batches & cookies

I like cookies. Come on.... who doesn't like cookies? They are the all-time favorite afterschool, watching TV, ruin your dinner snack. They are easy to bake at home. They are easier to buy and bring home. I remember my mom would bake cookies from a recipe... until she started buying those ready-made tubes of Toll House cookie dough. Eventually, she abandoned the whole "baking" idea and just bought cookies in a package. My brother and I were just as satisfied. We didn't care where our cookies came from. As long as there were cookies in the house.

I was always partial to a brand of cookies called Mr. Chips from a small commercial bakery called Burry. Burry supplied the Girls Scouts with their wares for their annual cookie drive until the company's Girl Scout cookie division was purchased by ABC Bakers in 1989. The remainder of the company's operations were bought by Sunshine Baking. In their heyday, Burry's made some great cookies — Fudge Town, Mr. Chips and Gauchos. They also made Scooter Pies — a large, single serving concoction comprised of two graham cookies sandwiching marshmallow filling and covered with chocolate. They were good, but we didn't have them often, Mr. Chips, however — those were always present in the Pincus household. Every so often, other cookies would make an appearance in our kitchen. My mom liked Nabisco's Oreos. She also like Fig Newtons, which I always questioned their inclusion in the cookie category. They were — as far as little Josh Pincus was concerned — fruit cakes. And they were filled with a fruit that old people ate. I would sometimes eat the cake outside and toss the innards when the cake was completely consumed. Fig Newtons had a pretty funny and memorable commercial in the 70s, featuring character actor James Harder singing and dancing dressed as a giant fig. I loved the commercial, but not enough to get me to eat a fig. As an adult, I have changed my mind.

Cookies that made it to my house were sometimes purchased by the pound at a local bakery. They were dry, crispy things covered with jimmies ("sprinkles" to those of you outside of the Philadelphia area), chocolate chips (with the chips just applied to the surface of the cookie, not integrated into the cookie itself, unlike normal cookies). Some were filled with some sort of viscous jelly made from an unidentifiable fruit. I avoided those until the more colorful ones were gone. Then, if I really wanted a cookie, I'd choke a jelly-filled one down with an extra large glass of milk.

Sometime in the 90s, places like Mrs. Field's and The Original Cookie Company started popping up in malls. Cookies — once purchased in a package containing several dozen or by the pound at a local mom-and-pop bakery — were now brazenly being offered for sale by the each. One cookie! You could buy one cookie! It was certainly larger than the cookies bought in packages at the supermarket, but it was just a cookie. Soon, these places offered large cookie sandwiches, somewhat along the lines of the Scooter Pie. Two three-inch chocolate chip cookies were stuck together with a generous mound of frosting between them. These sold for a dollar or more which, frankly at the time, was unheard of! A cookie for a dollar? Ridiculous!

Last Saturday evening, Mrs. Pincus and I had dinner with my brother and my sister-in-law (His wife. Don't think anything weird is going on). The restaurant was in a shopping center filled with upscale, somewhat pretentious shops. One of those shops was a place called Dirty Dough, an unusual choice of name for a place that sells food. Dirty Dough offers a variety of "stuffed gourmet cookies." After a dinner that kept us late (we were talking about all sorts of things), we strolled over to Dirty Dough about fifteen minutes before they locked up for the night. The young lady behind the counter was informing the customer ahead of us of their limited offerings due to the late hour. We sort-of eavesdropped as she ran down the short list of available cookies, deciding that none of the flavor combinations appealed to us. We left, half-heartedly hoping to return in the future.

