posted
So I was reading the paper the other day, and I thought...Tigerlily missed putting this article (that mentioned Cairo, though not about it) on ES And I can't remember that other person's name that also seems to scour the internet in search of every Egypt related article... There were two articles in total missed by ES--I'm stunned.
Seriously, copying and pasting is a pain--your work isn't given enough credit
Well here's one of them:
My Neighborhood Life With Zabar’s at the Epicenter Michael Falco for The New York Times A CORNUCOPIA Zabar's is only 174 steps away. For a hungry correspondent just back from Cairo, it offered a feast.
By JOHN KIFNER "THE epicenter of the search,” I instructed a bevy of real estate agents, “is Zabar’s.”
I had returned to New York City from more than a decade abroad as a foreign correspondent for The New York Times, in places notably lacking in amenities — the Middle East, Communist-era Eastern Europe and back to the Middle East. I wound up in Cairo (where even the cats were dirty) after my bosses ruled Beirut was getting a little dodgy.
I was ready for some amenities. And Zabar’s, the legendary “appetizing store,” was some amenity. French mustard! Italian pasta! Chopped liver! French-Italian/Blue Mountain coffee beans at $6.98 a pound! (“Want it grounded?”) Olive oil from all over! Knives, copper pots, machines, gadgets in the upstairs! Even food already cooked, like chicken potpie!
But the belief that favorable exchange rates had left me with a huge fortune — and, perforce, the possibility of a huge apartment — collapsed when it came into contact with the New York real estate market. In short, the vicissitudes of the Middle East had left me with more rugs than I could afford floor for.
Further, I had a totally unrealistic set of expectations: some outdoor space for maybe a garden, a fireplace (“wbf” as they say in the ads) and a fabulous kitchen. Near a park for running. Oh, and since my new assignment as a kind of parachute artist would involve scrambling for planes for indeterminate tours in places like Afghanistan, Kosovo, Iraq and Oklahoma City, a doorman might be a good idea.
Right.
So here I am, living in a top-floor apartment at 81st Street and West End Avenue, right around the corner from Zabar’s (174 steps, I counted the other day), and a block from Riverside Park, with a doorman. There are a terrace overlooking the Hudson (Riv Vu!), heavily planted; a wbf; and a great, if teensy, kitchen. Teensy is the operative word. The trade-off, as always in Manhattan, is space. If newspapers, magazines and books start piling up, this apartment gets very small very fast.
When I arrived in 1988, the Upper West Side was still mildly funky — there were independent bookstores, a Korean deli on almost every block, a few dark bars and some quirky little shops.
On my previous stay in New York, I lived in one of those sprawling apartments farther north, at 101st and West End. (The rent was $400 a month, which will tell you how long ago that was.) That area was truly funky back then, but it had a great butcher, Harry Oppenheimer, who had a cat not much bigger than a sheep (“How would it look for a butcher to have a skinny cat,” he asked, reasonably enough), a fine fish store, one of the then-new Korean vegetable stands and a Hunan restaurant that would deliver a whole steamed fish.
My new Zabar’s-centric neighborhood was certainly a step up. But as the years went by and the real estate prices skyrocketed, it began to acquire a certain showiness, cachet even.
“You’ve Got Mail,” the movie directed and co-written by Nora Ephron, was partly inspired, she said, by the real-life demise of a children’s bookstore, Eeyore’s, on Broadway. The movie was a valentine to the neighborhood, prompting a friend to remark, “I never realized I lived in Paris.”
Gay Talese, the writer and East Sider, once noted that the West Side was filled with the kind of people who had stacks of books piled on the floor. I hope that is still true. Certainly, the activists wielding clipboards of petitions on the sidewalk outside Zabar’s seem to believe it remains the beating heart of liberalism.
Now, it is really hard for me to be mad at a multiplex movie theater or, for that matter, a Barnes & Noble (2289 Broadway). In fact, a Barnes & Noble is pretty good. It is really big and full of books. Moreover, they let you sit around and read. So if one of your enemies writes a book, you can read enough to be snide about it without having to shell out money that could fatten his wallet.
But this progress is not without a price; the rising rents are driving out many of the little places that made the neighborhood special, replacing them with national chains. It is not yet the mall-ification that afflicted once-boho SoHo, but the danger lurks. First to go was a music store a little north of my apartment that had a great collection of jazz CD’s, outdone by giant emporiums that opened on 72nd Street and at Lincoln Center, which have themselves mysteriously gone out of business.
