Attack of the Borings
‘ITHINK the way a lot of us feel is, listen, like, keep your Instagram posts outside of the Boogie Down. Like, this is for us.”
That’s, like, Bronx/Queens Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez actively discouraging tourists from visiting The Bronx.
People have been flooding into the borough to take pictures of themselves on the “Joker stairs,” a long set of steps that run along West 167th Street, featured in the recent Joaquin Phoenix hit movie. AOC’s reasoning seems to be that only those who live in The Bronx should get to enjoy the once-dangerous spot. Or something.
People have been having a good time in The Bronx without realizing that it’s a cultural no-no unless you’ve taken the entire history of The Bronx into account before posting your selfies.
A member of Congress lamenting people visiting the borough she represents is just the latest way our elites are trying to make New York City a boring place.
Ocasio-Cortez’s dreary comrades in arms, Mayor de Blasio and a hard-left City Council, are doing most of the heavy lifting to turn the city into a nondestination. Having solved all other problems, the council this week enacted a ban on foie gras, to begin in 2022.
Usually, the Left likes to pester Americans to imitate the Old World’s refined (and social-democratic) ways. But not when it comes to goose liver — even if the ban risks turning us into a laughingstock in Europe. France 24 had a great time interviewing several prominent New York City chefs who railed against the ban.
They also interviewed MariePierre Pe, director of the Interprofessional Committee of Foie Gras, who told the French outlet (read this in a haughty French accent): “I am astounded that the country of the Statue of Liberty and liberalism can ban the consumption of a product that is healthy and sells well.”
She added: “It’s a symbol of French gastronomy that is being targeted, but there is nothing like a ban to boost sales.”
Pe has a point. People who like foie gras aren’t going to stop eating it. They’re just going to stop eating it in the greatest city in the world. Now that it’s in the news, more people will be curious to try it. Second-rate cities like nearby Philly will get the culinary tourists (as well as those wishing to pay homage to iconic stairs featured in movies, like the ones in “Rocky,” without scoldy lawmakers haranguing them).
The foie-gras ban also hurts producers, like the several farms upstate that rely on foie-gras production, and the many restaurants that serve it.
As Kyle Smith noted in National Review: “Some 1,000 New York City restaurants serve foie gras, and many of them are barely profitable in that notoriously dicey industry . . . Servers stand to lose their jobs to pacify a handful of militant vegans from Brooklyn.”
Does anyone really believe the militant Brooklyn vegans will stop with foie gras? It will be veal next and eventually all meat — if we let them.
It’s hard not to notice that the same week foie gras was banned, Pete Wells at The New York Times issued his blistering, and frankly bizarre, attack on Peter Luger Steak House, giving the storied eatery exactly zero stars.
If the steak has declined, fine, Mr. Wells, dock some stars (though I disagree). But the zerostar review picked apart the restaurant’s lone fish dish and said terrible things about its salad. If you want your thousandth kale salad, go elsewhere. No one goes to Peter Luger for the salad.
Luger is old New York, the kind that fixes you a stiff drink as you wait for a table. The kind that doesn’t introduce itself by its trans pronouns or wring hands over foie gras. It’s gruff waiters and meat, baby. Peter Luger didn’t criticize anyone when Williamsburg, where it is located, went from dangerous to hipster to yuppie. It deserves some respect from our cultural elites, in turn.
I’ve been to Peter Luger three times in the past year, and each time was a culinary journey to a better New York. A New York with fewer lame rules and a perfectly bloody steak to boot. Take your pictures, eat your foie gras, order your steak for two. Don’t let the borings destroy our extraordinary New York City.