Via commentor NotMax; once he’d violated my eyeballs with the Washington Post link, I had to try and dilute the horror by sharing it with you all. Per Roberto A. Ferdman, “The most controversial bagel in Brooklyn”;
It’s mid-afternoon, but the line still spills out the front door, snaking around the block, eating up the better part of the sidewalk, as it has since early that morning. There are young couples, clinging to each other in the cold. Mothers, standing patiently next to their anxious children. There are teenage girls, chatting in packs. And there are SLR cameras — so many SLR cameras.
“What are you all waiting for?” a passerby who lives in the neighborhood asks as she plucks an earphone out from one of her ears. She is looking at the crowd with amazement. “I see this line every day. It isn’t just for bagels, is it?”
“It’s the line for rainbow bagels!” a little girl yells…
The rainbow bagel, the brainchild of self-proclaimed “world premier bagel artist” Scott Rossillo, who has been making the brightly hued treat for almost two decades, is having a moment that many people in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, could do without.
For years, Williamsburg was the epicenter of cool for a specific kind of person. A thriving artist population, a liberal bend and a general disdain for popular culture birthed a haven for counterculturalism, a capital of hipsterdom that was defined, at least in part, by a high concentration of yoga studios, organic markets, vintage stores and artisanal coffee shops.
But time has transformed the neighborhood from the sort of place coveted by a select few to a destination for just about anyone visiting New York City. And that popularity hasn’t always jibed with local values. The tourism triggered a commercial flood: First came the Dunkin’ Donuts, then the Starbucks. A Whole Foods will be opening this year.
In many ways, the rise of the rainbow bagel perfectly encapsulates this tension, an unlikely but apt example of a proud neighborhood confronting the inevitable: change. The dye-infused treat, whose dough resembles Play-Doh more than it does something edible, is the antithesis of the organic-eating culture that courses through the veins of so many who live in the area.
It’s evidence of a uniquely modern form of gentrification…
It’s a good article, honestly (you should read the whole thing!) but I think it’s “uniquely modern” only insofar as it’s easier to fly in on a jet and snap a selfie than to travel by sail or animal-back to bring long stories home to your less cosmopolitan neighbors. The nuns in our high school taught us that a certain Mary from Magdala was a key figure in the New Testament because Magdala was the period equivalent of Las Vegas, an exciting resort destination for Roman bigwigs stranded in the Middle Eastern backwaters. A woman from Magdala would be used seeing the best entertainers and conjurers, the contemporary equivalent of Siegfried and Roy or David Copperfield; the support of someone so sophisticated was proof that Jesus wasn’t just another street preacher with a gift for sleight-of-hand. A few hundred years from now — assuming our species survives — no doubt there will be tourists at every aquatic gambling hall on Jupiter, sending sensograms back to their neighbors at home on the mundane rocks of the asteroid belt…
Mike in NC
We actually have two dedicated bagel shops in this little sleepy southern seaside town, because most of the people here relocated from NY and NJ. People have strong opinions about them both. Same goes with pizza places: authentic New York or not? Fuggetabotit!
Culture of Truth
Ha, ha, you brought this on yourselves, hipsters. Seriously, though, they’re all on a continuum.
Omnes Omnibus
Question: If I ask for an onion bagel with cream cheese, will i be perceived as a bad person?
Culture of Truth
Speaking of a continuum, Jupiter is named for the top Roman god, so it all works out.
Steeplejack
The low point of my day as a proofreader/pedant is when I see a howler in one of the “major” publications.
ETA: And you still get a pinhead nym when your comment is first published.
ETFA: <b> works, but <i> doesn’t. (Desktop version, Firefox, Windows 10.)
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: You’re good with that. Plain, egg, sesame, poppy, onion, garlic, salt, marble rye, pumpernickel, everything, and cinnamon and raisin are all good. Anything beyond that – sundried tomato and pesto, asiago cheese, blueberry – things like that are a shonda for the goyim!
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: I know that is is a perfectly reasonable order in a regular deli, but I wonder about the fancy new places with the rainbows and the colors?
chopper
@Adam L Silverman:
anything outside of plain, everything and maybe whole wheat are abominations. fucking cinnamon raisin? get the fuck out of here.
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: Honestly, I’ve got no real issue with the colors as a gimmick provided they don’t mess up the taste and texture. And I’m sure for kids its a real big deal.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Adam L Silverman: Just don’t have the poppy bagels before a drug test.
