Felix Salmon - Not Econoblog

American Express blows me a raspberry

2010-08-21T15:03:01-05:00

My name has been pronounced many weird ways over the years, but never quite like this:

On Dave Weigel

2010-06-25T21:30:39-05:00

So I haven't updated felixsalmon.com in forever, and I feel I'm very late to the Dave Weigel party, having spent most of my day doing other things like watching the World Cup and swimming in the Atlantic. So this goes here, rather than at Reuters:

The bien-pensant consensus surrounding l'affaire Weigel is that it's wrong he got kicked out of his position blogging for the Washington Post. And that of course is entirely correct. But even many of the people who are on #teamweigel will quickly add that he demonstrated poor judgment in writing what he wrote, and that this should be a lesson to us all.

I don't think that's true. Our wired and Twittered world is increasingly blurring the distinction between the personal and the professional, and in such a world honesty is a much greater virtue than mealy-mouthed meekness when it comes to expressing the truth as you see it. Especially in a blogger. People have opinions, and it's kinda hilarious to see conservatives try to simultaneously complain that Weigel had erroneously been counted as one of their number while at the same time complaining that he wasn't "objective".

I do believe that Weigel resigned rather than was fired, and it's easy to see why he'd want to do that after reading the absolutely horrendous column by their lame, sad toady of an ombudsman today. Weigel is a great talent, and he'll land somewhere which will be positively encouraging to say in public what he was confined to saying in private while housed at WaPo. He's a very funny guy, and he should be able to let rip as much as he likes, without then feeling the need to apologize for being who he is.

Meanwhile, a horrible little turd somewhere is gleefully if quietly celebrating his coup (I'm sure it's a guy) in leaking Weigel's private correspondence to Fishbowl DC and the Daily Caller. Maybe he's genuinely disturbed in some way. But, to coin a phrase, this would be a vastly better world to live in if he decided to handle his emotional problems more responsibly, and set himself on fire.

The story of Petunia

2010-01-10T16:38:29-05:00

Thanks, Petunia, you were delicious!

Umbrellas, cont.

2009-12-07T10:14:14-05:00

Old friends of mine might remember a question about umbrellas I had back in the 1990s. Has Mark Hurst come up with an answer (page 25)?

Department of weird banners, Cambridge edition

2009-09-05T13:02:32-05:00

The University of Cambridge is celebrating its 800th birthday this year, and so all around the town are banners like this one:

The obvious question, of course, is what is the significance of those dates? The 1209 and 2009 dates are obvious. And to find out about the others, the obvious place to look is the website at the bottom of the banner, which has a handy timeline. The problem is that although the timeline includes no fewer than 80 different years between 1209 and 2009 (not including the ones at both ends), only one of them coincides with the seven in-between years on the banner: 1446, which marks the founding of King's College. So what are the others?

Pork in East Williamsburg

2009-07-26T21:02:24-05:00

Another pork-related guest post from Michelle:

Less than 24 hours after Felix returned from Shanghai we cycled over the B'Burg Bridge for more summer weekending in Brooklyn. This time 85 degrees with thunderstorms and tropical showers, but that didn't keep us away from an anticipated pork feast. No way. We hit the 3rd Ward 2nd annual pork roast which included the entire population of Williamsburg hispters plus us, all packed into one building.

We waited in a very long line which did not move for almost one hour, and yet I was completely content drinking a beer patiently (generally not my greatest virtue) while arguing whether or not we were in East Williamsburg or Bushwick as a very loud garage punk band entertained the crowd.

Rockstar butcher Tom Mylan carved up the most gorgeous roasted pig while a team of folks assembled tacos for distribution. Felix and I watched the tacos roll out with small bits of pork as we frowned and looked at each other, "Forget THAT." I was hardly about to wait in a one hour line for tacos. When it was finally our turn, I pushed Felix up to the counter and whispered in his ear, "No rice. No beans, no tortillas - just try and get us the pork". Felix then asked, "Can we order pork only?" and the lady looked back at him with a glare, "That will be $12... EACH." Like it was out of the question or something... Done.

She wrote on our paper plates: "Plate Of Pork" and passed them back to the taco team. They rolled their eyes and passed the plates back to the pig. Yay! Bring it on... large juicy mounds of pork wobbled around on the flimsy plates as we snatched the goods and found a corner to merrily eat in silence.

