Fake Tales of San Francisco: Day Two

"I was filled with so much hate until I saw the Golden Gate." -- Hello Saferide

03.05.2010

I've decided to avoid jet lag by refusing to change my sleeping habits. Thus, I'm awake at 5:30 in the morning, sitting at my desk with my Moleskine. The sun is rising over the Bay. What an inspiring way to start the weekend.

I skip the continental breakfast offered by the conference and go to Blue Bottle Cafe. It's located in an unmarked storefront at an intersection of two sidestreets that should really be called alleyways. I order a bowl of pecan granola -- super-fresh, very tender, makes the milk taste like honey and cinnamon -- and a coffee.

My coffee takes five minutes to prepare because each cup is drip-brewed to order. It's THE best cup of coffee I've ever had in my life. The smoothness, the depth of flavor. Words cannot describe either.

The two cute hipsters from the airplane walk into Blue Bottle when I have an inch of coffee left. The cuter one and I lock eyes a few times, but he offers no sign of familiarity. I'm not sure he recognizes me without my glasses.

I find a seat in the back of the massive conference hall, but I don't know anything about prostate cancer aside from the bare-bones basics and the stuff related to clinical trial design. The presenters could be speaking Greek and I wouldn't know any better.

Actually, I think I understand Greek better than I understand how androgen deprivation and Gleason scores work.

There are ridiculously few women at this conference. There are also ridiculously many handsome young men wearing wedding rings.

Traditional open radical prostatectomy and robotic radical prostatectomy result in very different pelvic anatomies after healing, but radiation fields are only optimized for the former. Interesting.

We break for lunch. I decide to take my PI's advice and spend the rest of the day walking the streets of San Francisco.

I didn't realize San Francisco has hills.

Yes, I've seen Full House.

Yes, I've seen pictures of Lombard Street.

I always thought the hills looked worse than they really are!

They're really worse than they look.

Fisherman's Wharf is my first stop. It feels like a tourist trap, and as a New Yorker, I'm trained to neither patronize nor linger in tourist traps. Plus, it was sad seeing so many lethargic-looking sea lions in one place.

It doesn't seem like it would be too difficult to swim to the mainland from Alcatraz.

From Pier 39, I walk west along the Barbary Coast Trail to Fort Mason. I enjoy a crab cake from a street stand and a Ghirardelli's hot chocolate along the way.

Seagulls : SF :: Pigeons : NY. They are FEARLESS. One male -- a male, might I add, so large that he could easily feed a family of six if roasted correctly -- stands in my way and caws at me when I try to make him move.

I try to kick him. He flaps a few feet to the right and gives me the stink-eye.

No, really:

The Golden Gate Bridge really is stunning. Maybe all those hills were worth it.

My return trip is strategically plotted to avoid as many hills as possible, so I end up walking the entire length of Grant Avenue. A few blocks in, a very elderly Asian man says "beautiful!" as I pass him. Aw.

A few blocks later, another very elderly Asian man says "beautiful!" as I pass him. I start to suspect that "beautiful" is Canto for "ha ha look at the stupid white girl who didn't realize San Francisco has hills."

My cheeks are slightly sunburned. I'll have freckles by next week.

Three new blisters. I treat my feet to a long soak and lots of bandaging before I dress for dinner.

Hana Zen for yakitori. I let the waiter order for me. He chooses well.

Fake Tales of San Francisco: Day One

"I've been terribly alone and forgotten in Manhattan. I'm going home to my city by the Bay." -- Tony Bennett

03.04.2010

I drain half of my iced coffee in one gulp. Part of me feels like I should lay off the caffeine if I want to stand any chance of sleeping on the airplane, but the rest of me fears being trapped on an airplane with a caffeine withdrawal headache. And besides, I drink coffee before bed at night. It won't keep me awake!

Two men stand behind me as I wait to board the plane. They talk about whether they'll be able to sleep through the flight, whether they'll get any work done, the general precariousness of the gangway underfoot. I glance backwards under the pretense of repositioning my suitcase. They're both hipsters. Attractive, bearded, intellectual-looking.

We all move a few inches closer to the plane. The cuter hipster -- the one who looks like the cute brother of a cute guy I once knew -- says, "You know, I think I'm ready to fall in love." I envy his certainty.

The hipsters are seated in my row. The cute one is across the aisle and his friend is next to me.

I don't sleep a wink in the five and a half hours it takes the damn plane to land.

I burst out laughing in the BART because I realize that San Francisco has no palm trees.

The staff at my hotel has been coached to call all guests "Doctor" for the duration of the weekend. After the third time it happens, I decide to stop correcting people.

