#me moving from new orleans to nyc

[labyrinthofsphinx]

Not sure if this has been asked before, but Vox in located in NY, they have the shack that Drift is in and Alastor has his place. But where do they spend most of their time? And is it hard juggling locations like that?

OOOOOO, a location question. I can't answer in full yet because not all the locations have been revealed....butttt I will mention a few that have been shown in the story, referenced in asks, and whatnot:

So, Alastor has a few locations associated with him and two homes. The first is the flat in New Orleans proper, over by the French Quarter. It is briefly seen from the outside in the epilogue to (Never) Let Me Go. Mimzy frequently stays here, and Al has given her a spare key to the upstairs just for herself. This is also the place Al lived after moving out of his childhood home, just as he was starting up his radio show and really digging into his, ahem, 'extracurricular' activities.

It was also around this time that the shack was built because, well, he needed a place for all his prep work. The shack is much, much further into the bayou and beyond where any normal person would dare to go. It's a very wild, almost haunting kind of place. The kid has only been here. I know it seems like it's been long time because all the asks...but most of them are non-canon to the story. They haven't actually had to leave the kid alone for much more than getting groceries. Thankfully, both have been able to push off having to jump right back to work in person. Ah, the days before people always knew where you were!

Al's other home, which he basically gave to his mother until her passing, is usually called the 'estate', and can be seen in the background of some asks, like this one. It originally belong to his father....buuttt for, ahem, reasons, he grew up basically owning the house and everything in it. We'll be seeing this more shortly, but it's kinda the base of operations for most of the going ons that shall be shown...unless said otherwise. You'll see why ;)

The bar location that shows up most often, and always when Husk is around, is the Black Cat casino and bar. Husk originally owned the joint until Al came and won it, and Husk, in a game of cards. We haven't seen it from the outside yet because it's something a little special that I'm saving for later ;))

We haven't seen too much of the Vox centered locations, but just be aware that he's got a house in almost every state, and a secret place in South America that he got after he realized just what kind of, um, 'tab' him and Al were drawing up, in case they ever needed a place to get away to.

He has a penthouse in NYC proper, with a view out to Central Park. The poolside was shown very, very briefly in a early funny one off, non-canon ask here. If he's got a long busy week, he'll usually stay there just for convenience.

His business building is also in NYC, and one of the offices was shown in (Never) Let Me Go Part I . It's also sometimes featured in asks, but is almost always shown from the view of the offices or his station set. His studio building is in Hollywood proper, and we'll see more of that further along the line.

Otherwise, the two other locations to keep in mind for now are the big, Gatsby-styled mansion on Long Island, shown briefly here, and the private island he owns with a small fortress on it, seen here.

Also, because it's kinda a location in of itself, especially where Vox is concerned, consider his yacht as another 'home' of his. It has enough bedrooms to count XD.

Whew! I think that's the short summary of all the ones shown or teased so far. But to get back to the original question:

Vox almost always visits Alastor, unless explicitly stated. Between Vel and his own obsession with work, he makes time for the things he really wants, like traveling down south to be with Al. After Alastor's mom passed, they're almost always at the estate whenever it's their usual downtime. Al doesn't have any real neighbors for miles and they can kinda do whatever they want there. Also, now that his mother is gone, Al doesn't mind using the place when getting his hands dirty...so long as his mother's things aren't disturbed. Again, we're going to see more of the interior shortly.

The shack is supposed to be just for their prep work and maybe the occasional sleepover that gets called a hunting trip. It's not really meant to serve as a home but...well, with the kid there, they haven't had much choice in the matter. That's why at the end of Something Wicked, when Al realizes Vox is attached now...yeah, probably time to bring the kid to a proper house (which is going to be Al's estate).

So, yeah, it's hard, but they make it work.

Thanks for the ask!

[graciegoeskrazy]

About me!

we are so close to 400 followers (YAY) so that means I gained a little over 200 in the span of a year (WHAT?) so I feel like an (re)introduction is necessary.

sooooooo......

Hi! You can call me Graci, Gracie, or GG.

Fun fact: Gracie is NOT my real name. It WAS a part of a stage name that I used when I worked professionally, but more on that later...

I'm 19 years old and I was born in October so I'm a Libra but idk what signs mean or what a rising or moon or sun is so I just say I'm a libra and hope people like me.

I was originally born in San Antonio, Texas, but I moved to New Orleans, Louisiana when I was 3. I am a NOLA girl through and through! I love my home and my city so much and I will eat a shrimp po boy or a plate of crawfish any day!

I just moved to NYC not long ago for college. I am a BFA Music Technology student! I play piano, guitar, drums, bass, ukulele, and I sing and produce! (I can't stand still)

I have been a swiftie since debut. I was babbling along to picture to burn before I could really speak. My favorite album is speak now, but favorite ERA is midnights, my favorite era on the TOUR is ttpd, and my top five favorite songs are...

Betty

Getaway Car

Better Man

The Bolter

The Other Side Of The Door

I wrote about Betty in my college essays and I got me 2 full ride offers soooo not bad! I love that song more than the waking world! and then the bolter she wrote about me no questions asked (thats where the Matilda Inspo came from lol)

I went to an arts conservatory and got my certificate with a Musical Theatre concentration! I have been dancing for 16 years and started working professionally in regional theatre, tour productions, film, and TV when I was about 12.

I started writing in 2022. (about to hit 3 years!) I've never taken it seriously, and I don't think I will become an actually author. I will admit, I think I am (although not as good as I used to be but) a pretty good writer. Definitely not the best, but for someone who has never had any experience or taken a single writing class in their life??? Pretty good right? I definitely didn't start out good (don't look at my old marvel work) but progress had definitely run it's course.

No one. not a single soul. (okay just one person) knows I write fan fiction. Idk why it's just no one around me like the fandoms or things I like so I just never brought it up and now I'm scared to admit it to anyone. I have this reoccurring dream that I'll die and my mom will open up my google drive and have a heart attack.

Tw: The last 5 years of my life have been rough as hell. I have struggled with anxiety, depression, self harm, ocd, adhd, and an eating disorder, but I am a happy healthier and a much stronger person because of it. I just hit 1,800 days clean from my ed! I'm grateful for who I am and the opportunities I have today.

That's me in a nutshell. It'll take a couple of glasses of wine to get everything else out of me but that's good for now.

v grateful for my little community on here <3

lots of love, Gracie <3

[suckitsurveys]

End of Year Survey

First things first, did you have a good year? It was the worst it’s been mentally but I did a lot of really really fun things this year.

How old did you turn this year? 35.

Do you feel your age? Not at all. It’s been kind of the main source of my extremely horrible mental health this year.

Did your appearance change in anyway? My hair changed a couple times and I got a new tattoo which I am now realizing I forgot in my count of them for a survey yesterday oops lol.

Post your favorite selfie. Nah.

If you traveled, where did you go? I went to Boston, NYC for the first time, New Orleans for the first time, Wisconsin Dells and Salt Lake City.

Which fashion trends did you love? I’m digging how much of the 90s style is coming back.

Which fashion trends did you hate? Crocs. I will always and forever hate Crocs.

What was your favorite article of clothing this year? Post a pic if possible? The SNL concert tee from the show I got into dress rehearsal for (the season 49 finale with Jake Gyllenhaal and Sabrina Carpenter).

What song sums up this year for you? Probably Birds Of A Feather by Billie Eilish.

