, and good selection of decent red wines, and some nice Port style wines (including one made from Viognier, which is unusual and tasty).

Even though there is good stuff to drink right here in Alameda County -- such as Rosenblum (who also have a shop in Sonoma), Periscope (who share a space right here in Emeryville with another good winery, whose name I can't remember, but if you go to Periscope you get to try both), and St. George (who make spirits, not wine) -- we still like to go up to Sonoma, a growing region where you can see the vineyards and make a day of it.

Unfortunately, the consolidators, and bus tour operators (who charge for tours but don't share proceeds with the wineries, and therefore drive the wineries to charge for tastings because tour visitors rarely purchase wine), are starting to ruin Sonoma like they have Napa. If you want to establish relationships with winemakers and tasting room staff, and enjoy all the benefits that provides (friendly service, interesting discussions, barrel tastings, sit-downs with snacks and wine, etc.), you had best start heading up to Sonoma now, before it's too corporate for anyone to have a good time other than the company accountants.

Wally's Cafe

Wally's Cafe in Emeryville is one of my favorite restaurants, and I highly recommend going there if you're in the area and like Middle Eastern (Lebanese in this case) food. Wally's is a mom-and-pop joint which has a totally different atmosphere and style, but still reminds me of the sadly defunct Bistro E. Europa with Gypsy Flavor in San Francisco. Both restaurants were run by immigrant couples making traditional, delicious, and not-at-all-fancy dishes. And in both cases, the friendly owners are as much of a draw as the food.

You won't find anything at Wally's made with organic whole kale with extract of ginseg root, or that sort of thing. There are no special light, Atkins, vegan, macrobiotic, raw, or whole options (though a vegan could happily eat the Hummous and Babaghanouj with pita, or the excellent Lentil Soup). No, this food is traditional style Lebanese comfort food. I was in fact introduced to the restaurant by a Lebanese colleague who, rarely able to find food that reminds him of home, discovered Wally's the week it opened.

My favorite dish is the Pomegranate Chicken, which is done in a style which I've never had anywhere else, and I consider to be up there with the best dishes of much fancier Middle Eastern restaurants in the area. The Gyros, Kafta, Shawarma, and other dishes are also excellent, and the Baklava and Hibiscus Iced Tea are both must haves.

Ejected from his homeland by war, Wally has come to the U.S. to try to have a better life, like my own family after WWII. Restaurant work was not his first career, but this is his third restaurant, and the experience certainly shows in the excellent food. At least one review has called the Yelp kudos for Wally's Cafe "overly enthusiastic given the category." What I think this reviewer is missing is that the category itself is part of the positive vibe around the place. Wally and his wife Angelica are friendly and unpretentious, and so is their restaurant. Given the sometimes obnoxious tone found in the abundant hipper-than-thou Bay Area restaurants, Wally's is a lungful of fresh air.

Located behind a dingy bar (The Bank Club) with which it shares bathrooms, Wally's is very much in the style of what New Yorkers affectionately call a local dive. It's the kind of place that you're not sure if you should let people know about. I want Wally to have as much success as possible, but on the other hand I don't want a bunch of schmucks to start showing up and ruining the place for the rest of us. I'll err on the side of drumming up business for him, though, and say that in these tough economic times small businesses like Wally's really need your support. So when you're in the Emeryville-West Oakland area and are thinking about grabbing lunch, go grab it at Wally's. You won't spend much more than at, say, the nearby Denny's or IHOP -- but the food and atmosphere are 1000 times better.

Depression Depression

Maybe it's cyclical Christmas blues, or maybe it's the impending economic Depression, but I've been depressed even more than usual the last 3 weeks or so. The Bay Area doesn't have very ambitious weather, and its idea of winter is rain, which I love, so it's not like that's to blame.

I'm going to go with the impending economic Depression theory. I've blogged a bit about the economy over at TFG, but it's getting to me enough that it's interfering with my real life, not just agitating my political braincells, and stepping all over the mental space needed for the things I'd normally write about here.

In fact I've been unable to write anything at all of much value since the week before Thanksgiving, which just makes me angrier. I find myself more worried than excited about anything and everything lately (even more so than usual).

Our house is now likely worth enough less than we paid for it that if we sold it we may not even be able to pay-off our mortgage and wind up making monthly payments on something we don't even own anymore. This means we're stuck here no matter what, for quite a long time.

None of the personal projects I'd hoped to get third party investment for are going to be looked at right now, either. Everything is our lives are in stasis as we slog through these wretched economic times (and meanwhile various CEO types are going around defending bonuses that vastly exceed all the money I've ever earned in my life).

They're even aggressively, preemptively cutting costs at work, something they've never done before. I'm lucky to have a job at all. But I don't want to feel that way. I want to feel excited about my work, and the economic situation is making that very difficult since I feel like there's a gun to my head to work or else (which makes it pretty hard to actually enjoy it).

All in all it's very unsettling to be so excessively -- settled. And yet, while a bad economy makes work start to feel more like a prison, at the same time it makes that security seem so precarious. It's a very aggravating contradiction to feel like the situation both traps you somewhere, and at the same time makes you feel like that place ejected you that you'd be totally lost.

Now I know why they call it a Depression.

Contributing to Two Books for 2009 (maybe more)

Ben Goertzel and I will be rewriting "The Path to Posthumanity" into a book we hope will actually sell this time, along with new co-author Lisa Rein who lends her needed experience as an editor to the project. Right now we're still in the preliminary phases of getting into the rewrite, but the book will be out by mid-2009 if our publisher agrees to release it at a reasonable price point. Ben and I have at least four other books we're supposed to be working on together, and I'm hoping we'll get cracking on at least one of them in 2009.

I am also contributing to a forthcoming handbook of Visual Effects production, an outline for which was just submitted to a publisher. That book is an edited volume, and will have around 30 authors or so. I doubt anyone outside the industry will have any interest in the book, but it should be pretty good for industry folks (hopefully meaning not just TDs, but artists, producers, directors, cinematographers, and others as well).