My Hometown’s Recovery From Sandy Has Been Lackluster, And Could Have Been Better

In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, I witnessed two Long Island communities, Long Beach and Oceanside, located just 1.5 miles from one another, experience very different fates. Both communities have populations hovering around 33,000 residents, and both faced unprecedented damage during the storm.

However, the main difference between the two is that Long Beach is a city, with its own government and resources, whereas Oceanside is what New York State defines as a hamlet, an unincorporated area with no mayor, no police department, and no other essential services that would be useful in times of  crisis. It is simply a part of the greater Town of Hempstead, which is itself a collection of 37 hamlets and 22 villages. The Town of Hempstead’s total population is 760,000 according to the latest U.S. Census Bureau reports.

When disaster struck, Oceanside, where I grew up, had few resources to rely on: We have an all-volunteer fire department made up of amazing men and women who went without sleep for weeks after Sandy, constantly putting their lives on the line as calls came in non-stop (despite half of the firehouses and trucks flooding, rendering them useless). We have our own U.S. Post Office (unhelpful post-Sandy), a school board with a long-standing and well-respected superintendent of schools (though half of our schools were also seriously damaged), and a public library (that emerged unscathed).

Not only is there no police department in Oceanside, as we rely on Nassau County police officers, there is not even a police station. For sanitation, we rely on the Oceanside branch of the Town of Hempstead’s refuse collection operations, a group of heavily unionized folks who have proved to be inept and unwilling to pick up the mess in this rare time of crisis. There is no mayor, no city council, and of course no professional city management staff.

Long Beach, on the other hand, has 300 city employees. Of these, it has approximately 75 police officers and 30 firefighters, as well as its own Department of Public Works that handles sanitation and sewage issues.

Prior to Sandy, the City of Long Beach distributed over 19,000 sandbags to residents, while also updating its website to keep people up-to-date with the latest information. This was in addition to distributing hurricane preparedness pamphlets to all residents during the summer and organizing a de-facto emergency management office headed by its mayor and Kennedy School of Government-educated city manager.

Yes, like Oceanside, Long Beach relies on LIPA, the beleaguered and bumbling soon-to-be former power holding company, but the failures of LIPA seem to be one of the few commonalities between the two cities (and Oceanside, as it turns out, suffered far longer in total darkness).

In the days after Sandy, Long Beach established its indoor ice rink as a collection point for relief supplies, also making it a distribution center for its residents. Emergency generators were brought in for power. The ice rink was as well-organized as a Target store, with specified loading docks and hundreds of volunteers flocking in from around the country to assist. There were New York State Troopers on site, National Guardsmen, and other federal employees in addition to Long Beach’s own. Things were civilized, and it became clear to residents where they had to go for supplies and information, even when most of the city appeared to be in shambles. FEMA and insurance companies set up shop around the ice rink (also located a short walk from City Hall), where any necessary information or services could be found.

Oceanside, meanwhile, had a host of tired firefighters and community leaders, many of whom lost their own homes, trying to wrap their head around the crisis without being physically able to take much action, because, without power, they still had other responsibilities to their families, employers, and in many cases, the schools or fire department.

Oceanside’s collection efforts were meager in comparison to Long Beach, because there were no individuals able to organize large-scale collection sites and manage the distribution of relief supplies.

There was little outside help. FEMA decided to set up shop in Oceanside Park, located at an edge of town that the thousands of people with flooded cars would never be able to get to, and thousands more, stuck without power, never even knew that this help existed.

The Town of Hempstead was useless. Nassau County was useless. New York State was useless. FEMA was useless. It then fell on the Oceanside diaspora, family, and friends, to convey information. I and others not terribly impacted by the storm set up websites and Facebook pages to provide information to fellow citizens (if and when they could even check these resources), as Oceanside has no web resources of its own. It was old high school friends and acquaintances whom I counted on to get relief directly to Oceanside, because it seemed like our community was not one featured on the news like others (until Oceansiders turned a school press conference into a rally dedicated to venting frustrations with our unreachable power company, as well as our do-nothing Town of Hempstead, Nassau County, and Congressional elected officials…).

As for aid management, Oceanside is now relying on Oceanside Community Service, a small non-profit set up in 1949 to help poor members of the community. This organization is led by the same civic-minded folks who are also members of the school board, fire department, Rotary Club, Kiwanis, etc. And it’s usually this time of year that the organization feeds, clothes, and delivers toys to the needy. Whereas the Long Beach ice rink is now, to their credit, filled to the brim with supplies and a never-ending flow of vehicles dropping off more needed items, Oceanside Community Service was overjoyed that a single tractor trailer recently arrived from Vestal, New York, bringing much-needed supplies.

My call to action is that Oceanside immediately incorporate as a village. In times of crisis, all areas need police departments, management professionals, and full-time leaders. Unincorporated areas cannot and should not rely on incompetent bureaucrats at the county or township levels. Incidents like Sandy may not happen often, but when they do, citizens should know that they will be looked after, and that disaster management on the local level will never again be such a debacle because a hyperlocal government is not in place.

This article originally appeared on PolicyMic.

