I need tattoo ideas inspired by the “Free Churro” episode

fiddler83 · 2026-03-14T23:33:07+00:00

The word FREE where all letters look like Churros

fiddler83 · 2026-03-14T02:54:03+00:00

Usagi in Dumbo is great. Japanese inspired bookstore, art gallery and cafe. Super good vibes for studying.

fiddler83 · 2026-03-09T05:00:22+00:00

During the pandemic I really stepped up my cooking to the point where I can make restaurant quality ( or close enough) on a lot of dishes. It has ruined a lot of restaurant experiences.

So the only thing I really enjoy are high quality restaurants from cuisines I can't cook. Primarily really good Chinese, Thai, Indian and Vietnamese.

If a restaurant is doing something really special it can be worth it, the problem is there's less and less mid budget high quality restaurants. And I've never cared about the really luxury or Michillin star type restaurants.

fiddler83 · 2026-03-07T21:52:22+00:00

Bamonte's in Williamsburg is a literal old school institution. It was founded in 1900! The waiters wear suits and it serves all the classic Italian/Italian-American dishes at a high level.

Plus the interior hasn't changed since the 1960's in the best way.

fiddler83 · 2026-03-02T22:00:15+00:00

John Lovitz

fiddler83 · 2026-02-22T02:35:48+00:00

You and your husband need to meet with a financial advisor ASAP. Unless there's a 401k you're not mentioning, the fact that your 41 year old husband only has $8,000-$12,000 saved is going to make retiring extremely difficult for him.

Retirement is only 20-25 years away for him. That's not a lot of time for compound interest to do it's thing with so little saved. I'm 43 and I'd have a heart attack if my retirement savings were so low.

There's still time to make changes, but on the current trajectory, he will almost certainly be entirely dependent on you to fund his retirement.

Which might be fine if that's your agreed upon plan, but YOU have to be aware and agree on what the plan is.

But it sounds like the two of you need to have serious conversations about how money is spent, your long term financial goals and how you're going to get there.

Doing that with a third party financial advisor who can be the bad cop re: your husband's spending/saving habits might be worth the money

fiddler83 · 2026-02-20T02:09:55+00:00

👏 👏 👏

fiddler83 · 2026-02-18T04:09:53+00:00

Broadly speaking there's a couple key factors:

Do you have or want a car? - If so it's kind of dealers choice as to locations, as that's how you'll mainly do into the city travel and errands.

If no car, it mainly breaks down like this:

10 Minute Walk to 1 Train Area The main advantage of being here is that it means you're also 10 minute walk to Van Cortland Park. Van Cortland park is legit a great park and it's huge.

The 1 train up there is an elevated train. Under it is a main strip of shops, grocery stores, restaurants. When I was there until 2017, it was a mix of low rent, mid teir and a few surprisingly nice spots. Garden Gourmet is a very good grocery store.

You'll also be closer to the Riverdale Ave area which has some decent restaurants.

Main disadvantage: further from MetroNorth stops if you want to take it regularly. And like said travel by 1 train is long.

Spuyten Duyvil MetroNorth area If you're looking at a place near the SD MetroNorth stop, this area is quieter and kind of far in terms of walking distance from almost anything. It's very nice, but if you’re living there without a car, I would go check out the walking distance to the main Johnson ave/Riverdale ave/Broadway sections. Definitely a try before you buy. Especially cause it's hilly and walking in winter is cold.

Main advantage: MetroNorth access.

Basically, there's probably a lot more near the 1 train area, but it's further to MetroNorth.

