December 11, 2009

Stage III: The Sauce is Strong With This One

I theorized last time that what’s been damning my chicken-work was not a lack of rigor, but too much of it. And so last night’s trial was as casual as a big chicken dinner ought to be. I wasn’t planning on frying at all—I was going to bake, to give my gut a break—but while searching for something to do with black eyed peas, I stumbled onto Cooks Illustrated’s recipe for oven fried chicken. “Oven fried?” I exclaimed to my empty bedroom. “That’s not even a thing!” And yet, apparently it is.

Discarding everything I’d decided about simple preparation, I decided to give their baroque breading a try. The chicken was to be dressed in crushed Melba toast, pulverized by the food processor I do not own. And so from the wild north of Manhattan I imported a sort of man-beast named Joseph to stand in for a Cuisinart. Using the bottom of a pint glass, a cup measurer, a chef’s knife, and finally his fists, he worked for twenty minutes to reduce the 5 ounces of surprisingly stubborn crackers into “sand and pebble texture.” The torrent of grunts and cursing caused the two ladies present to cover their ears, but their blushing was worth it for the resultant grease-free crunch. The chicken was excellent, and baking it was, as baking always is, easy. Like a cruise missile, the chicken was fire and forget. But unlike a cruise missile, it treated our stomachs gently. No one besides our uptown barbarian was fully incapacitated.

Of course, I didn’t mind toying with the chicken itself because the chicken is not the real experiment. Like the first caveman to don a labcoat, I am trying to invent fire. Past experiments have suggested that our best method is to refine the spicy paste that won the 2008 hot chicken cook off, and based on some work my mother and I did over Thanksgiving, it’s become clear that the first step to refining the paste is to make it not a paste at all. Combining the spices in butter instead of lard allows it to flow evenly all over the meat, and prevents clumps of pepper from forming. My wild man supervised the sauce, and though he added paprika, red pepper flakes and all sorts of other red things, the most crucial addition was approximately 1/8 of a pound of cayenne. I finally found someplace that sells it by weight: a market underneath the three chilli pepper Indian restaurants on First Avenue and 6th. A quarter pound bag costs $2.50 and a whole lot of mouth-ache.

That’s right! I said mouth-ache, because we finally crossed the pain threshold. We added the sauce in two different ways, spicing half the chicken while in the oven and half after we had taken it out. We thought baking it in would help some of the heat seep into the meat—a feat I’ve yet to accomplish—but instead it just dried it out, and cut down on the heat. Cooked cayenne hurts less, apparently. But pouring the molten sauce on chicken fresh out of the oven, then flipping it over and doing the other half, yielded evenly spiced meat that hurt like hell. I’d put it somewhere between Prince’s medium and hot, which means that in terms of heat, we’re actually about where I want to be.

The work is not yet done, of course, and will not be until the heat is seared straight through the meat. The next batch will spend the night before its debut soaking in a brine of water, salt, sugar and peppers. I’m skeptical that this will actually impart spice, but if nothing else it will make the meat more tender. But for those keeping track, here’s the rough formula for the Sauce That Worked:

  • 1 stick butter
  • 1/8 lb cayenne
  • Some vegetable oil
  • A bunch of other stuff

I’ll take leave now. The sun is falling and I need to get back before it gets really cold. Home is where the heat is, after all.

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December 5, 2009

I Am Eating and I Am Awake

In two weeks I will embark on what academic calendars call “Winter Holiday.” As I will theoretically have graduated college this time next year, this is to be my last. I’m hoping to spend most of it asleep.

Observant readers have by now noticed the bizarre hour at which I am writing this. It’s certainly not lunchtime. While 9:07 AM is a normal rising hour for bakers, coal miners and astronauts, it is an unfamiliar place to a college student, especially on a Saturday. But this is that season when students are assaulted by work, and for two weeks find themselves, like the aforementioned black lung victim, forced to complete tasks on certain days by certain times. In a student in such a state wakes up early on a Saturday, the feverish racing of his mind combines with self-pity and a thirst for coffee to make returning to sleep impossible.