Crap, my room is enormous. I could have easily brought two friends with me and we still would have had room to spare.

My hotel is located in the shopping district of San Francisco, so I decide to spend my first few hours visiting every store that I already visit in New York on a bimonthly basis. The styles featured here are drastically different than anything I'm used to purchasing, though. Punchy colors, crazy patterns, and dangerously short skirts are everywhere. Where is my limitless selection of nearly identical black dresses?

I walk into a fitting room to try on a dress. Without being asked for his help, the attendant brings me six other dresses, three belts, and a sweater to try on. He chooses the correct size in everything, too.

At an intersection. The woman standing next to me hails a cab. The driver gets out, walks around to the curbside passenger door, opens it for the woman, closes it behind her, walks back around, gets in, and drives away. The man on my other side says what I'm thinking: "Jesus. In New York, you're lucky if the cabs STOP."

Homeless man quote: "You seem like a woman of fine taste. Wanna buy my album?"

I decide to go to bed at 7:30 PM. My colleague -- my fifty-something year-old colleague -- calls me an old lady for it.

Love Story

"Romeo, take me somewhere we can be alone! I'll be waiting. All there's left to do is run." -- Taylor Swift

Halfway through my workday, I took a walk around the corner to grab a cup of coffee. As I headed back to my building, cup in hand, I noticed a tractor-trailer stopped at the red light directly in front of me. Or, more specifically, I noticed the truck's driver. He was large, burly, and balding, and he was singing along with something on the radio. He wasn't just mouthing the lyrics, though -- this dude was in total rockstar mode. He played the drums on his steering wheel, he tossed his head around, and he even interspersed a few well-placed fist-pumps into his performance.

I continued to watch him as I walked.

As I approached the corner, I noticed that his window was cracked open.

As I turned the corner, his blaring radio became audible.

Yeah. The truck driver was totally, passionately, and unabashedly rocking out to Taylor Swift.

Debug In Reverse Order

“Reaffirming and strengthening America’s role as the world’s engine of scientific discovery and technological innovation is essential to meeting the challenges of this century. That’s why I am committed to making the improvement of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education over the next decade a national priority.” -- Barack Obama

Five year-olds stop pursuing STEM careers because their parents and teachers don't make science fun.

Ten year-olds stop pursuing STEM careers because that's not what the cool kids do.

Fifteen year-olds stop pursuing STEM careers because their classes are too difficult.

Twenty year-olds stop pursuing STEM careers because they realize that they can make three times as much money working in finance and consulting.

Twenty-five year olds stop pursuing STEM careers because the job market denies them opportunities to do so, despite the fact that they're fully qualified to work in science and love it enough to have stood by it for a quarter of a century.

I applaud the President's efforts to reform STEM elementary education and rehabilitate its image among children, but technical knowledge is worthless if those of us who are passionate enough about science to study it at the college level aren't encouraged or even allowed to exercise our skills in the workforce. I'll gladly use my engineering degree to help America meet the challenges of this century, but in return, I should be able to find a technical job in America without killing myself and, once I've got one, I should earn a salary that's not an insult to my level of expertise. Just a suggestion.

Giving Up

"Nothing about us is perfect or clear, but when paradise calls me I'd rather be here. There's something between us that nobody else needs to see." -- Jason Robert Brown

Despite the perpetually depressing weather, I've had an amazing couple of weeks. I've been happy, healthy, and living life to the fullest. But now it's Lent, and though I'm not religious by any means, I still like to keep with tradition by foregoing a luxury for forty days. When I was younger, I used to give up my favorite foods for Lent -- chocolate, coffee, even cheese one disastrous year. After I grew into my appetite and learned that my food cravings are cyclical (and rarely last a full forty days), I began to make Lenten resolutions instead of denials. Over the years, I've vowed to stop procrastinating on homework, double my job hunting efforts, and swear off unhealthy relationships. The same should go for this year, but... I'm in a great place in life. My relationships are spectacular, I'm at the top of my game at work, and there's really nothing important that I know I could be doing better. I decided that I'd have to revert to giving up something for Lent... but what?

The answer was right in front of my nose... or, more appropriately, right underfoot.

I love fashion and own a lot of great clothing, but since I spent my formative years wearing a school uniform, I tend to gravitate towards black, grey, and neutral fabrics. Since this approach has a tendency to appear funeral-chic and I don't wear a lot of flashy jewelry, I developed one foolproof method of waking up my sense of style:

These photographs don't include seven pairs of boots, two pairs of running shoes, two pairs of Chucks, one pair of Birkenstocks, or the three assorted pairs under my desk at work.