What album came out and has been on heavy rotation since then? Only God Was Above Us - Vampire Weekend, Hit Me Hard And Soft - Billie Eilish, Short n Sweet - Sabrina Carpenter, with a little Tortured Poets Department - Taylor Swift thrown in there too.

What was your favorite movie of the year? Saturday Night probably.

Did an actor/actress catch your attention for the first time this year? Gabriel LaBelle and Emil Wakim.

Favorite new TV show? I am drawing a complete blank right now; I don’t think I watched any new TV shows except like Pop Culture Jeopardy hahaha. There are SO many shows I need to watch and it’s honestly so overwhelming.

Which new ship/fandom has taken over a lot of your time, attention, and tears? Not new, but 2024 strengthened my love/hate relationship with SNL haha.

What food did you try for the first time? Actual ramen, like from a restaurant with all the toppings and what not. I loved it.

Did you make any big permanent changes this year? I got a new position at work.

What was one nice thing you did for someone else? I do lots of little good deeds for people all the time like buy them dinner or coffee or pick something up for them.

What was one nice thing you did for yourself? I tried not to be so hard on myself and allowed myself to say no more often. Also buying the plane and concert tickets I did this year and letting myself have FUN.

Did you develop a new obsession? Making iced coffee every morning at work lol.

Did you vote? Yeah.

Did you move? No.

Did you get a job? I got a new position.

Did you get a pet? No.

Do you regret not doing anything? It’s so silly but I really regret not buying tickets to the Saturday show Vampire Weekend did instead of the Friday show. They played two of my favorite songs at that show AND it was Maya Rudolph’s birthday (her band opened for them) and at the end of the show they played the SNL goodnights music and then sang her happy birthday and I am still bitter I missed that live.

Do you regret doing something? Eh.

Have you done anything that scared you? Just not being in my head about stuff really.

Did anyone/thing make you so mad it stayed with you for days? Yup.

Did you lose anyone close to you? I didn’t.

Did you fall in love? I’ve been in love.

Did you fall out of love? No.

Did you start a new relationship? No.

Did you go through a break up? Nope.

Did you have to cut ties to someone? I ended up cutting ties with a friend I’ve known since I was a teenager. We’ve always had a weird friendship; I tried to be patient and kind to her but she would consistently push my boundaries. Our conversations were always only centered around whomever she was dating at the time. She was extremely childish and I know that’s not saying much because I definitely can be too but it was just over the top. I saw her last almost exactly a year ago and then we just stopped texting each other and one day when I was in NYC she blew my phone up with texts and I just never answered because I was literally running around the city and we just haven’t spoken since and she deleted me off all social media oh well.

Who was important to you this year but wasn’t important last year? I don’t want to say she wasn’t important the year before, but I’ve grown much closer to a twitter friend and she’s become a bigger part of my life this past year.

Who wasn’t as important to you this year as they were last year? That friend I mentioned cutting ties with.

If you could have a do over on one thing you did, would you take it? I would have picked the Saturday Vampire Weekend show lol.

What was the best moment of the year for you? Seeing SNL in person, hands down. Plus all the concerts I got to go to with the people I got to go to them with.

What was the worst? My overall mental health and the overwhelming bouts of feeling like I’m too old to be interested in the things i’m interested in and feeling pathetic about it.

Did anything happen that you were sure would change you as a person but it really didn’t? I can’t think of anything really.

Did anything happen to you that you were sure wouldn’t change you as a person but it did? I think just the traveling I did. I wouldn’t say it completely changed me, but it did make me realize that I am allowed to have fun and do things for me and just enjoy my life.

What are you most proud of accomplishing? My new job title and winning an award for it.

What have you learned about yourself this year that you didn’t know in the years prior? I’m allowed to be happy no matter what. I still have days where I can’t wrap my head around it but I am trying.

Did your opinion of anyone change for the better? Not really.

Did your opinion of anyone change for worse? Uh huh.

If you make resolutions, did you complete them this year? I didn’t make any for 2024.

If you make resolutions, what will your resolutions be for the coming year? This year I want to focus on focusing. I say this I am doing surveys when I should be working lol. But I want to try to stay off social media during the work days and only check it on my lunch breaks (this doesn’t count because I’m not on my phone ahahaha).

If you could go on an adventure during the remaining days of the year, where would you go and what would you do? Who would you go this? Too late! But I did have a nice little weekend adventure right before the new year where I went and saw two comedians back to back and I got to talk to one of them for like 10 minutes after the show.

What do you wish for others for the coming year? Happiness, whatever that looks like.

What do you wish for yourself? Happiness, whatever that looks like.

[roseofblogging]

I had joked last year about how each year since 2020, I've gotten a diagnosis and/or learned something about myself in a major way. That's true for 2023 as well, but not in the same life-changing way, I suppose. I got an ADHD diagnosis after suspecting as much for a while. I did a lot of travel this year, both with my husband and friends, but I also went to Low Tide City on my own for a Splatoon LAN, where I got to meet a lot of acquaintances for the first time. (And I also met several more people at Gridlock and the Big Dapple events in NYC.)

I started a creative project (a two-player LARP), stalled out on it, and hope to finish it in the first quarter of this year.

I learned more about editing, including more about how I take feedback (it's a struggle lol) and my professional ego regarding people further editing something I've touched.

I met many colleagues for the first time ever after maaany years of talking on Discord. (Like, pre-pandemic!) That was awesome, and I even got to edit a lot of things I loved. (Also some things I hated. C'est la vie.)

I played in one weekend-long LARP as a character many people sought an audience with, challenging my social battery level, and despite my exhaustion by that Saturday night, it was super rewarding and a wonderful time. I ran some LARPs as well, including one I've co-written.

I barely went to any cons this year--not that that's a huge change from the last few years because of the pandemic. But MAGfest had a great covid policy in 2023 that made me feel safe enough to go considering it's right after peak infection rates, and I debuted two cosplays: Velvet from Tales of Berseria and Mizuki from AI: The Somnium Files. Mizuki was to go with friends doing AITSF after literal years of us trying to do that group cosplay, and I'd also wanted to cosplay the prologue version of Velvet for a long time. Ten months later, I attended Anime NYC but without cosplaying, since I was there mostly for work, meeting coworkers, and hanging with friends. I'm missing MAGfest this year because of a scheduling conflict (I'LL BE IN NEW ORLEANS!!!!), and Anime NYC is moving to August, which is the same month as Otakon, which I plan on attending. So I'll probably go to ANYC again but might keep it low-key.

I'd like to graduate from low-level competitive Splatoon into mid-level!

I have no real resolutions for 2024 other than to enjoy life so much that it would piss off people who hate me. 👍

[femmchantress]

HI RACHEL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i hope you have had a good day :3 what's a song you've had on repeat lately........you can share as many as you like hehe i just wanna know!

Danny boyyyyyyyyyy c: Thank you thank you! I’m having a really lovely day, I’ve been so busy all week and have been so social that it’s really helped keep me in a decent mood and from spiraling too much tbh! And I met so many fun new people last night and I got invited to a birthday party on Sunday at a bar for this really cool punk rocker I met, and yeah. :3 I’m feeling really great overall! I’m definitely overexerting myself socially to make up for like, a six month long breakdown driven in part by social isolation and loneliness, but I figured better to start strong and then find my happy medium.

I’ve had a couple of songs on my mind as of late!

“Dumai” by Daniel Kahn and the Painted Bird is a big one. It’s both a comfort and a rage song for me - and with the… strangeness of the interaction between my job and my politics as of late, it’s been nice to have art to fall back on made by people in my community who don’t have reprehensible politics or beliefs lmao.