@Omnes Omnibus: Onion bagels are my favorite, unfortunately Costco doesn’t have them so I put sliced green onions on top of my cream cheese. Not the same, but it works.
Adam L Silverman
@chopper: everybody not as observant as you is a slacker. Everyone more observant than you is a fanatic.
Omnes Omnibus
@efgoldman: On that, I am gone.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Omnes Omnibus: I’d say more you have a kind of odd idea of tasty. Since it was suggested below that I need an adjustment to my parody detection system, I’d best not try and fail at humor.
PS – I did leave you a wee haiku below.
Adam L Silverman
@efgoldman: It resembles it. The question is what’s the taste and texture like?
Adam L Silverman
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): we’re good, in case you didn’t see my last comment on the matter.
pseudonymous in nc
Poppy, because a) tastes great; b) fucks with drug testing bullshit. I ordered a vaguely-decent poppyseed bagel with cream cheese to go the other day, took it home and added some thinly-sliced cucumber and a schmear of Marmite, and it was bloody lovely, so don’t even open your mouth to complain.
Adam L Silverman
@pseudonymous in nc: I thought for marmite its a trowel not a schmear?
Adam L Silverman
@efgoldman: Possibly. Also, re: previous thread – do I need to know something/anything about the commenter you just took behind the chemical shed? As in is action needed from someone with moderator authority?
Mike J
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Or do and keep your receipts.
Miss Bianca
@Adam L Silverman:
I surface to see what’s going on over here whilst I wrestle with a chase scene, only to find multi-color bagels. I…I do not recognize this world any longer.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Adam L Silverman: I figured we were good, but mclaren seemed to pretty much tell me to
As if you are incapable of assembling a defensive posture when required.
Adam L Silverman
@efgoldman: Okay, I’ve got the IP and will keep an eye out in the future. I figured something I hadn’t seen must have happened.
pseudonymous in nc
@Adam L Silverman: they used to print SPREAD THINLY on the jar for a reason. Now, Buzzfeed will just put up a video every six months of an American consuming a spoon of Marmite as if it were peanut butter when it is very much not.
Adam L Silverman
@pseudonymous in nc: I remember the first time a flatmate handed me a slice of toast with marmite on it. I then remember considering putting said flatmate through the window and dangling him four stories over the street. A little warning of what I was getting would have been nice. Though, overall, my flatmates that year were decent guys. All of them were members of the St. Andrews Christian Society – The God Squad. They were chuffed to have a Jewish flatmate. Like it was a sign or portent or something. And they were really decent people, not particularly pushy.
Anne Laurie
@Steeplejack:
Em-in-brackets should work, though.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@pseudonymous in nc: My first exposure to marmite was traumatic. I spent a summer on an organic farm in Atascadero, CA – before it was hip. The marmite was the best (and safest) part of the cuisine. They believed that if they ate cooked eggs they ate too much bread with them, so eggs were added to orange juice at a ratio of an egg per person, and whirled in a blender. These were at least, eggs from the farm.
Milk, which I already found unpleasant, to put it politely, was also quite fresh, and raw. We milked it ourselves from the herd of kinda raggedly dairy cows at the 80 year old guy’s farm a mile down the road. When the kind cows were last vaccinated was not shared with me.
Skimmed the cream off and refrigerated one (5 gallon) jug for drinking/cooking and the other jug was treated with yogurt culture and kept wrapped in damp warm towels (rotated for more or less) constant heat. Once properly cultured, that was refrigerated as well. No mason jars were harmed in this process.
I managed to survive the summer without contracting, salomonella, tuberculosis, brucellosis, or listeria. I will not consume raw milk unless (perhaps) at gunpoint so as not to press my luck. Eggs I’m not wound up about when I get them at market, where I see one or two of the same egg ladies.
And orange juice best not have bubbles unless it’s a Mimosa.
Steeplejack
@Anne Laurie:
Yes, it does, as seen in my sic in that comment. The point is that Alain’s “Basic HTML Tips” need to be edited to conform to what actually works. Otherwise people are going to be kvetching when they follow the instructions and they don’t work.
Does <del> work?
Deleted text.Yes, it does.