Shakespeare & Company, the independent bookstore on my corner of Broadway, is long gone, of course, replaced by a store that seems to sell almost everything on earth, including “eyebrows threading,” which sounds painful. I wouldn’t know, since I’m boycotting.
Then, the once-ubiquitous Korean delis started to disappear. They were not only 24-hour convenient, but reliable for things like broccoli rabe and celery root. In my usual walking radius, I counted five that have shut down. They are being replaced by nail-polishing salons, cellphone stores and shops selling women’s shoes, which are not things I have a lot of use for.
Lately, it seems that another neighborhood fixture — Chinese laundries — is under fire. Mr. Louie, whose handiwork was admired by defense lawyers, a notably foppish group, was forced out of his basement by the “everything” store, but not before my button-down shirts had helped send his three daughters through, respectively, Barnard, M.I.T. and the University of Chicago.
Mr. Louie passed me along to the unfailingly cheerful Helen Yee on 79th Street who, with her husband, Michael, had worked there for 25 years and lived upstairs. She closed and left last month; somebody bought the building. Michael gave me the card of a place called Toy Chin (262 West 77th Street).
Doubtless, the best addition to the neighborhood is the restaurant Ouest (2315 Broadway), opened by the star chef Tom Valenti in 2001 in what New York magazine described — not entirely fairly — as the “culinary wilderness north of Lincoln Center.”
Another favorite is Louie’s West Side Cafe (441 Amsterdam Avenue), a friendly place for brunch and the Sunday paper that also serves a very satisfactory meatloaf at dinner. It is the kind of place that makes the Upper West Side feel like a village in the middle of the city, along with the good folks at Apthorp Cleaners (2205 Broadway) and Ben Franklin hardware (2193 Broadway) who greet you as a neighbor.
So let’s have a big shout out not only for Zabar’s (2245 Broadway), but for Fairway (2127 Broadway), home of combat shopping, and Citarella (2135 Broadway), once a fish store, now an empire. Citarella used to have a guy who made art in the window, a kind of seafood collage or bas-relief. It was better than that famous shark in formaldehyde, since you could eat it, too. And don’t forget the more unassuming but well-stocked Westside Market (2171 Broadway) and Broadway Farm (2341 Broadway).
There is a lot I miss as the neighborhood changes. The startling sight of the two Pakistani owners of a little stationery store grinning madly under Santa Claus hats at Christmas. A bar called Teacher’s, Too, (sadly, now a McDonald’s), an exact replica of one a few doors south called Teacher’s that was displaced. The Greek florist who used to bring plants for my terrace.
Still, the Upper West Side remains one of the most comfortable places in the city to live.
One thing, though. Why is it that the only reliable source of little bottles of Schweppes — mandatory for individual gin-and-tonics on the terrace of a summer’s evening — is so far south, at the Food Emporium at Broadway and 68th?
Posts: 483 | From: cairo | Registered: Mar 2006
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Next time you copy & paste at least have the courtesy to include a link (it's a board rule perhaps you should read the instructions more).... Posts: 30135 | From: The owner of this website killed ES....... | Registered: Feb 2004
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posted
Of course you find it 'pretty funny' because it wasn't aimed at you. Well some people do have a interest to slander and/or getting a kick out of seeing others getting slandered on this board.
Oh and PLEASE don't take that too personal.... Posts: 30135 | From: The owner of this website killed ES....... | Registered: Feb 2004
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posted
I wasn't being sarcastic TL (I meant in that your efforts are appreciated), it really was alot more difficult than it looks...plus the article has a picture and captions so I had to erase that part to make it look okay to post here. I really meant it, it's awfully considerate of you to put stuff up here (and its more time consuming than it looks). Hope I haven't said anything wrong? Posts: 483 | From: cairo | Registered: Mar 2006
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posted
Oh please stop it. Don't make this topic even more strange.
I do believe I contribute well and active to this forum in my own way - and I will continue to do so.
Posts: 30135 | From: The owner of this website killed ES....... | Registered: Feb 2004
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posted
Well I thought it was a compliment because I too appreciate Tigerlily's informative articles. Maybe I missed something but Tigerlily I think Cairobug was offering a compliment. Then again I'm not really familiar with the personalities here...but I enjoy reading all of them!
Posts: 263 | From: Georgia USA | Registered: Jul 2007
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look into my eyes...... look into my eyes...........
Cairobug is never offensive. I am sure she meant it in the nicest possible way. She was complimenting you......really.
Cairobug if you read some of the crap that members here say to her about her posting you would understand why she is a bit jumpy. She is sick to death like we all are with the fighting and rubbish that goes on here.
Notice how quiet, and civil it's been lately?