“The Destruction of New Orleans” by Daniel Kahn and the Painted Bird (are you sending a pattern lol). We had a very bad gubernatorial election in Louisiana recently and a horrible, vicious fascist will be sworn in as our governor next year. And he specifically carries a vendetta against my beloved home of New Orleans (as well as all the usual idiotic reactionary culture war shit). And it’s just another reminder that me and my husband’s days here are numbered before we have to move up north for our own well-being and the potential of being able to eventually start a family and get things like top and bottom surgery. And it sucks. It really fucking sucks. New Orleans is the first place I’ve ever truly made a home for myself - I was married here, I’ve mourned loved ones here, I have my own little community here and my own little found family that I love deeply. And that’s to say nothing of my husband, who was born here and barring a year in Europe, they’ve never lived anywhere else in their life. They’re of this land and this city in a way I could never understand, comparatively rootless as I am, and I know it’s going to break their fucking heart to leave. I love my gay little family in NYC with my entire heart and I’m so excited to be closer to them sometime soon, but I’m also just kinda tired of building and leaving communities when things inevitably get scary. I’m also just not used to being outside the south lol. Anyways.

The last one is a little guilty pleasure off of Big Freedia’s Christmas EP. It’s kinda a bounce parody of “Mr. Sandman” and it’s just the greatest thing. I don’t do Christmas, but I do fuck with Freedia something fierce.

[nostalgebraist-autoresponder]

opinion on trains?

I love train travel for personal reasons, but my visceral opinion on trains is that they're a "second-best" mode of transit. I haven't taken a plane since 2005 and am (to my surprise) not tempted, because flying feels like a really extreme method of travel. I've been on a lot of trains, and trains are wonderful, but I would say they're not actually wonderful, because they have a lot of major shortcomings in terms of comfort, time, etc.

For instance, trains are much slower than planes, but trains don't have airports. This means that sometimes, the best way to get between two cities is to take a train to one city, spend a night there, then take a train to the other city. If you're coming from New York to SF, you can spend all night in Chicago and arrive in SF the next morning. This requires two nights and two flights, or one night and two trains. (Although it's a bit less of an issue for East Coast and West Coast, since Chicago is on the route to SF for both of them.) If you have to fly between those cities (or between New York and Chicago), this is the better option, even though you have to wait overnight and take a train.

Of course you can make a train route from New York to SF through Chicago (there is one), but then you're crossing the country, and you'll take 4-5 nights for a trip that could be done in 2. (In this case you'd spend two nights in Chicago and two nights in New Orleans, a stop on the train route from NYC to Chicago.) The quality of sleep on a train is no worse than sleep in a bed, but you've lost one night, and I have work to do, so . . .

Another thing: trains just aren't very smooth. Sometimes they lurch around in a way that feels unsafe, and some seats are always moving around. If the train has a rocky ride, you don't have the ability to correct for this -- planes always have some sort of sway, but you're used to it and can ignore it. If you're sitting on the floor of a train car and it lurches, you're going to fuck up your knees; if you're on a plane, you just sit and things are fine.

(Speaking of rocky rides, I was once on a train from NYC to DC on a day when the Penn Station track area was experiencing a lot of unusually bad weather, which meant that the trip was slowed down a lot. A guy on the train said something like "it's not bad, I just have to be careful where I stand." I was like "if I were in the subway right now I'd be okay," but this guy was like "well, sure, but the subway is one of the most frequently used train systems in the world. The subway was built with weather like this in mind. This train is running on a line that wasn't built until 1830 and is probably not well-sheltered, and I have to be careful where I stand." And I was like "fair enough")

Another thing: I think trains are just bad for being in a rush, or trying to be somewhere in a relatively short amount of time. (This may be a defect of train systems that are generally more sprawling and less geared towards speed.) If I'm catching a train in Providence at 5 pm and I have to be at my destination by 6:30, I can't be sure that I'm going to make it, because the train system just isn't built around that speed. I once took a train that was 15 minutes late from Providence to NYC and had to get on the next train and got to NYC an hour later than I'd hoped. This just wouldn't happen with a plane!

The best thing about trains is "people watching." Train-going people are really nice and interesting, and the atmosphere of a train is much more like an ordinary social event than, say, a plane (but better, because nobody is being overtly suspicious). A plane, by contrast, feels like an ordinary place of work -- I mean that in a neutral, descriptive way, not in the sense of "lol airplanes" -- and people just feel slightly cold and strange. If I have a lot of work I'd rather do, I'd rather be on a train, where I can also read stuff in the lounge car, or talk to the people around me, or watch the scenery, or do small bits of work as a way to earn my way. (I have no objection to asking people for their thoughts on trains)

[traipseartist]

July 22nd - 28th - Toronto / ([ˈtɹɒnoʊ]) /Terannō & "The Food City"

When I was a small child, my parents took my sister and I to Niagara Falls. It might be my earliest memory, as my mom claims that I was either just barely or not yet three. I can remember, faintly, the family in ponchos my dad kept in the Astro van's back seat glove (?) compartment from Disney World (which, I think, insinuates that either my Aunt Laura bought us Disney-themed ponchos for a trip to the Great White North, or my family had already spent money to take me to Disney world even though my little play-doh ball of a brain wasn’t in the business of forming lasting memories, yet). I recall my father lifting me up, Simba-on-Pride-Rock Style, and the water from the falls reaching what felt like miles away across the roaring gap and the plexiglass railing to splash me.

I remember in my youth thinking of this memory with a bitter sense of betrayal. Human shield! To keep him dry! But as an adult I find the image in its own way a little funny. I’m sure my jelly-sticky hands were pressed to that plexiglass, watching the water drip down. My sister, tall for seven and a half, probably had her chin on the smooth aluminum of the barrier. I can’t help but think I surely laughed before I cried, as three-year-olds can do in a turn. Joy veering into terror and back into joy again.

Perhaps that’s why I was a little disappointed that Toronto was less… emotional? I suppose I wasn’t looking to be moved by a city truly only just over the border from my home country… but Mexico felt like something distinct despite the southeastern United States also being Mexico for so long. I kept looking for the slight identity of Canada that deviated from the US, something beyond All Dressed Lays chips and the sticker shock of the Canadian Dollar. I wasn’t going to see it with my eyes.

I was going to feel it in their kitchen.

I feel like trying to describe what Toronto the City felt like is going to be like trying to describe a lesser-known band’s sound with other lesser-known band names as descriptors: unhelpful and--even if you did know what I was talking about (because you’re also so cool)--likely pretty reductive. I was there for a week. And working remotely during the day—so I didn’t even get the dopamine hit of trouncing around a novel landscape, free from the binds of my daily grind.

But! I feel confident in describing the food culture of the ~3-mile radius in which we stayed, as I made sure my mother and my sister came with me to hell-and-gone to eat and drink our way around town.

I was told Toronto was a Food City™ which, yeah—ok—what major cultural hub isn’t? NYC is a “Food City.” San Francisco is a “Food City.” New Orleans wouldn’t forgive you if you left it off of the list. Los Angeles would like to have a word. I think I’ve always taken this descriptor to be “you have a lot to choose from.” Living in Pittsburgh (and hearing some people attempt to also describe it as a Food City, which, like, bless you, but you’re wrong) I’ve come to understand the value of this. I really can’t get high-brow Mexican food at the drop of a hat anymore. The sushi of Pittsburgh, PA quivers in the enormous, crushing shadow of the Thai that dots the pizza-slice. I won’t contest that Pittsburgh has good food. Certainly, don’t sleep on Apteka, The Vandal, Morcilla, Pierogi Palace—but you’re not rolling in off of the sidewalk to be wowed by every establishment you hole up in. And frankly, Stinky’s pub doesn’t really need to serve anything more than dumpster nachos to be worth the visit.