Anne Laurie
@Adam L Silverman:
I can remember, back in the early 1970s, the scandal when a Michigan bakery first introduced fragels — a raisin bagel rolled in cinnamon sugar & fried. They were quite tasty, but I was still enough of a NY snob to insist they weren’t actually bagels.
These days I feel that way about Panera’s pumpkin ‘bagels’, but then what Panera sells are only loosely bagels at best. But they’re not bad, for bread products, and the nearest Boston-chain approximation to a real bagel (Brueggers, IMO) is too far away “just” for a snack.
Steeplejack
Testing <blockquote> with cite tag:
ETA: <blockquote> with cite tag does not work.
NotMax
@Adam L. Silverman
Nix on cinnamon raisin, puh-leeze.
Neither fruit nor tree bark has any business being near bagel dough.
Pet theory is that cinnamon raisin bagels were created for little old ladies of the old money and WASP persuasion to serve sliced and quartered at teatime without having their guests be aghast at something Jewish making an appearance in the parlor.
Gretchen
@Anne Laurie: Ooh, Anne! I lived across the street from the Bagel Factory in Ann Arbor 1973-1975. The fragels were awesome. Since I was an Irish Catholic from Detroit, I had no bagel-cred to compare, but they were pretty great. I could set my clock by the 2am closing of the Village Bell and Bicycle Jim’s, when the bar patrons were turned out to the streets.
Suzanne
AZ doesn’t have good New York food. I grew up on Long Island and ate at the deli, the bagel place, and the pizza parlor all the time. We do have good pizza out here, but the bagels suck (Einstein’s and Chompie’s), and there’s only one deli. Fortunately, it’s great. I’ll probably go there for lunch this week. DeFalco’s, I loooooove you….
Suzanne
Oh, and pumpernickel bagels rock.
Peale
But time has transformed the neighborhood from the sort of place coveted by a select few…
Who moved into a Hasidic neighborhood 20 years ago. But before the wasp artists, no one lived in Williamsburg. They were like Laura Ingles Wilder, but with more weed.
divF
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
I would expect my first exposure to Marmite to be traumatic, so I think I’ll pass.
I find the whole harmonic convergence of the brightly-colored bagels, and the discussion of color background for the FP’ers leading me to other topics. So here is a suggestion for JC on a background color
(#40826D)
PIGL
@efgoldman: rosemary rock salt bagel, good aged cheddar, slice of Roma tomato. And a thin even layer of marmite. Proof that God exists and wants us to be happy. The fact that some substitute vegamite, otoh, is proof that The Other One exists and that hell is other people. Who like vegamite.
Anne Laurie
@Gretchen: Yup, but I was attending the other well-known Michigan university — Bagel Factory’s subsidiary location.
@Suzanne: I’ve never been a real fan of pumpernickel in any form (you know the probably-imaginary derivation of ‘pain por Nichel’, right?). And then many years ago I broke a front tooth on a pumpernickel-mix bagel, so I’ve avoided that variety ever since…
seaboogie
@efgoldman: Montreal bagels – just better. Skinny – big hole, just the right amount of doughy goodness for the schmear of your preference.
It’s all about the ratio of carb base to ingredients. Like an In-and-Out burger. The only ratio that works is the double double. The single is paltry and unsatisfying, and thruple patties are just wrong.
seaboogie
@seaboogie: New York bagels make me feel like I am eating my pillow. And – as I was editing my comment while still active – my user name came up as “undefined”. Truth be told, I feel like that some days.
Debbie(aussie)
@PIGL: even if I am going to hell at least you could spell it correctly, vegemite, three e’s. ?
OzarkHillbilly
To all you purists: If it tastes good, I eat it. You can all go fug yourselves.
(i have, on occasion, been known to eat things that don’t taste so good. guess i’m just not that picky)
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@Gretchen:
I lived about five blocks from there from 1980-86 through junior high and high school; on Olivia between Hill and Cambridge, next to the ATO house. By then, the Bagel Factory was a dump. The most interesting store over there was the Village Corner, a fascinating blend of crappy convenience store with punked out employees and the best wine selection in the Midwest. Strange, strange place.
raven
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: Did you go to the Hash Bash?
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@Anne Laurie:
There was a Bagel Factory in Houghton?
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@raven: No, it was pretty much dead during the period when Iived there, after the cops started cracking down in the late 70s. I’ve heard it’s picked back up, though the university cops are hard asses about it. I doubt I would have gone anyway, seeing as how I’ve never actually smoked pot.
raven
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: My buddy, Chef Ra was a fixture there. Just wondered.