From Narrative.ly: The Intact-ivists

The Intact-ivists

A diverse group of men who are opposed to circumcision share a common, if unorthodox, mission—to restore their foreskins.

By Stephen Robert Morse

After twenty-seven years on this planet, I learned last week that I am not only a victim of mutilation, but also an amputee; I just hadn’t known it. Like millions of other men, I was, as a baby, circumcised. I never really thought anything of it until my editors directed me to a Yahoo! Group—yes, they still exist—that serves as the online home of the New York City chapter of NORM, the National Organization of Restoring Men.

Since the early ’80s, men who have been unsatisfied by their “cuts” have banded together for the cause and formed acronym-heavy groups with varying degrees of wit: Brothers United for Future Foreskins (BUFF), UNCircumcising Information and Resources Centers (UNCIRC), and Recover A Penis (RECAP), among many others. The spectrum is wide, yet the mission remains relatively stable: These dudes want their foreskins back, and they want them now. Plus, they don’t want any more unsuspecting babies to get snipped.

NORM is the restoration organization that reigns supreme today, with dozens of chapters in seven countries around the world. To complement the techno-prowess of the aforementioned Yahoo! Group, there is also, I kid you not, a Foreskin Restoration WebRing. (For those of you who haven’t heard the term since the late ’90s, a WebRing is a collection of websites that are all linked to each other, forming a chain of sites around a central topic, in this case foreskin restoration.)

Though I’d never previously thought about my amputee status/victimhood, while perusing these online forums I discovered there are people who think about their circumcisions every single day—particularly those in the midst of the painful restoration process, which oftentimes means having a mechanical clamp attached to one’s penis for hours at a time over a period of months or even years

Intrigued, I embarked on my Foreskin Restoration Information Deep Gathering Expedition (FRIDGE). If they can do acronyms en masse, so can I. Step one was to attend the monthly meeting of the New York City chapter of NORM, described on its Yahoo! Group as a “community of men seeking to restore our foreskins, an important part of the male sexual anatomy that most of us were wrongfully deprived of at birth.”

*   *   *

While the origins of circumcision are murky, in terms of both the reasons why cutting began, as well as where and when it first occurred, the practice most certainly dates back several millennia. Of course, circumcision has long been practiced by Jews, Muslims and other groups around the world. As fifth century BC historian Herodotus wrote in his still-widely regarded work, “The Histories,” the Egyptians “practice circumcision for the sake of cleanliness, considering it better to be cleanly than comely.

Records show that other groups from Before the Common Era, including many cultures from across the African continent, circumcised their young. In some cases this is thought to have signified an ascent into manhood (when the act was performed in the pubescent stage) or to discourage masturbation (we all know how well that works…).

In recent years, the ancient practice has found considerable scientific validation from medical professionals, with studies showing that circumcised men may be less likely to acquire sexually transmitted diseases than their intact counterparts—as well as some highly debatable stats that circumcision may reduce risks of penile and prostate cancer.

The New York Times reported on August 27 of this year that the American Academy of Pediatrics had “shifted its stance on infant male circumcision,” announcing that new research, “including studies in Africa suggesting that the procedure may protect heterosexual men against H.I.V., indicated that the health benefits outweighed the risks.”

Despite these studies, the fast-growing anti-circumcision movement traces its routes back several millennia as well. “Foreskin restoration also has a history stretching back to the Hellenistic world,” says Daniel O’Neill, a 42-year-old graphic designer who lives in the Inwood section of Manhattan and is the coordinator of NYC-NORM. “Jewish athletes would stretch their foreskin, as circumcision was a much less radical procedure in those days, to fit in. Athletes competed in the nude, and exposing the glans was considered obscene in the Greek world.”

Daniel O’Neill, coordinator of NYC-NORM, at home in Manhattan (Photo by Emon Hassan)

Records of circumcised and uncircumcised men in ancient Greece are of particular interest to the restoration community. A clothing accessory from that era, the kynodesme, has been taken up by the NORM folks as historical evidence of the ills associated with the exposure of the glans, or as it is better known, the penis head. Non-Jewish Greeks weren’t circumcised, but it was considered, um, un-Kosher for the glans to be exposed during athletic competitions. Thus, the kynodesme, a leather strap of sorts, was worn by male athletes who lacked sufficient foreskin to cover the entirety of their glans.

The contemporary restoration activists, who call themselves intactivists, stand by this ancient belief that the glans should not be exposed, and therefore circumcision is nothing less than mutilation.

*   *   *

Despite spending years as a kid at Jew-ish summer camp (approximately 97.5% of the attendees were Jewish by my unscientific count) where circumcised penises abounded in the bunks, as a straight man and germaphobe who avoids locker rooms in favor of outdoor exercise I have only seen a handful of my intact brethren. And, truth be told, I’d never wondered much about whether I was missing out on anything by being cut. I suspect this is the case for the vast majority of cut men.