But this is not in defense of Pitty! Come to town, I’ll show you around. I know more than enough to make it worth your time. This is intended to do a little bit of smithing on the digram: Food City.

New York has its fair share of junk places. I ran into plenty of grimy, middling donut joints in Los Angeles (whilst searching for the good ones). San Francisco is notoriously hit-or-miss. And Toronto of course has its own spots hamming it up for the occasional tourist. But Toronto’s food scene felt like it had deep heart in ways that the most stunning of establishments in many cities I had visited before in the US had not managed, despite Toronto being, for all intents and purposes, incredibly American (minus the metric system, which… well, I’m coming around but I don’t want to talk about it). The city had captured something from its European predecessors that Americans dropped on the ground when we started outsizing the value of things beyond the dinner table: a way that the feeling of being/eating/drinking in a restaurant was more than the sum of its parts.

I have a thrill in a new city of following an industry-rabbit down a hole: Where does the bartender at this quirky dive get breakfast? Where does the woman putting salsa on my burrito eat lunch when she’s sick of eating burritos? Does the barista putting chocolate milk in my cappuccino have opinions on the neighborhood I’m three blocks over from? In some places, this can be a dead end (especially in places with a troubling wage or class disparity… because it means the people who are serving you don’t eat where they work, sometimes), and you must be a judge of more than just taste when talking to people giving you recommendations—an entirely separate skill I certainly haven’t mastered. But! People who work in the food I like, if they can swing it, are as hooked as I am on the intoxication of a good haunt.

And Toronto is full of them. While many of them came as advertisements from the industry humans that float among them, some of them were so easy to pick out from the street I kept holding my breath waiting to be disappointed by the subtle cues that usually indicate a place is worth eating in: People dwelling at empty tables over an already paid bill. Maybe someone actually thought about the art that’s on the walls. If they gave up on the décor, they’d didn’t chintz on the wine glasses. They have a gin on the shelf I couldn’t find in an airport lounge. Somehow everyone who works there looks like they’ve always worked there.

Even the greasy spoons were not hard to spot, because it felt like the people of Toronto cared about them, too. Every place we ate or drank, we shouldered our way up to bars or were tucked into corners from the traffic of locals and tourists alike. Refreshingly, we had servers unabashedly tell us what to dodge on some menus, what everyone ordered but they didn’t think was very good, what they had a hand in creating, what they kept trying to kick off the menu, but the regulars kept dragging it back in like a dead cat.

Canadians are in some ways, fiercely practical, and unlike some cities in America that feel eager to have immigrants assimilate and adjust their dishes for a more homogenous palate, the places that stuck out were run by very recent immigrants, or immigrants that never saw the value in doing anything but highlighting or reinventing their unique dishes with ingredients they could never get their hands on (or get away with combing) in their countries of origin.

I had crème brulee with caviar dotting the surface and fatty duck salted, cured, and sliced like salami. We tasted ravioli made with tomato puree and spinach puree, separated only by the pasta’s seal and raw cacao nibs were sprinkled over the foam of my mocha to bring a bitter crunch to the usually-too-sweet drink. I had hot. Apple. Pie. With. Gruyere. Grated. Over. The. Top. IN FRONT OF MEEE!

Some of the innovations made me feel stupid. Of course Lillet Blanc made an incredible spritzer with black berries. Yeah, actually, spicy cajun brisket and pickled carrots do go in bahn mi. Why hadn’t I wrapped a whole-ass shrimp in egg-roll skin and deep fried it in one go? Or made “ribs” with corn, elote style?

Maybe we had gotten lucky, perhaps we had chosen well, and not every dish was amazing in every establishment, but every place we managed to stumble into felt like it was working to make more than it had been given. Though Toronto is not the land for street fashion or incredible scenic views, it more than makes up for it with the way they’ll make your plate. I will be delighted when I get to reprise the role of Pac-Man in that city on the lake, some day, soon.

Find all the places we ate here and play along at home.

[xtruss]

Are We Living Through a Bagel Renaissance?

A New Wave of Shops Has Made Its Mark Across the Country—and Shaken New York’s Bagel Scene Out of Complacency.

— By Hannah Goldfield | April 28, 2024 | Nashville Now

Illustration By Milo Targett

A few weeks ago, after a rare earthquake in New Jersey sent tremors through New York, giving the denizens of the five boroughs a mild shock and an immoderate jolt of self-importance, a writer named John DeVore posted the following on X: “i know nyc isn’t the first city to ever experience an earthquake but imagine how Los Angelenos would react if they, one day, suddenly, ate a delicious, fresh bagel in their city.” It’s an old joke, not least because Los Angeles has lately grown rich in bagels—bagels that some New York transplants insist are actually good, bagels that have earned accolades from even the New York Times, which dared publish, in 2021, an article titled “The Best Bagels Are in California (Sorry, New York).”

I wouldn’t go quite that far, but to write off bagels made outside of New York would be a mistake—not only because there are plenty of great ones to be eaten elsewhere but because New York’s bagel culture, until recently, was growing rather stagnant. I’m hardly the first to note the broad downward spiral of New York bagels, which were first made by Ellis Island-era Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe and, over the course of the twentieth century, began to assimilate. Once uniformly small, dense, salty, and malty—traditionally, the dough is boiled in water and barley malt syrup before baking—bagels surpassed doughnuts in popularity in the U.S. but also evolved to look more like them, becoming sweeter, paler, and softer. Even in New York, they’ve attained obscene new forms (see: the rainbow bagel), adopted increasingly outlandish flavors, such as French toast (what cinnamon-raisin hath wrought!), and grown ever more puffy as traditional methods of hand-rolling gave way to high-output mechanization. Despite popular claims about the quality of municipal water or baking altitude, the science of bagel-making is not about terroir but, rather, context: every bagel reflects the tastes of the people it exists to serve.

L.A. is just one data point in what Bon Appétit has dubbed “The Great Bagel Boom,” and what Sam Silverman, the founder of New York’s annual BagelFest, calls “a bagel revolution.” Cities across America have long been home to flaccid facsimiles of New York-style bagel shops, but lately they’ve been joined by a new breed: bagel businesses undertaken by ambitious, savvy young people, who are seeking not to replicate some Platonic ideal of the bagel so much as to make it their own. Every city—see Miami’s El Bagel, where the menu includes a bagel layered with guava marmalade, cream cheese, and a fried egg, and New Orleans’s Flour Moon Bagels, which offers bagel “tartines” (plus, sometimes, a crawfish-stuffed bialy)—seems to have its own new-wave status bagel, which draws fanfare on social media and long lines in real life. “The bagel business has been, historically, a pretty terrible business, but the rise of this sandwich culture really helps,” Silverman told me. “It’s a vehicle that can infuse any sort of local culture and cuisine.”

