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Category: The Goods

Published: 20 December 2012

As both a parent of two elementary-aged children in the district and as a former Scarsdale Middle School teacher, I feel comfortable sharing with you what I know and what I believe about safety. Scarsdale schools do have in place a good security system, which was implemented after 9/11. It works as long as people do not prop open the doors out of laziness or for convenience. Teachers and students also have lockdown practices and the faculty conducts yearly drills with local police.

But you know all of this. You've heard it from Michael McGill and other officials. Rationally, we can say, the doors are locked, the teachers are aware of what to do. But, ultimately, we never really know what will happen in life.

And so that's why I say that I feel as safe as I possibly can feel about sending my children to school in a world where random, unimaginable violence lives.

To surrender to the fears I felt on Monday when I put my children on the school bus would have meant giving in to terror. I refuse to do that.
I do not want our schools to become prisons. I do not want there to be guards outside every door. I want my children, when they are older, to feel free to come and go on the high school campus, provided they don't cut biology class in order to get a sandwich at Lange's. I refuse to let terror rule my life.

That being said, since the school shootings in Columbine, there is not a classroom I enter without thinking, where would I hide the children? I have lived through scary days in school. On September 11th, I drew a map of Manhattan on the blackboard of my 7th grade English classroom and assured my students that their parents, if they were working on 75th street or near Grand Central Station, were safe.

I did not know that for certain. But I needed them to believe it.

On Friday, December 14th at 1:30 pm, I parked outside my own children's elementary school. I had just heard the tragic story coming out of Newtown and entered the Fox Meadow office in a state of distress. I was there to teach art appreciation to my son's 5th grade class. I was crying and needed to sit down. It was hard to breathe. I was ushered into the conference room where I talked with our principal, teacher-in-charge, and secretary. They brought me water and hugged me.

"If you don't want to be at school right now, we'll understand," Mr. Wilson said to me. "You don't have to teach."

To be at school, to teach, to be with my children – there was complexity to my distress. I felt shocked and grief-stricken, yes, but I also felt so overwhelmingly lucky in that moment. And I felt safe in my children's school.

In fact, there was no place else I'd rather be.

Columnist and blogger Julie Gerstenblatt writes with humor and candor about her life in Scarsdale, her friends and family, and the particular demands of motherhood and wifedom in modern-day suburbia. Read about her new book Lauren Takes Leave and keep up with the latest from Julie Gerstenblatt at http://juliegerstenblatt.com

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Category: The Goods

Published: 09 January 2013

Forget looking ahead and making resolutions in 2013. Since this year will mark my 25th reunion from Edgemont High School (insert gasp of horror here), I'm going to enjoy a little looking back. Like a shrunken and wrinkled grandma visiting the old neighborhood where she grew up, please indulge me as I take you on a brief yet colorful tour of Central Avenue, circa 1980.

    One of the best things about growing up in Edgemont was my proximity to Central Avenue and all that it offered. On the strip of ½ mile between Old Army and Ardsley Road was everything I needed for sustenance, first as a child and then as a teen. In the space that now houses Staples was Child World, the biggest toy store my five-year-old eyes had ever seen. It was a superstore before there were superstores, and it competed with Toys R Us. (My parents wouldn't let me go to Toys R Us because it was located in a very dangerous place: Yonkers.)

    There were so many dining options for me on Central Avenue. I loved the chicken cutlets and ambrosia salad from the German Deli, and the pizza at Gennaro's. In the same shopping plaza as Child World was a Chinese restaurant called South Seas that served delicious-slash-gross Pu-Pu platters, the kind with the fire in the center and fried everything all around. It was dark in that restaurant, and so the fire really glowed. I ordered it mostly to play with my food, as spinning the wood dish was easily my favorite part of the meal. When I got older, that restaurant became my favorite for another reason: it served Mai Tais and Scorpion Bowls to minors. The drinks were pictured on a laminated menu, so you could see just how blue the Blue Curacao liquor would be before ordering your preferred concoction. With a straight face, one of us would order for the group. "Can we get that with two paper umbrellas, one silk flower, and three straws, please? Thanks." Then we'd giggle into our napkins. The tackier the drink, the better it tasted.

    Alas, the restaurant closed in the mid-1980's due to health violations. But the news was no biggie to us. We could always hang at The Mont.

    Mont Parnasse diner, lovingly referred to as The Mont, was THE place to be almost all the time, especially during biology class and after a big Saturday night party at either Tamir's or JD's house. I'm talking old school here, before the renovations that changed The Mont from a dark, faux-wood 70's time warp palace into the bright, cheerful, glass and turquoise Florida diner it later became. Before it moved to the corner of Ardsley Road. Back then, each booth had a juke box. The chocolate pudding lived in a rotating display case up front and had 'skin' on the top of it. I loved it topped with whipped cream. I also loved fries with gravy.