Until embarking on my research for this piece, I had little idea that the penis in its natural, uncut state, is quite similar to the vagina, whereby it is a moist organ that has some pretty sophisticated and highly sensitive nerve endings. Sounds like something that could be useful. If I weren’t circumcised, I would have my very own built-in Manhattan Mini Storage, a place where my glans would be protected from things like touching the interior of my pants, or from that small scrape I gave myself in high school when I  accidentally zipped my fly over the glans. As the kind of person who uses a huge shatter-proof case to protect his iPhone, always wears a seatbelt when in a car, and a helmet when on a bike, given the choice I’d like to keep my one-of-a-kind, irreplaceable organ covered, too. Of course, I didn’t get to make that choice myself. My parents and a knife-wielding mohel, made that decision for me.

I turned to a Semitic pediatrician friend for literature about circumcision and was promptly handed a copy of “Jewish Medical Ethics,” a definitive volume written by Lord Immanuel Jakobovitz, the now-deceased former Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom, and an internationally respected public intellectual of the twentieth century. In this work, Jakobovitz writes, “The method to be adopted is laid down thus: ‘One excises the foreskin, [that is] the entire skin covering the glans, so that the corona is laid bare. Afterwards, one tears with the fingernail the soft membrane underneath the skin, turning it to the sides until the flesh of the glans appears. Thereafter, one sucks the membrane until the blood is extracted from the [more] remote places, so that no danger [to the infant] may ensue.’”

Objectively, this sounds nothing short of horrific, and if it didn’t have a heavy dose of religious backing combined with a loose medical coalition behind it, I imagine the practice might one day be looked back upon as barbaric in the same vein as eugenics, bans on interracial marriage or other once-normal cultural taboos.

The sucking component of circumcision has aroused much (warranted) criticism in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, not only for its obvious pedophilic qualities, but also because of incidents whereby the person performing the sucking has transmited an STD to the child. Though this part of the procedure is no longer widely practiced, it is still prevalent in some Orthodox Jewish sects. (Take a puke break, then keep on reading.)

Back to me and NORM. After explaining my journalistic affiliations to the NORM-NYC Yahoo Group, O’Neil cordially invited me to sit in on their December monthly meeting.

*   *   * 

Tuesday, December 4, 2012

At seven p.m. on the dot, I enter a high rise building in Hell’s Kitchen, where I announce myself to a doorman and proceed to take an elevator to an upper floor. Other than exchanging some email courtesies and getting permission to attend this gathering from O’Neil, I have absolutely no idea what to expect and no idea who these restorers are.

I am greeted by a man who asks me to remove my shoes. I enter a well-kept apartment, realizing I am the first person to arrive. Tom Gualtieri, the host, is in his early forties but looks much younger and has a toned physique. “This is the first time I’m meeting this group,” Guallatiri tells me. He’s previously only had one-on-one conversations about restoration and participated in online forums through NYC-NORM and another group, RestoringForeskin.org.

Guillatiri says that he’s known he has a problem for his entire life. “My issue was that, at a really young age, when I first started exploring my own body sexually, I just knew there was something missing,” he says confidently. “I recognized there was something different about my penis. Even though I hadn’t seen other people’s penises, there was like an instinctive thing that I knew something was wrong.”

“But is this a psychological or physical problem?” I inquire. “What’s missing?”

“I can’t put my finger on it because I was so young when I started playing with myself. Looking back on it, I was trying to push my penis head back inside my skin. I used to push the glans back into my shaft because I wanted it to be covered up. I guess there’s something instinctive about wanting to be protected.”

Interesting. Logical. He’s not crazy as, I must admit, I suspected some of this group’s members to be.

Guillatiri continues: “Also, my father’s not circumcised. We were a fairly liberal household, in that I would see men in my household naked, whether when swimming or whatever, and I remember looking at his penis and trying to figure out what was different about it. When I asked him why I was circumcised, my father said, ‘That’s what you’re supposed to do. It’s better, it’s healthier.’ And when you’re nine years old, you’re like, ‘okay.’”

“But when I became sexually active this was not so fine to me. I’m bisexual and recognized that many of my sex partners have been uncircumcised since I was first sexually active when I was nineteen, and I was like, ‘Oh, that’s what’s wrong.’”

The doorman calls up to the apartment. Another guest is heading upstairs.

Nick, twenty-seven, tall, effeminate and good-looking in an almost model-esque way, walks in and introduces himself.

I continue chatting with Guillatiri, asking, “Do you think sex is less pleasurable for you than for your partners?”

“I do,” he replies. “But based on what I’ve read, it’s not the amount of pleasure, it’s the quality of pleasure. Whenever I have a friend who’s going to get their baby circumcised, I say to think logically about what a penis does and what it’s built for. If you cut off all that skin, all those nerve endings, and all of that vascularity, it’s got to have some effect. I think that sex is less pleasurable.”

While there is a dearth of scientific evidence to back up or contradict that statement, many believe it to be true. One 2006 study of males in Korea who were circumcised after age twenty did find that a majority reported decreased masturbatory or sexual pleasure after being circumcised.

