BlogDay 2008: Eating in the City

I moved to New York earlier this month to start grad school at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs. I've been neglecting most things online during the process of packing/traveling/unpacking/buying lots of stuff that I already own but that didn't make the ruthless weight and space requirements for the move and was consequently left in Kansas.

I've settled in to my new home, made it through the first week of orientation (including 14 hours of the euphemistically titled "Math Camp") and procured Internet access. Now that I'm online again, I realize it's BlogDay 2008.

Blog Day 2008Hash at White African posted a list of 5 great African blogs, which I wholly recommend that you check out (disclosure: one of them is Jackfruity). I'm going to take a geographically minded cue and, in honor of my new home, share a handful of NYC blogs.

Whenever I travel (or move), I try to check out a few local blogs before I go. I get a more well-rounded sense of what's happening in a particular place than I do from following local news media, and I like to see what the hot blog topics are. In New York, one of the hottest topics is food. So, showcasing the city's array of amazing treats, here are my top five NYC food blogs (in no particular order):


Midtown Lunch is what I read when I pretend I am a successful working New Yorker instead of a woefully indebted graduate student. It's cheap and dirty and has a list of food types down the righthand side that includes Peruvian, Scandinavian and Filipino — options I didn't even know I had.


The Amateur Gourmet makes me want to travel to boroughs afar for Senegalese coffee and follow the Dessert Truck all over town. This article on lox had me fascinated. I read it twice and have planned a trip to the Lower East Side to sample the twelve different kinds available at Russ & Daughters. Mmmm, lox.


Serious Eats is big on food events like street fairs and falafel eating contests: cheap foodie fun for those of us who can't afford $300 truffle dinners in Midtown.

The City Sweet Tooth is a blog by comic artist Abby Denson. She reviews New York's best desserts in comic form,
like this neon masterpiece about gelato and this one about ice cream and dragons. So far she's covered mostly frozen confections, but the concept's engaging, and I'm hoping as the weather gets colder she'll start blogging about warm treats as well.


Reading The Girl Who Ate Everything is a bit like talking to your crazy funny happy hipster friend. In other words, it's great. And the photography is fantastic. Yay!

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Sylvester & Abramz on BoingBoing

My favorite Ugandan hip hop/breakdancing duo made BoingBoing yesterday as part of a post on Diamonds in the Rough, a documentary about Uganda's awesome socially and politically active hip hop scene.

The film has been out for a while, and its director, Brett Mazurek, was profiled in 2006 by UGPulse. The site also has an excellent introduction to East African hip hop (Uganda's at the bottom) and an interview with Sylvester & Abramz, whose song Lemerako is featured in the film's trailer.

Check it out:

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