Two unrelated childhood memories

[conuly]

1. The very first slice of pizza I can remember eating was in Brooklyn. This wasn't the first slice of pizza I ever ate, I don't think, but it must have been one of the first ones we ate in NYC after coming up from Louisiana because Daddy was very enthused about the superior quality compared to pizza in other places. I remember folding the pizza to drip off some of the oil.

2. When I was an adolescent I spent a lot of time in bookstores. My mother worked two blocks from the WTC, and I often went to the Borders there after school. One day Mommy left work and went to meet me at the bookstore, and get a few books for herself, and a cashier looked up as she walked in, a perfect stranger to her, and said "Oh, hi, your daughter's upstairs!" I can remember that store so clearly. They had a fake tree separating the chapter books from the picture books, and originally there was a green carpet underneath to look like grass, with a curvy edge where the children's section ended. But that carpet got too stained, so they replaced it with a stars and planets carpet, still with the curvy edge under the tree.

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This sounds like a fun DW comm

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Comments

[foms]

I applaud the indicated changes to attitude toward gay and lesbian people.
I also wonder about whether asking a random sample of people in a given area about whether their area is a good place for gay and lesbian people to live smacks too much of asking the privilege-one-eyed to lead the privilege-blind. I tend to support nothing-about-us-without-us variations and I keep seeing studies that conclude that it does not take a large percentage (or absolute number) of defectors to drastically change results in this sort of thing.

[acelightning73]

My first taste of Chinese food was in NYC's Chinatown. I grew up on Long Island, and my birthday falls in December, and every year my mom and dad would take me into the city to look at all the holiday decorations and lights, and the story being told in Macy's windows. Then we'd go look at the tree in Rockefeller Center, and then we'd get dinner. I don't remember how we wound up in Chinatown, once, but someone told me to try "chow mein", and it was pretty good. Now I'm 75 years old and teaching myself Sichuan-style cooking from cookbooks and videos.

And New York is still the capital of the planet. When the Vulcans show up to invite us to join the Federation, they'll land there (and speak at the UN and such). Every corner of the planet, every ignored ethnicity, every bit of human variability, is present somewhere in the city. You can find a daily newspaper in your milk language, a place to buy hand-embroidered silk saris, and listen to a bagpiper who busks in the subway.

[adafrog]

1. Is that twhy you fold the pizza?
2. :)

[acelightning73]

You fold pizza so you can stuff it into your mouth without looking unladylike, and because eating it with a fork looks stupid.

[adafrog]

Got it.

[conuly]

Many people do, in fact, eat pizza with a fork.

[conuly]

That's why *I* fold it. I don't know about other people. It may just be that people do what's customary around them.

[acelightning73]

People made fun of one of New York City's former mayors for eating pizza with a knife and fork. (Given the diversity represented in NY, he should have been trying to eat it with chopsticks.)

[conuly]

I always say New Yorkers don't actually think NYC is the center of the world - we know it is, and consequently, we don't think about it too much!

[acelightning73]

Pre-fucking-cisely!