I turn to Nick, the new guy, who says, “I started restoring in college. I studied abroad in London, and I was talking with some English friends of mine. They asked why Americans were all circumcised, and I said I had no idea. So I went home to my dorm and researched online. I’d had difficulties in college with orgasming. I hadn’t found oral sex to be particularly stimulating, and sex with a condom was very difficult too. I couldn’t climax. I said to myself, ‘One day I’ll have a boyfriend and I’ll have sex without a condom and that will make everything better.’ However, the more research I did, circumcision seemed to be a reasonable cause of this lack of pleasure.”

The doorbell keeps ringing and soon there are eight men present, in addition to me.

The meeting opens, as I’d expect some type of AA meeting to begin, with the group’s leader taking the floor. “I’m Daniel, I’m forty-two,” he says. “I have been restoring now for almost two-and-a-half years. For the extent of time that I’ve been restoring, I’ve been using the dual-tension restorer, or DTR, and the tugging mode more recently to manually inflate the skin. I guess the reason I’m doing it is that I feel like there’s a part of me that’s missing, that should be there, and some sense that I’ve been mutilated.”

Next.

“I’m Nick. I’m 27. I started restoring in college, with tape.” (“Taping” is a basic restoring method in which tape is applied to the foreskin along with an elastic band, working to stretch the skin forward.) “I was taping for a year or two, and I got some pretty good results, surprisingly, using just that method. I just got a DTR. I’m a little uncomfortable, but I’m still getting used to the sensation of that device. I got the DTR because one of my biggest problems with the restoration process is that my scrotal skin has more hair on it, and it was causing some pain. Now I’ve been alleviating that problem by stretching more skin toward the top of the shaft. I’m doing that because I want a little more skin to cover up the head of my penis. There’s a little bit that’s exposed since what I did in college. But I want a permanently covered glans. As I said earlier, I’m trying to regain more sensitivity sexually.”

“Has that worked so far?” I ask.

“Yes. With masturbation it’s now easier to be pleasured. So I did notice improvement, even within a month or so.”

Next.

“I’m Anthony Losquadro,” says a well-built Italian-American with a thick Brooklyn accent, promptly reaching across the room to shake my hand and pass me both a business card for his site, intaction.org, and a pamphlet with a cover that reads, “Intact Babies Are Happier Healthier Wholesome & Natural.”

“I do a lot of things, but I’m here mainly as an intactivist, or an activist who advocates for people to keep their children intact,” says Anthony. “I’m forty-seven. I’ve been involved for three years. I’ve been to the Berkeley symposium three years ago, the Helsinki symposium, New Orleans, Boston… I run a non-profit and we do what we can to raise awareness on the issue. Baby shows, pregnancy expos.”

They go on like this, eight men with eight different stories and reasons for being here. About half are gay or bisexual; a few are straight. There’s Kevin, twenty-nine, better known as the Barefoot Intactivist, who believes his sexual problems stem from a botched circumcision. There’s Tim, who wanted to start restoring a couple of years ago but had a boyfriend who was against it; Dave, a sixty-year-old, who recently ordered a Tugger online but has used it only irregularly. Tom, whom I talked with before the others arrived at his apartment, adds that in addition to restoring for the past eighteen months, he has convinced several friends not to circumcise their babies.

A good-looking, boy-next-door type, wearing a business suit with his tie removed, stands up to speak.

“My name is Adam,” he says. “I was fifteen when I first heard Howard Stern screaming on the radio that circumcision is mutilation. For some reason it just really hit home with me. I was deeply affected by it, very angry that it existed. Here I am walking around with a scar on my penis, growing up in this world where you’d think that bodily rights are the first thing that come with being alive.

“I started restoring in high school, using T-tape,” Adam goes on. “I bought a DTR two years ago.”

At this point, Daniel pulls his DTR out to show the group. It looks like some kind of S & M pain-inducing mechanism, with a conical shape, plastic head, and some tubes sticking out of it.

“I have about another year to go before I’m finished,” Adam says. “Right now, when I’m flaccid, the skin can probably halfway cover the glans. The most annoying thing about restoring is it’s like somebody is pinching your skin all day long. You’re constantly aware of it.”

It now dawns on me that many of these men may right now have these complex devices on underneath their pants, attached to their penises. Bizarre. Painful. Well, relatively, compared to the act of circumcision, I presume.

O’Neill displays his restoring equipment, including: silicone adhesive, adhesive remover, a Dual-tension Restorer adapted with a balloon to induce tension through inflation, and “Manhoods”—socks to wear over the penis when not actively restoring (Photos by Emon Hassan)

“I only tell girlfriends who are girlfriends for a long time,” says Adam. “Random hookups, I never tell. I just pull the gripper piece on and off my penis.”

After a continuous round of questioning, Daniel points out that it’s time for me to go, so that the members can interact freely, without a member of the press present. I have no idea if that half of the meeting includes displaying restoration progress for the group, or just continuing discussion as it was while I was there.

But my overall takeaway from NORM is that these guys are pretty darn normal.

*   *   *

When I emerged from the NORM meeting, I immediately called my dad to ask him about my bris, an event that I knew took place nearly three decades ago with some fanfare, but one that we’ve never properly discussed. All my dad muttered was, “Traumatic. Traumatic. It was completely traumatic. Some guy just picks up your son and…” He couldn’t finish the sentence but I imagine my eight-day-old self being clamped and sliced by some Jewish Gordon Ramsey.

