Trench press

My round up on everything growing up along the Brooklyn Queens Expressway (a k a, "The Trench") is in today's NY Post.

The Real Deal was nice enough to link to it. (As was Brownstoner -- although they were slightly cheeky. But, hey, it's a free country.)

I'm really looking forward to that Pok Pok!

Bucking, a trend

Percy's is the best dollar slice in NYC.

There -- I said it.

I actually said it more than a week ago in the Post (but for some reason didn't blog about it until now.)

Of course, just because Percy's is the best, doesn't mean that there aren't plenty of pretty good single dollar options.

Two Bros., which has been popping up all around the city is pretty excellent, when you consider that it's only a dollar. (My main criticism of 2 Bros. is that it's a little doughy, for me.)

Likewise, 99 Cent Fresh Pizza isn't bad -- which also has multiple locations. (That slice is a touch greasy, but also not bad.)

The owner of Percy's (Jim McGown) said something interesting though:

He thinks that all pizza is either going to become $1 slices, or $4 slices, within the next couple of years.

The market can't really sustain the middle-range slice. If $1 slices are decent, that's what people will eat. If they want something truly spectacular, they'll shell out $3 or $4. (Particularly in NYC where people will pay for the cachet of getting a great slice.) But where is the market for the $2 or $2.50 slice?

It might be lights out for them.

In the meantime, check out Percy's.

If the GOP field were a Top Chef, they would be Hosea

So now it's Santorum?

Clearly the GOP has gotten on the fast train to crazy town.

Not that I care much what Republicans do, but this guy is unelectable, and somebody should think about mentioning it to the GOP voters.

(While old Santorum has stayed away from the jaw-droppingly dumb things he's said in the past, the New Republic has compiled a list of Santorum's greatest hits. If you ever feel that Dan Savage has been too hard on Rick, read it.)

Maybe it's because Top Chef was on last night, but I couldn't help but think about which candidate would be which Top Chef -- until I had a realization:

They're all Hosea Rosenberg.

If you don't remember Hosea, he was the Top Chef that nobody liked much. He wasn't particularly talented or memorable -- except that he cheated on his girlfriend on the show with Leah (who was not only taken, but living with her boyfriend at the time.)

It seemed impossible that Hosea would ever become Top Chef -- until he did.

He mastered the TC phenomenon of never quite doing a bad enough job to get kicked off -- but never doing a good job, either. The guy who should have won (Stefan) did slightly worse in the finale, and Hosea got the top prize pretty much by default. (It felt mind bogglingly frustrating at the time.)

And that pretty much sums up the GOP presidential contenders. They all share at least two of Hosea's three bad qualities. It's just a question of who will out-worse the others.

(1) His loose morals.

Newt Gingrich seems to have that one down pretty pat. But I would also argue that Mitt Romney's willingness to say anything -- anything! -- depending on who's listening to him suggests a certain liberal relationship with the truth.

(2) Nobody likes him.

Willard Mitt Romney -- desperate to be liked. As a result (and for other reasons) despised.

Newton Leroy Gingrich. The most despicable serious candidate in modern times. Every member of Congress who has any memory beyond 2000 knows just how dangerous a guy this is -- as well as nasty, vindictive and unappealing. A small number of tea party supporters think he'll destroy President Obama in a debate (they are mistaken), but that is the extent of his support.

Rick Santorum. So openly homophobic and anti-choice that nominating this guy would be the equivalent of just giving up on any Independent votes.

(3) He's always second worst.

This describes Romney, Santorum and Gingrich. All three of them are a joke. They only become credible when you look at all three of them together. (Ron Paul is a different discussion.) A real statesman -- someone with experience, decent looks, a conservative voting record and the ability to form a complete sentence -- would blow these guys out of the water.

And yet it hasn't happened.

One of these guys will be the GOP nominee (provided we don't get a brokered convention) -- and 2/3rds of the GOP will feel it is the equivalent of giving the prize to Hosea.

They'd be right. All three are Hosea.

Let's go Metro!

This is my roundup of everything that's happening in Downtown Brooklyn's MetroTech area.

The stuff about the snake is gleaned from my own personal experience -- I remember coming out of the Fulton Mall's A&S and walking past the defunct movie theater (the same movie theater where I saw such '80s classics as "The Karate Kid" and "Back to the Future" when they first came out) and saw a snake charmer with what looked like a 9 foot long snake!

I nearly ran! (I managed to just walk quickly away.)

The area still has a ways to go, but, yes, it has made some remarkable progress.

Happy new year!

Here's wishing you a (slightly late) Happy Year of the Dragon!

I actually wrote an account of a food crawl I took in Chinatown a couple of weekends ago here.

Of the places I went to, Peking Duck House was my favorite.

...But as a Chinese-American friend of mine said when she heard the list of places I had visited: "Ah... you had Chinese food for white people."

It's sort of true. To get a really good Chinese meal, I almost think Manhattan Chinatown is over. You have to go to Flushing. (There are, of course, great and authentic Chinese restaurants in Manhattan -- but very few of them are in Chinatown.) But if you're looking for a place to celebrate, check out Legend for some seriously good Sichuan food.

