donwill and subhurb - nighttime (video)

casey.

casey.
Originally uploaded by miguel carlos.

he's the younger of my two boy cousins and was always the adventurous one. my childhood memory is littered with "oh my god, you wouldn't believe what happened to casey..."

it usually goes something like,

"and he snowboarded down the whole mountain on the ankle and walked into the aid station!"

no shit.

he's also a inconceivably chill guy, as i've been learning during my sporadic visits home.

we're having an art party next week.

this is one of the things i'll be showing.

late dinner.

late dinner.
Originally uploaded by o.miguel.

El Chalarro:

A husband and wife in their early 40's - he from DF, she from Oaxaca - run an anonymous food cart under the Jackson Heights subway station in Queens. Theirs is one of an ever-changing number of carts that serve nearly identical, dirt cheap Mexican street food.

It's simple fare and for a gringo it would be easy to end up with some mediocre ground beef tacos and walk away summarily unimpressed. But to go with my friend Rodrigo, a guero from Mexico City who knows what to ask for and how to ask for it, is a wholly different experience. He orders two carne asada huaraches - a name, reserved to the best of my knowledge for a strapy sandal, not anything edible - and instructs me to do the same. While he shoots the shit with the husband, she slaps a handfull of sliced beef onto a two foot long griddle. After adding some spices and waiting a couple minutes, she reaches behind the grill and grabs four home made flour tortillas as thick as the heel bubble in her well worn nike airs.

The meat finishes and is folded into the tortillas, which are topped with crema fresca, queso fresco and lettuce. Cradling his plate with both hands, Rodrigo shuffles to the side of the cart, puts his plate down and dual-wields twin diner syrup pitchers filled with green and red salsa, drawing a braid down the middle of the huarache. To the left of where he grabbed the salsas is a metal dish of long sliced green peppers, charred from the griddle and marinated with onions.

He tells me that the name of the peppers, chiles torreados, comes from bullfighting - the act of poking, prodding, stabbing, bleeding and generally angering the bull (or pepper, as the case may be) so that they're fully charged up when they get to your plate, or red cape.

At the first bite, I feel each hair on my head stand at attention. By the end of the second hurache each folicle is swaying to the slow Norteño ballad that drifts out of a boombox hidden in the cart to my right, barely audible over the sizzle of meat.

Two stuffed bellies comes to $10, and my buzz cut does a two-step the whole way home.

a handle on a habit.

a handle on a habit.
Originally uploaded by o.miguel.

finally got some money to get my new york spring break rolls developed. i saw this hand hanging out of a brooklyn window and couldn't help myself.