Being awake at this time demands a hearty breakfast. It’s the farmery thing to do. And a bleak winter morning like this, a few hours after the first frost has (hopefully) descended on the mosquito population of Manhattan, demands hot cereal. To wit, oatmeal.

“Oatmeal?!” you cry. “Does he mean it?!”

Indeed, I do. I have some stuck in my teeth right now.

Since I first made oatmeal freshman year, I realized that it is apparently something I do wrong. While other people are slathering them with butter, honey, sugar and maple syrup, I was always happy to consume it plain save for a pinch of salt. When I say that people usually retch, so if you just choked on your breakfast burrito, I apologize. The fact is that oatmeal (and its superiorly mushy cousin, Cream of Wheat) is bland, and the sort of person who is awake in the morning doesn’t have time for blandness. Frankly, I don’t blame them.

But for me, the smell and texture of these strange grains flavors their white weirdness with a remembrance of breakfasts past. The winters of elementary school were built on hot cereal, and it was always served plain, since a man who rises before dawn (as my farmer-like father likes to do) isn’t going to want to fill any tiny people with sugar. (My mother, a late riser, was the opposite. On the rare days that she fed us and drove us to school, she usually made cinnamon toast. In a word: wowwee!) Every morning my brother and I chose—oatmeal or Cream of Wheat—and were thrilled by the blandness.

Apparently the conditioning has stuck. I can’t taste dry, dull Cream of Wheat without feeling like an eight year old again, and my brother spends his breaks trying to collect the energy to let my father show him the correct way to make oatmeal. As far as I remember, the method has two steps:

  1. Ignore everything on the back of the box
  2. Undercook

If oatmeal were a steak (and what a breakfast that would be!), my father would serve it cold in the middle. Good rare meat doesn’t need A-1 sauce. Good hot cereal doesn’t need syrup.

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November 29, 2009

Trial By Error By Fire

I went back to the Source last night, journeying out to North Nashville (?) to visit 123 Ewing Drive, home of Prince’s Hot Chicken Shack. These are the boys I’m trying to beat, or rather, to match. And revisiting the inspiration for my hot chicken testing reminded me of two things:

  1. These guys make chicken for a living
  2. I am a chump

Prince’s greatness lies in its simplicity. And by that I don’t mean to suggest an adoration for some kind of primitive country living. I just like that they know what they’re good at, and they don’t try to do more. (Interior decorating is certainly not a strength.) The chicken goes in the oil when ordered, meaning a half hour wait on a folding chair or wooden bench, listening to the security guard’s television blare Law & Order. (Apparently the defendant was a registered sex offender and had child porn on his computer.) The heat scale isn’t clever, ranging from mild to xtra hot, and sides are limited to slaw, fries, “bake beans” and extra bread. (Worth the 25¢.) It really is a lovely place.

Because chicken demands beer, my companion and I got ours to go. Because I’m a stupid hubristic piece of offal, I ordered my leg hot. (In the past, medium has had me sweating.) The skin was a uniform rust color, suggesting some kind of liquid rub poured on after frying, or possibly that the cooked meat had been dipped whole into a vat of the fiery death goop. The taste was not far from the Cayenne & Crisco paste I’ve been using—the heat was about twice as powerful as the best I’ve done.

The heat didn’t bother me at first, but after five minutes it felt like I’d been sprayed with mace. My lips looked like Scarlett Johansson’s, and my mouth was as stripped as the jungles of North Vietnam. (I believe that’s my second Agent Orange allusion in the month—record!) I worked through as much of the meat as I could, but a foolish touch of forefinger to eye meant that tears began leaking after ten or fifteen minutes. I went to the bathroom, where I washed my hands, blew my nose, spit and dabbed my tears. It was a carnival of the G rated bodily fluids. I dove back into the meal, gobbling pickles and spicified white bread, but once my beer was gone the growing weight in my stomach eventually forced me onto my back. I finished the leg, but not the bread, and I didn’t pick the bones clean.

