I Have a Bagel:

New York, NY - Peter - Friday, July 12th, 2002 : goo

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I have a bagel thats so good that I almost feel blasphemous sitting here stuffing it into my coffeed-up-and-second-hand-smoke-y mouth.

I moved into my apartment in the late fall, immediately greeted with wintery weather and the sorts of dark mornings in which you run to the train-station, eyes fixed strictly to the ground to avoid frozen dog-poop amidst the patchy gray slush and sandy Gotham ice.

I guess this is why I hadn't noticed the looming, unlit sign of Absolute Bagels until recently. Or maybe its the fact that my springishly-summer commute is sunny, warm, and filled with those stomach rumblings that are usually squelched by the darty winter stabs of wind that gallop up the Hudson Valley like ten-thousand wheezing Old Man Winters. But now, I know who's side of the street I'll walk on if they ever beef with Columbia Bagels...

Remember in elementary school when you learn that little tidbit about your heart being roughly the size of your fist, give or take? This bagel dwarfs my otherwise large balled-up hand. It is also much tastier, sitting here steaming, all covered in onion bits, poppyseeds, sesame, a dash of caraway, garlic shavings and tiny chunks of sea-salt that go clunk! when they fall on my desk after taking a bite.

Luckily, the Fates have allocated a perfectly timed moment between my waking and when my train comes, a moment where, like clockwork, the ovens of Absolute steamily open, and hundreds of fiendishly parboiled-then-baked-to-perfection loops of dough are sorted by shifty hands between the various bready bins.

Too freshly hot to hold a dollop of tofutti without it oozing out on the train, but better plain anyhow, this 60-cent gem of New York cookery has become a faithful part of my morning waking routine, as it will probably stay, even when something better to occupy my morning moments comes along. This starchy sucker is worth waking up earlier for.

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