A wave of euphoria swept over us, like some crazy grease high. Showers came plummeting down from the sky and the crowd took cover, but never left the line. You don't wait that long for Tom Mylan roast pork and leave just because there's a monsoon. Thank you 3rd Ward, thank you Tom & crew. Happy Sunday in Brooklyn, Happy Dead Pig.

Eclipse

2009-07-21T22:36:36-05:00

It was touch-and-go there, pretty much all the way. In the days leading up to today, Stefan was obsessively checking the forecasts and the satellite pictures, looking at an enormous thundercloud, at least 1,000km across, which was right in the way and which would make the eclipse a total wash.

But then, yesterday, the cloud broke up, and Moganshan -- where we're staying -- was bathed in sunlight. The people operating the resort said that it's always clear in the mornings, and when we climbed the hill to look east over the plain, we were excited to get a perfect eclipse at 9:33am.

When we woke up, however, it was overcast and drizzling, and by the time we were looking out over the plain, you could barely see it, let alone the sun. We were convinced it was going to be a complete washout, where we wouldn't see anything but the sky getting dark and then light again.

Happily, we were wrong. Just as the eclipse was approaching totality, the sun started peeking out from between the clouds, and at one point there was an astonishing sight where you could even see what was left of the sun in the middle of a tiny swatch of blue sky, with sunbeams streaming down between almost-black clouds.

And then it arrived: the sun was blacked out, the corona appeared, and the eclipsed sun spent 5 minutes and 47 seconds peeking in and out behind the clouds. It wasn't dead-of-night dark, but it was definitely late dusk. And decidedly cooler than the normally-sweltering temperatures, too.

We didn't get the Full Eclipse Experience: the dark-indigo sky, the view of the orange horizon, the vision of the shadow of the moon rushing towards you and then away from you at 3,000 miles per hour. But we got something truly special all the same. It was my first total eclipse, I don't know if I'll ever see another. And I'm not in the slightest bit disappointed.

(The photo is by Stefan Geens. That's exactly what we saw.)

White wine contest results

2009-07-01T21:50:31-05:00

A good time was had by all at the wine contest last night, the rain notwithstanding. The wonderful Pasanella & Son laid on five wines for us, all of them sauvignon blanc or thereabouts.

Wine A was the most expensive, a Vacheron Sancerre which sells for about $30.
Wine B was brought in especially by Pasanella to get a US wine: it was a Walter Hansel Sauvignon Blanc from Sonoma, which retails for about $25.
Wine C was another French wine, a Domaine Massiac from the Languedoc which Pasanella was selling for $10 a bottle.
Wine D was Dog Point from New Zealand, which Pasanella sells for about $20.
Wine E was Basa from Spain, sold by Pasanella for $15 per bottle.

Armed with our range of similar whites at dissimilar prices, we embarked on a not-remotely-blind tasting, and everybody tried to rank the wines in order from most expensive to least. I also asked people to rank each wine out of 20, with limited success, since that wasn't part of the competition and a lot of people didn't bother. And as a tie-breaker we asked everybody to guess the price of the Dog Point. The results are in a Google spreadsheet here.

Looking at the people who judged the taste and not just the price of the wine, the results were close, but unambiguous: the best wine was C, the Massiac -- more people judged it their favorite than any other wine, according to a show of hands I asked for, and it also got the highest average rating. It was certainly my favorite wine. The worst wine was D, the Dog Point.

No one really believes the efficient market hypothesis when it comes to wine: they know that Sancerre and Californian wines are generally more expensive. Still, when they ranked the wines, they tended to say that the ones they liked cost more, and the ones they disliked -- especially the Dog Point -- cost less.

Wines A and C -- the two French wines, which were also the most and the least expensive wines respectively -- both got 13 (out of 44) votes as being the most expensive wine, and both got 4 votes as being the cheapest. People clearly liked them. And people clearly didn't think much of the Dog Point, which was voted cheapest wine by 17 people and second-cheapest by a further 16. Still, they didn't think it was cheap cheap: the average price they put down for it was just over $20, surprisingly accurate.

No one got the exact right result (ABDEC), but two people came very close with ABCED, elevating the better Massiac and pushing down the less good Dog Point. Rolfe Winkler came in second place -- he won the Jill Platner gift certificate -- after guessing that the Dog Point cost $45 a bottle. That seems weird, since he also said it was the cheapest wine. But then again, we'd all had quite a lot to drink by that point. The winner, David Snowdon-Jones, was pretty much spot-on, guessing $22 a bottle. He also had something of an artificial advantage: he arrived quite late, and tasted all the wines systematically, instead of just drinking them in sequence like most of the rest of us. And his dad's a sommelier.