The chicken won, but I’m okay with that. This proved something I already suspected, which is that anything hotter than medium obscures the tender flavor of well fried chicken. It also demonstrated that eating lots of cayenne pepper causes heartburn, and taught me the remarkable fact that it is apparently possible to literally shit fire. But I always enjoy an opportunity for humiliation and pain, so I’m glad I tried the hot. From a scientific standpoint, it was good to taste my next goal. (We’ll deal with the xtra when we come to it.) Next time I’ll just eat medium.

When’s next time? Right now, fucker. I brought home a second helping. Lunch—ACTIVATE!

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November 26, 2009

Overcoming Adversity!

The little man who lives in my skull tried to escape early this morning, perhaps following the example of the fantastic fox whose tunneling exploits I had witnessed earlier in the night. I woke up at 5:15 to the sensation of wonderfully stimulating pain, which I fought with a stiff wall of denial. Once that failed, I spent the next ten or fifteen minutes marveling at the sensation. “Wow!” I thought. “Wowowowowow ow OW! This is more than a feeling!” Never before had I enjoyed a headache so sociable that it brought nausea to the party.

(Right now, the thoughtful reader will inquire: did you give this headache to yourself? In short, I don’t think so. I admit to ingesting a couple of beers last night, but not near enough to invite the Most Amazing Headache Of All Time.)

When I finally decided that I would rather be asleep than in pain, I staggered to the bathroom in search of relief. I’m back at home in Nashville right now, which meant that my normal supply of Ibuprofen was not at arm’s length. In the bathroom, I found that the supply of medicine I laid in during August had been pilfered. Of course, I blamed my brother.

Stagger stagger stagger across the hall to his bedroom, I did, where I found that there was a similar deficit. At this point my headache had passed through adolescence to adulthood, and was on the verge of securing a $300,000 a year position at a major Wall Street firm. It was time to get serious. I scrambled, pawing through my drawers and cabinets in search of ANYTHING AT ALL. I found a single pain relief pill which had been buried (wrapped) in the bottom of my suitcase for six months, and a packet of alka seltzer. I slurped them both down, stopping when the ingestion of beseltzered water started to worry my tummy. Finally, I fell asleep.

On waking, I was saddled with a chore. The night before I had planned on visiting the local Kroger (a lovely supermarket) to purchase the makings of a Thanksgiving side. (Beans!) I had forgotten. Although my head remained foggy (and still feels that way), I was too proud to give in to sentiment, and pressed on. The roads were empty; the store was ransacked. Once again, I scrounged. I came away with their last pack of sundried tomatoes, and the last few handfuls of sad green beans.

Thanksgiving bounty: straight from the bottom of the barrel.

 

UPDATE 3:45

They were the last beans for a reason. These guys are so limp we couldn’t snap them, and had to use a knife to separate the ends. Time to roast that apathy out!

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November 13, 2009

A Tragedy Of Glassware

I’m not embarrassed to tell you wonderful Internet people that I have a typewriter. I am, however, slightly embarrassed to tell you about what I just did with it.

In order to iron out the kinks in a script I’m working on, I pulled out my Smith-Corona to try to bang my thoughts out on paper. It’s a manual typewriter, and so requires quite a lot of force to put letters on paper. When I work up a head of steam I often feel like a jazz pianist, his fingers ranging across the board, leaping into the air and then plunging down hard before moving swiftly onto the next key. Apparently my little writing exercise was going well, because I my hands flew fast and powerfully. So powerfully that the typewriter, as it sometimes does, began to drift sideways on the table, requiring regular adjustment.