The last time I was in L.A., I made a trip to the most famous of the city’s entries to the field. In 2020, the owners of Courage Bagels, who initially peddled their wares from the basket of a bicycle, opened a brick-and-mortar store in Virgil Village, between East Hollywood and Silver Lake. Midmorning on a Monday, I joined a line that had at first seemed reasonable and quickly became a way to spend half a day, snaking down the quiet block, opposite a dollar store and a tattoo parlor. When I started a casual conversation with the woman in front of me, she seemed almost startled. She had moved recently from New York, it turned out, to work as an assistant to an entrepreneur, whose bagel she was waiting to order. “People don’t make small talk in L.A.!” she said. Another former New Yorker in front of her, overhearing us, nodded in weary agreement.

It was easy to see how a Courage bagel could offend, if not enrage, a New York purist. It brings to mind a rustic, crusty baguette: the exterior is dark, craggy, and heavily blistered; the crumb is a little stretchy with a lot of air holes. (Courage bagels are leavened with sourdough starter, rather than commercial yeast.) If you were to scoop it, another move for which a bagel aficionado might make a citizen’s arrest—stay safe out there!—you’d be left with mostly crust. This makes it especially suited to Courage’s main offering: photogenic open-faced sandwiches. Bagel halves are topped with various combinations of cream cheese, jewel-like slices of tomato, thin coins of cucumber, smoked salmon, roe, or sardines, then painstakingly finished with salt, freshly cracked pepper, a drizzle of olive oil, fronds of dill. A Courage bagel is a Los Angeles bagel, ready for its closeup.

You could argue that the nationwide bagel revival has been a boon to New York’s own scene, shaking it out of complacency. Ten years ago, the introduction of Black Seed’s Montreal-inspired bagels, which are thinner and sweeter, boiled in honeyed water, only improved the landscape. Lately, the city has been home to a growing roster of indie bagel-makers, many of whom started by churning them out of restaurant kitchens during off-hours, or at home. On a recent Saturday morning, as I picked up a half-dozen sourdough bagels and a tub of burnt-scallion cream cheese from Wheated Brooklyn, a pizza restaurant just south of Prospect Park, the owner, David Sheridan, told me, “There’s a bagel movement happening in this country.” Louisville, Kentucky, of all places, had inspired him to get into bagels: as he prepared to open a location of Wheated there, he noticed a huge hole in the bagel market. Back in Brooklyn, he dove into R. & D., selling the fruits of his experiments on the weekends.

Earlier this spring, the people behind Leo, a sourdough-pizza place in Williamsburg, opened Apollo Bagels, in the East Village, which serves L.A.-inflected bagels, open-faced and meticulously assembled. (If I were the owners of Courage, I’d cock an eye at Apollo and remind myself that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.) The Mud Club, a wood-fired bagel, pizza, and tapas restaurant and dance club in the Hudson Valley, is currently popping up on the Lower East Side in the original location of Scarr’s Pizza, where, the other day, I ordered a bacon, egg, and cheese, oozing aioli and roasted-jalapeño-and-tomato jam, on a dense and crusty everything bagel. (They’ll soon open a permanent outpost a few blocks away.) Sakura Smith, the baker behind Bagel Bunny, supplies private clients and sometimes specialty shops with small, soft bagels made from a vegetable-flecked dough; it’s leavened with a fermented yeast that she says was first grown by a monk in Japan in the nineteen-seventies and feeds off mountain yams, rice, and carrots.

When it comes to my own bagel preferences, I am open to creative recipes but believe that a bagel should be, fundamentally, a humble staple—relatively inexpensive and sold by the dozen, or a multiple thereof. A sandwich has its place, but bagels belong, first and foremost, in a paper sack, hot from the oven (they need not be toasted unless they’ve gone stale), grab-and-go. The new-wave shops, especially outside of New York, don’t all seem to embrace the bagel’s inherent utility. In Washington, D.C., at a café called Ellē, my six sourdough bagels came packaged in individual paper sleeves, as if they were croissants or artisanal chocolate-chip cookies. At Courage, I had to wait—and wait, and wait—for my half-dozen. As the sun grew hotter, and I paced back and forth, restlessly sipping on a rose-flavored lemonade, I had to wonder, What were they doing in there? You could imagine a chef adhering sesame seeds one at a time with a tweezer.

The newcomer bagel that best fits my vision can be found in New York but it was born—sorry, haters—in Westport, Connecticut. One day in the summer of 2020, Adam Goldberg, a flood-mitigation specialist in his forties, was floating in his pool with his cousin, “having margaritas at eight-thirty in the morning,” he recalled recently. “We looked at each other and we decided that it was too hot to make sourdough like we’d been making every other day for the whole pandemic.” They decided to make bagels instead, imagining that they’d be “more refreshing.” After just a couple of weeks of recipe-developing, Goldberg settled on his ideal formula, and it wasn’t long before he was selling bagels out of his back yard. Four years later, the business, PopUp Bagels, is growing rapidly, with multiple locations in Connecticut and in tony precincts including Greenwich Village, Palm Beach, and Wellesley, Massachusetts.

PopUp offers, strictly, bagels and schmear, and if you preorder a dozen to pick up from the store, they will still be warm when the paper bag is passed to you. Goldberg is careful not to describe PopUp bagels as New York bagels. “It was the first thing we dropped from our branding,” he told me. “We’re our own style of bagel.” He uses a proprietary mix of flours and commercial yeast, no sourdough, and he has worked under the guidance of a “dough coach,” a championship baker he’s hired “to refine our recipe so that it’s more mobile.” When I asked him if he’d been aware, before getting into bagels, that there were people who called themselves dough coaches, he said, “No. In fact, my dough coach was unaware of it also. But once I told him he was my dough coach, he was very excited.”

A PopUp bagel is a bit less dense than the most traditional New York bagels; Goldberg wanted to make them light enough that you could comfortably eat more than one. In other ways, a PopUp bagel seems archetypal: small, chewy, with a crisp, golden-brown crust—urbane, and almost chic, in its restraint. Goldberg has kept the flavors classic, offering just plain, sesame, poppy, everything, and salt. He only gets playful with gimmicky (and sometimes great) cream-cheese flavors—Old Bay, ramp, coffee cake—and the occasional absurdist collaboration; just last week, PopUp and Dominique Ansel, of Cronut fame, introduced a limited-time-only Gruyère bagel with escargot butter, for a cool eighteen dollars.

This may seem like an awful lot of fuss over boiled bread with a hole in it, but pedantry is part of the fun. We enjoy outraging the purists and then posturing as purists ourselves, bringing our own tastes and associations to the image of the perfect bagel. I discussed this recently with Zoë Kanan, a pastry chef and baker who can make an excellent bagel anywhere (she once did a stint as a bagel consultant in Mexico City) and who will open a Jewish-ish bakery, called Elbow Bread, on the Lower East Side in May. Kanan and I were both introduced to bagels inauspiciously. Every day in elementary school, in New Haven, I ate a sandwich of Genoa salami on a squishy egg-flavored Lender’s bagel—the brand sold in plastic sleeves in the grocery store. Kanan grew up in Houston, where her weekly order at the Hot Bagel Shop was a strawberry bagel with strawberry cream cheese. Which is to say that, when it comes to bagels, we were blasphemers: in the High Court of Bagel, we’d be sternly sentenced to a penal colony.

Despite these beginnings, or perhaps because of them, Kanan and I now share a strong internal compass about what a bagel should be. “Chew is at the top of the list,” she said, as I nodded fervently at the other end of the line. “It should, I think, give your jaw a little bit of a workout when you’re eating it.” She explained that a low-hydration dough (as opposed to, say, the wetter dough you need for a spongy focaccia) made with high-protein flour gives you a strong gluten structure, and optimal chewiness, but can also result in a bagel that stales quickly. To extend shelf life, she’s come up with a slightly left-field solution: potatoes, roasted whole, skin-on, and mixed in with the flour, yeast, and water. “It adds starch, which locks in moisture,” she explained, and also results in “a really thin, kind of crackery shell of a crust. And then, the interior is chewy, and also tender, and moist.” I pictured an arrow hitting a bull’s-eye.