    Ah, you could smoke in restaurants back in those days. There wasn't even a smoking section; the whole place was just fogged up with carcinogens. I used to smoke Marlboro Lights in a coveted booth, the juke box playing Madonna while I downed several coffees in a row, confessing my innermost secrets to friends under the soft glow of a faux-Tiffany style plastic 'chandelier.' I would arrive home reeking like an ashtray.

    "Were you smoking?" My mom would ask, eyeing me suspiciously.

    "Nah, Mom, gross!" I would fake-shudder, pretending to take offense. "I was just at the Mont for hours. You know how it smells in there."

    Who wouldn't love a restaurant that could be used as an alibi?

    Most everything from those days is gone now. One of the last hold-outs - besides from Gennaro's, which is still an awesome place for a slice, and not just because the owner remembers me as a high school cheerleader - was Pizza and Brew.

Pizza and Brew was the place to go for regular meals as well as celebrations. On a random Thursday night after the Greenville Chorus Concert, that's where my family would go. There would be a line out the door as we waited for a table. Need to have a birthday party with the grandparents on a Sunday afternoon? Head to Pizza and Brew.

    The quirky design feature that defined P and B was the train. You had to request your preference to sit in the train, which was, like it sounds, an old-fashioned trolley-like space in the middle of the restaurant. The tables had black and white advertisements on them and there were wooden slatted benches inside a green train with old movie posters overhead. In the 30 years that I ate at Pizza and Brew, I think I only sat outside of the train three times. In those cases, I liked sitting at the old-fashioned ice cream counter, which had, similar to The Mont, fake Tiffany stained glass lighting. But it also used wax ice cream sundaes for décor.
I am so glad that I brought my own children there to dine several times, now that Pizza and Brew is gone. Over the summer, the Rachanelli family that owns the restaurant closed its doors to renovate. Last month, it re-opened as Racanelli's New York Italian.

    I had to go!

    Perhaps because I was walking around the restaurant randomly taking photos with my phone, I was approached by John Racanelli, one of the owners. "Hi! So, what do you think of the new place?"

    I oohed and ahhed as John gave my kids and me a tour or the beautifully designed new restaurant. "Did you make it bigger?" My 10-year-old son, Andrew, asked.

    John laughed. "No, it's just funny what happens to a space once you remove a train from the inside of it. It feels a lot more open."

    The restaurant mixes industrial-style elements, such as exposed ductwork and original concrete floors with reclaimed wood and honed marble to make it architecturally appealing and very current. Huge sliding garage doors front the space, which can open in good weather. Hints of the restaurant's past are all over the space, from the red and white ice cream parlor chairs in the waiting area to the original signage, now hanging as artwork. Black and white photos of the Racanelli family surround the bar.

    John explained that the restaurant, which his father, Martino Racanelli, opened in 1972, was due for a change. "When the lease came up for renewal, the landlord told my father he needed to do two things: add a bar and update the décor. But then my father got sick."

    Martino Racanelli passed away in 2011, and, a year later, the family began remodeling the restaurant. "We refocused the concept onto New York Italian and we've elevated everything. It's Pizza and Brew grown up," John said.

    I guess, just like me, and after all these years, a lot of Central Avenue had to grow up too. And Racanelli's is a nice destination for a family looking for a slightly fancier but still kid-friendly night out.

    But, to be perfectly honest, dear 2013, I kind of wish I could rewind time, so that I could sit in that train enjoying a greasy slice of pizza after an elementary school chorus concert, maybe just one more time.

Columnist and blogger Julie Gerstenblatt writes with humor and candor about her life in Scarsdale, her friends and family, and the particular demands of motherhood and wifedom in modern-day suburbia. Read about her new book Lauren Takes Leave and keep up with the latest from Julie Gerstenblatt at http://juliegerstenblatt.com

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Category: The Goods

Published: 12 December 2012

Step 1. Ignore TripAdvisor: Every time I plan a vacation, I turn to TripAdvisor for advice, and you know what? That's a baaaaad idea. That site totally messes with my head. I think I know what I want to do for vacation, and then I read awful stories written by pissed off people venting online, and then I get totally confused. Here's an example. For my 10th wedding anniversary, I was going to book a trip with my lovely husband, Brett, to Parrot Cay, a romantic getaway off Turks and Caicos. Everyone I spoke to said it was amazing. Jennifer Anniston was supposedly in love with Parrot Cay. All systems were go until I read ONE REVIEW by a STRANGER saying that there was never enough food to eat at the resort and that I should bring my own granola bars and pretzels to snack on, because that place was so remote it was like vacationing on the set of Survivor.
I did not go to Parrot Cay. I booked us at the Four Seasons, Nevis, which was hit by a hurricane two months before our trip.
We ended up vacationing in freezing cold NYC.