What I didn’t notice was that everything else on the table was drifting too. And how could I? I was caught up in the moment, wrapped in the thrill of creation, utterly insensible from marveling at my own skill. (It’s a heady feeling!) I didn’t notice, as I pounded key after key, that my French press was ambling slightly northward with every character. (I’m talking about my big French press, the 4 cup one, not the little personal guy.) I didn’t notice the table shaking, and I swear I didn’t see the piece of coffee equipment move, but it must have. I know that because, in between words, staring at the line where I had just accidentally pushed the space bar before the D key, turning “good” into “goo d,” I noticed my French press doing a swan dive off the table. It seemed to hang in the air for about six seconds, during which I had time to think the following:

“Oh Gosh. That’s unlikely. I suppose it’s going to break now, and I’ll have to buy another one. They cost $40. This reminds me of that story my brother told me, about the girl who was holding two of them and smashed them both at the same time by hugging someone. I can’t believe I broke my French press with my typewriter. This is a problem only I would have.” THUD. “Oh! It didn’t break!”

Having tipped face forward, it seems to have landed on the plastic nub at the top of the plunger, sparing the glass the force of impact. Truly, it was typographicaffeinated miracle. Having been spared by the fates, I moved all the other glassware to the middle of the table, exhaled, and went back to work.

Five minutes later a small glass shattered onto the chair next to me, propelled by the same force that had almost doomed my coffemaker. This is why writers should only be allowed plastic cups.

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November 11, 2009

Stage II: Foul-Fowl Flies Foul

Battle with the hot chicken project was joined again this weekend, and ours was not the only unit at the head of the charge. (Military metaphor will be dropped forthwith.) A Chinatown friend of mine had been inspired by Esquire to brine his meat in a mixture of Coca-Cola, Worcestershire and Tabasco, a bizarre experiment that would sound repulsive if it weren’t also tantalizing. I, meanwhile, pressed on where I left off last time, attempting to prove my mother’s theory that if I just put enough fucking pepper in the flour, my mouth would be beset by wonderful and terrible sensation.

Continued frustration was my result. My third test-fry, I have yet to replicate the crispy perfection of my first haphazard trial. I’ve visited a different butcher each time, and the second two sold me much larger pieces of chicken than I used that first Wednesday. That may have some bearing, but it is also possible that fried food suffers when overly intellectualized, that the scientific façade of my endeavor is the trouble. (It’s well known that the second time Ben Franklin tried trapping lightning in a bottle, his kite came back greasy and undercooked.)

But crunch and moistness are matters of technique. They will improve in time. The real question is, was it hot?

No, and damn it, it wasn’t for lack of trying. My breading was about 1/2 flour, 1/2 cayenne (with a little salt, pepper and dried mustard for flavor), a finger dipped in the mixture came back burning. Simply put, this should have been spicy—if not Agent Orange spicy, then at least hotter than it was with a tenth that much cayenne. It made no difference at all, and I think the red cloud that formed at the bottom of my oil points to the cause. Like a buttermilk brine—so promising when breaded, so disappointing when dropped in the pan—the cayenne came off in the oil. The chicken’s flavor was commendable, but damn it people, this stuff is supposed to hurt your face. Thankfully, I was able to prepare a few teaspoons of cayenne paste, which acted as a brutally spicy failsafe.

The failure of highly seasoned breading leaves me with two paths to follow. The first is to refine the paste I’m using, to help it stick better and coat more evenly. (A recent New York Times travel article claims a similar rub is actually how they do it at Prince’s.) The second is to work on brining my meat—not in buttermilk, but in a salt brine steeped in peppers.

Despite the crushing disappointment, I’m enjoying the work because, at least based on the research I’ve done, this is a largely unexplored field. Nashville loves hot chicken, but from the recipes available online, nobody knows anything about it. (And the ones that do know aren’t willing to share.) It’s nice to be on the cutting edge, even if it’s just of cholesterol.