But many congratulations and thanks to everybody for turning up on a rainy night -- we raised a lot of money for the South Street Seaport pirate-flag public art exhibition, which means it's definitely happening. Yay!

A public wine contest

2009-06-16T10:28:08-05:00

If you've been reading on this blog about the various wine contests I've held over the years, you might have wondered when you'd be invited to one. Well, that day has now come!

Michelle and I have organized a wine contest to be held in the beautiful tasting room at the lovely Pasanella and Son vintners, in the South Street Seaport where Michelle's Sea Warriors public art exhibition is going to be held. The contest will double as a fundraiser for the art project, which will involve flying pirate flags from vintage lampposts; if you donate more than a certain amount, you get to keep one of the flags for yourself when the project comes down.

The wine shop is at 115 South Street, between Beekman Street and Peck Slip -- come along at 6pm on Tuesday June 30. We'll be tasting five different wines, all similar, but which have quite a wide range of prices. Your $40 entry fee will get you a ballot, where you will attempt to rank the five wines in order of price; you can buy as many additional ballots as you like for $20 each. The winner will get an original Michelle Vaughan pirate painting; second prize is a gift certificate to Jill Platner.

Bring as many people as you can -- it's all for a very good cause! Once again:

Wine Contest

Pasanella and Son Vintners

115 South Street

Tuesday June 30, 6pm

See you there!

Studio Sale

2009-06-03T15:41:48-05:00

My incredibly talented wife, Michelle Vaughan, is having a studio sale tomorrow -- come pick up some bargains! The official announcement:

Flat file sale by the work of Michelle Vaughan... there will be drawings/paintings from past series, plus a few special pirate pieces. Reduced prices. Can arrange framing. Drinks served.
Studio Sale
Thursday, June 4th
5-8pm
10 Jay Street #609
Brooklyn, NY 11201
(F Train to York Street, or A/C Train to High Street)

Pedestrianize Broadway! (Redux)

2009-05-24T00:00:52-05:00

Back in 2005, I put up a blog entry entitled "Pedestrianize Broadway!" in which I waxed rhapsodic about Broadway being made a pedestrian thoroughfare at least from Columbus Circle down to Union Square.

Now it seems there's a non-zero chance that my dream will come true and that the current plan to close off small chunks of the Great White Way is only the beginning:

If the Broadway plan does succeed, the next step (though Sadik-Khan is not talking this way publicly) will likely be to close more sections of Broadway until one day in the near future the entire boulevard has been converted to pedestrianized open space. It’s hard to characterize how dramatic a change that would be. Imagine a Manhattan with two major parks: one built in the nineteenth century as a confined space of bucolic wonder; the other refashioned in the 21st century as a long, open boulevard slicing the island on the diagonal. This would be the most striking alteration of the city’s physical landscape since the days of Robert Moses.

Oh, to see it happen!

Update: This is what it looks like, now, when there's a street fair on Seventh Avenue:

Pig's head

2009-04-22T22:05:38-05:00

A special guest post by Michelle Vaughan:

The butcher at Marlow & Daughters ran after us. "Wait. Are you sure you know what you're doing?" Us: "No, not a clue." Him: "Make sure to soak it in a brine overnight. Here's a box of Kosher salt, dissolve it into hot water and brown sugar... throw in coriander, white wine, vinegar, pepper..." Us: "We might call you tomorrow if there's an emergency."

After grabbing some ingredients at the shop and shoving a pig's head in my bicycle basket, Felix and I rode over the Williamsburg Bridge back to the East Village while the head wobbled behind me. I was given the choice: half a head with the skin on from Flying Pigs Farm, or a whole skinned pig's head sans ears. I ordered the latter and prayed for the best. I also prayed I wouldn't hit a bump while the head flew out and smacked some poor passerby walking over the bridge.

The following day, with it's piggy snout and teeth sticking out of our too-small (massive) pot, we pulled the head out of the brine. Its nose had gone completely red and I tried not to flinch. After adding fresh water, wine, leeks, onions, garlic, carrots, celery and pepper, we dumped Sally (I had to give it a name, my god it was staring at us all day) back into the pot to simmer for 6 hours.

