Mokka mit Schlag

Back in 2008 Jon Stewart rightly mocked Sarah Palin and Donald Trump for (among other things) saying they had a slice of real New York pizza at Famous Famiglia’s, a national chain suitable only for tourists and stranded airport travelers. But recently I realized that I haven’t had a slice of New York pizza better than Famiglia’s at a public restaurant for a very long time. Why?

First we need to establish what New York pizza is. It’s a single slice with Mozzarella cheese, tomato sauce, and a medium crust. You can sprinkle it with garlic, oregano, or crushed red pepper if you like, but it doesn’t come with any toppings, and it’s sold by the slice, not the pie. We can talk about Sicilian and calzones too, but for now let’s stick to the basics. A New York slice is a hot, take out food for a very reasonable amount of money that you can eat while walking down a Brooklyn street, not an entire pie served at a fine dining restaurant. You can find it in every neighborhood in the city, from Tottenville to Bedford Park. And for the last some-odd years this classic style of pizza has roundly sucked.

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Bumble, Prospect Park’s Famous White Squirrel

A belated announcement of a milestone in my home county. On July 20, 2024 at Plumb Beach, Brown Pelican was my 300th species for Kings County. I saw this pair on a Brooklyn Bird Club field trip led by Peter Dorosh.

The count does not include escapees and hybrids. It does include introduced and established species like Monk Parakeet, Mute Swan, and the ubiquitous Rock Pigeon.

I initially thought this was #299, but I didn’t realize I was not counting a Thick-Billed Murre I had seen in Dead Horse Bay back in 2005 before I started keeping regular eBird lists.
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I’ve had a little more time for local birding this year. I actually managed to get my sixth (and final expected) woodpecker for Brooklyn on February 8, a Red-headed Woodpecker that has set up housekeeping in Greenwood Cemetery:

This is months earlier than I’ve traditionally done it, but thanks to global heating and the fossil fuel industry, Northern Flickers and Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers are now spending the winter here. Red-bellied Woodpecker is another traditionally southern species, especially in the winter, that moved northward with rising temperatures decades ago. Downy and Hairy are the only two that should be around right now. I even heard a repeated double tap in Prospect Park today and looked around because, well, you never know.
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I’m trialing On1 PhotoRaw 2025 as a possible non-subscription Lightroom replacement, but it’s not looking good. PhotoRaw isn’t as hideously clunky as Canon Digital Photo Professional, but it’s still far behind the state of the art. It has security issues, has much worse file and album management compared to Lightroom, and makes a lot of UI mistakes we should have put aside 40 years ago. Medium gray text on dark gray background? Seems On1 really doesn’t want people to read the labels, do they?
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