welcome to aspiring upper middle class consumer goods. instead of splurging on real luxury products, which we can't quite afford (yet), we invest in daily luxury items. what do you do when you can't hire your own chef, barista, or confectioner? you just go to the local coffee shop, cupcake store, boba shop, or jamba juice. five dollars will buy you instant gratification and a taste of the good consumerist life.
if you don't know about specialty cupcake stores, you're missing out. the first one i visited was in new york. magnolia's was already a manhattan institution but an episode of sex and the city put it on blast. a few years ago, i stood for an hour in the dead of winter to get my lips around one. the verdict? overrated. it was just a mountain of (admittedly good) frosting on a hard little cake. hardly worth the wait, or the price. i prefer twinkies or ho-hos -- readily available at the 7-11.
the public doesn't agree with me however. magnolia itself has like two or three spin-offs in the city. specialty cupcake stores are springing up everywhere. at least magnolia serves all kinds of desserts along with their vaunted cupcakes; most stores just serve cupcakes, straight up.
the famous cupcake place in los angeles, sprinkles, is cupcake only. it was closed when we went there so i never got a taste. we did get to try the hot new susie cakes last week. it came at the cost of $36 for a dozen. and i thought golf balls cost a lot. the susie cake was pretty good -- "dense like antimatter" is my review -- but for three dollars apiece a birthday party for your kid's kindergarten class would set you back a bill. never has homemade sweets made more sense.
this weekend we were introduced to "individually dripped coffee." it's just regular coffee but each big cup is filtered individually. we walked by this alley with a grip of people waiting outside and upon investigation, it turned out to be a hole in the wall coffee joint. as you'd imagine, waiting for individual cups of coffee to be filtered can make for quite a bit of standing around. it took us twenty minutes to get three cups of joe. the coffee was strong and quite tasty but not really worth the effort. it's funny how starbucks used to be the premium coffee and now everyone is willing to stand in line anywhere else just to get "extra"-premium coffee.
i was amused but not overly impressed with the coffee experience. but then we were talking to some other friends on vacation in SF and it turns out they had just had the same coffee at the farmer's market that morning. now we were in the know and cool. i certainly felt cool when ameer saw this picture and then mentioned that he used to walk from work just to get this precise brand of coffee.
it's retarded but these things matter; even if they cost a grip. i wouldn't give up my boba habit for anything and a few disposable dollars here and there for a steady supply of coffee, boba, cupcakes, and jamba juice seems like a small price to pay for a bit of sunshine in your day. think about all those struggling low income folk who can't even afford a three dollar cupcake!
for my money however, i'd rather be addicted to thirty-five cent diddy riese and buck fifty cuban corn. these items are priced as treats, not as exorbitant mini-meals.
ps - in the famous jack rabbit slim's scene from pulp fiction referenced by the post title, "martin and lewis or amos and andy" refers to the flavor of the shake - vanilla or chocolate. "martin and lewis" refers to white comedians dean martin and jerry lewis while "amos and andy" refers to the african-american hosted radio show. did you get that? i sure didn't.
there's some real flavor combinations we could come up with here. kimora lee, tiger woods, etc.
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