Got the Jimmy Legs

February 5, 2010 – 11:19 am

Now it's all covered with daisies

Little Caeser's comes to Bushwick

While some of us (me!) struggle to find work, others in the neighborhood are newly employed. I just found out that a Little Caesar's has opened up the street from me, on Broadway between Jefferson and Cornelia. This is a few blocks off my usual beaten path (it's about halfway between the Halsey and Gates stops on the J) so I didn't hear about it until somebody dumped a bunch of these promotional postcards on my stoop.

There was a time when I would get all huffy about big chains moving in over the Mom & Pop paradigm, but a) I used to live in Clinton Hill, which has been overrun with ostensibly M&P shops full of expensive, unnecessary goods and services (who needs that many type of french pastry?), and b) the storefront it took over was unoccupied, as were its neighbors up and down the block, and they had been that way for years.

You know how after a forest fire, the first things to sprout are the little ferns and underbrush type stuff? They thrive because there's no competition. Their success sets the literal groundwork for the recovery of the rest of the forest. Maybe the Little Caesar's and the Checkers and the Dunkin Donuts are these lil' recovery plants for Bushwick. Down in my end of the neighborhood, half the storefronts are unoccupied, so anybody willing to give it a shot is fine by me.

The Little Caesar's of my youth was strictly a financial proposition. They used to give you a 'free' pizza with every pizza ordered, hence their mnemonic chant-slogan, "PIZZA PIZZA." Of course I later realized that the cost of the 2nd pizza was already folded into the cost of the first, so it really wasn't such a good deal after all. Also in terms of quality, well, that too was a bit lacking. But I fell for the pitch and patronized them often as a teenager (I think I knew somebody who worked at one maybe). It seems they have abandoned the 2-for-1 pizza concept in favor of a more old-timey approach (round instead of square pie). So who knows if it's any good, I'll probably break down and try it out shortly. But Jimmy, you cry, aren't you a vegan? Well, one nice touch is that LC is touting the fact they can make a vegan pizza now. Things are looking up!

By Jimmy Legs | Posted in Bushwick, Neighbors | Tagged fast food, local business, restaurants, urban renewal | Comments (2)

January 26, 2010 – 12:06 pm

Jumping someone else's train

I was mildly aware that the MTA was holding the Z train (among others) for ransom, as the do every few months. They said they would kill the Z if we didn't pony up the dough, and they appeared crazy enough to go through with it. Well, I think we did pay up, but they still said they were gonna end the Z anyway. And nobody paid much attention after that.

At least I didn't. Boro prez Marty Markowitz held a funeral for the Z train a long time ago, and I guess I just thought it was a matter of time. I don't usually ride the Z, but the stations before and after mine are served by it. This means during rush hour (assuming I get a job soon) all the people normally riding the Z would get packed into my J train. Of course they'll probably have to run a lot more J trains, so the loss of the Z would be in name only for people who live as close to Manhattan as I do (people further out, especially in Queens would feel the burn of having to stop at every single stop all the way up).

What I didn't know was that the MTA had issued a similar threat against the M train. Marty had a funeral for that train as well (hey Marty, instead of spending all your time and our money having these ridiculous photo-ops, why not try using your office for something practical like finding jobs for your constituents!), but I didn't hear about any of it until yesterday. So sorry if this is old news for everybody else, but it blows my mind.

See, the M train is now on the chopping block. If removed, the V train will be extended all the way to Middle Village, the full range of the M train on this side of Brooklyn (the M's intermittent service to West Brooklyn would be eliminated altogether). Meanwhile, the Z has quietly been released under its own recognizance. Former M train riders in Bushwick and Queens will be able to take one train up through midtown and into Astoria, if they feel like it. J train riders will have a relatively simple connection to get the V at Myrtle-Broadway, although it still might be easier to go to Essex St and switch there.

Either way, this doesn't actually sound like a service reduction for us. Maybe Manhattan V-train riders will be annoyed, but Manhattanites are always annoyed about something. Now of course the MTA probably has something up their sleeve to make this change a bad thing for everybody involved, like running one train an hour or something. Still beats the G train!

Check this out: some history on the J/Z lines, turns out our elevated platform dates back to the steam era (1888).

