Pre-Christmas Gratitude Edition
Look, I had to do it
I’d planned some humbug for this letter - the NYC restaurant closures, the gobsmackery that is realizing there’s a NYC private school that outdid mine in its attempt to not appear racist, the fact that [whimper] I have no #AMA for you tonight. But you know what? Too many good things happened this week. Let’s roll the videotape!
My husband announced he’d be closing the door on his fifteen year-old coffee roasting company, Ristretto Roasters, and you know how you people responded? With hundreds of notes of thanks and love and buying well into five-figures worth of beans. Much obliged and all love back to you.
There was walking into Strand Book Store and asking someone if she worked there. “I own the store,” said Nancy Bass Wyden, who’s married to Oregon Senator Ron Wyden and thus, we started chatting, about the Portland protests, about the awesomeness of Ron’s press secretary Hank Stern, about how happy Nancy is that customers are again thronging the store; it hadn’t been that way a few months ago, and also, after I told her I wrote for Reason, how grateful she was for the magazine’s support in 2019, when demands from the NYC Landmarks Commission nearly put the almost century-old store out of business.
There’s the niceness of the yule-log-crackling/Christmas-tuneage on YouTube as I type. There’s the newness of drinking Ramazzotti on the rocks, an amaro I learned about two days ago from Peter Sudeman’s new Substack. There is the stream of humanity in and out of the bodega on the corner, the guy who laughs a lot and leans against the Bitcoin trading machine I’ve never seen anyone use; the kid who tried to sell me a realistic-sounding though fake stun-gun from a duffel bag (sales were swift); the counter gal who on Thanksgiving told me she was going to her apartment after her shift to wash her kitchen floor, maybe Skype with her kids in the Dominican Republic. I gave her some pie to take home. And speaking of pie, lovely premium subscribers, these are in the mail! And new subscriber(s), I will be baking again tomorrow.
Was there weird stuff on my block this week? Sure.
Though the cops would not tell me anything (“You can watch it on the news”), as it turned out, a guy hacked up his roommate with a meat cleaver, then went to the roof and jumped. He died. The roommate made it to the street and was so bloodied up people couldn’t tell where he was bleeding from. He was taken to the hospital and, so far as I know, survived. Grateful for that!
City officials deserve no gratitude for reopening outdoor dining because they should not have closed it in the first place. The diners braving the cold get all the kudos, and some of the street-side set-ups look downright cozy.
There was meeting Ben Dreyfuss (who also has a new Substack!) when he was a guest on The Fifth Column podcast, which records at my place (and soon in the new studio we’re building across the hall). For those caviling, “Give Nancy a mic…” I predict you will soon be wanting them to take it away. I’m just grateful they let me hang around.
Grateful, too, to Matt Welch for schlepping over a rug today, and bringing his daughter Coco. Am I saying I had twice as much fun making her a scavenger hunt around my apartment as she had finding the clues? Maybe three times! Coco more than reciprocated, sharing her favorite Christmas song. Please note we will be trying to recreate the video in its entirely on New Year’s Eve and live-streaming it, duh.
#AMA will be back next week, maybe sooner. Will be doing it as a Zoom or a Google Meet so we can have some face-to-face. If you have a preference (or something even better!), let me know.
With love and hot pie xx Nancy