A Boatload of Nonsense II!

Hello everyone,

Welcome to Issue #134 of CAFÉ ANNE!

Lots of news, but first, I need your help with my THIRD ANNIVERSARY ISSUE, which drops next Monday. For this special edition, I’m planning a little adventure, something I’ve wanted to do for years: ride the NYC subway for 24 hours straight!

The rules: I can go wherever I please, chat with whomever looks interesting and pass the time however I like—as long as I don’t pass back through the turnstile. Also, I’m only allowed to eat and drink what I buy underground.

So here’s where you come in: with 24 hours to kill, what stations and sights would be fun to explore? What should I track? Where can I find NYC transit’s top churro lady? (I’ve never eaten a churro!)

My adventure starts TONIGHT—the plan is to ride from 9 pm Monday to 9 pm Tuesday. So please leave your suggestions ASAP in the comments, or drop me a note: [email protected]. I’ll continue checking for ideas while riding the train.

In other news, I am pleased to present the results from last week’s survey looking at street-side giving habits. I wasn’t surprised to learn that CAFÉ ANNE readers are a bunch of softies generous bunch!

Yes, 76% said they gave to panhandlers, beating the 68% of New Yorkers who said so when I took my 50-person in-person survey in the parks. Just 23% said they never give while 2% said, “Buy me a sandwich!”

Readers also shared some great strategies.

Reader Sarah T She wrote that instead of giving cash, she buys bags of thick black socks to carry around and always offers panhandlers to a fresh pair. Smart! I’ve heard from many over the years that socks are in high demand among street people—and it’s probably hard to swap socks for crack. Sarah also said that when the recipient thanks her, she responds, “You’re welcome. “I know you’d do the same for me.” Very cool!

Reader Elevensbest He said he carries $1 bills in his car and hands them out with slips of paper providing contact info for services like food stamps, addiction treatment and housing. “Hopefully, the dollar helps them get through the day, and the slip of paper gives them the inspiration to advocate for themselves,” he wrote.

I was also VERY pleased to learn that many readers share my annoyance with pan flute players. “It might be an effective money-making strategy for a pan flutist busker to offer to stop playing the flutes for a length of time equal to the dollar amount of the donation,” suggested Rob S. in Clinton Hill. “Your $5 buys you 5 minutes of waiting for the R train completely unmolested by ‘El Condor Pasa.'”

Meanwhile, I heard from a half-dozen readers asking me to write about the Bed-Stuy Goldfish Ponda makeshift community aquarium that appeared in August after a sidewalk fire hydrant sprang a leak and nearby residents added more than a 100 fish to the resulting puddle, along with colored rocks and shells.

Unfortunately, I read that it’s since been destroyed by vandals, and don’t know whether it’s been restored. Could someone who lives nearby check it and let me know what’s happening, please? It’s near the corner of Hancock Street and Tompkins Avenue.

Also, look what I spotted yesterday at the corner of Boerum Place and Pacific Street:

When did publishers start staging “guerilla” marketing campaigns for literary novels? Is this just a Brooklyn thing? Discuss!

Finally, huge 24-hour subway adventure shoutouts to this week’s newest paid subscribers, Babbette H., Bobby L. and Stephen H. That’s enough $$$ to pay the fare, tip every busker and buy peanut M&Ms from every candy kid who passes by! As you know, while everything on CAFÉ ANNE will always be free, I cannot continue without the support of those opting for a paid subscription, so many thanks!

I am very excited for this week’s issue, of course. I didn’t have time to report a big feature story, but we do have our second annual Boatload of Nonsense (you can check out the 2023 round here) including the newest edition of Eric Adams Watchan interesting Carl Jung Thing and some very important thoughts about Cobb salad. Please enjoy.

Regards!

Anne

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ERIC ADAMS WATCH

I continue to enjoy the exploits of Eric Adams, whom my friend Aharon refers to as “New York City’s first AI-generated Mayor.” As a profile in Politico put it, “In a city of weird people and weird mayors, Adams is maybe the most idiosyncratic figure to ever hold the office.”

Here, round-up #25 of the mayor’s doings:

August 21: Responding to an article in the New York Times Looking at why he wasn’t asked to speak at the Democratic National Convention, the Mayor declares, “I don’t have to be onstage. I’m the oldest of New York—my life is a stage!”

August 24: At a press conference, the Mayor responds to questions about several ongoing corruption scandals in his administration by touting his ability to “sexualize and stay focused.”

September 8: After Federal investigators raid the homes of several mayoral aides, Mr. Adams compares himself to a famously ill-treated biblical character: “I’m just in my Job moment.” Ace Gothamist notes, the Mayor has previously stated, “I am mayor because God gave me the authority to be mayor.”

