Magnolia, or: The Reason I Can Never Get Anything Done in the West Village

Any self-respecting New Yorker knows that Magnolia Bakery is the place to go for cupcakes. In fact, anyone who’s seen “Sex and the City,” “Spin City” or “The Devil Wears Prada,” or YouTube-searched the words “Lazy Sunday,” probably knows about this pleasant little Bleecker Street bakery. Magnolia is actually a citywide presence(the business franchised to Midtown and Rockefeller Plaza after new owners Steve and Tyra Abrams took over in 2007), but the most famous location, the one from “Sex and the City,” resides in the trendy, super-exclusive West Village, Manhattan’s perennial playground for its more recession-proof citizens.

The place isn’t much to look at. But like all classic New York eateries, the food is fantastic and definitely warrants all the high-profile name-checks. The cupcakes are blissful albeit artery-clogging, and the prices ($3 per cupcake) can be a tad steep, but nobody can argue that you don’t get what you pay for; even if CitySearch only ranks Magnolia at three and a half stars out of five (one poster writes: “nothing blew us away. Not to mention…it’s pretty darn expensive!”), the line is consistently out the door.

Founded in 1996 by Allysa Torey and Jennifer Appel, Magnolia is homey to the core. Bakers bustle out trays of pastries every few minutes or so, full-blown cakes (priced from $24 to $48, depending on the type of cake) line display cases and a sign reminds buyers they’re only allowed a dozen cupcakes at a time. And since the food at Magnolia is all takeout, it shouldn’t be a surprise that a visit during peak hours is about as close to smash-mouth cupcake shopping as it comes. Sometimes foreign camera crews filming the Marc Jacobs store down the block capture their reporters grabbing a bite. OK, cameras and New York aggression aren’t homey by anyone’s reckoning, but it’s still as close to small-town sweetness as New York City gets.

And while Magnolia certainly isn’t timid with their pricing ($2.50 for a regular cupcake, $3 for “special” treats like the red velvet and pumpkin cupcakes), at least they’re not overly secretive about their tricks. Appel’s 1999 “The Magnolia Bakery Cookbook,” as well as Torey’s “More From Magnolia” (2004) outline the basic recipes for the store’s offerings, including the cupcakes.

One such tidbit: the cupcake icing contains two (!) sticks of butter. Eat too many of these bad boys and you’re on the short list for a heart attack. But there are certainly worse ways to go.

The Beat Report: The Best Hot Dog in New York City

Last Thursday I went to a place that claimed to have the best hot dogs in NYC. No idea who decided that, but according to the chalkboard outside the place it was voted by the Times and another magazine, I think it was Time Out NY. I'm fuzzy on important details like the place's name (update 12/8/09: it's called New York Hot Dog & Coffee) because 1) I was on my way to table for a fundraiser for my frat and running late, and 2)I was only on Bleecker St. to check out the record stores. Why? Because I was hoping to fulfil my quest for an original pressing of my favorite album; U2's The Joshua Tree.

No such luck on that front, but I did notice the hot dog place. Now, you don't get to be a slim 205 lbs like myself without turning down unique culinary opportunities, so I figured I'd stop in for one of the Best Hot Dogs in New York. Sure, was something like 5:45 and a bizarre time to be eating anything for me (my meal schedule is usually pretty uniform; breakfast at 9ish if I have it, lunch around 12, and dinner around 7-8). But hey, you gotta try the best, right?

So I stopped in and, wanting to save my cash for the weekend's festivities, I ordered a "New Yorker." That's just a plain hot dog with sauerkraut, relish and onions. It was $3.45 and easily the cheapest 'dog on the menu. While I waited I took a look at the place. It looks pretty nice, well-kept, walls the color of actual hot-dogs and a surprisingly extensive menu that includes burgers and fries as well. There are definitely classier places in the West Village, but it's cleaner than 80% of the Papaya Dogs floating around this island, so I was cool with it. I got my New Yorker and promptly doused that baby with ketchup and mustard, completing the masterpiece (in Jersey, we call that "the works." Probably elsewhere, too, but I don't get hung up on those details).

The verdict? Not the best hot dog ever. Definitely good, but not $4 good by a long shot. I'll probably go back and give it another shot, though. I scarfed this one down reeeeal fast and didn't have time to savor it. Also, I really wanted a chili dog, but all things considered that probably would have been a poor choice at the time.

West Village News: NYU Suicide

At 4:30am on November 2nd, a junior in NYU's College of Arts and Sciences died in the University's Bobst Library on Washington Square South. No official statement on the cause of death has been issued, but NYU President John Sexton said in a statement later in the day that "indications are that he [the student] took his own life." If so, it would be the latest suicide for NYU, a school as renowned for its opportunities, academic programs and city living as the stress that the combination of all three can inflict on its students.

News spread around the NYU community quickly. Student reactions ranged from sympathy for the victim, Andrew Williamson-Noble, 20, to angry when they learned that a guided tour of the university made a stop at Bobst only hours after the death occurred. The University's student newspaper, the Washington Square News, ran a continuous coverage of the incident, adding to the report as updates on the situation rolled in from the University and student witnesses, several of whom have said that they heard a loud boom echo through the library that seemed to signify when Williamson-Noble died.