I can explain, though! I spend a good portion of my workday on my feet, so I started collecting shoes in an effort to find the perfect balance between style and comfort. As I grew more successful in that arena, I just learned to love shoes in general. Some of them really are works of art, and their ability to completely transform what I'm wearing amazes me. Shopping for shoes soothes me, and even walking through shoe stores and browsing online -- seeing the shoes, stroking them, imagining where I'd wear them -- is an uncannily pleasurable experience for me.

Thus, I'm giving up shoe shopping for Lent. No looking at shoes online, no leisurely strolls through any department stores, and most importantly, no touching. And if I'm spending time with someone who wants to go shoe shopping, I'll go but I'm not allowed to buy anything.

It's only been Lent for two and a half days and I can already tell that this will be a tough one for me. I'm writing this blog post to distract myself from the fact that Nine West is having a 60% off sale this weekend.

Who Are You?

"I used to believe I was such a great romancer -- then I came home to a woman that I could not recognize. When I pressed her for a reason, she refused to even answer. It was then I felt the stranger kick me right between the eyes." -- Billy Joel

A few months ago, I wrote about the New Yorker who looks exactly like me. How do we reconcile her existence with the fact that, apparently, I don't even look like me?

Epica Insuccessa

"Say it's over. Say I'm dreaming. Say I'm better that you left me. Say you're sorry -- I can take it. Say you will, say you won't. Say you love me, say you don't. I can make my own mistakes. Learn to let it bend before it breaks." -- Brandi Carlile

I don't usually follow recipes when I cook. I learned how to cook from my grandmother, which means that I work in the kitchen the same way she did -- measuring in terms of pinches and handfuls, feeling out the consistencies, tasting things along the way, applying heat until the food looks right. Even when baking, I use ratios and basic chemistry concepts more often than I use cookbooks.

That doesn't stop me from owning many cookbooks, reading tons of food blogs, and subscribing to half a dozen cooking magazines. One of them, La Cucina Italiana, has long been a favorite because it's as much of a resource about Italy as it is about Italian cooking. It teaches you where to stay and what to see in the country, discusses tools and techniques, and breaks down all of its food writing by region. (This is especially useful due to the insane degree of cultural variation across Italy; my Parmense grandfather and my Abruzzese grandfather might as well be from different planets.) Today, I spent my Saturday at home as a consequence of the snowstorm that never happened, which gave me an excuse to go through a year's worth of La Cucina Italiana back-issues to tear out the recipes worth keeping.

One recipe, for a sticky, delicious-looking chocolate espresso layer cake, haunted me all day, and since I had all of the required ingredients on hand, nothing could stop me from making it. The recipe was surprisingly simple -- it was a foam-based cake, made using whipped eggs and only enough butter to grease the pan -- and came together in no time at all.

I poured the batter into several miniature cake pans, whipped up the recipe's chocolate and coffee liqueur frosting while my cake was in the oven, and waited expectantly. After half an hour, I pulled my cake out of the oven. It had basically exploded -- the batter was everywhere except my miniature cake tins, and I was thankful that I had the foresight to place the tins in a roasting pan before baking. I soldiered on, though -- hacked the cake out of the pan and glazed it anyway.

So it looked gross. But that doesn't matter if it tastes good, right?

Well, it didn't. It was so disgusting that I ate a few forkfuls and threw away the rest of the cake.

I then went online to check out what people were saying about the recipe. (I figured half a dozen horrible reviews would make me feel better about my culinary misfire.) Well, it turns out that the reviews on the La Cucina Italiana website were... pretty good. Very good, actually. The cake was downright praised.

I scrolled up to look at the recipe on the website. It called for six tablespoons of softened butter. I then grabbed my torn-out recipe off the kitchen counter. It called for no butter. The recipe on the website gave very specific instructions about how to incorporate all that butter into the batter. There weren't any references to butter in the text of my recipe.

Now I have a garbage can full of disgusting cake and a folder full of recipes that I will never, ever use... on principle alone. I'll read through them tomorrow morning and jot down any meal ideas that they inspire. Then they can join the damned cake in the trash.

The Future That Never Was

"Fifty years after the fair, I live in tomorrow town. Even on a wing and a prayer, the future never came around. It hurts to even think of those days, the damage we do by the hopes that we raise." -- Aimee Mann

Writing my last post got me thinking about Flushing Meadows Park. This, in turn, got me thinking about the two World's Fairs held there -- the first in 1939 and the second in 1964. Both events were the brainchildren of Robert Moses, the Master Builder who single-handedly designed the infrastructure of modern New York City. (Read up on the man if you have time. His life story is unbelievable.) Though Moses used the Fair as an excuse to turn the Flushing cinder dump into public parkland, the people of New York City saw it as so much more.