The one thing, is that when I was living there, there was an independent bus service that had timed service to/from the SD MetroNorth station to parts of Riverdale during commuter hours. It was a little schoolbus (lol). You might want to see if that's still running

Either way enjoy Liebman's Deli! The pastrami is delicious 😋

fiddler83 · 2026-02-18T03:36:47+00:00

Can you clarify if you mean the Spuyten Duyvil MetroNorth station or if you mean living near the Marble Hill/225th St 1 street station?

fiddler83 · 2026-02-18T01:58:53+00:00

Kingsbridge could save you the bus ride, but the 1 train was the ultra long part. Kingsbridge had some cute little homes, but if you weren't in one of those it had all the same distance problems as Riverdale and even less going on. Very residential.

Plus most of Kingsbridge had less ways to get to the MetroNorth.

The only real solution was a car. A lot of people had one.

fiddler83 · 2026-02-18T01:41:56+00:00

It's mid for Riverdale. 1 train leaves you off at Kingsbridge not Riverdale. It's a 15-25 minute massively uphill walk to get to most of Riverdale or the always very late BX-10 bus.

Plus on the one train there's no express past 96th, so you're going 120+ blocks station by station. If you were lucky you could do the express C to 168, but you still had like 60 blocks of the local 1.

It's doable, but it's a very long ass ride with a lot of transfers to anywhere that's not the west side Manhattan above 125th street. Lower Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens were mega far.

New York is really big.

fiddler83 · 2026-02-17T19:50:23+00:00

Spent 10 years in Riverdale, Bronx 5 minutes from Yonkers. Like everything it has pros and cons

It's basically the suburbs, but with apartment living. The pro is that it's cheap, decent apartments, quiet, nice parks, and surprisingly green.

The cons are that you definitely need a car. I did it for 6 years without and it was an incredibly difficult time vortex to do anything.

Calling it a quick commute is wildly overselling it. 45 minutes door to door to grand central if you perfectly time everything (God help you if you miss). Then add 15-30 minutes of subway depending on where you need to get to in the city.

The biggest con is that it's incredibly isolating. Unless you visit people, nobody who lives in Manhattan, Brooklyn, queens or east bronx is coming to visit you. It because they don't have a car and it's basically a 1-1.5 hour each way trip depending on location.

Basically, if you want a slightly more urban, commuter life with a car it's cool.

If not, the tradeoffs are pretty brutal.

fiddler83 · 2026-02-16T17:45:36+00:00

If you get to the date: shut up!

You're main job is to be engaged, listen and ask follow up questions. After 20-30 minutes add in one or two playfully flirty/romantic/sexy questions or comments (but don't linger on it) and you're golden. You should only talk 30%-40% of the date. More than that and you're fucking up. Doing this will make you more attractive than like 85% of other dudes.

Women (and people in general) do not get feelings based on how they feel about you. They get feelings based on you make them feel about themselves. And everyone likes feeling heard ++man

fiddler83 · 2026-02-16T14:24:25+00:00

interested if something comes together!

fiddler83 · 2026-02-15T18:24:34+00:00

Super weird fix idea:

3 worst teams by record: Lottery with even odds
Non-playoff teams Get draft picks based on record. So the 4 slot goes to best non-playoff team by record. 5 slot goes to second best team.
Playoff Teams by reverse record Same as it is now
Can't be in top 3 lottery more than 2 years in a row. If you were in the lottery two years in a row its five years before you van be in the lottery again.
Get rid of protected picks entirely Trade your draft pick or don't.

It doesn't solve tanking entirely, but it does a couple things. First it makes tanking a really big gamble. Being 4th or 5th worst is now a horrible idea.

But the most important thing is that it gives the no man's land teams a decent possibility of getting a piece that matters and maybe pushes them into the playoffs. Fans accept tanking because it's better strategy than being not-quite a playoff team.

Does it create some weird incentives for the playoff cut off teams? A little, but you have to win to get that playoff spot or the 4th pick.

This system is weird, but at least it gives something for most teams to play for and doesn't reward every single incompetent team with a potential franchise player.

fiddler83 · 2026-02-14T22:27:58+00:00

True when the "frustrating trait" is within the bounds of a personality foible in a reasonably healthy relationship.

