All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.
But there’s no need to thank us here at The Traveler. We’re just happy to serve you.
In Jeffrey Toobin’s piece in this week’s New Yorker on the decline and fall of Martha Stewart, my old company got a shout-out:
Stewart said … that she liked to buy shares in the companies of C.E.O.s she admired, as a kind of tribute but also as a way to learn from them. Her stock portfolio, which was made public during the trial, revealed that she fell for other emblematic figures of the nineteen-nineties. She did well with Wal-Mart and Dell, but lost with investments in Amazon, Lucent, Doubleclick, and JDS Uniphase. (Emphasis added.)
I was once a Clicker back in the heyday, when they built us a roof terrace with a basketball court, a climbing wall that we weren’t allowed to use, and a fountain so loud that it could never be turned on. They used to feed us and get us drunk so often that I wondered if they were fattening us up for something, and of course they were. I got off the merry-go-round voluntarily ? that was when I headed off to Korea to teach English ? but took the generous layoff package they were offering. And I managed to make some money on my stock options, but my dad invested my sister’s bat mitzvah money in DoubleClick shares when the company had roughly the same value as General Electric. Which was foolish, but those were heady days and we all liked to believe it would last forever.
Anyway, in terms of CEO worship, DoubleClick was better than some other places. We had two Glorious Founders, Kevin O’Connor and Kevin Ryan, and an advantage of polytheism is that it blunts the power of any one god.
The City of New York Department of Mental Health and Hygeine — they’re the reason we New Yorkers all have such clean minds — has helpfully provided its restaurant inspection results online. Look up your favorite restaurants … if you dare! (A little hint: include The for restaurants whose names start with the article.)
Some highlights from my neck of the woods (Carroll Gardens): The Grocery passed its inspection, as did Banania, but snazzy French bistro Quercy didn’t make the cut, and neither did newcomer Bacchus on Atlantic Avenue. Neighborhood standbys Zaytoons, The Soul Spot, Sam’s Restaurant and Tuk Tuk (best Thai place in town) all failed as well. But then, so did Nobu and Tabla, so it’s not just Brooklyn.
Now go, eat, eat! New York is the best food city in the world! What are you waiting for?
Topic: Around Town
Posted by: Josh
I’m tired of whining alone. Send me your best stories of snowy disaster and I will post them here. And later I’ll tell you about getting snowed upon on the summer solstice.
Dear Mayor Bloomberg,
It’s snowing again, and I for one don’t think it’s funny. At all.
Back in December when it first snowed, I thought it was pretty cool, but then it all just sat there for months turning gray. A leaky hydrant just up Bond Street created a lake of ice that had to be chopped apart and stacked up by city workers. And then it snowed again on Tuesday, and that was totally lame.
So I get up and look out my window today, and what do I see? Snow! Mr. Mayor, my wife was planning to garden today ? her friend was coming over to help and everything ? and then this happened.
These snowfalls are an assault on our freedoms. They hinder us, trap us inside, limit our ability to enjoy this fair city. They are costly to the government and bad for business, unless your business is selling bags of salt. (Maybe the salt merchants are behind this?) And the snow is so very, very not funny.
So please, Mayor Mikey: make it stop.
Correction: It’s not snow. It’s some snowlike substance that falls like snow but then melts actual snow on contact, creating slush puddles the size of Lake Eerie. Truly, it is the season of the Oobleck.
Dunno if you’ve seen this, but it’s pretty amusing.
1. Go to the Google homepage.
2. Type weapons of mass destruction.
3. Click I’m Feeling Lucky.
4. Read the error message carefully.
Note: Unfortunately, this comes with a bunch of pop-ups when you try to move on. Whatever you do, don’t click OK on anything.
Mr. Caen passed away a number of years ago, but his columns are still out there and well worth a read.
(Hint: The page reloads every time you click Back; to read sequential columns, you have to right-click on the link, then select Open in New Window. When you’re finished, close the new window and right-click on the next column.)
The New Yorker has an excellent article this week on the newly refurbished Kabul-to-Kandahar highway, on which the United States spent $270 million. It gives a good sense of how much still remains to be done in Afghanistan, and it serves as a reminder that the country remains insecure and violent, with a resurgent Taliban making gains for the same reason they did the last time around: because there is a gaping power vacuum.
Yes, the road got built — as one American official in Kabul put it, “It just goes to show what you can do when money is no object” — but I imagine that the country would be in much better shape if instead of invading Iraq, we had focused our military and financial resources on pacifying and rebuilding in Afghanistan. And considering that Afghanistan (and neighboring Pakistan) is where the terrorists actually are, that would have been a more obvious tactic in the war on terror.