The World's Fair gave New Yorkers hope for a bright future when reality offered little encouragement; the first preceded World War II and the second came on the heels of JFK's assassination. One square mile of land in Queens was cleaned up for the cause, and different countries, US states, and major corporations erected lavish pavilions to showcase their products, people, and visions for the future of humanity. If you've ever been to EPCOT in Walt Disney World, that was the general idea. (And by "general idea," I mean that EPCOT was an idea that Walt Disney stole from the '64 World's Fair.)

I love learning about the World's Fair for the same reason I love EPCOT: I derive an inordinate amount of joy from studying my predecessors' expectations of the future. It's inspiring to see what innovations first presented at the World's Fair have enjoyed success (i.e. television, color photography, and the modem) and which never found a place in society (i.e. humanoid robots, Smell-O-Vision, and undersea vacation homes). It's even more interesting to compare our current technology with our grandparents' and parents' expectations of how our generation would live. True, we're not colonizing Mars or traveling at light speed, but I doubt that anyone in 1939 could have ever envisioned anything even remotely resembling the iPhone.

Despite which predictions came true and which predictions never came to pass, one aspect of the entire World's Fair experience can be recalled as indisputable fact: its optimism. The people of 1939 genuinely believed that humans would travel on automated highways and eat meals cooked by machines by 1960. The people of 1964 knew that they'd live to see moon bases and flying cars in the new millennium.

Flushing Meadows Park is still scattered with these certainties. Two time capsules filled with microfilm, "new" materials like stainless steel and nylon, knickknacks, and other symbols of our civilization are buried fifty feet under the cement with instructions not to open until 6939. A forty-foot sculpture of a Buck Rogers rocketship stands in a random driveway behind a building. A geodesic habitat designed by Buckminster Fuller houses forty species of birds at the Queens Zoo. The future of American architecture is slowly rotting despite preservation efforts, but it doesn't matter because most Americans only know it as something Will Smith shot out of the sky in 1997. Meticulous etchings of cars, robots, and transistor radios are underfoot everywhere. Tokens of world peace -- whether they're actual depictions of the world or pieces of native architecture donated by friendly nations -- are everywhere, too.

All of it makes me nostalgic and curious, but it also makes me sad. I'm a smart, forward-thinking research scientist with a firm grasp on technological innovations and a degree in the most cutting-edge discipline on the planet. And you know how I envision the future? Thinner cameras, iPods, and televisions. And that's about it. There are no robot butlers in my old age. No flying cars, teleportation devices, or jetpacks, either. I don't think we'll ever cure cancer or even come close to it. I don't think humans will travel any farther than the lunar surface. I don't envision food, architecture, or fashion significantly changing. No end to world hunger. No world peace.

I don't know if this makes me a pessimist or a realist, but when I walk through Flushing Meadows Park, it's nice to look back, look forwards, and forget.

All My Love To Long Ago

"I might have to wait. I'll never give up. I guess it's half timing and the other half's luck. Wherever you are, whenever it's right, you'll come out of nowhere and into my life... I just haven't met you yet." -- Michael Buble

Old things fascinate me and I've spent most of my life trying to figure out why. Is it the byproduct of growing up in a disposable culture? Is it sentimental? Is it part of the engineering mindset to appreciate things designed to withstand the test of time? Is it a consequence of always wondering "why?" Am I just an old soul? Whatever it is, I can't walk around an antique structure without thinking of people treading the same path a century earlier, and I spent far too much of my childhood and adolescence poring through Historical Society records, microfilm, and old photographs to learn about the origins of some of my favorite pieces of New York City.

Imagine my excitement, then, when I discovered that the aerial map on New York City's official website gained a new layer last week. You can now type in any address, district, or place of interest in the five boroughs to see what it looked like in 2008, 2006... or 1924.