I agree she does a brilliant job here. She spends so much of her own time here finding things about Egypt to interest us, and saves us all that bother. She is one of the best contributers here.
posted
Seriously, copying and pasting is a pain--your work isn't given enough credit
copying and pasting is not a pain, however browsing on the net to find and select interesting info about Egypt is something else. no everyone has time to go through Egyptian newspaper in order to find out what is going on in Egypt, this is why many members participate to this kind of topic when interesting and revelant articles are posted
Posts: 1182 | Registered: Sep 2005
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posted
Soozi, Sherry (you're right, I was offering a compliment btw), and PV thanks for commenting--and I really hope TL understands I didn't mean it in any way.
PV: I didn't realize that it's been up before, I honestly thought it was just one comment about her posting (guess I haven't been reading ES as much as I thought I did) which I was trying to counteract with my post. Thanks for the kind words PV I was going to say the same thing about how nice it's been lately, so civil, but last time I did that I think I jinxed it. I remember when I first joined ES it was around now in the summer (even though I registered in March) it was so nice & normal--not like all the weird fights going on.
Souri: not sure if I'm retarded, but I found it pretty hard with the stuff that gets in the way (pictures, captions, shortcuts on the sidebars). And you are right, not everyone has the time, but its thoughtful to remember to post it here when you come across a good read.
Posts: 483 | From: cairo | Registered: Mar 2006
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Tigerlily does a brilliant job here. It's just that she does not get the thanks she deserves IMHO. It was nice of you to recognise this and make a thread about it.
By the way you didn't jinx anything.
We all know the root of the problem here and hopefully it has been solved
We all know the root of the problem here and hopefully it has been solved
Amen!
Hallelujah-Hallelujah!!
pseudovellum is absolutely right about Cairobug, she is peaceable a.k.a Ms.Disclaimer. That’s how inoffensive she is. She’ll write something and add her little disclaimer
Lilly you do a wonderful job by keeping us up to date with your articles. I wholeheartedly believe that Cairobug meant no harm at all. I sincerely believe that. She is friendly, put your guard down now, even for a little while.
I also believe the ‘root of the problem, has been solved’.
Once again Lilly, you do a wonderful job, please keep it up. Posts: 2079 | From: 'by any means necessary' - Malcom X | Registered: Mar 2007
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posted
I'll try to be more considerate next time Phoenix, I'll try to find a puking smiley to label my post (as a warning) so that you don't have to endure this...j/k
-------------------- Disclaimer: My posts are not meant to personally offend anyone. If you find yourself reading my posts repeatedly, you are kindly asked to seek the help of a professional Posts: 483 | From: cairo | Registered: Mar 2006
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posted
Hello, well I don't know what to think, Cairobug. You can really read your first post in two ways. Anway if you didn't mean any harm I am sorry for replying back to you this way. Of course you and anyone are free to contribute with articles, clips, anything concerning Egypt - I say the more the merrier. These contributions give us the chance to debate about it - if you like. Have a nice and peaceful Friday everyone! Posts: 30135 | From: The owner of this website killed ES....... | Registered: Feb 2004
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posted
Tiger, I was wondering if you already posted articles on famous/recognized modern Egyptian women. Writers, activists etc..I can give you a name to start, and if you find an interest maybe include that in your search for Egyptian topics.
Safinaz Kazem
Amazing background and achievements. Writer/journalist - political and even poet Travelled the world Married three times, one of her husbands/father of her only daughter/journalist also is Negm /very controversial political poet and else.. Turned Islamist but a real feminist. Her poise and sense of humor are very powerful She says about herself: /I look identical to my father and I'm proud of it, even if my mother was the pretty one
She is 70 yrs old today.
Posts: 215 | Registered: May 2007
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Btw, will "San'et Latafa" also be available in English language?
You know Almaz, I don't know much about Egyptian key figures, I didn't grow up inside Egypt that's why I think it's important if more people on this forum would come up with topics like that. I am aware that not everyone is interested in reading this but I do think it would be an enrichment to ES.
Posts: 30135 | From: The owner of this website killed ES....... | Registered: Feb 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Tigerlily: Of course you find it 'pretty funny' because it wasn't aimed at you. Well some people do have a interest to slander and/or getting a kick out of seeing others getting slandered on this board.
Oh and PLEASE don't take that too personal....
No dear, I meant that she feels like she's been reading ES too long I'm not 100% sure why you took what she said so personally and then what I said. I know how it feels to feel like you've been reading ES too long, I dreamed about ES once, that's how I KNEW I needed to take a break from the message board.