By Jimmy Legs | Posted in Mass Transit | Comments Off

January 21, 2010 – 2:36 pm

Head with wings

I am hoping you are now seeing a bunch of animated heads on the title bar of the site. Yes, it's kind of annoying, but I am working out some options for the Flash sections. This little exercise forced me to use Adobe Premiere and After Effects. I need to put them all into Flash and make them a uniform animation yet, but for now I think it's kind of amusing, if only briefly.

The next step is to make the animation operate only when the user mouses over the images. This will use Actionscript, which I am not a big fan of, but since it's a pretty simple operation, I think I can stand it.

One other thing: despite the poweful tools at my disposal, like the mkv to mp4 converter described here, I ended up using good ol' VirtualDub for some of the video editing. What an awesome open-source program that is.

By Jimmy Legs | Posted in Video, Web | Comments (6)

January 15, 2010 – 4:34 pm

Your body is a wonderland

Hooray I just updated my WordPress theme a lil' bit. Users may not notice much of a change, but believe you me, I have been tinkering with the code all week and the result is way more awesome on the back end that one could imagine. Don't even try to imagine it, it's not worth even trying.

I'm using the rehash of this old site to force me to learn the intricacies of messing with WordPress. There are times when it seems like it would have been easier to just learn the coding and build the site myself, but then I think, who am I kidding?

More updates to follow as I think up more stuff that I can later list on a resume.

By Jimmy Legs | Posted in Web | Tagged site updates, web design | Comments Off

January 7, 2010 – 6:26 pm

To get bread from dough you gotta bake it

Now that the holidays are over, I've pretty much reached the end of my rope, unemployment-wise. I could stay on unemployment, continuing to dip into my savings until I hit the time limit, but this lack of true income is starting to affect my judgment. Every time I think about doing something, I stop and do an internal audit; if it seems too pricey, I don't do it. While this is sound judgment for most things, it keeps creeping into odd places.

For instance, at the grocery store I seem to be unable to buy canned beans any more. Yes, cans of beans are too expensive for me to justify purchasing at the local Key Foods. Instead I buy dried beans. They are significantly cheaper than canned, but of course you have to reconstitute them for use. I figured this would be no big deal, the Joy of Cooking says I can just throw them in a pot of water overnight and retrieve fully hyrdrated foodstuffs. I tried this recently, giving the beans a good 24 hours to soak. The water made no discernable impact. Is New York water too hard or something? What's up with that?

I ended up softening the beans up in some boiling water. No big deal but what a hassle. The other bags of beans in the cupboard remain untouched thus far. I guess that's one way to save money: don't eat anything.

Here's another way to save money: spend a hell of a lot of money.

On Tuesday we rented a Uhaul cargo van and went to Costco and spent something in the neighborhood of $800. No one is more aware than I that this seems counterproductive during these leans times. But if we have played our cards right, we won't need another such trip for at least 6 months, if at all. For one great expense has been dealt a mighty blow by our brave quest: the cats have their food. We bought 20 bags of Costco's premium cat food. At 25 pounds apiece this adds up to 500 lbs. of kitty kibble stacked up in the cellar. Our basement looks like a feed store.

But of course we stocked up on human supplies as well. Since I am intent on not spending unwisely at the grocery store, I went kind of nuts at the warehouse store and bought a bunch of bulk items that should help sustain us until I get a job. Among other things, I bought a 25lb. bag of flour and a 2lb. bag of yeast. I've been baking a lot more of late, and I'm always running out of these items, so it sort of makes sense … until you look at the bags.

cookies, anyone?

I have no idea how to store this stuff once I open the bag. I guess I can dole it out into several containers, maybe freeze some of it or something. But I've been going through a 5lb. bag a month, and once I start making all our bread from scratch, I'm sure this stuff won't last 5 months. I'll still have to buy whole wheat flour separately, I guess. They only had white in these institutional sizes. It added up to a big bill, but pound for pound this stuff is dirt cheap!

In other cost-saving measures, I am happy to announce that one of our foster cats will be adopted out this weekend! Louie, who has been with us since the summer, will be moving to Cobble Hill to a home with an other (one one!) cat. He is a fun cat and some of our other cats will miss him I'm sure, but it feels good to be back on this side of the adoption game. If his adoption is any indication, we will be adopting out one cat every month of the year and will be down to zero by Christmas!

This big noggin is movin on

Naw, that probably won't happen, but I sure hope we can find these cats some permanent homes this year; it's a full-time job taking care of them as it is. I'd hate for my paying work to suffer!