The writer Joel Stein, who has been a career and life mentor to me for more than three years, penned a TIME Magazine column in 2009 about whether or not to circumcise his forthcoming son. “All I knew was that this is clearly not a decision I should be making for another human being,” wrote Stein. “What school he attends, what he eats, which bouncy seat he should bounce in—sure. Whether to alter your genitals for aesthetic reasons is a question meant for your mid-twenties at Burning Man.”

Stein’s wife, however, felt differently, primarily for aesthetic reasons. He said, “My casual conversations with a range of people show a widespread aesthetic preference for circumcised penises over those that are au natural.”

Hoodies just aren’t ever fashionable it seems!

Stein continued: “I started asking every medical professional, woman and gay man what kind of penis they preferred, which, to my shock, got me a lot of dinner invitations. Though there seemed to be a slight aesthetic preference for not wearing a hat and a slight functional preference for keeping one on, no one had a really good argument for giving your baby plastic surgery. A pediatrician told me the sole reason he circumcised his son was so that the kid looked like him. If my son looks at my penis and the biggest difference he notices is foreskin, I have far more serious problems. Plus, if I wanted my son to look like me, I wouldn’t have worked so hard to marry someone better-looking than I am.”

I asked Stein—who ultimately consented to having his son circumcised—how he feels about the growing intactivist movement. “I think it’s a smart movement,” Stein told me. “I would have been happier not circumcising my son if we lived in a demographic that also didn’t circumcise. It does seem barbaric and probably cuts down on pleasure. But those STD studies are pretty convincing and that ultimately put me over the edge.”

“A lot more women and gay guys in our demo don’t dig the uncut,” he continued. “My son needs as many advantages as he can get if he’s anything like me. So, no. No change in thoughts. I will say that the surgery seemed to cause less pain than I would have imagined. I think lots of things are painful that first week. Like crapping.”

The one thing I have concluded for certain is that, whether beneficial or not, the circumcision process is unnatural, peculiar, and most certainly a painful intrusion—and one that is performed largely on newborns who have not requested any such procedure

But should I ever be put in Stein’s situation, I’ll have to seriously consider what I should do. I’m no card-carrying intactivist and I don’t think I’ll be restoring any time soon, because, knock on wood, my sexual experiences have been pleasure-full enough. But just because I won’t be strapping on a DTR, doesn’t mean I won’t wonder—or even empathize, in some weird way. It’s now like I’ll always have a severe case of FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out), a term my friend Miko uses when she can’t make it to two events that are happening simultaneously, about what my life would have been like if I hadn’t been snipped.

This piece originally appeared on Narrative.ly and was syndicated by The Huffington Post and Salon.

Guy Fieri Times Square Restaurant Review: Here Is The Grade I Give It After I Tried It Myself

Guy Fieri Times Square Restaurant Review Here Is The Grade I Give It After I Tried It Myself

After reading Pete Wells’ marvelously entertaining New York Times review of Guy Fieri’s Times Square restaurant, the eponymously named Guy’s American Kitchen and Bar, I wanted to experience the place myself, simply to judge whether Wells was too harsh, or whether this dining experience was truly as poor as Wells claimed.

So I launched a campaign early this week to convince my five-person team at work to join me at Guy’s for a Friday lunch to remember. Much like my pre-Sandy obliviousness to the practice of folks who traffic in disaster porn, I was ignorant that ironic dining was already a hipster pastime. But an ironic dining outing, much like wearing tight pants when cycling long distances, is a hipster concession that we all must make for the good of mankind.

Our motley, open-minded crew (all dudes, as it happens) made the three-block trip to Manhattan’s armpit, better known as Times Square. Mind you, when I worked for MTV in Times Square, I had daily panic attacks that I’d die by terror or tourist trampling on my route between the subway and the office, yet neither situation came to fruition, and this was just my neurotic self at work. Typically, I painstakingly try to avoid going from my Bryant Park office those couple of northwestern blocks, unless there’s a Tony Award-winning Broadway show being performed, or if there is no other possible way for me to get to some Hell’s Kitchen destination. Also of note: Other than a trip to the Olive Garden 10 years ago when I was in high school, I have proudly avoided all Times Square restaurants. (Restaurant Row on 46th is as close as I’ll get to the area, or Shake Shack on 8th Avenue when some lowbrow accomplishment must be celebrated.)

Unfortunately, as in wine tasting, the nose goes a long way when delivering initial impressions. And the foyer to Guy’s smelled pungently like some type of food-based staleness. This wasn’t a false sense for those looking to criticize. It was very real. As real as the pigeon shit that nailed me last week. All of us prayed that it wouldn’t be our individual choice of food that would give off this odor. With that, we ignored the kitschy gift shop (trying to use the word kitsch only once in this article is an accomplishment!), and 30 seconds after our 11:45 a.m. arrival, we were promptly seated.

