Chris "East Village Idiot" C.'s Profile

In the ongoing campaign to make Chris fat, Plan B has opened just a few blocks from my girlfriend's apartment. And there's no reason to think that I won't want to be there every other night.

It's a decent sports bar given its size (only 4 TVs, but a great outdoor patio for those who don't give a damn what A-Rod's OPS is), but its standard bar food - with a few twists - is the star of the show. The menu was limited when I went in, but the burger is juicy (a little too juicy to be easy to eat), served on a light, airy roll, and... stuffed with cheese! Yes, there is cheese INSIDE the burger. And somehow, the cheese wasn't scalding hot, but the burger was cooked all the way through. It's only American cheese, though... I wish there were other options.

As for the fries that accompanied it, they're perfect for someone like me who likes to bathe himself in garlic. The garlic parmesean fries are the real deal: shredded parmesean cheese and chopped garlic - not the sprinkled stuff out of a can. They really stink up the place, so beware of poachers who might want to saddle up and steal your fries!

Count me among the haters.

If you can't keep regular hours for your place of business, you won't get my business. Going by Artichoke was like rolling dice - even at peak hours, I never knew if it would be open.

If you can't manage a somewhat efficient system for handling the volume of business you get, you won't get my business. If they're going to man the restaurant for three hours before they finally open, they should be pumping out slices, not moving at a snail's pace.

Artichoke, your slice was good, but not worth the two weeks of trouble I went through to get it. Work out the kinks, deliver what you promise, and maybe I'll be back.

Arrow has become a regular part of my weekly routine for a couple reasons:

1. I host a trivia night there on Monday nights at 8pm. But I swear that aside from that plug, my review is completely unbiased.
2. They have a 2-FOR-1 HAPPY HOUR THAT RUNS UNTIL 9PM.

Seriously, #2 is reason enough, but their drinks are great any time. They have some creative cocktails, and their beer list, albeit smaller than its predecessor The Rook in the same location, is still quite strong and unique.

Arrow is a great subterranean hideout for those looking for a mellow nook or cranny during happy hour... then, the place heats up at night with some great tunes.

My date and I went to Mary Ann's on 2nd Avenue in the East Village. This was our biggest mistake. She wanted a margarita, so it was the most logical choice for dinner, but given my experience last night, even the Chipotle on St. Mark's would have been a better choice.

We walked in and were seated right away. There were about five occupied tables in the entire restaurant, so we pretty much had our pick of tables. And that was about the only good thing that happened in the entire hour and a half we were there.

First off, I sat down to look at the menu and saw roughly 27 mentions of the fact that the place is cash only. Welcome to the 21st century, Mary Ann's. I don't carry around wads of cash anymore for various reasons. One of those reasons is that when I go to a restaurant, I expect to be able to pay with a credit card. Don't give me this bullshit about transaction fees, either. Plenty of other restaurants have been accepting credit cards for years and get by just fine.

Realizing I had no cash on me, I told my date I'd run to the ATM down the street. She said she'd order me a drink while I was gone.

I stepped out, walked down the street to the Bank of America a block away, got some cash, and walked back to the restaurant. The whole process took roughly five minutes. By now, you'd expect that our drinks would be on the table.

"Yeah, uh, the waitress hasn't even come by yet," my date told me.

So we waited for her.

She walked by and took the order at another table.

And we waited.

She stood around by the bar, seemingly doing absolutely nothing but chatting with the bartender.

And we waited.

About ten minutes later, we flagged down a bus boy, who, expectedly, spoke little more than five words in English. We asked him, "can we get a waitress over here?"

"Yes, yes," he said, as he walked back towards the kitchen, shouting rather loudly at our waitress in Spanish.

At this point, you'd expect her to come right over to us. Instead, we waited another five minutes. I looked at my date. "Do you want to go?"

"I don't know," she said. "Do you?"

I took out my cell phone and put it on the table. "Two more minutes," I told her. "Starting... now." It was 7:05. We had walked into the restaurant around 6:45.

Finally, less than 30 seconds before we were about to get up and leave, the waitress finally came over and took our order. We ordered both drinks and our entrees, unsure that we'd ever see her again.

We should have left at that point.

We watched, dumbstruck, as the waitress continued to go about doing other things. After we ordered, she spent about ten minutes at the bar, then walked over to another table to serve them their drinks. It was at that point that my date very audibly stated, "I could really use that margarita right now."

The waitress then came over and told us, "your drinks should be right over."

Two minutes later, our food arrived. We still didn't have our drinks. It was at this point that I looked over and realized the problem with our drinks: the bartender wasn't bartending. Despite the fact that absolutely nobody was at the bar and he was standing behind the bar, he was not making any drinks. Regardless, ordering a margarita at a Mexican restaurant should not be an alien concept.

Finally, after sitting for several minutes with our dinners cooling in front of us, our drinks finally arrived. A margarita with salt, despite the fact that we specifically ordered it without salt. But at this point, there was no use in trying anymore. If we had her take our drinks back, we may never even get a drop of alcohol before we leave. And by then, we damn well needed some.

This whole meal was emotionally exhausting. The food was incredibly bland to boot, the waitress overcharged us for the margarita, and it took fifteen minutes of sitting in a near-empty restaurant with our near-empty plates before the waitress asked us if we needed anything else.

I was dumbfounded by this level of service. There was never a single apology made by our waitress. She didn't even try to come up with an excuse for the way we were treated. Never in my life have I been ignored in a restaurant the way I was in Mary Ann's last night. Except maybe on my last Delta flight.

