Stories

People always think I’m an expert on everything. Which I guess makes sense because I am sort of perfect. But seriously, I get questions all the time. Where should I eat sushi in New York? Where should I take a yoga-obsessed Venice girl out on a date? What’s a good coffee shop that’s hip but quiet enough to write in? Do you know of a fun gallery in Berlin?  I’ve never even been to Berlin!! Don’t you people have Google?? I mean, don’t get me wrong. I’m flattered that people think I’m a fountain of information. And I sort of get it. I mean, as my boyfriend can vouch, I might be the pickiest person in the world. Although, I prefer the term “refined”.  And the combination of having refined taste and being economically cautious (though some people would call it cheap) does sort of make me, by necessity, a fountain of information. So consider yourselves lucky to be in on my Best Of list, in no particular order:

Best Hotel Bar: The Whiskey Bar at the Sunset Marquis
1200 Alta Loma Road West Hollywood, CA 90069

Best Ice Bar: Absolut IceBar London
31-33 Heddon Street, Mayfair, London, W1B 4BN
United Kingdom +44 20 7287 9192

Best People Watching: Campari gallery events
Sign up at www.campariusa.com for invites   

Best Sushi: Matsuhisa
(Just tell them Chaparang sent you.)
129 N. La Cienega Blvd., Beverly Hills, CA 90211 (310) 659-9639

Best Place to Go with No Plans: Paris

What do you consider a good beach read? Something entertaining? Light and fluffy? What about a bedside book? I like a vacation read that I can completely lose myself in, but next to my bed I need something I can pick up and put down endlessly. Right now I have a few of those books.

The first is How to Be a Better Foodie and it's subtitled "a bulging little book for the truly epicurious." Can I just say if there is anything more irritating than someone using the word foodie, it has to be someone using the brand name epicurious as if they made it up. It's a website, ok? Despite the annoying title, the book is a lot of fun. It's filled with little tidbits of information that you will either find essential or completely trivial but either way it is equal parts entertaining and informative. Do you know how mustard got its name? What to savor in Franche-Comte? What and who inspired the famous blue Le Creuset? What season to eat fresh lotus flower root? It's all in there and then some. It's not a book to read cover to cover but it it enjoyable nonetheless.

They know when you leave your house.  They know when you return.

They know when you have company.  They know when your company left. 

They know if the brown truck delivered today or yesterday and how many packages were left on your doorstep. 

Yes, your buttinsky neighbors, you know the ones; THEY KNOW EVERYTHING...about you.

Ever have the feeling that the minute you set foot outside, someone is peering at you from their blinds across the street or watching your every move from the shadows of a doorway?

It's horrible isn't it?  That feeling of reconnaissance surveillance in your own yard.  What's wrong with these people?  They need to get a life.

Summer is my least favorite season. I am a ghostly pale person, I sweat easily, and I do not garden successfully. I am allergic to chlorine and can’t spend days by the pool without breaking out in hives, and I am not generally given to hiking, camping, kayaking or doing any of those other things that involve being outside, sweating, and getting burned. I complain a lot about the heat, which may explain why I often find myself alone in my air conditioned house drinking iced tea and reading.

Today, though, today it was 80 degrees after an interminable and bitterly cold winter. Stepping outside tentatively in my cotton skirt and flip flops, I was overwhelmed by sense memories, good ones, the kind that made me sit down on the peeling porch steps and savor them. As the hair at the back of my neck coiled inexorably into ringlets, and the warm air extended its seductive fingers to touch parts of me that have not been unwrapped in public for five months, it seemed that maybe I didn’t hate summer any more.

I remembered all of the Only Summer things, the Farmer’s Market on Sunday morning, bags full of vegetable love in the form of tiny Patty Pan squash, gritty zucchini, scallions with shining white bulbs, garlic scapes, baby eggplants, tiny and fiery Hmong peppers, and the tomatoes, oh Lord the tomatoes in their juicy, flashy glory.