Choosing iced tea to drink put me in a bit of a quandary. This was because it was served neat (without ice), though there was a lemon. That said, the drink, which would more appropriately be recognized as “room temperature tea,” was served unsweetened, which was a pleasant surprise from a restaurateur whose sole purpose in life appears to be to make me die younger. (Tasting note: Interestingly, the tap water did come with ice.)

For starters, I tried the $14.50 sashimi tacos with raw ahi tuna, mango jicama salsa, wasabi, and sweet soy. What the four mini tacos lacked in size, they made up for in crispiness. That said, their insides were heavy on the salsa, ultra-light on the tuna, and heavy on sweet soy (which might as well be known as teriyaki or hoisin!).

Faring better were the nachos that Wells skewered (no pun intended) by writing, “How did nachos, one of the hardest dishes in the American canon to mess up, turn out so deeply unlovable? Why augment tortilla chips with fried lasagna noodles that taste like nothing except oil?” In fact, our group shared and universally loved these nachos. My only criticism was that the meat on them tasted a little funky, perhaps like the “cold gray clots of ground turkey” that Wells recalled. However, as a most-of-the-time pescetarian, I’m not in the best position to judge.

Regarding the calamari, Wells wrote, “How, for example, did Rhode Island’s supremely unhealthy and awesomely good fried calamari — dressed with garlic butter and pickled hot peppers — end up in your restaurant as a plate of pale, unsalted squid rings next to a dish of sweet mayonnaise with a distant rumor of spice?”

My colleagues described the squid, in Zagatarian terms, as “OK,” and “it’s hard to mess up fried food” but it “didn’t really have any flavor.” So perhaps, again, Wells’ critique was warranted.

Onward to the entrees! While there isn’t much diet-friendly fare on the menu, I ordered the shrimp, with caramelized red onions, bell peppers, green apples, and crispy noodles topped with “Guy’s signature sangria glaze.” Yes, the shrimp were sweet. Yes, the jumbo shrimp were set atop a mound of rice (which was, oddly enough never mentioned in the food’s description). But perhaps these shrimp were too sweet. And it’s not worth $24.95, when a similar dish could be purchased at a run-of-the-mill Mexican or Chinese restaurant for half the price. But again, this seems to be the de facto Times Square tourist tax at work.

Our group’s vegetarian-in-chief went for the whole grain penne with fresh mozzerella, cremini mushrooms, onions, and a garlic cream sauce. Though he’s too polite to grumble publicly, he told me upon return to the office that he “feels sick,” citing that the entree, awash in its cream sauce, was horrid.

The pulled pork trio (three sliders, with bacon and coleslaw on top), paired with fries and fried onions didn’t fair much better. Our tester, a notable Bushwickian with a sophisticated palate, found them unmemorably mediocre. The same went for the “Big Dipper,” a steak sandwich, that is meant to be dipped in a watery “beef jus” gravy.

Now, when my hungriest colleague ordered the $31.50 steak diane, I knew he would have high expectations, as this is the most expensive menu item. Though it was served medium-rare as promised, the steak was smothered in the “brandy pan sauce” intended to accompany it. The sauce to steak ratio was approximately 3:1, making for a calorie-laden experience that was quite off-putting to my somewhat-health-conscious colleague.

We didn’t stick around for dessert.

While Wells discusses some ignorance, for us, the staff was nothing other than incredibly kind and helpful throughout. (A close friend of mine is the GM of another Times Square restaurant, and he always complains about how difficult it is to attract and retain decent staff … most of whom are actor types who are running off to auditions before, after, and occasionally during shifts.)

Regardless of how Fieri tries to position it, Guy’s is certainly a member of the TGI Fridays-Chili’s-Applebees-Ruby Tuesday casual dining family, and one shouldn’t be expecting Le Bernadin when walking into a place that has plastic American flags of the Betsy Ross variety, cans of cheap beer, and cast-iron moose heads lining the walls. But was Wells’ review over the top? In some ways he was fair, yet in other ways he was brutal. But it appears that Guy’s is already making changes: A well-dressed restaurant-consultant type did ask us some questions about our meal after we finished (and then took it upon himself to refill our untended-to empty beverages).

At the end of the meal, perhaps because of the five pounds I put on, I forgot my bag under the table. But I scarcely made it to the door before a kind busboy returned it to me, avoiding a potential disaster. That kind of attention to detail is appreciated, and once the chefs get their acts together, Guy’s will become the middle-grade American restaurant it is destined to be.

29 Things I Learned in the Aftermath of Hurricane Sandy

29 Things I Learned in the Aftermath of Hurricane Sandy

As anyone who’s been following me on Twitter or is a Facebook friend knows, I’ve been quite obsessive in trying to coordinate relief efforts post-Sandy. I’ve now been to many of the most affected areas of New York, and I know that recovery will take years. In this list, I mix the funny with the serious, hoping that we can laugh and learn.

1. New York State Troopers need a fashion makeover, ASAP.

2. LIPA is the worst power company on the face of planet earth!

3. Hurricanes don’t discriminate between rich and poor.

4. There is no shortage of bottled water donations to Sandy victims.

5. Your and you’re will always be difficult … (especially when trying to stop potential looters!)

6. People have shotguns on my sister’s street, and are ready to defend themselves.

7. People who helped others for many years can find themselves in need.

8. People keep a boatload of junk in their basements.

9. A petition can be an extremely effective tool for change and media will take note! (Heck yes, we stopped the marathon!)