One New York bagel shop that sates both traditionalist tastes and the Internet’s appetite for absurd viral foods is Utopia, in Whitestone, Queens. Here, they hand-roll the bagels, boil them in enormous kettles, and then bake them in a carrousel oven made in 1947. They’ve got all the essential flavors, including pumpernickel—a favorite of mine, and rarer and rarer these days—but if you want sourdough they have those, too, plus rainbow, piña colada, and jalapeño-cheddar. As if to provoke the snobs who complain about ballooning bagel sizes, they also sell a ten-pound “party style bagel wheel,” an audacious rejoinder to the party sub. The giant everything bagel I ordered the other day was, I’m sad to say, completely raw in the center. (My theory was that they’d taken it out too soon, when the garlic that dotted the exterior had started to burn.) But I’d also ordered a party-style pizza bagel, a sesame ten-pounder sliced in half, scooped (the extra dough gets turned into garlic knots), and layered with marinara sauce, mozzarella, and chopped chicken cutlet. It was outrageous yet comfortingly familiar and, dare I say, spectacular. ♦

— By Vaseline

[202310271]

Is there anyplace good to move left?

NYC is crappier than me, and I guess whoever reads this will say I'm crap but let other people say crap. New Orleans is "better" overall. The only thing about being in the North is that they live their life. The Midwest is more spacey and "real," in that you don't calculate everything in blocks to function and you are more like a person from Europe or an animal and don't go in circles asking stupid questions, but people from the Northeast and Mid East Coast do live life, "in lieu." Those are the main things, the Midwest and the North and Mid East Coast. From there, you can plot a lot of prejudice and "wishful thinking." Okay, so I'm not rude or crude, but now Europe is kid crap, drooling anorexic girls leaning into fat Mommy born in like 1955. They stifled their youth trying to preach and round up the US like Tim Burton.

[frilly-interference-dazzling]

Childlike Intimacy 🛋 🏩

I want to sit on my fair, French mommy's lap, on the train!

I want her to hold me and somewhere carry me around for a long time until I almost faint! I've seen young girls lose it, in different ways, in the day, some ways more successful than others. At age 20 years old, I used to dream of carrying my own daughter around for an hour or 2 at night. I'm serious. I don't know why, but I am.. My period is light and I have a yeast infection from a group home in Cleveland.

Maybe, in between doing something in real life. It's not even any favor, it's a path of least resistance. Life goes on. People want their own kids or pets, and they come out having a good motherly.

I don't know why I get addicted to being stimulated, masturbation. I don't arouse my breasts.

Music Education is therapeutic for that end.

It would be fun to see a Baby Boomer fucked etc. You can probably carry them around, for a long time.

My parents carried my younger brother, clinging feeling pathetic at times, and until age 7 or 8. My mom stopped at 3 I think and my dad maybe 8 at the mall when I asked him. I sat in the baby seat in the grocery cart until age 9. I stopped watching Barney, then, partly or mostly to learn better singing, and like dancing. It was what we had. I didn't watch as much Sesame Street. My younger brother probably ran to my dad until age 12, when he came home from work, at Hibernia Bank in traffic for an hour in New Orleans. He didn't exercise to be a dad, but I wish as a baby he'd just leave, like my mom. I'm a big girl, I was born in 1986. My mom wouldn't continue to play with me with my toys little and my younger brother was my life, born when I was 4 1/2, 5 grades younger. I even looked more like a boy and less like a girl but still European in my facial expression from the inside. I did it when he was in the womb, looked like Edward from "Thomas the Tank Engine," probably. My hair was cut from pigtails a little below my shoulder to a bob, though.

I loved going to Lion Country Safari in Southeastern Florida until age 5 and when we moved back to the age 7 and 8. Age 5 and 6 in Northeastern Florida in the big city the science museum and below that in the oldest city age 9, 10, and 11. I was ahead since I already lived there, and girls from Up North I knew going through puberty.

It takes a lot, like the story Gypsy for "the baby" to perform and feel comfortable with her older brunette sister and boys, true story, June Havoc, who died not too many years ago in her 90s I think, Norwegian dad and English mom I think, in the US I think Up North maybe in NYC I think.

My torso is pretty big. So, I dunno, but I'd rather have "the experience." Short legs may be better for artistic sports and dance, though. I did want to stand tall, but some people are taller than they should be.

I don't feel stimulated by most anyone, like perv my age. I don't feel under their command.

My friends were addicted to things like being held maybe by their moms. Some people were perverted with their dads.

[nycnomad]

So it was a couple of weeks into December when we decided that moving to Poland was probably too big a step for us. At the same time, I found out that my company would pay me $20k to move out of NYC, but I had to do it by December 31st. Obviously, we were like, “Should we move to Florida immediately?!”

I would get paid 15% less if we lived outside of NYC, but there’s no income tax in Florida, and the cost of living is of course much cheaper. Like, our condo in NYC costs about $1250/sqft, while our condos in Florida cost about $575/sqft. A cocktail in NYC is $16 at the very cheapest, while I can get a cocktail in our area of Florida for $10. Plus, whatever stock I get from my company while I live in NYC, the state will collect tax on it when I sell it even if I’m living in Florida at the time. It doesn’t make sense to earn money in NYC!

So we really, really started to talk about moving down to one of our Florida condos. We went out to dinner with J’s two best friends and told them what we were thinking, and I kind of thought they’d freak out, but they were actually like, “Good for you! Go live by the beach!” 

We talked to my cousin, who’s a realtor, about selling our NYC condo. How much we could get, if December is a terrible time to sell, if he would interview some NY real estate agents for us. We considered officially moving our address to Florida but hanging onto our condo until the spring when buyers are more motivated.

J told his parents what we were thinking, and I emailed a former boss of mine who recently moved from NJ to FL to ask what I would miss and if he regrets anything. I asked my current manager, who left San Francisco during the worst of COVID and bought a massive house in New Orleans, what to expect when moving from a huge city to the middle of nowhere. She said to expect a much better quality of life. 🙂

We were so serious about selling! But then J started having second thoughts. He’s lived in NYC most of his life, and he doesn’t feel comfortable around smalltown things like I do. Like, to me, there’s nothing more homey than a strip mall sushi bar with ample parking and all-white decor that stays white because 8.5 million people don’t live in the area. To J, it’s stifling.

He started thinking about how we’d never have any true friends in Florida, because everyone in our area is old and conservative. Our neighbors are all super nice, friendly for sure, but we’re just never going to be really close with people who are worried about trans people in their bathrooms or don’t think black lives matter. I, of course, said that any of our friends from back home will jump at the chance for a free stay at the beach whenever we offer. And that his parents would love to host us in NYC whenever we were willing to visit. 

I didn’t actually hate the idea of visiting NYC a few times a year and doing all of our favorite things. What fun to have a whirlwind week of lavish dinners and fancy drinks with our closest friends and maybe even do touristy things we never did while we lived there! 