I like to think it's all TripAdvisor's fault. That website should just be called ShutUpAndStayHome.

Last year, I booked a family vacation in Puerto Rico for Christmas break. Because there is seriously something wrong with me, I again read the TripAdvisor reviews of the resort before committing, but this time at least, I did not let the chatter completely influence my decision-making. It was like, I know some of the rooms are old, and I know that some of the restaurants at the resort suck, and I know that it's a shlep to the beach, BUT we're going there anyway, and we're going to have an awesome time, goddammit, regardless of what those TripAdvisor crazies have to say because we're traveling on Amex points and this is the best we can do at Christmastime! So there!

We arrived at the hotel on a glorious, hot, sunny day and looked out at the deep blue ocean. All of us Gerstenblatts were beginning to relax and unwind...until we got to our room.

"I requested an ocean-view room in the building on the hill," I told the porter who was bringing us down, down, down the hill to the marina area.

He checked his data. "You requested ocean-view only. You cannot make two different requests."

"But I heard that the rooms in the marina smell like low tide and have had flooding issues in the past, leaving them moldy!" I said.

"You heard?" Brett asked. "From who?"

"From the hoard of complainers on TripAdvisor!" I said. Maybe there had been two.

The porter opened the door to our room, and all five of us – four Gerstenblatts and one hotel employee – held our breath, waiting to see how awful it really was.

The room was beautiful. It was light and airy and newly renovated. A sliding glass door opened to a deck with chairs overlooking the expanse of ocean, with islands in the distance. It was so bright I had to squint.

And even though my eyes were telling me one thing, my brain was still telling me another: this room was no good. The BEST ones were up the hill. We were somehow missing out.

We unpacked and headed to the pool, but it took me all day to shake the notion that I was somehow being screwed out of a perfect vacation by not being in a room on the hill. And then I realized that TripAdvisor had inadvertently turned me into one of their minions, a complaining, negative Nelly who wouldn't settle for being satisfied when they could strive for being disappointed.

Forget any website's comments, my negativity was the thing that was going to ruin my family's already perfect vacation. So I backed off, jumped in the pool, and realized that I was with my family in a tropical paradise with great weather, and there was nothing anyone on the World Wide Web could say to make me doubt myself any more.

Step 2. Read TripAdvisor

Call me crazy (you wouldn't be the first one!), but I still feel that sites like TripAdvisor do offer helpful information – as long as you can remain calm and take all advice with a grain of salt. Or sand, as the case may be. Many people who write reviews online are the ones at both ends of the spectrum, because they were either extremely satisfied or extremely disappointed with an experience. Knowing that makes me slightly more sane. But only slightly.

Step 3. Always vacation in the same place

There is an adjustment period when you travel to a new locale. How long does it take to get to the hotel? What's the best spot by the pool? Where should we eat breakfast? How potent are the Margaritas and how many can mommy drink before she goes snorkeling? You can avoid all these issues by returning to the same resort year after year. The people who we met at the airport and who were returning to our resort in Puerto Rico for the second, fourth, or eleventh time were already chillaxing at the baggage carousel. They knew what they were heading towards – their favorite water slides, the nightly outdoor movies, beach volleyball – and had already gotten over the hump of those first 24 hours. Although I love to try different hotels on for size, I can see the appeal in returning to a known destination and just saying "ahhhh."

Step 4. Bring a great book

I just read the cheesiest, badest, couldn't-put-it-down book and I think you should read it on your vacation. It's called On The Island by Tracey Garvis-Graves, and it's a sexy survival story of a 16-year-old boy and his 30-year-old female tutor whose plane goes down in the Maldives. On the Island is like The Blue Lagoon (cheeseball 1980 romantic movie) meets Hatchet (a children's book about a boy who is lost in the Canadian wilderness for 54 days), and my friend Suzanne recommended it to me. If you hate it, feel free to blame TripAdvisor.

Safe travels, everyone! See you in 2013!

Columnist and blogger Julie Gerstenblatt writes with humor and candor about her life in Scarsdale, her friends and family, and the particular demands of motherhood and wifedom in modern-day suburbia. Read about her new book Lauren Takes Leave and keep up with the latest from Julie Gerstenblatt at http://juliegerstenblatt.com