Sunday, October 20, 2002

But No New Tatoos or Piercings Last night Mark, who loves Indian food, showed me a noteworthy block of E. 6th St. in the East Village. One after another, between 1st and 2nd Avenues on the south side of the street only, sits a string of what must be no fewer than twelve Indian restaurants. (This page from Gothammenu is hardly an exhaustive listing, but gives an idea.) Picking one of the restaurants from the sidewalk is mainly a matter of three things: Do you wish to eat to the accompaniment of live Indian music? Maybe half the restaurants featured two- or three-person ensembles squeezed right into the tiny dining rooms. Do you wish a lighting scheme modeled on the Hanging Gardens of Babylon? This is favored by several of the restaurants. Imagine a thick canopy of small red (always red) light bulbs dangling above your head. I'm talking about hundreds of lights. It's not unlike dining at a planetarium. Do you wish to surrender to the pitchman standing outside the restaurant? Each one seizes your arm in turn to praise the food and point out the bargains on the menu. It's a gauntlet. At last you give in, hoping the kitchen can send an Ace bandage to the table. Another thing we noticed last night: the used CD stores along St. Mark's Place have eliminated their classical inventory. Just a year ago these stores, such as Venus Records at 13 St. Marks, had hundreds of classical CDs. What's going on? And where in New York is the equivalent of the Bay Area's Amoeba Music or any of the other five or six awesome shops I used to haunt in San Francisco and Berkeley? I know about Academy Records and CDs on W. 18th but frankly it doesn't even come close in terms of inventory nor prices. Speaking of dining in New York: on Friday night my beautiful sister Alison came in from Connecticut to take me a delicious dinner in the West Village. She had her heart set on a French bistro but unfortunately had left behind on her desk the list she'd made. So we trusted to luck and strolled down Cornelia, Bleecker, and others before settling on Grove Restaurant. Too bad it was too chilly to try the garden out back. 7:17:20 PM     Wisdom of the Ancients From Dryden's translation of Plutarch, Life of Lysander: But this also, indeed, is one of the ordinances of Lycurgus, who, as it is reported, was used to say, that long hair made good-looking men more beautiful, and ill-looking men more terrible. Rep. James Traficant and friend Travis Fimmel   3:45:00 PM     Desperate Idea of the Week According to this Web story, corrections officials in Thailand are mixing male and female inmates in prison in an attempt to reduce the incidence of homosexuality. 1:58:50 PM

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