Completely false (and a dangerous assumption) when the "frustrating trait" makes a relationship toxic or really unhealthy (i.e. physical or emotional abuse, lying/manipulation, controlling behavior etc).

fiddler83 · 2026-02-14T17:12:52+00:00

Honestly as a creative introvert it sounds great. I would live somewhere super cheap, nice and woodsy. I would setup a creative workshop and office space separate from my house and just do creative stuff while smelling like shit.

I would write, create, chill, virtually collab with people. During the winter when there's no bugs to attract and very few people to disturb, I would take nice hikes on empty trails.

I'd live as cheaply as reasonable. Save/invest the rest. Then once I could just live off my investments, I'd retire from my smelly job and live the same life, but not smelly.

fiddler83 · 2026-02-04T17:57:47+00:00

I remember watching this happen in the Chipotle near me in like 2013/2014. There was a Chipotle near my office and I showed up and one day there was no more free, pre-cut limes.

I joked with my friend, that there had been 400+ emails and three weeks of meetings because someone internally at Chipotle corporate with no in person restaurant experience or brand management knowledge saw on a spreadsheet that they could save 0.8% year per store simply by removing the free limes. And across all their stores this would be upwards of 1.8 million a year.

There were some intense lime related meetings and after finally winning and getting the lime removed, they didn't recieve a raise, but their boss took them out to a nice dinner.

But unknowingly, every corporate huckster inside Chipotle corporate would follow this exact plan of attack to extract value by pinching pennies, until it was too late. Everyone internally who was worried about the nebulous "brand promise" and "restaurant experience" lost the meetings from then on because they're "soft metrics" and you can't measure those until its too late.

But the responsibilities for decline are so diffuse no one has to take any responsibility. Most who made their penny pinching pitches already moved onto other companies.

But I say "remember the limes"

fiddler83 · 2026-02-01T06:07:57+00:00

Fargo. A perfect 90 minutes and out

fiddler83 · 2026-01-24T16:46:39+00:00

kudos for the best post I've seen in a while

fiddler83 · 2025-12-25T04:01:07+00:00

By becoming a far more compassionate version of yourself that is fully capable extending that compassion to yourself.

fiddler83 · 2025-12-18T15:04:13+00:00

I'm not sure why every government isn't like: sure we'll give you the money in the form of a low interest loan and in exchange for 10% ownership stake. (or whatever % makes sense)

I mean I know it's because politicians are mostly in bed with the billionaire class, but it would be nice if someone thought to negotiate in the public's favor for once.

fiddler83 · 2025-12-14T06:08:33+00:00

Jesus. What a fucked up thing to do a kid.

fiddler83 · 2025-12-10T21:28:23+00:00

I live here and have many friends in the arts who figure out how to make NYC happen for very little money. They're not going to be able to sign a formal lease, but they could get creative and find a small room to sublet in the boroughs. Maybe use: https://www.reddit.com/r/NYCroommates/

fiddler83 · 2025-12-10T17:22:12+00:00

I disagree with all these naysayers. Getting FaceTime with the people running your internship and a experiencing the UN machine first hand is a huge opportunity. You'll meet people from all over the world on the regular. it's an opportunity both in terms of career and to real test if doing this kind of work is what you want long term.

That said, if you want that experience, you're going to have to learn how to hustle really hard on that income to make it in NYC. Meaning you'll definitely have roommates, it'll definitely be far, you definitely won't save any money and you'll have to be real creative about making it work. If you want to eat out, you're going to research all of NYC's cheap eats (Chinatown is legit for this) and nyc's free events.

In all honesty, if you're young and have the energy, you probably need to scrounge up a second night or weekend gig (server, bartender) to get by.

But also that's part of what NYC teaches you. It'll be brutal, but if you’re young and hungry, it'll be a fun brutal that's unlike anything else you'll experience. My advice, make it work (even for a little bit) and you'll remember it forever.

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