After Tipping

★★★ There was no way to make the case that the light wool coat had not been the necessary choice, but in direct sun it was still possible to imagine feeling stifled and to resent it. Red plastic shopping bags lit up in the space between their handles and their contents. A cold-dried fingertip split open and bled freely onto the computer’s trackpad. The light moved slowly and stolidly across the scenery even as the high clouds went through drastic changes, from contrails to curling fractal patterns to shapeless wisps. Then the sky was wholly clear. More than half a mile away down Fifth Avenue, the Washington Square Arch caught the sun and declared itself.

“What’s the difference between tahini and tahina and tehina? What are its essential ingredients? Once you get that far (sesame seeds), think about those, too: How do sesame seeds grow? What’s the difference between the white variety and the black? And if traditional tahini is made of white sesame seeds, can you do the same with the black kind?”
—OH MY GOD I DON’T KNOW! CAN YOU? CAN YOU?#

JACKPOT pic.twitter.com/orX2fZCEji

— drewtoothpaste (@drewtoothpaste) March 22, 2016

Look,

I’m a simple man. I work hard, I love my family, I love my country. I’ve been the foreman at the dildo factory for fifteen years. I started when I was just nineteen, when my buddy Phil helped me get a job sweeping the shop floors. I put in the hours, I kept my head down, I respected my bosses, and pretty soon I was promoted up the ranks. First, I started helping stir the vats of liquid silicone, and then I moved up onto the assembly line, packaging the dildos into their plastic packaging. Soon I was doing quality assurance, helping Acme Dildos turn out more and higher quality dildos than ever before.

Just go with it, you’ll be glad you did.

★★★★ The snow had been light but enterprising. It stuck to the sides of the balcony rails more thickly, if anything, than to the balconies themselves. It had failed to whiten the pavement but it traced the delicately tapering lines of the tree branches all the way out to the thinnest new twigs. The clouds grew pearly and began to separate. Puffy little lumps of snow fell off the top of the scaffolding and looped around to land underneath it. The sky went from half-blue to two-thirds on the walk to the pre-K dropoff, and surpassed three-quarters on walk back. The early afternoon was not just clear but intensely so. Every bit of snow was gone, but so was the milder dampness that had come with it. The wind was dry and getting ever colder. It lifted a plastic bag high off the sidewalk and wrapped it around a branch of a tree. The bag jumped loose and clung to an even higher branch. The four-year-old asked if he might be allowed to throw bags out the apartment window to watch them fly.

The NYPD plan to rid the city of face slashings is called “Operation Cutting Edge.” If it is as effective as most initiatives under the De Blasio administration, one might consider a new summer commuting outfit.#

Kate Edwards has been a hospitality consultant in New York City for almost a decade, but before that she was a maître d’ at one of the landmarks of New York’s downtown dining scene during its heyday in the late nineties and early aughts. While the job came with a lot of perks—especially for women, who were regularly given gifts by repeat customers, like clothes from people in retail—for her actual take-home pay, Edwards relied mostly on “handshakes at the end of the night,” meaning tips she received from guests after she’d found them a table.

Edwards eventually discovered, however, that males were routinely palmed far more than women in the same position. The handshake tips normally came from men, and for Edwards, it was obvious that the exchange of cash was part of a ritual designed to shore up the power relations between guests and restaurant employees. “Men tip men to demonstrate who’s in power,” she said. “So if I go in and I’m the man and you’re the maître d’, I’m tipping you to show you that I’m the guest. Now you’re going to give me something. But let’s not misunderstand, I’m in charge.” For a man confronting a female employee, on the other hand, the power dynamic is simply assumed: There’s no need to negotiate it, no need to feel threatened. “I don’t have to worry about power in front of you,” Edwards said. “Your job is to get me a table.”

This disparity meant that a female maître d’ received a considerably lower weekly income. Edwards brought this to her boss’s attention, and asked for a raise in order to even things out. At first, he registered some surprise, citing the figure he thought she took home. “No,” a colleague corrected him, “that’s for the guys.” Ultimately, Edwards’ employer agreed to raise her hourly wages to ensure equitable compensation.

Enjoy. [Via]

★★ Clean clouds, blank as paper, floated on the sky seen from bed. They gathered into something unpleasant, another of late winter’s near-daily interludes of gloom, carrying past the season’s end. Midafternoon unexpectedly broke it, though, and the streets filled with sun again. Aged trash was in the treetops on Broadway but leaves were in the trees on 72nd, and there was a persistent soft edge to the cold. Not persistent enough, though. In the course of a piano lesson the light and softness departed completely. A truck laden with salt turned the corner, calcium chloride fluid sloshing in its translucent tanks. One palm frond lay in the street. By bedtime there were snowflakes passing in the lights, whitening the upholstery on the luxury building’s rooftop chairs.

35. Marathons are easy
34. I’m not interested in celebrity friendships
33. I already have a bikini body
32. I know it all
31. That soap scum isn’t bothering me
30. I’m not interested in free recipes
29. I don’t want to see celebs without makeup
28. I know exactly how much my stove installation will cost
27. I don’t enjoy long, luscious, clump-free lashes
26. I am happy with low traffic
25. I’m not interested in increasing my growth