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The first time you use a hand truck you will crash into a corner and run over your feet. It’s normal. The guy with infected knuckle tattoos lies when he howls his hand truck skills. But once you get the hang of manoeuvring around corners and avoiding others’ toes, you’ll discover a functional task that is remarkably empowering.

The hand truck has an obvious purpose: move lots of stuff from point a to point b without hurting yourself or the objects. Maybe you’re moving a couch or boxes of books. Regardless, the object or objects are heavy and unwieldy and it’s duty of these four-wheels to transform the item from intimidating to acceptable. With the hand truck you gain a powerful ally in negotiating space with the heaviest things.

Although the hand truck mitigates the threat of the large and overwhelming object, the truck itself retains an aura of intimidation. With it’s looping handle and stiff bars and corrugated metal bed it resembles a medieval torture device. And that’s when folded up. Open and ready to drive, hand trucks appear weather-beaten. The long metal bed hangs down a few inches while inexplicable scratches and loose screws punctuate the handle. Standing ten feet away you picture steering it with ease. Then you approach. And as you play Tetris to fit your couch or boxes of books on the bed, you realize that the hand truck isn’t a soft ally: it wants skill and attention in return for moderated conveyance.

You move. At first you push, forcing your body weight force against the hulking object to make pushing flimsy metal wheels less fatiguing. But after twenty feet you run against the wall. You switch tactics. You pull. The back wheels rattle ominously. Fifty feet later a corner blocks your progress. It doesn’t physically bar like the wall, but as you skirt the edge you realize the back left wheel is stuck. You push back a little, then push forward. Nothing. Standing there, slightly dumbfounded, you contemplate going behind the truck to heave up the back wheels. But, no, that won’t work as you could barely lug the object you’re moving onto the truck. So you drive back further and after manoeuvring and manoeuvring and manoeuvring you finagle a turn wide enough to slide the hand truck through the corner you newly perceive as narrow.

The first time you use a hand truck you will run into someone or something or both. And then you’ll use it again and again and again and at an undefined point your path will function with the vehicle’s. Through changing the way you move through space, the hand truck presents a new lens through which to view everyday objects and passages. All it takes is practice, patience and humility to understand this new outlook.

(Image via Flickr: Jeremy Brooks)

• ‘The History of Being Found‘ from The Design Observer Group.
• ‘Dining with the Stars’ from Lucky Peach (16).
• ‘A Social History of Jell-O Salad‘ from Serious Eats.
• ‘The Simple Perfection of a Cookbook Bookstore‘ from Eater.
• ‘Finding New Uses for Baltimore’s Many Vacant Rowhouses‘ from Curbed.

I enjoy my commute. It takes approximately thirty-seven minutes: ten minutes walking to the subway, four minutes waiting, sixteen minutes riding the train (with three of idyllic Brooklyn Bridge views), seven minutes walking to work. During this spell the city fades away and I exist in my own orbit together with others existing in theirs.

Enjoying your commute isn’t a given: its daily repetition threatens to quash happiness. Commuting exists within a nebulous neither/nor time. You are neither working nor playing. You are neither productive nor unproductive. You exist. Commuting time is passive time. It shouldn’t be. Articles arguing for a better commute insist upon actively savouring your ‘me time’. But the word’s Latin root suggests otherwise. ‘Com’ means altogether while ‘mute’ signifies mutare, to change. Thus, commuting is a shared transitional activity. It’s a concentrated period during which individual citizens share time, space and routine to shape their city.

Commuting together forms a group identity. By moving in a specific way in a certain place, you assert your identity and build a shared one. Your non-relationship with the person you always see on the subway demonstrates how these different layers of identity form passively. You don’t speak and you don’t know their name, but you share a space, a time and a moment. You share the pole, the delays and the stench of other passengers. You make up stories about this regular traveller, recognize them and invent a name for them. Through sharing in time, space and routine you passively develop a relationship. This non-vocal relationship constructs your commuting persona.

Although these bonds shape how we feel about our routine movements, they form without recognition. Their hidden nature subordinates the commute in our daily movements. Riding the subway and walking to work aren’t inherently disagreeable, but ignoring the commute’s nuances turns these minutes into nebulous, so-called lost time. In a culture where “time is money” such undefined instances become evil through their lack of remuneration. If we adopt an active attitude toward our routine movements, we can acknowledge communal relationship we form and appreciate commuting.