How did the Coca-Cola fried chicken turn out? I only tasted it the next day, but it was nothing to scoff at. The color was nice, and the meat was very moist. My friends who cooked it assured me that, when fresh, it had been “good.” But the soda had made it sweet, and that is not my goal. My quest is for cayenne catharsis. I’ll let you know when I find it.

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November 9, 2009

On Love And Farting

Butternut squash—fuck off. It’s May again.

Well, not really. But it was 71 degrees in New York today, and the temperature provided a much needed timewarp to six months ago or six months from now. It is a change of perspective worth embracing. Consider it a temporary lift of an escalating siege: one that threatens to keep us shut in our apartments until March at the least.

So while the weather holds, behave like it’s May. Forgo huddling around a simmering stew for barbecue on the roof. If you are a smoker, spend three days smoking not to warm your chest, but because your skin is warm. And anyone gearing up for a relationship, take the opportunity for a Spring fling—born from an excess of joy imbued by an excess of sun—instead of December’s typical desperate search for body heat. For now sex can be more than just a hot water bottle.

For lunch yesterday I grabbed a bacon cheeseburger from the deli on First Ave and Tenth. I’ve been eating these for about a year, since they were recommended by a bartender at International for having a “better than average bacon cheeseburger.” (Anyone who’s been reading this for a while knows that better-than-average is as small a target as I aim for.) I strolled there in short sleeves, but with a sweater in my bag. Last Tuesday, in the midst of a frigid shower, the burger alone cost $6. Yesterday, for the same price, they threw in a better-than-average ginger ale and better-than-average French fries, I suppose in celebration of the sunshine.

I toted my bounty to Stuyvesant Square, which is remarkably empty on the nicest afternoons, and encamped on a bench next to an old lady. It was 3 o’clock. I scarfed for fifteen minutes, read for six, and napped for two. When I woke the sun had gone, and I was shivering in the shade, a reminder that summer’s cameos are even shorter than the season itself. I put my sunglasses back on anyway. Around then, the old lady farted.

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November 2, 2009

An Update Nobody Wanted

The dishwasher cycle continues! And by cycle I mean not the beautiful fill/wash/rinse/dry that used to hum pleasantly beneath my sink (nearly typed “hump leasantly.” I wonder who Leasantly is.), but the grind of hope and failure that characterize the efforts of an untrained home handy-person. My (meaningless) troubles have not resolved themselves as speedily as I suggested the last time I whined. Instead, I have descended into dank pit of bafflement, a condition alleviated not at all by my repeated querying of the wisdom of our fair Internet. The following things are not the problem, and attempting to remedy them has remedied nothing at all:

  • The filter
  • The soap dispenser door
  • The brand of detergent
  • The style of detergent
  • The spray arms
  • The water temperature
  • The way I’m loading the top rack
  • The way I’m loading the bottom rack
  • The amount of vinegar I’ve run through the machine

Don’t think that was a very funny list? Well, neither do I. Here are some other things that are not funny:

  • The amount of time I’ve spent in yellow gloves this week
  • The number of beverages I’ve enjoyed from dirty glasses
  • My increased tolerance for grimy forks
  • The disgust with which my friends last night touched the silverware left in my contraption after one of my several experiments in using it to actually clean dishes

So after a week’s frustration, off and on, I think I may have finally found the trouble. Today, in violation of every fiber of respect I have for my appliances, I opened my machine mid-cycle. I expected a flood of water onto my battered wood floor, and was greeted by a host of very dry dishes.

There is almost no water flowing into my dishwasher at all.

Anyone who has ever tried to have his plates dry-cleaned understands why a lack of water would be problematic. The dryness is apparently (according to the ever suggestive Internet) resultant from a busted tube whose name is something along the lines of “input-valve-pump.” This is a part that can be ordered online, delivered to one’s door, and replaced easily by anyone who is not an idiot.

Those of you who have read my blog before know that I am, if nothing else, an idiot. I’m calling my super today; I expect he will have fixed the problem by New Year’s. Whether your care or not, I’ll probably keep you posted.