September 18: Speaking at the first National Urban Rat Summit, in Manhattan, the Mayor shares more about his famous rodent obsession. “You can only imagine lifting up a toilet seat and seeing a rodent come out,” he says. “Or little garbage bags. You take the garbage bag outside and see a rat run across your feet. You think about that all day.”

DEPT. OF I ♥️ CARL JUNG

I’ve been sloooowly reading Carl Jung’s “Modern Man in Search of a Soul,” and recently came across a passage that was so interesting, I put the book down and haven’t picked it up since.

It’s in the “Psychology and Literature” chapter and presents a very satisfying answer to the perennial question of why artists and other creative types so often exhibit “all sorts of bad qualities,” as Jung put it, including “ruthlessness, selfishness and vanity,” resulting in “tragic lives. “

It’s a bad-boy stereotype for sure—think Picasso, Miller, Jobs, Hemingway—but it’s also definitely a thing. And none of the explanations for this phenomenon I’ve seen over the years felt right until I came across Jung’s. I thought it’d be fun to share it with you and see what you think!

The passage runs about three pages; here are the relevant excerpts (sorry it’s still a bit long):

“Art is a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him its instrument. The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize his purposes through him. As a human being, he may have moods and a will and personal aims, but as an artist he is a “man” in a higher sense—he is “collective man”—one who carries and shapes the unconscious, psychic life of mankind . To perform this difficult office it is sometimes necessary for him to sacrifice happiness and everything that makes life worth living for the ordinary human being.

…The artist’s life, then, cannot be otherwise than full of conflicts, for two forces are at war within him—on the one hand the common human longing for happiness, satisfaction and security in life, and on the other a ruthless passion for creation which may go so far as to override personal desire.

…In this way, the creative force can drain the human impulses to such a degree that the personal ego must develop all sorts of bad qualities—ruthlessness, selfishness and vanity—and even every kind of vice, in order to maintain the spark of life and to keep itself from being wholly bereft.”

And here’s where the passage gets really interesting…

“The auto-eroticism (self-love) of the artist resembles that of illegitimate or neglected children who from their tenderest years must protect themselves from the destructive influences of people who have no love to give them—who develop bad qualities for that very purpose and later maintain an invincible egocentrism by remaining all their lives infantile and helpless, or by actively offending against the moral code or the law.”

So while the great artist may be a genius when it comes to creation, in the rest of his life he’s basically functioning just like a crazy kid reacting to his terrible parents. Only in this case, the awful “parent” is the creative force!

Orange you glad you’re not an artist? Well, being a CAFÉ ANNE reader, there’s actually a good chance you are, haha. So let me know your thoughts about this theory in the comments! Input from civilians welcome too.

DEPT. OF COBB SALAD

As regular readers know, I typically aim to report on the world around me and let others draw their own conclusions. But sometimes I encounter a serious issue that I must address before the world tilts off its axis and we all die.

This is the case with my favorite salad, the king of salads, the Cobb salad. Cobb salad is my go-to lunch when eating out. It is a perfect meal. But lately, I’ve encountered too many “takes” on the traditional Cobb that are just absolutely f—d up.

It’s time to set things straight.

• Grilled chicken 🐓

• Avocado 🥑

• Blue cheese 💙

• Bacon 🥓

• Hard-boiled egg 🥚

• Red onion or scallion 🧅

• Romaine lettuce 🥬

• More bacon 🥓🥓🥓

• Tomato 🍅

• Red wine vinaigrette 🍷

• More blue cheese 💙💙💙

• Any leafy green other than Romaine

• Beets

• Cucumber (a common mistake!)

• Ranch dressing (WTF?)

• Corn (Yes I’ve seen this. Some believe the “Cobb” in “Cobb salad” refers to corn-on-the-cob. However, it is a reference to Robert Howard Cobb, owner of the Howard Brown Derby restaurant, where the salad was invented in either 1929 or 1937.)

• Any cheese other than blue (cheddar is happening far too often, people!)

• Shrimp (I saw this on a menu recently and now I wish I could un-see it.)

• Croutons (get it together, people!)

• The ideal non-vegetable-to-vegetable ratio, by weight, is 16:1.

• Extra charging for chicken is a capital offense. It’s like offering a hamburger and then charging extra for the beef patty.

• Cobb salad is best served on plate so one can admire the individual ingredients in all their glory.

• Unless the establishment is super fancy, a Cobb salad should cost between $16 and $20. More than that is too spendy; less is frankly suspicious.

• A Cobb salad should be so large that after one has cleaned their plate, one vows to never eat again. Until the next Cobb salad.

Please share the above with everyone you know. And when it comes spotting expletive Cobbs in the wild, if you see something, say something. Don’t let the chef get away with it!

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“A person is a bottomless thing.”

—Zadie Smith, The Fraud

CAFÉ ANNE is a free weekly newsletter created by Brooklyn journalist Anne Kadet. Subscribe to get the latest issue every Monday!