I read. Through books I actively participate in the subway reading community and appreciate the role I adopt within it. Through these self-identity affirming actions, I perceive my thirty-seven minute commute not as lost time, but as daily moments of routine interaction with my city. These actions compose the fabric of my identity and work to form the fabric of a community. I enjoy my commute as shared active time and personally productive space.

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• ‘The End of Walking‘ from Aeon. The modern city is designed to discouraged walking, but cultural stereotypes against walkers will need to change if we want pedestrians to reign.
• ‘The Importance of MTV Cribs’ from Apartamento. A scripted peek into someone else house reveals design choices, but really reveals how society perceives and classifies these certain objects and spaces.
• ‘Dining in the Wilderness: The Restaurants in America’s National Parks‘ from Eater. More than just cafeteria, the restaurants in America’s National Parks must negotiate between pleasing the public, maintaining tradition and producing healthy meals.
• ‘Jonathan Franzen’s Great Expectations‘ from New York. Franzen is one of the few novelists who merits a feature article when publishing a new book. What does this say about literature in America?
• ‘“Moment” Is Having a Moment‘ from The New York Times Magazine. As digital media changes cultural perceptions of time, the moment has become essential in defining the social and political zeitgeist.

The other day I was in a government building and asked a guard where I could find the bathroom. ‘On the twelfth floor,’ she grunted. Then she disappeared, turning on her rubber heel, keys clanking. Right, to the twelfth floor.

The twelfth floor signalled my entrance into a heterotopia of first world bureaucracy. Michel Foucault, the 20^th century French intellectual, describes a heterotopia as an enacted utopia that expresses a vision of a societal ideal. A secular higher power directs meaning within these spaces. The power may be cultural or political or social as long as it illustrates the operation of a group. Some may enter the area while others are prohibited. These spaces reveal how we structure our world and respond to taboos. They possess both intellectual and practical functions. As I examined the limbo-esque twelfth floor, I better understood my community.

In addition to public rest rooms — so-called public, I had to show an appointment confirmation and passport to pass security and access them — the twelfth floor boasted a café (aptly named Café on Twelve) and empty locked rooms. I saw a man on his phone and a woman waiting for the elevator. The emptiness evoked the distance the building put between its functions and visitors. Although the visitors had been chosen to enter, they were shielded from the bureaucracy’s inner workings. Shades of pale and mossy green covered the walls like an alien’s living room. After seeing this sinister hue, the tenth floor’s plastic pink felt like the cheery. Whereas the public amenities floor intimidated me with closed doors and strange colours, the tenth floor distracted me with a bright, false cheer. Openness and restriction characterise government bureaucracy.

Foucault argues that access to space and spatial relations dictate modern life. The sites we visit define us. Frequenting a museum or being admitted to a hospital gives us a distinct social identity through which to perpetuate culture as reflected in a given area. Government buildings accomplish a similar function. Entering one of these guarded edifices associates the individual with a specific ideology, defines them according to the law and asserts their role as an ordinary citizen. The government building is a heterotopia in that it mirrors society and social relations while existing separately from the daily orbit of most citizens.

Myriad citizenship identities were being formed and performed during my visit. There were the deviants; arguing with the guards over phones and restrictions. Others acted as enforcers, upholding social norms. Some played the atemporal: they were waiting when you arrived and waiting when you left, casting them in a separate orbit from the standard 30-minute appointment. Our purposes impacted our roles. Some sought citizenship, others green cards renewals and others foreign visas. Although the heterotopia echoed the country in which we lived, our respective sections of the mirror corresponded with our social identity.

Despite our unique roles, we were all social others — individuals seeking to alter our citizenship status — in this heterotopia of deviation. A heterotopia of deviation collects individuals whose actions, and consequently identities, digress from the social norm. Foucault argues that the heterotopia of deviation has largely replaced the heterotopia of crisis (at least in modern cultures), which dominated in centuries when knowledge directed relations between groups and individuals. A heterotopia of crisis collected individuals in a critical mental, physical or emotional period. Foucault cites boarding schools, old-style honeymoons and military service as heterotopias of crisis that separated people in compromised states from routine life. Rather than cast out people in difficult periods, we rebuke people who exhibit a strange identity.

