After months of favorites-list marking and bemoaning the empty spaces on our white(ish) walls in our new(ish) high-ceilinged if not alll that large apartment, we spent most of this rainy Sunday shopping away on Etsy.

I’ve bought a few things there before, a print and some jewelry, but mostly I’ve just clicked around, saving copies of prints to put in my computer desktop background rotation, where they would lie in wait for the eventual day I’d give in and drop some money on the ones I really liked a lot. And putting painting after print after t-shirt into my favorites list (represented by a cute little heart).

Just in the interface, you can tell the people behind Etsy really care about getting their artists’ goods out to the public, including some very nice shopping features like interviews with artists, galleries (public lists by users), and the innovative if eventually unhelpful color-based shopping path. They have some performance issues at times (we seemed to have abnormally slow page load times around 6-7pm), but considering their relative newness as a tech company and image-content-heaviness, this isn’t all that shocking. If Etsy can figure out how to do Amazon-style recommendations with their content, they could have something truly amazing as opposed to just a great place to buy art.

After hours of deliberation (there’s a ton of stuff on Etsy!), we narrowed it down to a bunch of pieces that really struck us as befitting our styles. A not insignificant but fortunately also not ridiculous amount of money later, we walked off with (technically, sat around and waited for) a nice big pile of art to brighten up those sterile walls.

Target Freedom (David V Moore)

Pele (David V Moore)

Chlorophyll Dreams (David V Moore)

Together (Mattsart)

The Bunny Sisters (Sarah Ogren)

Gone To Earth, Plate Two (Magic Jelly)

The Cherry Berry Monster (Yumi Yumi)

Sitting Still (Yumi Yumi)

The Guava Berry Monster (Yumi Yumi)

Bubblegum Betty (The Black Apple)

Cat And The City (Bigrin Design)

On the end of North 8th lies the official entrance to Williamsburg’s East River State Park, a small space of grass and concrete providing a much-needed green space along the East River.

The last time I was here, a few years ago, I had to sneak in through a hole in the fence, and it was just an empty space filled with rubble and unkempt brush. Now, it’s a park with hundreds of people lounging and admiring the East River and the Manhattan skyline view. Sometimes, progress is awesome.

Granted, there are myriad problems with the way the Parks Department continues to mismanage the space; various reports have it as weekends-only, closing and kicking out everyone an hour before sunset during the summer, banning dogs, and requiring a scowling arms-crossed security guard at the gate for no apparent real reason, not to mention delaying its opening for over a year for little apparent reason, despite constant community call for action.

On a sunny Saturday afternoon, though, I’m willing to put all that aside and happily sit on the grass, enjoying a New York view that’s long overdue.

I think Le Barricou has the potential to be a very good bistro, and a solid brunch site. The hanger steak cheese steak is the highest-end cheese steak I’ve ever eaten, with all the trappings of a Philly-style cheese steak (onions, peppers, cheese) but with quality cheese, bread, and sliced hanger steak instead of whatever that stuff is that goes into a regular cheese steak.

Their chicken sandwich is also excellent, with the same level of great cheese and bread.

If you show up early enough for brunch, you get a basket of croissant and pain au chocolate. Hopefully it’s just recent-opening issues, but if you show up too late in the afternoon, you get no tasty bread snacks.

Unfortunately, the coffee is disappointing, which means I’ll be going for tea the next time I return for brunch.

Le Barricou
533 Grand St
Brooklyn, NY 11211
(718) 782-7372

• 1 rack pork spare ribs (about 3 1/2 lbs)
• Some kind of basic store-bought BBQ sauce
• 3 tsp paprika
• 2 tsp sea salt
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• 1/2 tsp ground red pepper
• 1/2 tsp oregano
• 1/2 tsp basil
• 1/2 tsp thyme
• 1/2 tsp smoke salt
• 1/3 tsp cayenne

1. Make spice rub with ingredients above.
2. Preheat oven to 350.
3. Take broiler pan out from under the oven, line bottom part of pan with aluminium foil.
4. Wash and pat dry the ribs.
5. Season both sides of ribs with spice rub.
6. Bake ribs meat side up on second-to-bottom rack for 1 hour.
   
7. Remove from oven.
8. Pour tiny bit of liquid fat out of pan and into a can to get it out of the way.
9. Paint meat on bony side with BBQ sauce.
10. Flip back over to have meaty side on top, paint with lots of BBQ sauce such that all meat is covered.
    
11. Lower oven temperature to 325.
12. Cook for about 90 minutes until meat has pulled back from the bones.
13. Remove from oven, let rest for 10 minutes
14. While resting, raise oven temp to 450 and put a package of Pillsbury biscuits in. Bake for the 10 minutes specified on the package.
15. Accompany with Brooklyn Pilsner for best effect.

Inspired by this recipe.

The Sound Of Young America - http://maximumfun.org/

The first podcast I recommend to people if they ask, and often even if they don’t. Other people have told me this show is like NPR, but I’ve never been able to make it through more than a few minutes of anything on NPR without becoming bored to tears. Instead, TSOYA’s Jesse Thorn has the gravitas of an old-time radio interviewer, but the youthful energy of an idealistic recent college grad. Produced from his living room, this show has that honest indie feel while simultaneously maintaining highly professional quality. There’s a very good companion blog as well.

Never Not Funny - http://podcast.jimmypardo.com

This is the most consistently funny podcast out there for my tastes. Never Not Funny is the first thing I listen to on Monday’s commute (new episodes come over the wire on Friday evening).

Air Out My Shorts - http://www.theitspot.com

Sophomoric humor with a contagious manic drunken energy. The two hosts — “Preston Buttons & The Word Whore” — read listener-submitted short stories while progressively getting drunker and drunker. There have been some disappointingly frequent stumbles lately with scheduling, and the show suffers greatly when they’re not co-located and instead record over the phone (using skype, judging by the sound quality?). The “let’s call a friend” sketches are hit or miss, but I did find myself missing them when they stopped for a while.

