my hipster hood

for my birthday, alicia's mom gave me this. i find it kind of funny because it really sums up our neighborhood, which though i still couldn't give you the definition of what one is in writing, is full of hipsters. come out with us and i'll point to a street corner and there you'll see them, kicking it in front of the atm or smoking on the curb. the copy on the backcover reads, "street food, street art, and street style: creative recipes for the graffiti generation."

i love this. the book itself is broken into five subcatergories, or cities. think long and hard about hip, urban cities on a global scale and what do you get? according to king adz, the book's editor and author, it's new york; it's paris; it's berlin and amsterdam and london. i can't agree or disagree since i've only been to the apple, but the book exudes enough confidence that i'm ready to jump in for the journey and say, yeah, that sounds about right.

here's an excerpt:

"this is for everyone. urban cookery (street food) is the most accesible form of cooking there is. just as street art has brought the beauty of art into the lives of the masses, street food is all about making diverse and tasty food available to all, using simple recipes that are quick and easy to follow. there is no mystery, no special secret."

new york street food recipes include chili con carne, spaghetti and meatballs, and a cheeseburger. which is funny because you say street food and i think, hands! but good luck with noshing down on that pasta and chili with your hands, right? and this is where i have a problem with the book. the food, on the whole, truly isn't street food. it's food that the street people eat, which i think is the whole point of the book, but is delivered indirectly, and thus is lost. it's in the subtext of it all—never are the recipes more than pedestrian—which, for me, is okay if you can figure it out, but is unnecessary work for the reader to have to do. but the food, again, nothing revolutionary, just familiar and tasty, and all the while spliced with interviews featuring skaters and artists, the pulse of the urban beat, which is where the book really excels.

what intrigues me most about the book is the door it opens for further thought. a dish like biryani, featured in paris, how does it differ from borough to city borough? and why? at what point did that one dish in its conception change, and then change again, and then pass down from family to family, from area to area, so many thousands of times—and is biryani at café bharath truly so different from one at a cafe on the other side of the seine?