Posts: 13440 | Registered: Feb 2006
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Btw, will "San'et Latafa" also be available in English language?
You know Almaz, I don't know much about Egyptian key figures, I didn't grow up inside Egypt that's why I think it's important if more people on this forum would come up with topics like that. I am aware that not everyone is interested in reading this but I do think it would be an enrichment to ES.
posted
\Hal`le*lu"iah\, Hallelujah \Hal`le*lu"jah\, n. & interj. [Heb. See Alleluia.] Praise ye Jehovah; praise ye the Lord; -- an exclamation used chiefly in songs of praise or thanksgiving to God, and as an expression of gratitude or adoration.
Jehovah before you ask is one of the names to describe GOD in the Old Testament.
Like Yahweh a name of God, transliterated by scholars from the Tetragrammaton and commonly rendered Jehovah.
Like Allah like Elohim like eli elilah
God has been called many names by many people in many religions. One is Allah.
1. Elohim El, Elah, Alah In the Bible, God is very often referred to as ‘Elohim’ in the Hebrew language. The ‘im’ in the ending is a plural of honour and God is referred to as ‘El’ or ‘Elah’ in the English Bible with commentary, edited by reverend C. I. Scofield. ‘Elah’ is alternatively spelled as ‘Alah’. The difference in spelling is only of a single ‘L’. Muslims spell Allah as ‘Allah’ while the Reverend has spelled it as Alah and they pronounce it as ‘Elah’. Muslims pronounce it as Allah. Hebrew and Arabic are sister languages therefore we say it should be pronounced as ‘Allah’ and not as ‘Elah’.
When I was in school, I was taught ‘D, O’ is do, ‘T, O’ is to. What is ‘G, O’ It is ‘go’ and not ‘gu’. ‘N, U, T’ is nut, ‘C, U, T’ cut; ‘B, U, T’ is but, what is ‘P, U, T’? Not ‘pat’ but it is ‘put’. If you ask "Why?" The answer is "It is their language". If I have to pass I have to say ‘P, U, T’ is ‘put’ and not ‘pat’. Similarly the right pronunciation for A, L, L, A, H, is Allah. 2.
Jesus (pbuh) cried out Allah Allah when he was put on the cross It is mentioned in the New Testament in the Gospel of Mathew, chapter 27 verse 46 as well as Gospel of Mark, chapter 15 verse 34 when Jesus (pbuh) was put on the cross.
Jesus cried with a loud voice saying "E’-Li, E’-Li la’-ma sa-bach’-tha-ni?" that is to say, ‘My God, My God why hast Thou Forsaken Me?’ Does this sound like Jehovah! Jehovah! why has thou forsaken me? Does it sound like Abba Abba? The answer is ‘No’. Hebrew and Arabic are sister languages and if you translate "E’-Li, E’-Li la’-ma sa-bach’-tha-ni" into Arabic it is ‘Allah Allah lama tarak tani’ does it sound similar?
This statement of Jesus (pbuh), "E’-Li, E’-Li la’-ma sa-bach’-tha-ni" is preserved in its original Hebrew in each and every of its translation which is available in more than 2000 different languages of the world and in each and every of them, "Allah" is present.
1. "Allah" in Sikhism One of the names by which Gurunanak Sahib referred to God is "Allah". 2. "Allah" in Hinduism 1. "Allah" in Rigveda Book 2 Hymn I verse II Even in the Rigveda which is the most sacred scripture of the Hindus, one of the attributes given to God Almighty in Book no 2 Hymn no I verse II, is ‘Ila’ which if pronounced properly is the same as Allah. 2.
Allo Upanishad: Amongst the various Upanishads one of the Upanishad is named as ‘Allo’ Upanishad in which God is referred to as "Allah" several times.
quote:Originally posted by Tigerlily: Hello, well I don't know what to think, Cairobug. You can really read your first post in two ways. Anway if you didn't mean any harm I am sorry for replying back to you this way. Of course you and anyone are free to contribute with articles, clips, anything concerning Egypt - I say the more the merrier. These contributions give us the chance to debate about it - if you like. Have a nice and peaceful Friday everyone!
sorry it's like I mentioned in another post, I guess its hard to figure out the tone of things in sometimes in posts. Glad everything's ok ES have a great weekend Posts: 483 | From: cairo | Registered: Mar 2006
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UBBFriend: Email this page to someone!
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And I can't remember that other person's name that also seems to scour the internet in search of every Egypt related article... There were two articles in total missed by ES--I'm stunned. 
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I know how it feels to feel like you've been reading ES too long, I dreamed about ES once, that's how I KNEW I needed to take a break from the message board.
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