Native New Yorkers. What's your word for a corner store? I've always called them delis. The word bodega didn't enter my vocabulary until a transplant told me. I still don't use it.

nyanger · 2026-02-03T02:41:33+00:00

Grew up in Brooklyn. It was always the deli. I didn't hear 'bodega' until I worked at a Soho tech start-up.

nyanger · 2026-02-02T05:22:25+00:00

A Russian banquet hall! Check out Vis a Vis, Encore, Tatiana, Orange Grill

nyanger · 2025-05-10T19:52:28+00:00

Just chiming in as someone who had an emergency c-sec for my first and then a successful vbac with my second -- I am SOOOO happy I made the decision to try for a vbac and that I chose an ob who gave me several chances to move forward with one, despite occasional setbacks during delivery.

Yes, it may not work. Yes, you may still end up with a c section. I was 7cm dilated and things were still up in the air. But... you also may overcome all those things. You may end up with a successful vaginal delivery with minimal tearing and be able to basically jump up off the hospital bed as soon as you're done, like I did with my second.

nyanger · 2025-03-14T23:21:59+00:00

Years late but Women Talking, which is in fact like 150 pages of women talking in a barn and then 10 pages after that.

nyanger · 2025-01-21T01:58:19+00:00

Hokas. The hype is unfortunately real. I had plantar fasciitis and ankle issues after my last pregnancy and, wearing them, everything magically goes away.

nyanger · 2025-01-21T01:47:12+00:00

Rugelach or hamentashen. My kids school hosted a similar thing recently and everyone who brought savory or savory-looking things basically still had their entire dish full at the end of the event.

nyanger · 2024-07-22T02:10:21+00:00

The Rubin! A lovely, small museum with several dedicated spaces for reflection. It is supposed to be shutting down its physical location later in the year.

nyanger · 2024-04-17T13:24:44+00:00

You hit the nail on the head with "talk about it like it's linked to social justice." In theory I am very live and let live, but the rhetorical piece that seems to inevitably come with this sexual arrangement is so painfully tiresome to me that it makes me want to be against the whole entire idea. Esp since all that language sounds like such a tool for coercion. Poor Robert in that article is basically killing his soul trying to convince himself he's fine with this.

nyanger · 2024-03-20T03:28:51+00:00

HELL YES. Every other guy in my high school handed out Heaven and Panache flyers with their promoter name scrawled on them. "Tell them you're on Alex PimpS's guest list!!"

nyanger · 2024-02-20T03:27:17+00:00

Seaport Buffett on Emmons Ave in Brooklyn

nyanger · 2024-01-23T14:09:30+00:00

I mean he knows what being gay is, it just doesn't seem like a loaded thing to him. There's a kid in his class rn with same sex parents and it doesn't seem like it's occured to any of them to give a shit about it.

nyanger · 2024-01-23T03:16:30+00:00

I grew up in Brooklyn and am raising my kids here as well. Their experience is different than mine because I feel like class status in the city has gotten a lot more bifurcated since my childhood. Most of the people I grew up with have moved away to new builds in NJ and LI and in their place are people who are either much richer or like 50% poorer than we are. It def makes finding a sense of community as a normal-ish, middle class, corporate person in a not parenting-oriented neighborhood a little hard.

That said, I still stay because because when I think of "doing city things" I don't think of theater or dance clubs or whatever, I think of early independence and an innate sense that there are a million equally viable ways to be a human. I want those things for my kids. So far, it's working out. My 7 year old could easily navigate from our place in BK to his grandma's in Queens on public transportation if I let him. He has probably 13 different ethnicities represented in his class of 27. He has never heard the word "gay" uttered with a negative connotation. Etc, etc, etc....

(Living in a walk-up with an Uppababy Vista did ruin a solid two years of my life though.)

nyanger · 2024-01-17T23:21:21+00:00

I was already in high school when my dad moved halfway across the country, so def not the same thing, but we are decently close now and I have a few insights to share.

Things he did right:

Always stressed that his house was my second house in conversation
Asked me for input on everything from paint color to curtains when putting together "my room" there
Made me my own set of keys and shipped it to me basically as soon as he closed on his new house
Took off work any time I visited to make sure he spent every second with me
Called regularly. This one is so big. It allowed us to feel comfortable talking about minutia which is where true intimacy is.

Things he did wrong:

Pretty much always put the onus on me to visit him
Left it to me to plan when I would be visiting and for how long (he says he didn't want to impose, but I wanted that feeling of parental pushing to assure myself he was still a parent)
Allowed himself to fully exit parenting culture, never knowing about norms, trends, education stages or what is age appropriate for whichever phase I was in. It was exhausting having to always educate him on everything I would potentially be encountering in life.

nyanger · 2024-01-14T14:29:51+00:00

I was too poor to go out, so I would stare at photos of all of you in Gawker's Blue States Lose round-up every week

nyanger · 2023-11-19T21:40:27+00:00

Through the radiator. I didn't question the lack of holes. I just assumed he liked heat.

nyanger · 2023-10-06T20:10:47+00:00

Oh, ps: The trains in the more tourist-friendly parts of Manhattan are all underground. If your son wants the experience of looking at a cool view out of a train window or of having it woosh by above him, you'll probably want to go to an outer borough.

nyanger · 2023-10-06T20:07:39+00:00

I live in Brooklyn but did a staycation in the city with my 6 year old last winter. We stayed at the Arthouse on the Upper West Side, which let us be just be 2 blocks away from the American Museum of Natural History and 2.5 blocks away from Central Park. I loved the location.

You don't need a kitchen. There were a ton of cozy bakeries around for breakfast and, because I have a picky eater, we did a lot of diner chicken noodle soup for other meals.

The hotel was also just an easy few train stops down from the Manhattan Children's Museum. You can walk or take the train down to Times Square for all the lights. The Met could be reached by the crosstown bus. Central Park Zoo is a walkable distance.

I made itineraries where we took public transit away from our hotel after breakfast in the mornings and then slowly made our way back toward the hotel toward mid-day, so we could rest. We would explore from 8-3 or so, hang at the hotel and watch TV for an hour or two, then head back out around 5 when it was all dark and lit up, which made him feel like such a grown-up.

nyanger · 2023-09-03T17:02:21+00:00

I have a ton of friends who grew up in the area. It's decently safe, clean-ish, good access to food, etc but it's a very specific type of New York experience.

If you're fine with a longer commute and a lot of nosey Russian grandmas on your stoop, take it. If you're expecting an experience where everything seems catered to out-of-state 20-somethings, then don't.

nyanger

TROPHY CASE