Time impacted the social and governmental interpretation of my national identity. Defining my identity as ‘deviant’ as opposed to ‘in crisis’ was a product of the 21^st century’s loosened borders. Whereas immigrants to the US during the early 20^th century were processed en masse on an island, modern migrants are processed in varying degrees of public view. Migration is no longer solely the product of a crisis — of money, of religion, of food, of family — that brings migrants to a new space. While contemporary migrants may be undergoing crises, the motivations are varied. I was a deviant: I was deviating from the path my country had set for me and, accordingly, entered into spaces that delicately pushed me away from others. They pushed me toward the desolate twelfth floor.

Crossing the threshold of the heterotopia ushered me into alternate temporal realms. My time within the building was sectioned: there was my appointment time; the queues, waiting for my number to be called; and my brief appointment. Time’s regimentation within the heterotopia foreshadowed the new demarcations I’d experience upon leaving: there would be the time to send my application; the window of time during which I could enter the country; the days when I’d be permitted to pick up a residence permit; the years for which I’d be allowed to stay within the country; the hours I’d be permitted to work; the day on which I’d be required to leave. My new experience of time within the heterotopia anticipated how I’d experience shared cultural time upon leaving.

But even as this heterotopia acted upon us visitors, it also acted with us. This was how I arrived at the twelfth floor. Although the building could have been closed in a fortress of hidden governmental rules, society’s insistence on viewing itself as a democracy required it to be at least partially open. So I had the terrace café and a toilet amidst an alien-green hallway of closed doors. My heterotopia of bureaucracy asserted that my society was open, even as it partitioned my time, directed my identity and determined my movement.

• ‘When Did Rosé Become a Thing?‘ from Vanity Fair. Rosé is having a moment at gracing dining tables and as a funny print on bags.
• ‘How Carrie Bradshaw, Don Draper and The Dude Changed Cocktail Culture‘ from Eater. Whether your sipping on a cosmo or an old fashioned (or even a white Russian), popular culture impacts your drink choices.
• ‘Frozen Dinners‘ from Roads and Kingdoms. With a lack of fresh produce for months on end, eating well in Antarctica is no small challenge.
• ‘Africa’s “Little Rome”, the Eritrean city frozen in time by war and secrecy‘ from The Guardian. A peak inside Asmara reveals an uncanny resemblance to Italy, its one-time colonisers.
• ‘Welcome to Dismaland: A First Look at Bansky’s New Art Exhibition Housed Inside a Dystopian Theme Park‘ from This Is Colossal. If you’re in South West England, you’ve got to check out Bansky’s interpretation of Disney idyll.

If you shop for liqueurs by the label, you won’t choose Cynar. Unless you really like artichokes. A large hand-drawn image of the spiny flowerhead pops on the bright red label. Cynar, a bitter liqueur introduced in Italy in 1952, is proud to include artichokes in its proprietary blend of 13 herbs and plants. Poured over soda or mixed with scotch, Cynar has transitioned from a cool Italian aperitivo–digestivo to a cool ingredient for making twists on classic cocktails.

Pezziol — a food company from Padua — created Cynar for an Italian public besotted with lightly bitter pre-dinner drinks. Among these were Campari and Aperol, introduced in 1860 and 1919 respectively, which punctuated aperitivi hours with americani and aperol spritzes. Cynar’s popularity depended on its ability to offer a unique experience of bitter in an already saturated market. They succeeded. This success may be due in part to the boom economico, which encouraged Italians with more leisure time and income to try new drinks at their local bar.

Originally advertised as fighting “against the stress of modern life”, Cynar caters to those looking for a slightly-sweet amaro with health-benefits beyond its digestion-friendly herbal blend. Artichokes may be the font of the drink’s wholesomeness, but the vegetable is more evident in the aperitf-digestif’s marketing than in its flavour. Early advertisements featured Italian actor Ernesto Calindri smiling over a small glass of Cynar, imbuing the novel amaro with old-school luxury it otherwise lacked. When Calindri wasn’t sipping his digestivo, ads featured women drinking Cynar from glasses made of artichokes and young Italians walking through forests bursting with artichokes. Not only was Cynar a delicious drink, it was also a healthy indulgence.

