Chilltown Bears

For those of our friends here who haven’t heard, Joe had a stroke on the way to work last Monday.  He suffers from hypertension, and although he’s religious about taking his medicine, his blood pressure shot up unexpectedly and he bled into his brain.  What a terrible day, one of the worst in my life.  I don’t cry much, but I made up for it in that Emergency Room at Palisades General where they first took him.  I was holding up ok until they asked him to sign a form.  He struggled and struggled and I just started to sob, with the nurse’s insincere “you have to be strong” and me yelling back GIVE ME A MINUTE!  All those visions of stroke victims with droopy faces slurring their speech flashing through my head, thinking to myself, our life just took a left turn. Read more »

Carlos in the garden at Taqueria Downtown

Right on the corner of Grove & Grand Streets you’ll find Taqueria Downtown, our favorite local haunt for Mexican food.  It has everything we look for in a haunt — it’s nearby, you can wear what you want, the food is tasty, and it’s cheap.

The menu isn’t huge, but the portions are! You’ll find tacos, enchiladas, flautas, burritas, quesadillas, and brunch on the weekend– no guacamole though!  They have soft drinks which include some funky imported ones, but it’s BYOB if you’re looking for something stronger.

The friendly staff takes your order as you walk in and you pay at that time.  Take your drinks and order-number-on-a-stick to your table and the food is brought out to you.  Your choices include indoor seating as well as outdoor — a cute garden out back with tables and picnic benches, as well as a few sidewalk tables up front.  Taqueria Downtown has take-out and delivers too if you’re not planning on venturing out.

There’s nothing foo-foo about this place.  In a word, the place is chill – a good thing to be in Chilltown. Is it the best Mexican food we’ve ever had, Ay Yay-Yay-Yay? No, but we give it two and a half Yay‘s. It’s a comfortable neighborhood spot to take your honey and friends to when you don’t feel like cooking or spending lots of money.  We hope you’ll enjoy it as much as we do. CARLOS

Marching with the God’s Love We Deliver gang during NYC Gay Pride ’92 CARLOS

On Labor Day we drove up to the New York Renaissance Faire in Tuxedo NY, about an hour-ish north of here, way up on Route 17.  It was beautiful out and the Faire is a great way to spend the day with so much to see and do there. Inexpensive too, they had a downloadable coupon on their website for that weekend bringing it down to only $10 a person to get in. The $5 premium parking lot filled early, so we parked in one of the free lots and took the free shuttle bus to the Faire’s entrance, only about 1/2 mile apart.

Young suburban wenches with muddled fake Old English accents tended to our needs for not-too-historically-accurate grub and grog. My first snack was iced coffee and a huge hard churro that I think they used to use to herd sheep or beat carpets clean.  Joe took a loud crunching bite out of it and then coughed for 7 minutes and 22 seconds.  Death by Ye Olde Churro – what a way to go!   Read more »

Good for a few laughs, cruise over to www.yearbookyourself.com to upload your mug. See how you might have looked had you been a member of a different graduating class. Too silly. CARLOS