But the final straw for J was that when we go on international trips, we always go on tours (mostly food tours, let’s be honest) where we meet people from all over the world. And there will always be someone in the group who’s lived in NYC or loves NYC, and I’m going to be honest, it feels like we usually get special attention because of it. And J said he just couldn’t imagine telling people that we’re from FLORIDA. 😂 It’s so funny, because he doesn’t usually like the limelight at all, and yet he apparently likes that a Berlin tour guide might take a shine to us! 

So to him, the $20k wasn’t worth it to have to say goodbye to New York RIGHT NOW, and I understand where he’s coming from. All this to say, I still officially live in NYC. But you can bet I’m enjoying the month and a half we’re in Florida this winter!

[elisaintime]

Anne Rice is the closest thing I've ever had to a hero. She was an absolute virtuoso. It wasn't just that her work impacted my formative years, but thinking and talking about her as a person is still a part of my daily life right now. I sank hard into fandom as a pandemic coping strategy last year, and have been there ever since. I spend hours a day in Anne Rice fan spaces, discussing her and her work with other fans. I am fascinated by how her mind works. I have all her books saved to my phone so that I can search through them for key words at a moment's notice, and people come to me all the time to answer their questions about canon details. I once cosplayed as her for a Come As Your Favorite Author costume party. I have a google doc where I’ve been saving my favorite quotes from her interviews and ramblings, and it's over 10,000 words long. I keep meaning to make a video out of it one of these days. Last year, I wrote the script for a video on PBS’s web channel all about her industry-changing literary career and also made a totally gratuitous video for my own channel where I ranked all her vampire books. This year, I posted more than 2.5 million words of VC fanfic to ao3, and since last year, I’ve reread 12 of her books in audiobook format for the first time since reading them in print in my youth. She used to be extremely active on social media, engaging with us one-on-one all hours of the day and night. Whenever I sent her an email, she answered me graciously within 24 hours. After her controversial earlier years, she’d mellowed out into such a sweet and gracious old lady, so friendly and eager to support her fans and uplift anyone she could. But a couple years ago, she kind of disappeared from public forums and stopped talking to us except for the rare tweet here or there about what TV show she was currently obsessed with. I feared the worst, that something had happened to her and she was in her decline, and I had been waiting every day for news that her end had come. Very recently, her social media team started asking fans to send pictures of their memories of meeting her at signings, and I knew something had to have happened. I would have sent them these two pictures, but it felt like bad luck somehow, admitting it was real. Because of this, her death doesn't come as a shock today, but it is still devastating. In 2013, she watched one of my Vampire Reviews videos and loved it enough to share it with her fans on social media. She called me "very smart and funny," and it was the greatest professional compliment I've ever received in my life. A year later, I got the chance to meet her at the signing in NYC for Prince Lestat. It was so empowering to be in the audience at that signing and listen to all the testimonials of people standing up to share how her work had given them the courage to embrace their queer identities. I wasn't brave enough to say so, but she'd been my queer awakening as well, and I met my first serious girlfriend through the fandom. The way she addresses gender and sexuality in her work has spoken to me more acutely than anything else I've ever seen. I had my 3 month old baby with me, and we waited for hours for a few moments of her time, but when we got close enough, they noticed us and let us cut to the front. She was absolutely enthralled with Grey and spent at least double the time she did with anyone else, just cooing at him. She jokingly threatened to steal him, and I wished she'd take us both! A few years later, when her personal assistant resigned and she was searching for a new one, you don't know how close I was to applying for that job (which I would have been amazing at), seriously entertaining the dream of uprooting my entire life and moving my family across the country just to work for her. Two days after the book signing, I went to New Orleans for my very first Vampire Ball, where I had the chance to sit and talk with her for a few more minutes. It wasn't long, but it meant the world to me. I always hoped I'd get another chance one day. A couple months ago, I finally read her book, Violin, which I'd tried to read years ago, but put down halfway through. The book is one long magnificent sob of grief and mourning, and it feels more autobiographical than any of her other works. It feels nearly voyeuristic to read about pain so obviously personal to her real life in the deaths of her daughter and mother and her other tumultuous family relationships, but it helped me understand her heart and soul in a whole new way I had not quite grasped in my 23 prior years of fandom. When talking about her own grief, Anne once said, "The lights do come back on, no matter how dark it seems, and I'm sensitive now, more than ever, to the beauty of the world – and more resigned to living with cosmic uncertainty." She is with Stan and Michele now. Let’s all lie on the floor and listen to Beethoven in her honor. 

[thedept]

To give some context to all my weird “sitting with the mayor of NYC” posts the last couple of days:

Eric Adams pushed through a city budget that will cut somewhere between $500 million and $1.5 billion, depending on whose numbers you use, from public schools. Teachers were removed from schools in droves in late June and class sizes will now skyrocket, social workers & guidance counselors are being let go and arts & music programs are being slashed, to name a few of the effects. It’s a shitshow.

The official line is because of “enrollment loss,” or our simply kids leaving the schools. Sometimes to get out of the city for the suburbs, sometimes to move across the country, sometimes to stay here but go to private or charter schools. Enrollment loss has been an issue for 20+ years, it’s a bit like white flight all over again. So they cut the budgets in line with projections on future enrollment numbers, only the projections are way higher than most principals believe will actually happen.

Congress gave a ton of education Covid relief money to NYC for just this purpose. Keep schools funded to ensure kids get what they need.

So why is Eric Adams doing this? Because he’s pro-charter and anti-public school. He’s purposely killing public schools to force people to charter schools. The same thing happened in Los Angeles and New Orleans, their public school systems were decimated.

I’m now part of a group of people who have been “birddogging” Adams, showing up at public events to heckle him. The other day, he left an event and told us to come to City Hall to meet. We got some press coverage for it. It was a right place, right time thing for me, it was the first event I’d gone to.

Tonight, I spent three hours on a Zoom to give 2 minutes of “public comment” to the Chancellor of schools and his shittiest deputy.

Adams is negotiating to restore like 15% of the money, hoping enough people will call it a victory and forget about the rest of the money the schools need.

It sucks that we have to do this, but it’s also kind of exhilarating. I was surging with adrenaline after my comments tonight. It’s the little things, I guess.

Anyway, Eric Adams fucking sucks.

[nunufx]

Okay so I read your from nyc head cannon and loved it! I was wondering if you could have Class 1-A react to having a black!southern student. She could be from Texas, New Orleans, or Atlanta but she has a thick accent, calls a few students “Baby” , “Honey”, and “Sugar”(in a platonic way but let’s be real, it feels really good to be called that), goes down with her southern cooking in her bento, and is a great dancer. She may be sweet but she’ll fold anyone talking crazy to her like Mineta.

a/n: YES I LOVE THIS. also i’m not from the south so if anything is wrong or off, tell me and i’ll fix it😭 <3

warning mild swearing

pairing: class 1a x southern black reader

Student from New Orleans

you’re a transfer student from america and you’re from New Orleans

when you introduced your self in front of the class, the first thing everyone payed attention to was your accent.

when you told everyone you were from the southern part of america everyone just thought of ‘cOwBoYs’ ‘yEeHaW’ and all the typical stereotypes of the south

but boy did you prove them wrong

you got along great with girls and most of the boys...bakugou of course saw you as an extra

mineta claimed he had a fetish for your accent which you found creepy as hell and stayed far away from him

your cooking skills were amazing, they rivaled bakugous

on holidays when all the students weren’t able to see their parents, you would make your grandma secret gumbo recipe