The future craziness of the GOP

A while ago I decided that nobody out there in schlubland really wanted to hear my peculiar brand of politics. Besides, this country has too much political punditry. (Seriously, when did people start talking about the state of the union or the GOP debates the way they used to talk about the Mets? "You see the debate last night? Boy, Newt really stepped in it. He's through. Definitely will be eliminated by Super Tuesday.")

But now that the GOP nominating process is drawing to a close (winner: Mitt Romney) and the national election stage is set (my money is still on President Obama to win) I suppose I'm entitled to sound off just a little on the silly season.

A liberal like me should be breathing a sigh of relief. While I can't stand the man it looks like the GOP is turning to (Mitt) and I think he's probably a loser in November, he's considered the "moderate" conservative in the race. And as the choice of the party establishment this is a hopeful sign that the GOP is turning down the temperature on all their tea party nutsiness. They're serious about governing again. Whoever is President in November, be it Romney or Obama, the country will not go off a cliff.

I beg to differ.

While I'm hardly in the predictions game, I will make one (because I haven't seen anyone make it): It's going to get a lot worse for the GOP before it gets better.

After all the ugliness of campaigning, nominations and a general election are over, there are two possible scenarios here that I envision for the GOP, neither of them are all that good.

(1) Mitt Romney wins the presidency.

The GOP will have learned a very bad lesson; namely, they don't have to contribute to the recovery, they don't have to think seriously about governing, they don't have to do anything other than obstruct, obstruct, obstruct and they'll get their way.

And rather than moderating their impulses, I think a win in November will embolden them. They will demand that President Romney, whom they don't trust in the slightest, take a series of loyalty tests. They will want healthcare dismantled -- period. They will want originalists on the federal bench -- period. They will want money to the EPA, the arts, public education and everything else slashed to the bone. They will want a Paul Ryan budget pushed through and if it means dismantling medicare, good!

Of course, much of this will depend on President Romney's behavior -- but I don't have a lot of optimism there. A man of such colossal ambition as Mitt Romney will want a second term. He certainly will not wish to have a primary challenge from his right. (The man doesn't do particularly well on the campaign trail in the first place.) But the right wing of the party will be watching him very closely. And if he doesn't do something meaningful to prove his bona fides, they are going to make his life hell.

Once again, the goal posts in American political life are moved further to the right.

(2) President Obama is reelected.

Obviously, this is the scenario I would favor. But I hardly think it will return the GOP to earth. If anything it will make them crazier for the following reasons:

(a) They have already been down this road before.

Last cycle, the GOP held their nose and voted for a man they loathe and despise: John McCain. The man every Democrat liked. (Until they really had to vote for him.) The man who opposed the Bush tax cuts. The man who wrote the dreaded McCain Feingold legislation. The one Republican the base of the party could not stand.

(b) If this happens to them a second time, they will feel that moderation is a mug's game. Maybe if they stuck to their guns they would have pulled off a victory.

It's sort of an insane argument. (So the electorate rejected a moderate Republican for not being conservative enough by going instead for a liberal Democrat?) But it's one that's taken seriously by the true believers.

(c) The "sticking to their guns" argument is crazy -- but not completely crazy. Yes, an excited base can swing an election. Particularly if it's close. And my bet is that 2012 is going to be close.

Of course, while a reasonable person would say that a Romney/Obama election will be a hell of a lot closer than a Gingrich/Obama election, the base won't believe that unless it actually happens. Should Romney lose, there will be a great many recriminations of his problems as a candidate (The Onion, as always, summed up this problem perfectly in their article Romneymania Sweeps America) but I thought Rick Santorum (of all people) summed up Romney's problems in the debate the other night -- Romney neutralizes the most salient criticism of President Obama: healthcare.

Healthcare reform is very unpopular (I think it should be popular, but that's a different discussion.) Nominating the guy who came up with the idea isn't going to make much headway with the average voter if you're trying to offer a contrast to the president.

You're already starting to see how the craziness will manifest itself. Grover Norquist is already (ALREADY?!) talking about impeaching President Obama in 2014 if he lets the Bush tax cuts expire. You will hear a lot of that in 2013 if Obama is reelected. (Jonathan Chait predicted a second term impeachment a long time ago.)

And even if President Obama is not impeached, in this scenario the right wing of the party will say to the moderates: We went moderate in '08, we got Obama. We went radical in '10, we got Congress. We went moderate in '12, we got Obama again. So we're nominating a radical in 2016.

A lot can happen between now and 2016, but I think the GOP is going to have to nominate a radical and lose hard before it snaps them to their senses. But it will not bode well for the country in general. Sigh.

Good DR

Yes, your schlubby friend fired his first gun ever last November at Casa de Campo, in the Dominican Republic. (The accompanying story was published in the New York Post on Tuesday.)

I have to admit (New York liberal objections aside), it was kinda fun.

Although, I will also admit: I was not as good a shot as I expected to be.

All those years of playing Duck Hunt on Nintendo apparently don't translate into good shooting skills.

Oh well. I'm probably never going to shoot another gun again. But worth trying once.