September 21, 2019

Another visit to Fire Island.



On the water.



Ocean Beach, great signs.



Declaiming from above.

June 15, 2019

$30 win!



Annual trip to Fire Island.

July 23, 2017

Perfect score !



Nighthawks by Edward Hopper at the Art Institute of Chicago.



Hopper: "[Nighthawks] was suggested by a restaurant on Greenwich Avenue where two streets meet. Nighthawks seems to be the way I think of a night street.
Question: Lonely and empty?
Hopper: I didn't see it as particularly lonely. I simplified the scene a great deal and made the restaurant bigger. Unconsciously, probably, I was painting the loneliness of a large city." - quoted in Katharine Kuh, The Artist's' Voice: Talks with Seventeen Modern Artists, p. 134



Matthew's Seafood- Ocean Beach, Fire Island, NY.



$70 win, $95 for the weekend.



Bart: Nights.I wake up sometimes. It's as if none of it really happened, as if nothing were real anymore.
Laurie: Next time you wake up, Bart, look over at me lying there beside you. I'm yours and I'm real.

July 22, 2017

Ocean Beach, Fire Island.



Dock the boat, eat.



Fire Island Beer.



$25 win !



Restaurant Week starts tomorrow. Scarpetta is on my radar.

From Italy Magazine: Fare la scarpetta is a phrase in the Italian language that’s close to the heart of everyone who has enjoyed a delicious plate of pasta with sauce. Meaning “make the little shoe,” it refers to the small piece of bread used to mop up the last of the sauce on your plate.

This end to a meal ritual is vastly popular all over Italy; however, where it originates is still open to debate. There’s one theory that the practice began in Venice, though bread wasn’t usually served with pasta in northern Italy, whereas it was in the south of the country, therefore it is implausible to assume it originated there.

In his book about medieval eating habits, Fabrizio Vanni proposes that the act took place following the introduction of tomatoes to the Italian diet back in the late 16th century. Before this time sauces tended to be thicker and more robust; with the introduction of the tomato, sauces became lighter and therefore required mopping up.

Another suggestion regarding the origin of la scarpetta is that back in a time when wasting food was frowned upon, the bread merely became a tool to be used much like cutlery.

A Calabrese friend of mine who tells me the phrase has its origins in Southern dialect prefers to have a more romantic notion regarding la scarpetta. He is convinced it stems from the heart of cucina povera (poor cuisine), from a time when people were literally so hungry they’d have eaten the soles of their shoes. He says when you are unsure when you’ll eat next, it made sense to mop up every last drop of sauce.

As with many Italian expressions, the reasoning behind the phrase is visual: during the practice of sweeping the bread across the plate the finger becomes the leg that pushes the bread which becomes the shoe. It’s not only an essential part of an Italian meal, but it is seen as a way to extend the pleasure of the repast.

August 7, 2009

As expected, most restaurants have extended
Restaurant Week until Labor Day.



Every year, friends and I do a trip to
Fire Island.



Clammers used to be all over, now
there are just a few.



One guy owns a big boat and we cross
the bay.



The beach wasn't crowded on an
overcast day.



We went to a bar and played Pool.
We were the first ones in, an hour later it was packed.
$3 Bloodies or Mimosas made it easy to stay.



Lots of Ducks by the dock.