Despite it’s relatively low ABV, Cynar probably doesn’t deserve the healthful reputation it maintained, even if it diminishes stress. Underneath faint herbal notes, Cynar is quite sweet, making it a welcome mixer with stronger liquors such as aquavit and scotch. But Italians didn’t embrace Cynar drinking strong cocktails. Originally, the amaro was drunk straight over ice or mixed with soda for a bracing aperitivo. With only 16.5% alcohol, Cynar provided a new option for drinkers tired of their americano and not ready for a negroni. Cynar’s similarities to other bitter Italian liqueurs allowed it to become popular — it’s unique flavour ensured its continued success.

But it required more than a smiling actor to convince American cocktail-enthusiasts to embrace Cynar. There is no Cynar spritz to inspire memories (real or imagined) of glamorous aperitivi in Milan. This has become its virtue. With the absence of a sacred drink from which thou-must-not-deviate, Cynar provides an intriguing taste layer to classic cocktails. Bartenders might make a Toronto cocktail swapping out Fernet Branca for more approachable Cynar. Brunchers could opt for a mimosa, made robust through the addition of the barely biter liqueur. Whereas Cynar provided a new drink option for Italians, it now provides a new flavour option for cocktail lovers.

In 1995 the brand was sold to Campari Group, the Milanese company that owns Aperol, Averna and Campari. The amaro increasingly appears on savvy liquor store shelves outside of Italy. Whereas Cynar once tempted Italians with the promise of a modern, healthful and tranquil drink, it now presents cocktail enthusiasts with a ready twist. Cynar: against the stressors of modern life, against the boredom of modern choice.

[Image via Serious Eats]

• ‘Doing porridge: prison, school and hospital meals put to the test‘ from The Guardian.
• ‘How Dolly Parton’s Childhood Home Became the Dollywood Empire‘ from Curbed.
• ‘3 Things You Might Not Know About Moonshine‘ from Serious Eats.
• ‘The Boozy Underbelly of Saturday Morning Cartoons‘ from Eater.
• ‘In a Pivot Happy World, We Need to Let Twitter Be Twitter‘ from New York Magazine.

For a fresh metaphor on coffee, I add cardamom and cloves to my brew. The spices’ impact is obvious from the moment the hot water hits the beans. Vegetal and sweet and floral: I drink my coffee newly alert.

I first tasted spiced coffee at a stand at Smorgasburg, Brooklyn’s food flea market. The operator — Bunna Café an Ethiopian restaurant in Bushwick — promised Ethiopian coffee made authentically with cardamom and cloves. I sipped timidly. But soon I was slurping at the drops between the melting ice cubes. The coffee was barely sweet, simultaneously light and rich. Bunna’s twist on my favourite summer coffee reinvigorated my reaction to iced coffee.

That’s what Bunna wants. The restaurant frequently holds coffee ceremonies to acquaint customers with the Ethiopian mindset. Coffee is crucial to Ethiopians. It is a key export, daily ritual and cultural touchstone. The coffee ceremony welcomes guests, fueling conversation as the beans — toasted immediately before serving — are subject to three rounds of brewing. From plastic cups of iced coffee to cultural events, Bunna presents Ethiopian culture as a fresh metaphor on coffee.

But adding cardamom to coffee isn’t a new habit, nor is it uniquely Ethiopian. Cardamom-growing countries — from Thailand to North Africa — infuse it into their coffee to refresh their brew. But the spice’s high price tag reserves these preparations for unique occasions and special drinks. Sometimes entire pods are ground along with the beans, other times they are left whole and chewed as a breath freshener while sipping. The resulting coffee may be drunk black, with sugar or condensed milk. Since a single pod will transform a pot of coffee, the brewer may share their wealth without being ostentatious. Like the coffee ceremony elevates the daily rite of coffee drinking, including a new spice in a cup retrains the taste buds, forcing a re-examination of the daily ritual of coffee drinking.

If you have coffee and cardamom, you too can celebrate. Choose your coffee — Ethiopia, as the birthplace of coffee, has more indigenous varietals than other coffee growing regions.[1] Just before you dump the warm water over those grounds, add the spices. You need less than you think. Then brew. And smell: slightly musty, floral, and warm. Drink. It’s coffee, but there’s something else. There’s a fresh metaphor.

[1] Freeman, J., 2012. the Blue Bottle Craft of Coffee: Growing, Roasting and Drinking, with Recipes. New York: Ten Speed Press. pp. 22-23.