Sure, I know when all the city's major landmarks were built -- most self-respecting history buffs have a general idea of timelines -- but it's still difficult to envision the way things looked without them. Well, it's all there in black and white on the NYC.gov website. I spent hours of my Friday poring over every inch of Jazz Age New York City, and the ways in which it's changed since then blew my mind. Half of the city's bridges didn't exist in 1924. (How the hell did people get to Staten Island?!) My place of employment looks like a row of tenements. Flushing Meadows Park, site of two World's Fairs and one of my favorite places to think myself back into the past, looks like F. Scott Fitzgerald's valley of ashes -- a barren wasteland covered in cinder. The Metropolitan Museum of Art was half its current size. And the location of my favorite building on the planet, Eero Saarinen's TWA Flight Center at JFK International Airport, was completely undeveloped:

I then decided to punch in the addresses of three places I've called home. First was my high school, situated at the intersection of four major highways in one of the busiest parts of Queens:

Next came the Seeley W. Mudd building, which houses my college's engineering department:

Last was the apartment house where I grew up:

The building's current foundations are outlined on each map in red... but the outline is merely a hint of what's to come. I've spent most of my life inhabiting those three places, and only eighty-five years ago, they were someone's backyard, an empty lot, and the middle of the freaking wilderness. It certainly puts my surroundings into perspective -- and makes me wonder what New York City will look like when I'm eighty-five years old.

Gnocchi

"Here's the cushion. I'm putting it on the sofa. Now, watch me! I'm sitting down, and what do I do on my final approach? I... oop! Move the cushion! You see? It's not involved! It's not part of the whole sitting process! It just lies there! It's fat litter! It's a sofa parasite!" -- Steven Moffat, from Coupling

It's been cold and dreary in New York City these past few weeks. The skies are grey, the wind is howly, the streets are covered with dirty ice from last month's snowstorm. It's the sort of weather that encourages you to do nothing except wrap yourself in a Snuggie and curl up on the couch with a stack of DVDs. Every good hibernation requires a good meal, though -- and in my estimation, there's nothing more filling or satisfying on a cold winter's day than a big steaming bowl of potato gnocchi drenched in delicious sauce. Supermarket gnocchi are too heavy for my stomach to appreciate, so I use a few simple ingredients and a little intuitive technique to make them from scratch. The trick to making light, pillowy gnocchi is twofold: remove as much water from the potatoes as possible, then use only enough flour to hold them together.

Here's my recipe for homemade potato gnocchi, followed by a recipe for the easy bolognese sauce I made to accompany them last weekend. If you don't have time to make fresh tomato sauce, use Mario Batali's brown butter and sage sauce on the gnocchi instead -- it's super-quick and insanely delicious.

Gnocchi di Patate

(NYO-kee dee pa-TAHD)

1 lb (2 large or 3 medium) russet potatoes

1/4 cup coarse salt

1 egg, beaten

1/2 cup flour, plus a little more for dusting and rolling

1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Scrub your potatoes, then repeatedly jab at each potato with a fork so the skin is covered in holes. Spread the salt in a thick layer on the bottom of a baking pan, place the potatoes on top of the salt, and bake for once hour, turning occasionally. Your goal here is to remove as much moisture from the potatoes as possible -- the holes aid in evaporation and the salt acts as an absorbant.

When the potatoes are just cool enough to handle, slice them in half and run the halves through a potato ricer. (The ricer will press the flesh clean off the skin -- no peeling necessary! If you don't have a potato ricer, you can use a lot of upper-body strength to press the potatoes through a mesh strainer or sieve.) Dump the salt off your baking sheet, spread the riced potatoes on it, and let them stand for 20 minutes so they can cool (and so more moisture can evaporate).

Sprinkle the parmesan cheese, half the beaten egg, and half the flour over the potatoes. Flour your hands and gently mix the ingredients, adding more flour until the dough is workable, pillowy, and not sticky.

Divide the dough in half. Flour a work surface -- I use the baking sheet again for this -- and roll out each half into a long log 1" in diameter. Cut each log into 1" segments, then sprinkle flour over each segment and gently roll it across the tines of a fork to make ridges. Arrange finished gnocchi on a plate and refrigerate until your sauce is cooked.

No-Time Bolognese

1/2 white onion, diced

4 cloves garlic, minced

1/2 cup wine -- I used white, though any wine works

1 12-oz can diced tomatoes

1/2 lb -- a good-sized hamburger's worth -- of chop meat

1/2 tsp oregano

1/2 tsp dried basil or 4 large shredded basil leaves

Pinch of salt and pepper

Brown chop meat in a large skillet, then add garlic and onion and cook, stirring often, until onion is transparent. Add wine, tomatoes, and spices, cover, and cook on medium-low heat for one hour, stirring occasionally.

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Drop gnocchi into the water a few at a time -- they'll sink to the bottom, then bob near the surface, then float to the surface and stay there. Scoop them out of the water with a slotted spoon when they float to the surface and stay there for at least ten seconds. Toss the cooked gnocchi into the sauce as you make them.

When all of your gnocchi are cooked and transferred to the sauce, give it a good stir and cook it on low heat for another ten minutes. Serves four as a first course -- double the recipe if you're making a meal out of it.