Meanwhile, we botched up the Bartolli beans which were supposed to go in the recipe - so I braved the rain, bought another batch and tried it again. All was well. Sally was ready to exit the pot, and the true moment had arrived. Was it globular? Gross? Would an eyeball go flying and hit the floor?

Felix dug a fork into Sally and started ripping through her head, collecting as much meaty-meat as possible. There was a lot of fat, about half the mass was fatty. We saved some of that and threw it back in. The eyeballs, teeth, and some of the snout stayed put. Anything else got tossed into the beans with reserved liquor, radishes, carrots, ramps and watercress for a light "wilting".

It was, indeed, a Fergus Henderson evening. Not only does he put new meaning into "pork and beans", we made his killer "Bread & Wine salad" (Boston lettuce, mint, spring onions, red wine vinegar, lemon juice and olive oil) which was light and airy. We also added the mushy courgettes as a delcious side dish. And for desert, I fused about 3 recipes to make a fresh ginger/apple/rum-infused prune cobbler which ended the menu FULL ON.

Without a doubt (and there were some doubts in the beginning) it was probably in the top 3 best dishes we've ever made. I don't know how the pork and beans "emotionally bond", but when they do - it's magical. We sat around the table with 6 other guests and after the first few bites, everyone looked at each other with satisfaction. This was not a graphic display of Sally's head on the table with an apple stuffed in her mouth, this was emotional bonding with beans and radishes. Poetry.

Thanks, yet again, to the insanely talented Mr. Henderson for bringing us closer to our pork deity. All hail the mighty pig. We even plucked 3 teeth to remember Sally and her excellent, lovely head.

Alex Kuczynski's Moral Blindness

2008-12-13T17:56:55-05:00

How is it possible that Lisa Wilson, in a three-sentence, 58-word letter to the editor, can raise more serious and more interesting moral issues surrounding the institution of surrogacy than Alex Kuczynski did in her entire 7,700-word cover story on the subject? I'm not sure, but that's exactly what she did:

If prostitution is unethical, immoral and illegal, why is it O.K. for one woman to pay for the use of another woman’s body? If it’s unethical, immoral and illegal to buy and sell body parts for transplantation, why is it O.K. to rent a uterus? Our morality seems so malleable in the hands of those who feel entitled.

LISA WILSON
Yarmouth, Me.

Thank you, Ms Wilson, for nailing the real fault with this story, instead of getting sidetracked by a silly discussion about the semiotics of the accompanying photographs.

Further Adventures in Fried Pork

2008-11-30T16:12:35-05:00

Have you been to Back Forty recently? The first thing on the menu is a $4 starter of "Pork Jowl Nuggets with Jalepeno Jam" which is, I swear, the single greatest dish being served in New York City right now. Better than Momofuku's pork buns, better than Eleven Madison Park's suckling pig confit. Go. Eat. Now.

Tasting menus

2008-11-20T00:38:47-05:00

Pete Wells will tell you, and show you, and talk about, what you get for $1500: a 20-course meal, with paired wines. Gael Greene has the play-by-play, including this:

Several tables have emptied even before the bacon. Foodists have to catch the train back to Dutchess County or find their way home to Tribeca. So I see many chocolate bon bons left behind.

Spending $1500 a head on a meal? That's obscene. But spending $1500 a head on a meal and then heading home before it's even over? Now that's conspicuous consumption.

But it's also something I can understand. A huge multi-course tasting menu with paired wines is exhausting, and often not much fun. A great restaurant meal has to have great food, but it can't be only about the food -- it's also about the guests enjoying -- as opposed to simply being impressed by -- the food. And when you're concentrating on the molecular gastronomy, and the ever-changing wine pairings, especially at a meal which is billed in advance as being incredibly unique and special -- well, then you lose a certain amount of fun.

I don't think I ever want to have wine pairings again, they're too distracting. For me, the best meal is one where I'm the happiest. Good food makes me happy, as does congenial atmosphere, and friendly servers, and great company, and, frankly, not eating in a shopping mall. This is good food, which made me very happy indeed.

While I'm as impressed as the next guy by auteurist pyrotechnics, I always get a whiff of self-congratulatory smugness, both from the chef and from the diners. And sometimes, as happened at one recent 20-course meal which started at 8pm and didn't finish until 2 in the morning, the whole thing can become a chore. I think I'm the kind of person who cares more about the food than about the cooking. But ask me again in a couple of weeks, when I get back from Corton. I might have changed my mind.