AST Radio - http://podcast.aspecialthing.com/

The production quality and focus of this conversational podcast have skyrocketed since its stumbling debut a year or two back. AST Radio is the only source I’ve encountered where you get to delve deep into the motivations and opinions of a slew of (usually west coast) comedians. Unfortunately, new episodes are few and far between.

The Sound Of Young America: The College Years - http://feeds.feedburner.com/collegeyears

With the format of a morning show (regardless of actual time of day of original broadcast), TSOYA: The College Years is an exceptionally entertaining broadcast done by intelligent college students. It’s intriguing to see the origins of the current incarnation, with sketches and banter which often entertain me more than the new episodes.

Jordan, Jesse, Go! - http://feeds.feedburner.com/thornmorris

Pretty much the same as TSOYA: The College Years, although down to two hosts from the original trio, and recorded now instead of years ago. This also has comedy-celebrity guests like Judge John Hodgman.

PopSci Podcasts - http://www.popsci.com/podcasts/

Eight to nine minutes of Jonathan Coulton interviewing people involved with stories in Popular Science. A framing device claiming that he’s doing all the interviews in an empty office on the moon provides an excuse for the low quality of the audio (it’s recorded via Skype)

Escape Pod - http://escape.extraneous.org/

When commutes and local travel cause me to burn through all of the new episodes of the above, it’s time to hit the well of Escape Pod, the best short-story podcast I’ve found. Focusing on science fiction short stories, this usually runs in the 20-30 minute range. They actually pay their authors as well, which is excellent.

La Vie Noir (Chris)

Advantages:

• Doesn’t waste much paper.
• La Mama’s a decent, respectable space. I’ve seen some good stuff there.

Disadvantages:

• “Are we in it or at it?” huh? Not a good tagline.
• Where is this building supposed to be? By the wide open nothingness surrounding its tall, boxy, style-less architecture, I am reminded of Texas. I don’t like it when that happens.

Spamalot (Anni)

Advantages:

• Come on. There’s a pop-up cow!? That’s freakin’ awesome.
• We’ve just received spam from Spamalot.

Disadvantages:

• I am a little sad that it wouldn’t fit completely on our scanner.

Today’s clear winner: Spamalot

Lincoln Center - The Tristan Project (Chris)

Advantage: Has the name of both the show and the theatre on the front.

Disadvantage: Are they in ice? Why so much blue?

The Year Of Magical Thinking (Anni)

Advantage: In focus.

Disadvantages:

• Needed to open this to figure out what show it was, and I wouldn’t even have bothered with that if wasn’t planning on writing about it here.
• Vanessa Redgrave holds little meaning for me.
• Pictures of old people looking sad don’t generally encourage me to see theatre unless they’re also looking angry, Lear-style.

Hard contest. If there was a way for them to both lose, that’d be the outcome today. However…

Today’s winner: Lincoln Center: The Tristan Project

First thought: Hmm, these kind of smell like sugar and feet.

Second thought: What? These taste like weed. Like, not just a little, a whole lot.

Third thought, a few seconds later: Oh my god! Dirt aftertaste! With the flavor accuracy you’d expect from Jelly-Belly!

So, basically, if you’ve ever left a bunch of pot in a bowl of sugar and rice, walked around outside for a while in Birkenstocks, then put your feet, shoes and all, into the bowl, and then you ate it and thought it was awesome, this is the snack for you!

BAM Spring 2007 (Chris) Advantages: BAM is the most respectable art-driven theatre organization in town: for my tastes, far more so than Lincoln Center. This schedule advertises a 3-week run of the Matthew Bourne ballet of Edward Scissorhands, one of the most beautiful experiences I’ve ever had in the theatre, which we saw in London last year. As always, the art direction in BAM’s season schedules rivals the Royal National Theatre for the best I’ve ever seen, with a consistent outlook, branding, and arresting visuals on every page. Disadvantages: It’s a mixed bag in here, as a number of the shows don’t appeal to me. For example, after seeing their production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at BAM a few years back, I’m not in any hurry to see the all-male Shakespearean Propeller company again. There’s an extremely confusing description of the scheduling of Ian McKellan in King Lear and Chekov’s The Seagull. It’s very unclear as to whether all the shows he’s in sold out to subscribers, or if only the three performances of The Seagull he’s in are sold out, or if he’s in King Lear for more than three shows. It says “sponsored by Bloomberg” right on the front.

Company (Anni) Advantages: Sondheim John Doyle’s still-fresh gimmick of actors playing the instruments Raul Esparza A straightforward ad, pretty much telling me exactly these things and not a whole lot more. Kills far fewer trees as a folded one-pager than BAM’s 8 pages. The biggest advantage of any of these, though: I know for certain I’m going to go see Company, as opposed to anything in the BAM season. Disadvantages: This is “THE BEST MUSICAL OF THE YEAR” already? Come on, it’s January! Kind of funny when said ironically, never anything more than annoying hyperbole when done sincerely. There were actually copies of this addressed to both of us, which somewhat negates the tree-friendliness advantage mentioned above.

Today’s winner (just barely): Company

It’s only been 4 years of near-constant disruption on weekends and nights, and the automatic message boards are finally working! It’s like we’re using any other major world city’s transport system, except years ago!

Oh, wait, never mind…

They were also testing the automated robot-woman-voice announcements while we were down there (Lorimer St. L, on Sunday, January 14). Hopefully they’ll figure out the volume control better than they had it working yesterday, as it was deafeningly loud, to the point of being incomprehensible, and was skipping and looping on words constantly.