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November 1, 2009

Why Last Night Sucked (For You)

As New York City’s premier expert on “fun,” people often ask me for advice on planning their weekends. My tips seldom amount to more than “Greasy food and orgasms!” which may or may not be helpful, I’m not sure. But since last night was Halloween, I think it’s time to give some serious thought to how to have fun.

Halloween is a tricky beast. Like Valentine’s Day or New Year’s, it’s a Holiday Where You’re Supposed To Have Fun. The pressure piled up on these poor, overtaxed calendar days means that they tend to collapse under the weight of expectation and party dresses. More than New Year’s—whose only real demand is “Drink!”—Halloween is supposed to be crazy, a requirement that troubles everyone besides art school students, whose tuition down payment grants four years’ access to an unlimited hoard of bonkers beans.

People who aren’t crazy on their own try to make up for it on October 31 by putting on stupid hats, drinking dumb things, and then whining into the next day’s brunch that, “this Halloween sucked.” Well buck up normals! The secret to a fun Halloween is the same one that makes one night stands worthwhile:

Low Expectations.

Unless your brother is an aspiring white masked psychopath, you will not have a Halloween like in the movies. Your costume will be worse than the one’s on television. It will either be uncomfortable, hard to understand, inappropriate for the weather, or too fragile to do any of the things you want to do. (All four of these problems can be yours if you’re dressed up as, say, a sexy placenta.) The party you wanted to attend will be cancelled, far away or (as a friend described a Lower East Side shindig she ended up at last night) sweaty.

Disappointment comes when you try to make your social life something it isn’t. Last week, were you the sort of person who likes waiting in line and spending lots of money? If the end of October hasn’t seen you transformed into a sweaty Jersey boy with skin the color of an autumn leaf, you probably don’t want to go to a haunted house any more than you usually like going to clubs. Are you generally too lazy to truck out to Brooklyn for a warehouse party that may or may not have free beer? Then you won’t enjoy doing it while dressed as a giraffe. Just because you’re dressed as someone fun doesn’t mean you actually are.

I understand myself well enough to know that at my core, I am as outgoing as a wilted fern. So last night, instead of filling my belly with jello shots and my face with cocaine, I cooked a quiet dinner at home. (Sauteed grouper! Scalloped potatoes! Kale! What could be more thrilling?) Afterwards, I occupied a friend’s sofa and watched the Yankee game while seven or eight of my buddies pregamed. As they debated when to go out—headed to a party in an abandoned Green Point Catholic school—the TV and I acted as an anchor, keeping us so tightly focused on baseball that by the time we left it was past midnight.

They skipped off to the L train, and I went to a party that, by midnight-thirty, was already winding down. My friends were at Arrow Bar, on A, a place with very loud music that is occasionally not awful. We watched the end of the game and tried hard to dance, finally decided that the music was too loud to do so, and went back up to the street. As though it was a casual suggestion, I floated the idea of going back to my place. We got beer, we got pizza, and we stayed up late enough to watch the clocks change.

This would have looked like a typical weekend, except that I was wearing a bathrobe and toting a towel. I think that’s the point. What’s wonderful about Halloween is that it’s a holiday for everyone—crazy Halloween is not. I wish it weren’t such a big deal; I wish there weren’t so much pressure to HAVE AN AWESOME TIME. I wish Halloween happened four times a year. The fun comes in walking streets you see every day, streets that have become stale, and seeing them covered in wacky drunks. Strangers are social, and everyone’s looking for fun. Disappointment comes when you overreach, and a safe bet is just to do what you always do, but with a wig on.

 

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October 30, 2009

Having Fun In Stupid Brooklyn

I’m not here to talk about the fact that my bedroom smells like maple syrup, although it is disconcerting. If this post seems unduly Vermonty, you’ll know why.

