A Hobbit's New York Tale, Part the Last

Swinging on the roof, lunching at The Club, and saying goodbye

Yes, I took this pic myself, from the real rooftop of a real club!

Good Tuesday morning to all you fully paid-up readers of Further Up, who are finally getting exclusive access to this third and last part of my little New York winter adventure. I apologize for the delayed delivery, but my excuse is that I’ve just wrapped up a very intense week of HOUSE-HUNTING (maybe worth a Stack unto itself), which has been exciting and exhausting in equal measure. Many different factors have made this step possible, but the income I’ve been able to generate from this little corner of the Internet has played a significant role in giving me the stability to take it. This year will mark Further Up’s 5th anniversary. From the bottom of my heart, THANK YOU ALL for putting a little of your hard-earned cash into my plate. In the gig economy, nothing is certain, but somehow I’ve grown my earnings in this spot from nothing to something like 30% of my annual income. And I have no intention of stopping!

Before I pick up where I left off with my New York adventures, I’ll invite people to leave comments on this post if you want to let me know what topics interest you most, what you’d like to see more of/less of. I have multiple ideas I’ve been wanting to develop, on everything from masculinity to AI to the Jews (yes, it’s coming, and no for the concerned I haven’t gone insane). But I’d like to hear from you. You can also let me know if my posts are just too dang long. A couple people have voiced that latter criticism, and I don’t want to dismiss it entirely, although I confess I do see this space as a place to let topics marinate without the tight constraints of an op-ed. This is where my thoughts go to bake when I’m told I just didn’t whip them up quite fast enough to be a sizzling hot take. (Which has been happening with increasing frequency these days. Is this…aging?) Anyway, with that said, I also acknowledge that without an editorial hand, I can tend to ramble a little. Or a lot. I’ve been working on a couple big print magazine features for which I’m told I have only 3,000 words max, and it did occur to me that maybe, just maybe, I could trim my Stacks a little more proactively. Anyway, if in fact you are madly in love with my long rambling, feel free to comment below and let me know this as well.

With that, here’s how I spent my last two days in New York! But first, I realized that I forgot something very important in my last entry, namely the unbelievable pizza I ate before going to the off-Broadway theater on Tuesday. This, my friends, is burraprosciutto pizza, topped with a combination of burrata cheese and prosciutto. Oh yes. Feast your eyes:

I also forgot to mention the sweet rolls we relished that night, it being Shrove Tuesday and the last day Bethany was allowing herself to enjoy sweets before Lent. We bought these at the little pizzeria where we always waited for our bus after getting off the train home. One or the other of us sometimes broke down and just bought a pizza slice, because whatever we’d eaten earlier in the evening, we had walked so much that we were at least a bit hungry again.

Okay, back to…

Ash Wednesday: Smudge and Swing