J + R

It wasn’t the sort of thing I normally did, but there was this wall, you see, down a long alley off Queen . . . a dull expanse of pale brick under decades of dirt, until someone had discovered—who knows when—that the brick had gone soft.
     And so began a long crude chronicle of young romance, white letters scratched into the grime, the successes and failures of those long gone and those still hanging onto the memory of a piece of gravel and a few minutes of carving for the ages to see, perhaps wishing now it hadn’t been so easy.
Photo © 2010 by The World Beckons. All rights reserved.

The Heart of the Storm

Outside the plate glass window, the storm slings flinty chips of snow into the shocked cheeks of the New Yorkers. It rips at Whole Foods sacks of tinned kidney beans and kelp snack storm provender; it snaps up five umbrellas – two floral, one stripy – at the corner of Ludlow and East Houston in a single skip of what must be a cold, cold heart.
     But inside the storm: il laboratorio del gelato, where a dish of spheres awaits. The marble grey is black sesame, slowly showing a toasty warmth; the off-white is lychee, its sweet breath perfumed like a succubus.

Image: Lynn Huang on foodspotting.