If Williamson-Noble's death is ruled a suicide, it would be the University's first since students Allan Oakley Hunter and Pranay Angara took their own lives during the 2007-2008 school year.

WTC Field Trip

I grew up in New Jersey, and on September 11th, 2001, I had what basically amounted to a front-row seat of everything happening in New York City. Not in the literal sense, since my middle school sat at the bottom of a hill and my vantage point was therefore nonexistent. But my cousin went to the corresponding high school (the same one I eventually went to) and, from the view of his cafeteria, he saw the second Twin Tower fall. My uncle was somewhere in Jersey that had a full skyline view; the Kodak picture of the smoke that he took is framed in his house for everyone to see. As for me, I didn't see anything happen firsthand. But I was one of those kids that got picked up early from middle school by his parents, and I called around to make sure my family members were OK. Luckily, nobody I knew or was related to suffered losses in the attacks. But I could see the smoke driving home from school and the people gathered around Bloomfield Ave to watch, I remember the radio broadcasts on the way home, I remember being generally freaked out, and I certainly remember having friends whose parents were working in Manhattan on that day. Ironically, however, my absolute clearest memory of 9/11 is listening to U2 on the bus ride to school and thinking what a nice day it was.

All of this considered, going to the WTC Tribute Center in downtown Manhattan was kind of a strange experience for me; since I live so close to the city I saw everything firsthand and didn't exactly need a reminder of what occurred on 9/11. A place like that exists for people who don't come from around here, and during my journalism class's field trip to the Tribute Center last week, I kept remarking on the fact that a good amount of my friends in the class had experienced 9/11 from a distance, not up close as I had. Granted, I was lucky enough to have not experienced it too too close - after all, I didn't lose anyone, thank God. But still, for someone like me the very existence of a guided tour of Ground Zero, or talking to someone who didn't see the towers burn from across the river seemed a little...odd.

I will admit: the idea of the tribute center is a good one; people have forgotten about 9/11. But I got the feeling that the whole tour turned the site into a bit more of a tourist attraction than it needed to be; as a group of tourists snapped photos all around me and the class, I quietly hoped a less ostentatious reminder of the attacks would be put in place along with the new Freedom Tower.

The one part I did appreciate was when my class spoke to Tracy Gazzani, a Bay Ridge, Brooklyn resident whose 24-year old son, Terry, died in the attacks. Since 9/11, I've heard and seen a million stories like hers on TV just like everyone else has, but this was the first time I'd actually met someone who had suffered an inconsolable loss on September 11th. I enjoyed hearing her speak glowingly about her son, gamely recount a drunken story of his or two for our professor and even poke fun at her own, ultimately unrewarded, optimism during 9/11 with a bit of black humor ("I was the one who thought my son was coming home, remember?").

Ultimately, I was more blown away by meeting her than the whole tribute center experience as a whole: the world has changed a lot since 9/11, and the things that were important to us on that day don't necessarily resonate anymore. Middle school is long gone for me, U2 has put out two albums since the one I listened to on 9/11, my father passed away, and pretty soon I'll be looking for a job. But hearing Tracy talk sort of made the experience complete for me; to a certain degree, her life will always be stuck on 9/11 because her son never came home, and that, to me, is the kind of thing that truly bridges the country and connects people who only saw 9/11 happen and didn't necessarily live through it.

West Village Post from Journalism Class

If you ever decide to take a walking tour of the West Village, good luck actually getting to the end of the thing. The neighborhood is so vibrant, interesting and enticing that, for unlucky college students like myself who have to follow a route instead of taking a guided tour (hey, my schedule is horrible and I’m strapped for money; sometimes you just gotta do it yourself), it’s incredibly easy to get lost in the restaurants, bakeries and local shops amid all the landmarks and famous hot spots.

The tour can be tough to follow for other reasons besides the distractions, too: the West Village is “off the grid” of Manhattan, which means that the streets don’t run vertically/horizontally like everywhere else, and a good chunk of them aren’t numbered. The area is much more suburban but also more old-fashioned, which probably contributes as to why it’s so expensive. It all looks very pretty and I wanted to live there immediately, but due to the unusual layout I was lost within minutes and spent at least a half-hour trying to find Charles Street. I was all of thirty feet away from it, which probably says more about my cartography skills/general sense of direction than the West Village, but still.

But once you find your way around and get the hang of the neighborhood, there’s all kinds of amazing spots around here for tourists and college kids alike, the tour I went on made stops out of Thomas Paine’s old apartment (59 Grove St., blink and you’ll miss the door), the Friends apartment (you can see it from the corner of Bleecker and Grove), and Magnolia Bakery (immortalized by Sex and the City and “Lazy Sunday”). Just make sure you stay focused and don’t spend a half hour you don’t have browsing a vinyl store for old albums. Not that I did that or anything. I’m just saying.

Here Goes Nothing...

OK, so apparently I'm a blogger now. I avoided it as long as I could, but the blogosphere has finally caught up with me thanks to a requirement from my journalism class. But I'm thinking positive: compelled by the fear of a bad grade in journalism, my desire for a job (hire me, please), and my propensity to share way too much about myself, I'm thinking this could be a good thing after all.