Anne Laurie
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: Nice snark! (East Lansing, of course.)
Joel
Reminds me of Peace, Love, and (stale) Little Donuts.
Princess
St Viateur bagels, never Fairmont. Or is it the other way around?
Shantanu Saha
Dunkin Donut “bagels” are an abomination.
debbie
Poseurs. Get an H & H Bagels store in there for some real bagels.
Central Planning
Brueggers had green bagels for St. Patrick’s day. Let’s just say the human body does not digest or process the green dye.
LAO
@debbie: the original H & H bagels went out of business in 2012.
Amir Khalid
A pastel colour swirl is fine for a sweet dessert pastry. For a regular bagel, no.
The Golux
@efgoldman:
The first time I bit into a sesame H&H bagel ranks right up there with the first time I bit into a slice of Pepe’s white clam. Ambrosial.
Miss Bianca
@Anne Laurie: That would be the Bagel Factory, thank you. And fragels were a deadly delicious treat. I was in charge of bagel delivery for our coop, which meant voluntarily getting up at 7 am to get our bags of bagels and walk them back across campus. Hot fragels made that trek so, so worth it…
ETA: I see someone(s) beat me to it. I am soooo late to this party. ; ) Fellow Ann Arborites, no less!
Uncle Cosmo
@OzarkHillbilly: Co-sign.
Ohio Mom
The real New York bagel in all its forms is just about extinct. The small, no tiny, neighborhood bagel bakeries that were just that — places were bagels were boiled and baked, and that was the total range of activity — are no more. My earliest memories include Sunday morning walks to the local bakery with my father.
It was a little storefront with a creaky, crooked wood floor, the finish of which had worn off long ago, and a pressed tin ceiling caked with layers and layers of paint. There was a small area before the counter for customers, a row of wire baskets with hot fresh bagels, and behind that, a wall oven with a ferriswheel contraption that let the bagels bake evenly, a table where the bagel dough was rolled out, and a pot that was taller than I was, probably about three feet across, filled with briskly boiling water and bagels that danced in the convection current.
The store was steamy and smelled like yeast. A big treat was when the bakers (and they looked like the bakers in Maurice Sendak’s Night Kitchen, and all had Eastern European accents) let a preschooler in the back to see the bagels being made. Once someone let me taste raw dough and I made a face and spit it out, and they roared with laughter, startling me.
Back then, all bagels were either plain or salty (big crunchy crystals) or savory and if savory, one flavoring apiece: onion, garlic, poppy or sesame. There was no such thing as an Everything, and certainly no such thing as a raisin or other sweetly flavored variety.
Most of the new versions, from cinnamon raisin on, have their advantages, and can be enjoyed for what they are (and I eat them without complaint), but you’re talking a different species. It’s not just the flavorings, it’s also that they are big and fluffy in a way the small, chewy bagels of yesteryear weren’t.
Sign me,
Born and bred in the Bronx
Paul in KY
@Debbie(aussie): Have tried it & although I’m really good about being able to eat just about anything, I will wait until I’m on Survivor & have to eat it for money to try it again.
You Aussies are badass!!
chopper
@Ohio Mom:
if you want a real New York bagel of ages past you more often than not have to make it yourself.
I found Brooklyn flat bagels to be a reasonable substitute in the real world. as the guy at the local bagel place told me, they just flatten the fucker before boiling. higher surface to volume ratio, less doughy inside, more space for toppings. awesome for egg sandwiches. you can make em at home real easy.
TOP123
@Adam L Silverman: I draw the line at the comma after salt, with the occasional exception for pumpernickel. Cinnamon and raisin?!? Meshugga!
TOP123
@chopper: Everything is a frightening innovation. Salt must be added to your list. Otherwise, I like the cut of your jib.
chopper
@TOP123:
what the hell’s a jib?
Miss Bianca
@chopper:
This
chopper
@Miss Bianca:
eh, it was a Simpsons joke.
Miss Bianca
@chopper: oh. well. oops.
debbie
@LAO:
Now that’s a real tragedy.
Anne Laurie
@Ohio Mom: Sigh. Salt bagels are my personal favorite, but those are never available any more. The ‘everything’ seems to be its replacement… and mind you, I like most everything bagels, but they’re not the same!