We headed to a Crumbl location we passed on our way to the restaurant. Crumbl is a trendy new chain of cookie bakeries with nearly a thousand locations across the United States and Canada. Crumbl is also open until midnight and we spotted a few folks we had just seen earlier at Dirty Dough. The Crumbl experience is an interesting one. Upon entry, no employee greets you. Instead, the front counter sports several iPads displaying an intuitive, interactive menu. One can scroll though the available cookies and make selection without a single word spoken to another human being. A team of employees can be seen busily working, scurrying around ovens, mixing dough, forming cookies — but not speaking to any customers until their pre-paid order is ready to be delivered across the counter. Mrs. P and I perused the evening's cookie selections. I settled on a traditional chocolate chip cookie and my wife opted for a frosted cookie of the sugar variety. We clicked our choices, sending little digital representations of the cookies into our virtual shopping cart. Our total was revealed and payment options were displayed. Our total, by the way, was ten dollars. TEN BUCKS! For two cookies! Cookies! Baked flour, water, sugar and such. I was paying ten dollars for two cookies. Granted they were above average-sized examples, but (and I'll do the math for you) they were five dollars apiece. FOR A COOKIE!

I swiped my credit card. Not happily, but I swiped it. A few minutes later, a young lady, handed us two small pink boxes emblazoned with the Crumbl logo. I was reminded of a scene from Quentin Tarantino's 1994 sprawling neo-noir crime epic Pulp Fiction. In the scene, dimwitted hitman Vincent Vega (as played by dimwitted actor John Travolta) is questioning his boss's wife's drink choice in a themed restaurant called Jack Rabbit Slim's. Mia (played to mysterious allure by Uma Thurman) had ordered a "five dollar milkshake." Vincent, cocked his head and asks for clarification on the beverage's contents and price.

"Did you just order a five-dollar shake?," he asks, "That's a shake? That's milk and ice cream?"

"Last I heard," Mia assures him

"That's five dollars?," he presses, "You don't put bourbon in it or nothin'?"

"No." she replies.

"Just checking.," Vincent adds.

When the drinks arrive, Vincent asks to sample the "five dollar shake" in question. Mia obliges, offering her straw and assuring her tablemate that she is free of "cooties." Vincent takes a healthy sip and then another. 

"Goddamn," a surprised Vincent reports, "that’s a pretty fucking good milkshake!"

"Told ya’.," Mia replies with a knowing confidence.

"Don’t know if it’s worth five dollars," Vincent concedes, "but it’s pretty fucking good."

I wish I could have had a similar exchange with the young lady behind the counter at Crumbl. However, I don't think she would have had the same appreciation and situational relevance from a quote from a thirty year-old movie as I did.

www.joshpincusiscrying.com

king of all the world

There are a few places I have been to that immediately conjure a specific — and similar —- mental image. One of those places is Fremont Street in Las Vegas, Nevada. I remember the first time I visited Las Vegas. It was in 2003. I recall pulling up to our hotel at the foot of the notorious Las Vegas Strip and being mesmerized by the millions and millions of illuminated buildings and marquees that lined the sidewalks for as far as the eye could see. Later in the week, my family and I ventured up to Fremont Street, just outside the glitz and reverie of the storied "Strip." Fremont Street was the original "Las Vegas Strip" back in the heyday of the Rat Pack and all those shots of Vegas that I saw on 60s TV shows. But since the attention has been shifted to bigger and better places like The Bellagio with its magically majestic choreographed fountains and New York New York with its uncanny approximation of "The Big Apple" compressed into a city block, Fremont Street has had to do what was necessary to attract visitors and, more specifically, their money. Something called "The Fremont Street Experience" was constructed in the early 90s. A barrel-domed canopy that stretches four blocks above the street was deemed to be the perfect solution to Fremont Street's waning tourist trade. A dazzling eight-minute animated light and music show was presented on the underside of the canopy, much to the delight of tourists below. When the show concludes and the regular street lights come up, the seediness of Fremont Street is once again revealed in all its faded glory. (Note: I have not been to Las Vegas in over a decade, so this observation is based on my experience and not on any subsequent improvements that I may not be aware of.) The hotels and casinos on Fremont Street are small, compact and look as though their finest hour has long since past. I remember strolling up and down Fremont Street and likening the scene to an old prostitute — once alluring and desirable, but now faded and worn out after years and years of.... well..... you know.