10. Minimalism should always be in vogue, because nobody needs so much stuff.

11. Some people will profit from disasters, but it’s okay, because it’s necessary.

12. Don’t take your favorite local brewery for granted! (We’ll get you back on your feet, Barrier.)

13. When there is no power, communication goes old school. (I spent time distributing flyers around Long Island with the latest information, and at times, when there was no paper, people even had to act, essentially, as town criers.)

14. You sometimes need to turn into a press conference into an angry rally to get stuff done. (And for this, I am proud of the citizens of Oceanside, my home town.)

15. People are generally good except for the 0.1% who are absolute scumbags. (People have become known as “regulars” at donation sites, as they’re clearly hoarders who are stocking up based on the goodwill of others.)

16. If politicians try to place sole blame for the lack of response post-disaster on a power company, they should be booted from office in their next election (or sooner!).

17. You don’t feel the pain when you’re not in an affected area. (When I’ve been at work in Manhattan, I would never know that 10 miles away there are people who are desperate.)

18. Nor’Easters suck, and so does that mid-word apostraphe.

19. Rebuilding should be strong and take advantage of technology.

20. We need oysters to protect us from the next big storm.

21. Hopefully evacuation orders will be taken seriously in future storms.

22. Zipping around Manhattan on a bicycle out of necessity isn’t as scary as it would seem.

23. There are so many individuals who have gone above and beyond their call of duty, who will never get the recognition that they deserve. (The folks who take care of my grandma, for one.)

24. Suburban areas that are incorporated as villages or cities face an easier time recovering from the storm because they have government and emergency officials on staff. (My hometown, Oceanside, only has a volunteer fire department, a school board, and a library to absorb all of the administrative efforts associated with what will surely be a long relief process.)

25. Tragedies do ignite a strong sense of community that would not exist otherwise.

26. The Occupy Movement has been able to re-brand itself as a force for tangible social good with Occupy Sandy.

27. Don’t go swimming around here for a while.

28. Lydia Callis, NYC Mayor Bloomberg’s interpreter, deserves a Tony Award.

29. The Bureau of Indian Affairs is here to help (even though their name is un-PC).

NYC Marathon Cancelled: Why We Had to Protest the Bloomberg Decision to Hold the Race

When I first heard the news that Mayor Bloomberg was planning not to cancel the New York City Marathon, I was completely shocked. When I learned that 40,000 hotel rooms that could be used to house storm victims were allocated for out-of-town runners, I was more than shocked. When I learned that generators would be used for the race and medical staff provided for the runners, as people and thousands of locals businesses are still without power in all of downtown Manhattan, and residents of Staten Island are stuck without shelter, food, and other basic necessities, I was overcome with a disgust that I cannot ever remember feeling.

When thousands of police officers are used to block roads (of course, at overtime rates, shattering the economic benefits of the race argument), and the only methods of transportation from outer boroughs are sealed off completely, it is mortifying that a public health hazard is taking a back seat to a recreational event. People will die because they cannot reach hospitals during this race. Mayor Bloomberg, along with his advisers and the sponsors of the race, will have blood on their hands.

I fear that Mayor Bloomberg’s government has become an authoritarian force that is not acting in the people’s best interests. When government steps on the will of the people, in this case to benefit the few at the expense of the many, it is the job of the citizen in a democracy to stand up and do something. So I created a StopTheMarathon page and a petition (for all of you to sign and spread, my dear fellow millennials!) encouraging the mayor to rethink his poor decision.

(Should the mayor proceed, we should form a human chain to prevent the marathon from being run, but that’s only a last resort if the mayor and his cronies don’t change their decision immediately.)

Supporters of continuing the marathon have cited the philanthropic efforts that are underway to raise money for victims of Hurricane Sandy. It’s quite clear that $500,000 coming from ING (the race’s sponsor) and the rebranding of the marathon as the “Race to Recover” is just corporate social responsibility nonsense which fails to correct a poor decision. ING should cut their losses. But we know why they’re doing it: ING, along with real estate developer Jack Rudin, who donated $1.1 million to the recovery efforts in the name of the race, will happily be claiming their tax write-offs for their philanthropy in a couple of months.

I’m not saying that they should cancel the 2012 marathon forever. But this is the the worst week ever to run it. If the city waited a mere two weeks, the event would have greater integrity, be more safe, and be less damaging to the city.

Of course, Michael Bloomberg lives in a bubble. If you were a multi-millionaire mayor of a major city, you would too.

A large part of New York City is still without power. People are lacking food and water and other necessities. It is a stark reality that critical New York City resources will have to be diverted to permit the marathon to be run. In what rational world can we justify benefiting 40,000 individuals as millions suffer? Imagine if instead we put all of the runners to work helping storm victims rebuild their lives.

In 1980, the United States boycotted the Olympic Games in Moscow, Russia, because we stood up for what we believed in. Would we have held a marathon less than a week after 9/11? Would we have held a marathon less than a week after Hurricane Katrina? Of course, the answers to the above questions are no and no.

