Affogato (gelato with 2 shots of espresso poured over it) @indianroadcafe

I just created a new tumblr photoblog for my lovely neighborhood Inwood NYC.  Make with the checking it out!

Cecil the Bouvier, Charlie the Great Dane, and Willow the Chow/Sheba Mix enjoy a morning romp in the #inwood dog run.

This woman walking down Broadway didn’t pick up her dog’s shit, so I started recording her. Then her dog shat again and she didn’t pick that one up either. I really hate it when people don’t pick up their dog’s shit. Seriously. My dog got whip-worms once from street shit.

May the Karma fairies cover your fancy shoes in dog shit on the way to your first date with a hot guy.

More photographs of the Broadway/Isham #inwood bus stop crash. The livery cab company involved was Diplo. The other car was a regular motorist. Both cars’ passengers were taken away by ambulances.

#inwood And now for someting completely different: A subway car being towed down Broadway

I died and went to Venezuela.

Erin and I had lunch (it was 10am so more like brunch) at Capachas Y Mas on Dyckman & Nagle. FANTASTIC. The food was really fracking good and pretty fracking cheap. I had a Cachapa-corn pancake with fillings ($6), Tequeños-cheese sticks ($1 each), and a lime juice/sugar drink. Erin got Patacones (plaintain sandwich). The portions are pretty big. Both Erin and I brought half of our food home.

The people behind the counter were very nice and explained everything on the menu to us. These guys genuinely want to share good Venezuelan street food with the ‘hood. I don’t know why there isn’t a line out the door.

Check out the website http://cachapasymasnyc.com and the facebook fan page http://is.gd/3BxXl

They open at 10am and close at 5am. And they deliver.

So I turned on “Mix” from Loopt thinking I could meet local people interested in the same stuff (like dogs or Jews or cheese or whatev).  Even though my profile says that I’m married and that I’m only interested in friends/networking the only messages I get are from the Bronx &  include the words mami, holla, hot, and booty. You thought you would ‘holla’ at me? What the hell does that even mean? You want to scream at me? Is that what you think networking is?  We meet at the park and scream at each other? And you can see that I’m married…do you want my husband to come too?

Are there any normal people on Loopt? Ones who want to do something besides scream and get up my skirt? Any dog owning, cheese eating Jews* want to hang out? Challah back!

*Not Jewish is fine too-I love everybody

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how many birds in hand is worth three in a bush? 1 1/2?

Inwood Hill Park

Last night my husband and I went to Assembly Member Adriano Espaillat’s town hall meeting. This was my first town hall meeting in Inwood…very similar to ones in Staten Island…but funnier.

There was no air conditioning in the school it was held in. I spent who whole time we were there schvitzing and fanning myself with a 311 pamphlet. I also spent a good chunk of the meeting twittering dumb comments, reading news on my phone (sooooo much going on in the world), and laughing at the mulleted conspiracy nut sitting two rows ahead of me in the front row….Ok, so I didn’t really pay much attention after the question hubby wrote on an index card (and handed to Turtle from Entourage) was read and answered…but I was definitely more aware of reality than some of the “um…can you repeat the question” (like they were on something that the guy across from my old building on Vermilyea sells) city agency representatives on the panel were. 

Anyway here’s what my (limited) attention span got from the meeting:

-The steps on  215th St/Broadway need to be repaired. The ‘city agency for that stuff’ representative started droning on about, pre-design, design, bureaucracy etc….she made it sound like we wanted the city to build the 215th street space elevator to the moon.  Eventually she admitted that nothing was going to be fixed until October 2010.

-There will be no 9pm-9am off leash dog time at Isham Park. *boooooooo*

-Someone asked about having more red light cameras because of car service cars, police cars, busses, garbage trucks, and shmucks, running red lights. Espaillat talked about the locations of already existing cameras and then unintentionally (i hope) revealed the location of the dummy red light camera. Deputy Inspector Capul shot him a *are you fracking kidding me* side glance and started tapping away on his blackberry…probably to get the dummy put somewhere else.

-There are going to be more uniformed and plain clothes officers in Inwood Hill Park (I’ve already noticed more police cars driving past the dog run)

-There are going to be more Auxiliary cops in Inwood

-The 1 train on Dykman is being fixed (so shuttle busses and stuff when that happens)

- A lot of the questions were answered with “When I go into the office tomorrow I’ll call/ask/e-mail/tell someone”

-Conspiracy nut approached me before the meeting and starting telling me this ferkakte story about former mayor Giuliani, former police commissioner Bernard Kerik, 18 million dollars, and how we can get that money by suing everybody. He handed me a hand drawn/photocopied flyer with truth written all over it in big letters and a list of nutty stuff. 3 sentences into his speil I knew this guy would be entertaining and I was right. His hand was raised the entire time and a couple of times he jumped up and started yelling and pointing. The cops eventually got him to sit down… bummer… i was hoping to see a taser-ing. Mike asked if he had a website or something… he doesn’t.

-One of the index cards asked if Espaillat was in support of same sex marriage. He is and voted for it as an assembly member …I’m for marriage equality and am happy that he voted the way he did (I knew before the meeting how he voted)….but I got the feeling that the question was either planted or asked by a supporter for applause, because if you actually care about the same sex marriage cause, you already know where your representatives stand, and how they voted. If you don’t care enough to find out…you probably don’t go to town hall meetings either. FYI this is his voting record http://www.votesmart.org/voting_category.php?can_id=14379

-The 4th Doctor Who (who also seems to be the Manhattan borough president) made a celebrity guest appearance. He showed up 45 minutes in, shook some hands, made some feel good statements, shook some hands, hopped back in the TARDIS, and flew away.

Mike and I left shortly after the boro pres. I was hot, tired, and starving (and a little bored)


Now on to what I think can be done to improve the next meeting:
-Allow people to submit questions online before the meeting (and let the city agency people see those questions so they can come prepared with an answer better than “I dunno”) and to avoid duplicate questions
-Put sticks on the 311 pamphlets so I can fan myself better
-Tase the conspiracy nut

I’ve decided to take the Real Estate sales class/exam (and then work for Erin lol). There’s a 75 hour class requirement, and a decision I have to make. Do I take the course online or in a physical classroom? CUNY in the Heights which is literally across the street, offers the class.  They are offering a M-Th class from 6:30-9pm over the summer. This sounds perfect except for one thing. A friend of mine took a course from CITH and had a horrible experience. I forget what class he took but he said that many of his classmates were disruptive, didn’t pay attention, probably didn’t really want to be there, and acted (for lack of a better term) really ghetto. Now I spent 13 years in the NYC public school system and have had my share of  disruptive classmates like the ones my friend described. I really don’t want to go back to that. Maybe this real estate course won’t be like that.  But do I walk my white (albeit hispanic)  tuchus into CITH and ask “how ghetto is your real estate licensing class?”

Maybe I’ll just take an online course. Online courses are good. I took a bunch with SUNY Empire State.  Having the freedom to “attend lectures” butt nekkid in my living room, or at a cafe (not nekkid)  is awesome.  That leaves me with the decision of which online school offers the best class/value. There are a bunch of online options.  I’m leaning towards these guys http://nyrei.com/onlinestudy.htm