Chilltown Bears

Whew! Been cooking all day, partly for tonight’s “Noche Buena” dinner – the big celebration growing up in a Cuban household was Christmas Eve, not Christmas Day – and then for tomorrow’s Christmas Day dinner which is potluck style.

This year we broke with tradition and *aren’t* traveling upstate to hang with childhood friends.  The edema in Joe’s legs is particularly bad these days and he just can’t endure hours and hours in a car.  So we’re joining our friend Vince at his brownstone here in Jersey City (just a few blocks away) and a few other friends, 8 of us in all, and having an all-gay Christmas.  Finally we won’t be the token gay couple at the Christmas table!

Tonight’s menu consists of a smoke-cured baked ham with my mulled wine reduction glaze, homemade creamed spinach, and roasted root vegetables (butternut squash, a variety of potatoes, carrots, parsnips, turnips, beets) followed by a luscious croissant bread pudding.  For  tomorrow, I’m bringing three dishes – even more croissant bread pudding, my special creamed corn (more like corn gratin) topped with bread crumbs, french fried onions, crumbled bacon, and green onions, and a root vegetable puree (similar to the roasted veggies tonight, but in a creamy puree.)

Looking forward to spending time with friends today and tomorrow.  Wish I could spend time with all of you.  Merry Christmas to all! CARLOS

Joe, Ryan, and I spent yesterday afternoon in and around Union Square in NYC for holiday fun.  We lucked out and found parking right on 15th Street and 5th Avenue, and avoided at least $40 in parking fees for our little trist around the park.  It was a bit cold out to do a lot of walking, but the smell of hot apple cider and gingerbread in the air let us know that it wasn’t going to be a problem — that and the fact that we were doing brunch first!

We hadn’t been to Chat n’ Chew since we moved out of Chelsea back in 2005, and we decided that our old favorite haunt deserved a visit from us, conveniently located on 16th Street between 5th Avenue and Union Square West, just 1/2 block from the park.  The place is retro-decorated with all sorts of old metal and wooden signs, the entire menu is comfort food, and concern with calories or carbs is a problem in this place.  My favorite dish is Uncle Red’s Addiction — honey-dipt fried chicken – to die for, literally.   Once we were stuffed, we hit the ATM, then into the park!

The Union Square Holiday Market operates from early November until Christmas.  It’s rows and rows of merchants in small red-and-white tents selling unique, mostly handmade items for gifts and ornaments.  It’s like no other collection I’ve seen.  If you haven’t gone and are going to be in the area, please make a note of going. We shopped till we dropped, hitting up the Hot Apple Cider stand a few times for jet fuel.  By the time we left the park, we looked like crazy old bag ladies with a dozen shopping bags in each hand.  Luckily the car was only a block away.   Traffic was heavy at the entrance to the Holland Tunnel, but otherwise we zipped home.  We spent the evening fussing over our aquisitions.

I think I said “Oh, that’s adorable” like 100 times yesterday – a few times to the boyfriends of some young ladies. CARLOS

I have a clear memory of the March on the United Nations on Sunday, June 26, 1994.  It was the 25th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots.  There were two marches that day, one up 5th Avenue, and the other up 1st Avenue in front of the United Nations, converging at the entrance to Central Park.  It was as much a matter of confusion as it was definance – Giuliani was against it and even a Judge ruled against a dual march, but details were sketchy at the last minute, so people assembled at both locations and proceeded to march north anyway.

Gay Games IV (Unity ’94) had just finished, so NYC was swollen with gay men and women and their families and friends, oh.. and more Bible-touting crackpots than usual. CARLOS

We traveled again to DC for the April 25, 1993 March on Washington for the Lesbian, Gay and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation. This time we went with a large group of my fellow volunteers at God’s Love We Deliver, sporting our fabulous blue t-shirts of that era. It was a serious matter but we were also totally empowered and bursting with pride and joy — gathering with a million of your friends to make a statement will do that to you. CARLOS

We marched on Washington DC in October 1992 when we came to see the full AIDS Quilt on display in the Mall.  There were boxes of tissues on the ground to wipe away the tears of an ocean of people as they studied row after row after row of quilt panels made by the loved ones of those who had fallen.  In the early evening of the 11th, we lit our candles and together marched through the streets.  I remember shouting “Shame! Shame! Shame!” as we marched by the home of the Vice President, Dan Quayle. CARLOS