Similarly, I feel the same way about Atlantic City. A little closer to home, I grew up going to Atlantic City every summer. Boasting the moniker "The World's Playground," Atlantic City was once a destination for families, as well as "singles who were ready to mingle." My parents both frequented Atlantic City in their pre-married days, visiting nightclubs and enjoying the entertainment of "big draw" names like Frank, Dean and Sammy. As a family, the Pincuses loved to cavort on the beach, thrill to the rides on Million Dollar Pier, enjoy sumptuous meals in a grand hotel dining room or just gobble down a hot dog from one of the many stands on the famous Boardwalk. When casino gambling was approved for the seaside resort, visions of an East Coast Vegas were presented to the folks in Philadelphia, South Jersey and surrounding locales. However, that never truly came to be. Instead, Atlantic City took a slow decline. The glitzy casinos were not enough to conceal the boarded-up houses and bankrupt business that dotted the landscape in-between. The casinos grew and their profits increased. The help that they promised the community never materialized. I remember a comedian observing that he had never seen more broken glass than in Atlantic City. When casino gambling began to pop up in areas just outside of Atlantic City, the seashore mecca no longer had a firm grasp on the local casino business. Several once-mighty casinos shut down and Atlantic City was now showing the sad, but familiar signs of an old prostitute — her sequined skirt torn and tarnished, her once-striking looks now unconvincingly disguised by hurriedly applied make-up.

I grew up in Northeast Philadelphia. It was a place where working class families from poorer sections of the city would aspire to live once they came into better employment and an increase in income. My parents moved into a new development in Northeast Philadelphia in late 1957 and soon little Josh came along to join my mom, my dad and brother Max. As a child and pre-teen, I experienced my fair share of bullying and anti-Semitism from my predominately gentile neighbors. Kids my own age — some I considered my "friends" — would turn on me without provocation, spewing vicious epithets that they — no doubt — picked up from their parents. I moved out of my parents house — and that neighborhood — when I got married. When my parents died and I sold their house, I dropped the keys in the palm of a realtor's hand and exited Northeast Philadelphia with plans to never ever ever return. I kept that promise as best I could, crossing the boundaries of Northeast Philadelphia from my suburban home only when absolutely necessary, like when I was on my way to somewhere else. On those rare occasions, I took note of how sad the "Great Northeast" looked. Houses showed peeling and faded paint. Streets were littered with rusty shells of partly-dismantled automobiles. Empty bottles and broken glass littered empty lots, front lawns and street gutters. Businesses were abandoned, their cracked asphalt parking lots breached by wildly overgrown vegetation. It was just.... sad. Once again, my mind evoked visons of an old prostitute, worn down by a hard life. Neglected, struggling and unwanted.

The commute to my current job takes me through Northeast Philadelphia on a daily basis. Each morning, I pass near-empty shopping centers, boarded up homes and pot-hole riddled streets. There are garbage-filled empty lots and cars unlawfully parked on sidewalks. However, this past Friday morning, as I turned the corner from Levick Street onto Castor Avenue, I saw something. Something unusual. Something out of place. Something.... sweet. Sweet enough to warm my cold heart.

There was a woman in loud pajama pants and dirty fuzzy slippers. She was standing on the sidewalk with a small boy about seven or eight years old. The woman was primping and adjusting the boy's attire as though she was a personal valet. And the boy....? The boy was dressed like a king. That's right. A king — right out of a fairy tale. I only caught a glimpse as I turned the corner and maneuvered my car toward the light at Devereaux Street, but I saw that he wore a gold bejeweled crown on his head and a long red robe with a fur collar that was appointed with small black dots. The woman leaned over and smoothed the robe as the boy stood still — his head cocked at a slight upturn, his chin pointing regally, his crown gleaming the early morning sun.

He was The King. He was The King of Northeast Philadelphia and beyond. He was The King of everything the light touched. He was The King of the provincial castles and thatched-roof cottages of his kingdom. He was oblivious of the disdainful judgement I had passed on my former surroundings, conclusions drawn from decades of experiences and observations. This morning, he was The King. 

And that was the only thing that mattered.

www.joshpincusiscryiing.com