No, I wanted to write about bowling. The great American pastime, right? (Until the Mets are in the playoffs, Major League Baseball can fuck off.) Great social function of the heart land, the preferred sport of fat people, that neat thing they do sometimes in “The Big Lebowski” and “Kingpin.” I spent a lot of high school bowling badly—my average’s been stuck at about 97 for years—and I admit a certain nostalgia for Melrose Lanes and Strike and Spare, those wood paneled dumps whose crowd was only 1/2 as trashy as the arcade game lineup in the back. When my A-1 Best Friend declared a desire for bowling on her birthday, I was right on board.

I mean damn, I love bowling.

My 1983 Guide To New York City recommends the borough of Brooklyn as “gritty” and “working class,” specifying the neighborhood of Williamsburg as a “fascinating enclave of Judaism.” Since God’s chosen people surely love God’s chosen sport, we set out on the L train for Brooklyn Bowl. With our $2,000 sunglasses and $9,000 boxer briefs marking us as pure Manhattanites, we expected to stick out garishly among a throng of black-clad, yarmulke-wearing construction workers. We were surprised to feel somewhat underdressed. Place looked like this:

All I can say is that Brooklyn Bowl is a very nice bowling alley. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not. It has expansive leather couches, soft lighting (with those supercool neo-industrial lightbulbs that are so popular in pseudo-warehouse environments), and banging DJ sets. There are no plastic chairs, no sticky spots on the floor, the ball returns all work and the PA never played Sexyback, My Humps or Rockstar—three songs I thought one could not bowl without. Despite the bizarre string pinsetter (whose swinging ropes seemed to occasionally knock down an extra pin or two), bowling is bowling, and I like it.

I had read somewhere that Brooklyn had been infested by a rodent named the “hipster,” but that was not what I saw in evidence at the bowling alley. Rather, there were lots of very well dressed people, casting serious glances at the room and the band and sometimes wearing baseball hats which they may or may not have been in earnest about. Say what you will about ironic appropriation of Americana, even the irritating faux-poor of Williamsburg cannot afford $40 for an hour’s bowling, or $30 for a plate of (excellent) fried chicken. These were just regular rich people.

In between frames the other night (I bowled badly; my friends bowled worse. Hooray 97!), I was struck by the sensation that somebody was missing the point. Is it dumber to bowl in a nice bowling alley, or to feel betrayed by that alley’s niceness, as though clean floors somehow obliterate whatever I’m supposed to be experiencing when I pick up a ball? (On an unrelated note, I’ve always had trouble bowling in Nashville because my hands are too large for the tightly grouped holes on a 12 or 14 pound ball, but too weak to wield a larger one comfortably. The spacing on Brooklyn Bowl’s 14 pounders was larger, suggesting that the owners are counting on fragile-wristed clientele.)

I can’t decide if Brooklyn Bowl is reprehensible, for turning a simple fly over state pleasure into something upscale and grotesque, or if I’m an idiot for caring. Bowling is hardly something I can lay claim to—it’s not as though anyone in my family was ever in a league. Confidently, I can say that there’s nothing wrong with being bothered when a cheap pleasure is made expensive. The atmosphere of a low-rent bowling alley—the supposed simplicity of the sport, as though poverty is a virtue—is an intangible, with little meaning at all. Money is concrete, and if what matters is bowling qua bowling, it’s a lot cheaper at home than here.

All of this anxiety was obliterated about halfway through our first hour, when the waiter (I mean, really, a bowling alley has WAITERS?) brought over plates of ribs and cheese fries. “Are these yours?” he asked, and when we said no told us, “Oh. I guess these must be compliments of the chef?” We nodded as though that made sense, and wolfed down the free food well after another waitress had shown up wondering where Lane 9’s ribs were. The food abides, as it were. As I soaked my face, fingers and ball with gratis sauce, my ass sunk deep into the leather couch, I stopped worrying about the building and relaxed into the ceaseless crash of pins.

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