Those of us who live in New York have all, at one time or another, gone through the harrowing ordeal of some person we know being like, "Who wants bagels?", only to reply, "Yeah, awesome. I'll have a bagel. Bagels. Delicious!" And that's when it happens: the person in question goes to his or her fridge, the temperature in the room drops with a cold, damp chill, and your will to live briefly though nightmarishly subsides as the horrific taste of chewy, bready non-bagelness slowly but unceasingly floods even the as-yet-unexplored corners of your mouth.Newsflash: bagels aren't really very good for you.
They are, however, ostensibly awesome.
But here's the hitch: bagels aren't intrinsically awesome
So, in other words, if you just make something that qualifies as a bagel, this does not guarantee its awesomeness. A bagel's value is directly related to the context in which it is presented. So, for instance, if the bagel was made within, say, 6 hours of consumption and within, say, 5 miles of Manhattan, then there is about a 93% certainty of awesomeness, which trumps the 100% certainty of not really good for youness.
The stark truth, however, is that there is no middle ground. A bagel that only adheres to one of the two criteria above yields a much lower probability of awesomeness, and one that adheres to neither ensures a shocking 0% percent awesomeness rate and only ever can be judged on a scale of edible-at-bestness.
4 comments:
Since my departure from New York City's 5-mile bagel awesomeness radius (and, I'll be so bold to extend that to 300 miles - down long island - and to College Town Bagels in Ithaca), there simply is no good bagel to be found. There is a place in Bethesda claiming to be be "New York Bagels" but it falls well far from the mark and definitely into the realm of just edible.
And PEOPLE (this means you, "New York Bagel" guy who toasted my bagel the other day) - WELL TOASTED does not mean NOT TOASTED AT ALL, or SOGGIER than when you picked it out of the bin. How hard a concept is this... maybe i should have said, please toast to a dark-gold almost burnt color? BURNT UMBER, perhaps?
Rant concluded.
This has never happened to me. Then again, I'm not from Boston.
In that case, Mile_end, perhaps the best way to explain this experience in terms you can understand is that it's somewhat similar to the feeling of crushing, bitter futility as though living on the event horizon of a black hole so strong it consumes not just all in its path but actually reaches into the depths of one's soul such that not even one's capacity for hope survives that comes with being a Mets fan.
I hate to break it to you, but New York bagel is a misnomer, and calling the bagel a New York food is as idiotic as calling something a New York deli.
The bagel is a Jewish food. The only reason people think it's related to New York is because there happen to be Jews in New York. But claiming that the bagel is specific to New York is like claiming that Chinese or Italian food is because there are Chinese and Italian people there too.
Get your goyish hands off of my ethnic heritage!
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