For the first time in my life, I felt like the service truly deserved a sub-standard tip. On a $28.25 bill, I tipped her $2.75.  I have absolutely no intention of ever going back to Mary Ann's again. I think I was still too generous.

I went on a Saturday night, and before I even stepped through the doors, I knew I wouldn't like this place. It was packed with the crowd that typically packs a kitchy place that gets promoted to holy hell. It was full of people who were there so they can say they went there first, go there to be seen.

The place is loud, the crowd is obnoxious, and the prices are a little ridiculous.

Did I mention the place was loud?

This is the first bar that wasn't a music venue that I've ever been to where my ears were ringing for hours after I walked out. It was so uncomfortable that I felt like they wanted me to leave the second I walked in.

MTA New York City Transit

Service Alert

Posted on:8/8/2007 4:27:05 PM

Due to a single droplet of water falling from the sky mistaken for rain that was actually condensation from an air conditioner in a 17th floor apartment, there are delays on the following subway lines:

1 trains are running between 14th Street and 18th Street in both directions.

2 and 3 uptown trains will terminate at 96th Street, as they are afraid to go into Harlem.

4, 5, and 6 trains will be making two loops around Central Park before getting you to your destination, because they need some fresh air.

7 trains are enjoying a hot dog and beer at Willets Point-Shea Stadium and will resume normal operation once the game is over.

A, B, C and D trains are not running at all, because they really just don't have time for your crap today.

E trains are running express in Manhattan, enjoying the nice cool breeze they get from going 30 miles an hour.

F and V trains are stuck in some neighborhood in Queens that you've never heard of.

G trains are currently experiencing an inferiority complex and will not run until further notice/counseling.

J, M, and Z trains are running normally, of course, since nobody ever uses these trains.

L trains are running between Princeton Junction and Hoboken. We really can't explain how they ended up there.

N and Q trains are currently running on the Cyclone track at Coney Island-Stillwell Ave.

R and W trains are feeling nostalgic right now, and are currently running over the Brooklyn Bridge.

S service is suspended between Times Square-42nd Street and Grand Central-42nd Street. You can just walk. You do have legs, don't you?

We would apologize for the inconvience, but we like to watch you suffer. Thank you for riding with MTA New York City Transit!

(Taken from my blog at http://eastvillageidio...)

If you never thought vegetarian food could be unhealthy, think again.

This place comes to the closest to being a vegetarian greasy spoon. But for comfort food without the guilt of eating a living creature, Curly's is a great choice. The curly fries are delicious. The brunch is a pretty good deal. And the fake meat? Well, you'd never know.

"We secretly replaced the ham in Chris' huevos rancheros with 'sham.' Let's see if he notices."

Nope. Tastes the same to me!

Just a few months ago, 12th Street Ale House was an old gay bar that played porn on TV screens that you could actually see through the windows... it was a friendly neighborhood place, I'm sure. These days, the only thing playing on their five TV screens are any and every sport imaginable. Given the place's history, the owners really wanted to strip it down and start from scratch. In a matter of a couple of weeks, they brought in a new bar, new furniture, and a new hardwood floor. They turned the place around really quickly.

When I walked in on Wednesday night, I experienced something I had never experienced before at a bar: new bar smell. The bar smelled like fresh sawdust - a bit like a lumber yard. In fact, it actually smelled a lot like Home Depot. I was expecting the bartenders to be wearing orange aprons and directing me to the tool department.

Actually, they're supposed to be bringing a beer pong table into the place soon, so come the start of NYU's spring semester, the bar will have a "tool department." Once that thing's in and pitchers of beer are flowing to the frat-set, the new bar smell will fade away quickly. But if you go this weekend, you can enjoy new bar smell while it lasts, as well as their selection of 12 beers on draft - a solid list, mostly European imports, but nothing too exciting or extraordinary.

A side note: when did $6 for beer become the gold standard in the East Village? It's not just the new bars doing it, but the older bars' prices are creeping up, too. I can buy a cheap 6-pack at a bodega for the same price, take it home, and not deal with the Bridge-and-Tunnel crowd that invades this neighborhood every weekend.

Review, in haiku:
Now: a decent place
for beer. Next month: probably
Mobbed with Douchebags. Sad.

Midway: Closer and Smaller than O'Hare. It does have that going for it.

What it doesn't have going for it: it's smaller than O'Hare. There is exactly NOTHING to do outside of security (a problem when you have a delay or a ticketing problem). It has one security checkpoint. It has one food court.

But everything goes off without a hitch here, compared to O'Hare. And it's not a complete mob scene most of the time. Plus, it's got Southwest, so the prices are pretty competitive. So, really, it's halfway decent, and at least your flight has a chance of leaving on time.

This airport is HUGE, but it feels practically empty. It's the largest airport in area in the U.S. - mainly because it's out in a field in the middle of nowhere.

The airport itself is decent - it's clean, it's easy to get around, and the food options are tolerable. But the airport's location is its biggest problem.

Because there's so much room to spread out, the gates are quite far from baggage collection. While the overly complicated and horribly flawed baggage collection system has been reworked over the years, the wait for your luggage in the main terminal is horribly obnoxious.

Location is also a problem in getting places. This airport is far from Denver. So far, in fact, that its skyline is barely a blip on the horizon. When you land, you may think you're in Denver, but you're about a 45 minute drive from just about anywhere you actually want to go.

But I guess that's the price you pay when you fly out of an airport where the planes don't sit in a 20-deep line for takeoff.