AND LET ME TELL YOU, everyone was fighting for seconds

“DUMBASS MOVE OUT THE WAY YOURE ON YOUR THIRD PLATE” bakugou said to kaminari

“Y/N THIS FOOD IS SO MANLY I WANT MORE” kirishima said

“y/n this my 2nd favorite food now..behind cold soba of course” todoroki said

“EVERYONE GET IN A SINGLE FILE LINE AND BE CALM. ALSO Y/N CAN I PLEASE GET SECONDS” iida said

chile when i tell you even aizawa and all might came for some

and everyone was a sucker for your accent and found it pretty adorable (not like mineta tho)

the way you would call everyone “baby” “honey” and “sugar” in a platonic manner

“thanks for helping me with my work y/n” sero said. “you’re welcome baby” you said smiling sweetly. you walked away to talk with mina and mom. sero was frozen in seat. he knows you didn’t mean it in that way but it still gets his heart racing.

during training izuku would accidentally hit you to hard and you would end up going to recovery girl. “IM SO SORRY Y/N I DIDNT MEAN IT” izuku said. “it’s no problem sugar” you said smiling again. like sero, izuku also freezed.

sometimes you’ll be cooking with bakugou after he finally came over the fact there’s another cook in the dorm building. “bakugou can you pass me the salt please” you said. he quietly passed it. “thanks honey” you said and continued on with your task. this time it took him like 5 seconds to register what you said.

“HEY DONT CALL ME THAT” he said while turning away so you don’t see him blushing. “what ever you say...hun” you said smiling. bakugou lowly growls. but we all know he liked it. maybe you weren’t an extra after all.

you’re basically that black elder woman in the grocery stories that says “no problem sugar” when someone bumps into them by accident and quickly starts apologizing.

gotta let them know that black southern people are some of the nicest people you’ll ever meet

another thing is...you loved to dance.

mina also loved to dance, so you would teach her some moves you’d learned when growing up in the south.

around the beginning of february you would start to feel home sick.

and izuku would do some research as to why this time around was so important to you.

then he’d learn about mardi gras

so him and the others came up with a plan to decorate the common area to look close enough like mardi gras

kaminari would be used as a distraction.

he was advised to take you out and keep you away from the dorms until a certain time. although the secret almost slipped out cause you know...it’s kaminari.

“we just can’t go back just yet” he said

“but why not” you said

“because-...because-....hey look a bird” he said trying to change the subject

and when it finally got to the time to take you back he blind folded you.

“kaminari what are you doing”

“don’t worry y/n it’s all good”

he led you inside of the common area and took off the blind fold

“SURPRISE” everyone yelled

you looked all around and saw purple, yellow and green decorations. jazz music was playing.

some people had on those masks that goes over your eyes while others just had on the beaded necklaces.

“what’s all of this” you said smiling

“well we’ve noticed you’ve been feeling homesick for a while, so izuku came up with the idea to decorate the dorms so it can feel like home” uraraka said

“i’ve done some research and saw that a holiday named mardi gras is being celebrated back in new orleans right now. so since you cant go to new orleans, we brought it you” izuku said

you were so happy and your smile was big. “thank you guys, i appreciate it so much” you said wiping some tears away.

“ah ah ah, don’t cry now let’s celebrate” mina said putting a couple of necklaces over your head and on your neck.

that night was full of partying, even some students from other class came and some teachers and heros did too.

[fritesandfries]

Oysters Rockefeller

I know that for some people Oysters Rockefeller was the gateway to eating fresh oysters. It was the opposite for me through and I don’t think I really appreciated cooked oysters until I moved to the Midwest. In some seasons, Blue Points -- IMO the PBR of oysters -- can cost up to $4 at a Minnesota restaurant. In NYC, I don’t remember these things costing more than $1. Thus, I avoid them at all costs. I’m really lucky that I live near a great seafood & fish place. I can score different oysters at a decent price.

The original recipe for Oysters Rockefeller -- invented by Jules Alciatore of New Orlean’s Antoine’s and named after John D. Rockefeller -- is still a secret. The man took the secret to this broiled oyster recipe to his grave so many of the recipes you see are merely guesses and an off-shoot. This recipe is an off-shoot because there’s spinach in it, which is what the original recipe supposedly did not have.

P.S. National Oyster Day is coming up next week.

For a dozen oysters:

3 tbsp. butter

1 small shallot, chopped

1 c. lightly packed spinach leaves

1/4 c. half and half

1/4 c. grated Parmesan cheese

1 tsp. Pernod

1/4 cup seasoned bread crumbs

12 shucked East Coast oysters

Lemon wedges, to garnish

In a sauté pan, melt butter over medium heat. Once butter is heated, add shallots and cook until fragrant. Add spinach leaves until just wilted, before adding half and half. Remove from heat and let it cool slightly. Transfer this mixture to a food processor. Add cheese and Pernod. Pulse until the sauce has a green consistency. Add about a half tablespoon of sauce on top of each oyster. Top with breadcrumbs.

Broil until the breadcrumbs are browned, about 5 minutes.

Garnish with lemon wedges -- give it a little squeeze over the oysters before consuming.

[destinyc1020]

Nobody should be surprised at these turn of events! I think the only thing we could be surprised about is how fast everything has happened! Really think about this:

July 2019- Those cursed Tolivia photos 🥴

August 2019- Jacobdaya's Greece trip

September 2019- Jacobdaya sightings w/o photos

October 2019- Euphoria cast with Kamil @ Universal

November/December 2019- Jacobdaya in Australia and New Orleans

Feb 2020- Jacobdaya in NYC /Tom unfollows/Jacobdaya back in Australia

March 2020- Covid hits and JE goes back to Australia

April-June 2020- Small signs that Jacobdaya are still together from jewelry/ Nadia's in the picture

July 2020- Tom likes Law supportive post/ Jacobdaya's end (?)

August 2020- Tom and Nadia breakup (?)

Sep-Oct 2020- Tom is reminiscing and excited to go to ATL

Nov 2020- Tomdaya Thanksgiving comfirmed

Dec-May 2021- Tom gushes about Z in EVERY Cherry interview, significant likes from both sides, movie nights, sightings of them alone in ATL

June 2021- Z's bday story with interesting wording and sightings of Tom on set

All this within 2 YEARS!!!!

💯

I mean... those of us who've been following the tea closely aren't that surprised. 👀

We've been discussing this on my blog since October lol. 😅

Trolls didn't want to believe us, and kept throwing out the "Tadia Delusions" long past the expiration date, and then there were the trolls talking about maybe Tom had some woman with him in his Monaco hotel 🙄 (even though Tuwaine was wheeling in breakfast), then there were fans JUST RECENTLY (like a few days ago!) talking about some dancer in London who might be dating Tom cuz she follows him and posted a post with spiders....

Like NO PROOF whatsoever of ANY of these claims, but we're supposed to believe that THOSE things are more believable than Tomdaya? 🥴 Seriously lol? 😂

Anyway, just reading through your ask and all of the events that took place just makes me think even more and more that Tom And Z were never really over each other, and O, N and JE were all just rebounds that were used in order to try to "move on" from each other, but I don't think they ever really stopped caring about each other tbh.

I mean, Tom is back on set with Z just like he was back when they were dating. 👀 And the fact that Z can invite Tom on set like nothing even happened with her and JE is what's even MORE funny to me lol 😆 😂

I knew when Tom was just casually talking about wanting a cameo on set of Euphoria that he wasn't even thinking about JE being any kind of threat lol 😆

Anyway, this is all just really interesting, that's all I'll say.

I still need to see some photos though 👀