10.02.07

The Yellow Ones Don’t Stop

Posted in Harlem, Manhattan, Soul Food at 9:50 am by Administrator

My relationship with Columbia University has been long and rocky. When I was first applying to colleges in the fall of 1995, I happened to rent both Midnight Cowboy and Taxi Driver for the first time. After watching them back to back, I felt dark and sticky, and all I knew was that I would go to school anywhere in America EXCEPT New York City.

Then I took a year off between high school and college during which I got over my fear (probably because I witnessed totally strangers embracing each other in the streets on tv after the Yankees won the 1996 World Series). So I applied to Columbia. And I got rejected.

After a semester down at NYU during which I endured one too many “fruit bowls” (my naked roommate loved surprising me when I came out of the shower – unbespectacled, dripping wet, at my most vulnerable – by jumping up and down bent over at the waist displaying his melons, apples, and banana), I decided Columbia might be a more cerebral environment. I applied on transfer, and I got ACCEPTED. But by the second semester I had settled into my new dorm where I shared a wall with an addictive diner called The Kiev and a room with slightly less naked roommates. So I rejected Columbia.

Three years ago I applied for graduate school at Columbia, and they rejected me again. The next year I applied for a different graduate program, and they accepted me. But then I deferred from them for a year so I could pursue my more immediate interests in eating and driving. I told you: the relationship has been rocky. It’s been almost as though Columbia has been Tommy Lee and I’ve been Pamela. No, it’s been exactly like that.

But there came a time in my life not too long ago when I realized I didn’t want to drive a yellow cab forever. An advanced degree might lift me out of that working class that I pushed my way into after college. And so, a month ago, more than 11 years after I first applied, I started school at Columbia.

No worries though. I told them that I am Chief Executive Officer, President, and also a member of Famous Fat Dave Industries so they let me into their executive program. I only have to go on Saturdays, and I have the rest of the week to occasionally drive the cab or conduct my five borough eating tours (operators standing by at www.FamousFatDave.com) I’m still living the dream.

I spent a good deal of the summer asking fares and customers where they eat in Morningside Heights, because, I admit, the Columbia area is a black hole in my map of good eats in NYC. I often take my tours through there on our way to Harlem to show them the famous Tom’s Restaurant facade of Seinfeld fame. And Koronet Pizza’s traffic sign sized slices have been known to impress the occasional drunk Midnight Munchies Tour customer. But I still don’t know where to eat when I’m at school, and I want something delicious.

Last Monday, on our way to see Showtime At The Apollo (it’d been my dream to be one of the white guys in the front row who gets made fun for driving like a white guy for as long as it’d been my dream to go to Columbia), my cousin Aaron, my cousin Jeremy, and his roommate Mike stopped at the campus gates to see what all the fuss was about with Ahmadinejad speaking. Would it be a perversion of freedom of speech, providing a platform to hatemongering? Or would it be a glimpse into the Iranian point of view and an open debate?

Either way, we felt like it might be an historic moment, like that time a bunch of the Weathermen from Columbia accidentally blew themselves up before class one day in the 60s. Except this time, we’d hear from a guy who pays for people to blow themselves up on purpose.

A couple hours before the speech, the scene was . . . festive? The Columbia kids had plastered the campus with flyers. One flyer had a picture of Ahmadinejad’s smirking punum with the caption, “Putting the Purr In Persian.” Another had his manscaped mug subscripted simply with “Bringing Sexy Back.” My favorite was this one (which I just had to have for myself, so I slyly tore it down and then posed for Mike’s camera with it). I think it cut through all the messy history and politics and religion clouding the issue and got right to the crux of the matter:

I had to leave my boys behind to see what was going down on campus because access was restricted, and when I came back I felt a little sad that I’d been missing out on the protest outside the gates. We’d come to protest the protesters, and it seemed like we were the only ones who thought the man should be allowed to speak.

But when I got back through the gate I found that Jeremy and Mike were getting along with the flag waving, New York Post reading, God fearing Americans who’d gathered to unwelcome the Hitler of Iran:

We spoke with a reporter from the Daily Telegraph (he assured me it was less of a tabloid than The New York Post, the inflamatory paper up on the sign in the picture above). We spoke for a while, and the main thrust of my conversation with the reporter was that I wish I were able to attend the forum so I could ask Ahmadinejad what he really thought of Brittany’s performance at the VMAs – I bet you he’d say he thought it was great he’s such a contrarian. Instead the quote made me sound like a serious and reasonable person. I also like that he dubbed me a “master student” which I most certainly am not (click here and read the whole story including Famous Fat Dave’s thoughts on the controversy because I know you care).

I later found out that President Bollinger, who “disrespected” America by allowing Ahmadinejad to speak and then “disrespected” Ahmadinejad by calling him a petty and cruel dictator, made his career as a first amendment scholar. So you can argue against Bollinger allowing him to speak, but you’d probably lose the argument if it’s on the grounds that this sort of thing shouldn’t be protected under free speech. If you start going down that road, you might realize that you just don’t agree with the first amendment.

Once this guy got up on his soap box about how Harlem is facing it’s own genocide and it’s called gentrification (people were REALLY throwing the word genocide around that day at Columbia), we remembered why we were really uptown.

Leaving the hullabaloo behind us, we walked down onto 125th. Now we were in my locale. I felt much more at home. The options for amazing food were boundless. After a brief stop at Manna’s for some devilled eggs, mac n cheese, and banana nilla wafer pudding, we were ready for Showtime.

We could have stayed at the campus to listen to the speech. But we would have had to just sit there and take it. At the Apollo, they understand free speech. And they know it works both ways. Anyone can get on stage , no matter how outrageous, during the Amatuer Night portion of the taping (so long as they rub the stump as they come out).

But when the crowd doesn’t like someone, they stand up at the their seats and in the aisles, wave BOTH hands in the air from side to side, index fingers extended, and the performer gets swept off the stage by a tap dancing guy wearing a top hat and white tails. I heard that Ahmadinejad seemed taken aback by the rude reception he got down on 116th Street. But from my vantage point on 125th Street, it was clear that he had no idea how good he had it.

Visit www.famousfatdave.com for food tourism at its most brazenly provocative

Manna’s, 125th And Frederick Douglas, Harlem, Manhattan

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