Where have all the egg creams gone?

For those of you who have never had one, an egg cream is a delcious drink. It consists of milk, seltzer and some vanilla syrup if your having a vanilla egg cream, if your having a chocolate egg cream, it's seltzer, milk and chocolate syrup. This drink is not to be confused with a malted. A malted is with grated ice, mixed in a blender and then adding chocolate syrup, milk and blending. There used to be many places in New York to get egg creams. There still are a few but it seems to be a vanishing beverage much to my consternation. There used to be many soda fountain type places in the city that served this beverage. Some diners still do but less and less so. According to some historians, the egg cream was a New York product, first sold mainly in Brooklyn and then spreading outwards. You can go to many places outside New York City and ask for one and the people will have no idea what it is. I recently was down south and asked for a bagel at a diner and got a look of consternation from the waitress, truly disturbing. The egg cream is a vanishing item and it is sad to see. It is one of those drinks that reminds me of my youth. Many people, when talking about egg creams, especially chocolate ones, say that it has to be made with U-bet syrup. I think this is the best way. If you can believe it, an egg cream has neither eggs in it or cream. This recipe has several legends as to how it was created, one legend is that it was created by a Jewish candy store owner in the early 1900's named Louis Auster who came to America and opened a candy store on the lower East Side. I am not sure who created the egg cream, but it is a miraculous drink. It was never able to be bottled because the ingredients tend to seperate after a while and the drink is best consumed freshly made. There is an old type soda fountain store on Chambers Street between West Broadway and Church Street where they sell them. However they put vanilla ice cream in them which is not the traditional way to make them. When I recently got one and saw the guy putting in vanilla ice cream I asked "what are you doing? That's not how you make an egg cream!" to which the guy smirked at me and told me that's how they made it there. It sucked! When I was younger, I worked in an ice cream store and I made very good egg creams. In fact there is a method to the madness, you have to make it sweet and add three pumps of vanilla syrup and just the right amount of seltzer, the old seltzer bottles that are pressurized work best for this type of drink, they are rare and hard to find but still sold by a few companies. It is depressing to see this great beverage, which is so much a part of the New York landscape and history, vanishing. Unfortunately so much of the old New York I love seems to be vanishing. The city is changing so drastically and the small things which gave it its identity and local flavor are slowly passing by the wayside. This is depressing to me, someone who grew up here and never left and I hope the trend reverses itself. If you are ever in a diner ask if they make egg creams, maybe they will and you can taste this great drink before it vanishes off the face of the earth forever. It is one of those special New York City only drinks that is wholly a part of the New York City landscape, that's how it should be. More to come soon, keep the faith, the worm shall soon turn for you too.

A storm was heard in NYC today

I have to apologize for not writing here sooner. I guess life throws you curve balls repeatedly and if you can't hit them well you fall into a deep dark hole I guess. I was also finishing my degree and now am on the job hunt along with millions of other unfortunate souls. We had a storm blow through the city today that I thought would shatter my windows, heavy winds were recorded of up to 100 mph, which for NYC is unheard of, things begin to get blown off buildings and when the buildings are 30, 40 or even fifty plus stories that can be like killer projectiles flying through the air. Imagine walking down the street and get cut in half by flying glass or some peace of whatever splits your skull and you never saw it coming. Freaky stuff to consider but hey tomorrow is never promised right? The city right now has around a ten percent unemployment rate which is really high considering that means around 800,000 plus people are out of work. I go online every day and feel that hopeless sinking feeling that i'm not going to find anything, or if I do it's going to be at some shitty job that I can't stand and makes me want to contemplate suicide with a butter knife. Well a bit dramatic sure but these are the times we live in. President Obama inherited a world of shit left over from the bush years and it's going to take a while to fix it up if that is even possible anymore. Too bad they gave AIG all that cash, we could have used it, AIG never did me no favors, I thought that if you mess up in a caplitalist world, you go under that's just the rules. These guys play with a different set though, they fuck up and the government bails them out, enjoy those bonuses boys while I contemplate if I can make it through the week on rice and beans and hot dogs as my lunch and dinner, skipping breakfast saves a few bucks! I sometimes wonde with all the natural disasters happening, (Tsunami's, Earthquakes, etc) maybe the predictions are true and 2012 will be it for us. It seems rather fitting if you ask me. I think God might be looking down and thinking, well I gave them two chances and they fucked it up again! Have you ever wondered how many innocent people have been killed, murdered, raped and pillaged just in the last thousand years, it's mind boggling. We have done a pretty good job of killing each other in the 20th century alone and the 21st is starting off with a bang. I'm ready if the end is near in 2012, i'm going to get a bottle of grey goose, sit out on my terrace and watch it come, hopefully with some close friends. I know this sounds glum people but hey these are dark days so a bit of darkness is par for the course. How many more signs do we need to convince us? I don't know, part of me wants the world to go on also, if we can just manage to get along with each other which seems more and more unlikely. I saw an interesting character today, the below picture was taken a few months back, of a way cool dude in a green fur coat with matching hat. Where else can you see a guy who is this confident in his style to rock this coat in public. I wondered if he was a pimp but then again maybe he just has pimp sensibilities whatever that means.



Anyway I think this guy is awesome, it takes alot of moxie to rock an outfit like this even in NYC where the weird is oftentimes overlooked or actually even blends in. I mean can you picture this dude walking down the street in some small town in Alabama or something? Shit that would be something i'd pay to see. On another note, I was recently out in the city with some friends, one of whom drinks way more than I can, I somehow drank seven shots of grey goose that night along with four beers and managed to keep standing, well I was down for the count once but that was a balance issue. However my other so called friend, who doesn't drink and was sober left us in the street when it was time to go home, you never leave a drinking buddy out in the street in that condition, so I was left the shitty task of taking a cab all the way uptown to drop my friend home, he lives way uptown i'm talking almost riverdale or in the 200's streets and we were in the village. You can get to the airport cheaper than this ride, it took every cent I had to get him home but at least I didn't put him on the train to get mugged or ride the rails all night in a drunken stupor. To you drinkers out there, you never leave a comrade behind, especially a drunk one and of course don't drink and drive but in NYC you don't need a car really its a luxury to have one and the parking sucks. Suffice it to say I arrived home with two bucks left over, smoked a cigarette while walking the deserted streets a few blocks from where the cab dropped me off. I love walking the city streets really late, when no one is around and its just you and whatever vermin happen to be scurrying around. It's funny though you don't see many rats in the winters, even they go hide when the winds swirl and that cold wind comes off the Hudson River. Any night you get home alive and unharmed is a good one in my book. Being a statistic just sucks. Peace and love, i'll write more soon.