New York will always be a tourist hub. Yet it is unthinkable that there are millions of people without power, and thousands of businesses that are currently closed while a small number of people take part in a recreational activity. Citizens must band together to prevent this marathon from being run. We have 48 hours to make our cause known to the world!

Hurricane Sandy Damage: Long Island Suffering Without Aid, Local Leadership to Blame

We’ve all seen pictures and video of President Obama and New Jersey’s Governor Chris Christie putting partisanship aside just days before the 2012 elections. While New Jersey has been devastated, the South Shore of Long Island, where I grew up, has been hit just as hard. (Yesterday, I started a petition to get President Obama to visit our devastation too.)

However, because of inept political leadership on Long Island, and an inability to make our problems known to the outside world, Long Island is still suffering. Just this morning, I started to read reports of looting as desperation sets in. Supermarkets are empty, gas lines are endless, and fear is running rampant. What does Long Island’s political leadership do? They host Halloween parties. Nassau County executive, Ed Mangano, went to a Halloween Party and then, four hours later, issued a Public Health Warning.

We already knew that Long Island’s Republican leadership is an old boys club with a mafia-like mentality. If Long Island dares to re-elect a person like Ed Mangano after this, then the consequences are only the fault of its electorate. The Nassau County GOP’s website hasn’t been redesigned since 1998 from the looks of it, despite being one of the most affluent counties in America. Instead of supporting a young, progressive, well-qualified, moderate Republican (Frank Scaturro), the party chose to support Francis Becker, a man with few ideas in my district’s Congressional race, just because he’s part of the establishment.

After Irene, Long Island was far from unscathed. Thus, this time around, Long Island officials should have been more prepared. Although I was across the Atlantic during Irene, and in Brooklyn for Sandy, from reading friends’ Facebook status updates it became clear that the police and local fire departments have been working around-the-clock. For that, I and the citizens of Long Island are grateful.

That being said, why has Long Island been overlooked by the media? Why has there been so much suffering with so little information? Where is the National Guard? Where are the water pumps? Where are the generators? Where is the food? Where is the water? Where are the medical supplies?

Newsday, the Long Island newspaper, is to blame as well. To fully disclose— I’ve freelanced for them in the past, but don’t expect to be doing so any time soon.) While the New York Times lifted their paywall during and after Sandy to keep citizens up-to-date, Newsday (while not of the same stature as the Times) should have done the same, because it is a responsibility of the media to keep citizens up to date. They still could have made money from ads even without the paywall.

In short, Long Island was ill-prepared for this mess. Apparently not enough precautions were taken. In the aftermath of Sandy, efforts have fallen flat to help people. It’s not too late, but there must be leadership. Who is up for the task?

How 21% of Americans Will Hold Election 2012 Hostage to Partisan Tools and Fools

Election Day is three weeks away, but that doesn’t mean much to me, because I’m not voting. I’ll go into work, read PolicyMic on my computer, check some exit polls in the early afternoon, and hopefully not encounter any radical offshoots of the New Black Panther Movement. It will be business as usual. That’s because I’m a member of the 79%, and until the Electoral College is abolished, my vote, as a resident of New York state, will be absolutely meaningless. The Electoral College has already awarded three elections to losers of the popular vote (not to mention that the “electors” are a bunch of partisan tools and fools).

The top 38.5 million Americans who live in “swing states” are the 12.1%. Their votes matter most, and therefore they get the best promises and treatment from presidential candidates. The people who reside in Florida (19.05 million), Ohio (11.54 million), and Virginia (8.10 million) are this lucky 12.1%. (Of course, the above figures recognize that not all eligible voters vote, and that ineligible residents, like children, are included in these statistics.) Like it or not, this year, these folks are the cream of the crop.

Then, just below them are 27.6 million people, our second, or “business” class of citizenry, the fine people who live in New Hampshire (1.32 million), Nevada (2.72 million), Colorado (5.17 million), Iowa (3.06 million), Wisconsin (5.71 million), and North Carolina (9.66 million). These people represent 8.8% of the population, and their votes, collectively, could effect the outcome of the election.

This above population represents 21% of America. The rest of us, we are the 79%. Let’s put that number out there. Let’s make it as ubiquitous as the 1% and the 99% and the 47%!

We are the 79%. We are useless. We are slaves to the 21%. The only way that we can vote, paradoxically, is with our money, by donating it to our limited choice presidential candidates and political parties and PACs and other quasi-shady organizations who can then bombard these 21% with enough media propaganda to make them see the light. (Yes, our situation could be regarded as worse worse than the 3/5 compromise. I’d take 3/5 of a vote over none!)

Sure, as a member of the 79% you can still help elect Senators, Governors, Congressmen (and women), and local officials, but that’s not the crux of why you’re proud to be an American. You want to be electing the person who comes out on top, the person who will be, for the next four years, the leader of the free world. You don’t want to be relegated to the minor leagues, yet you are. Perhaps, forever. Abolish the horribly antiquated Electoral College, and then the 79% will be free.