Snack & Slay 3: Biko & The MTA

"Slay" is here to stay... for now.

Good day!

Here I am again, probably in your Spam folder! Welcome to the third edition of Snack and Slay. 

I once again allowed too much time to elapse between newsletters, this time due to my inability to come up with new, original slays. I had backed myself into a dangerous corner of identifying myself as a tastemaker, as someone who frequently discovers cool things to do or watch or make. Truthfully, most of my opinions come from other people– I watch new shows reluctantly after more than two friends tell me I should; I see cool-looking people on the subway and Google “vintage levi low rise pant” from across the car. As this newsletter evolves, perhaps I will ditch this inevitably fleeting piece of the Gen Z vernacular I have clung to for the past 6-10 months in my pathetic attempt to stay (become) relevant and focus more on snacking– the element that really made me excited to write in the first place. To slay, too, is not just to be good, but to really kick some ass. My little knitting project from Newsletter 2 is still sitting unfinished under my living room couch. If that is not the antithesis of slaying, I don’t know what is. 

The effort of coming up with new slays, though, pays off. I have unintentionally assigned myself with the task of making one of those godforsaken “gratitude lists” on a regular basis. I jotted down a list of potential slays in my Notes app this week, and they weren’t musicians with 14 Spotify streams. They were just mundane things that I could write about in a positive light and send along to the Spam folders of my subscribers.

Snack

I had a really bad day last week. This newsletter is a place of joy so I will spare you the details, but what matters is that I found myself in the primal state of stress which I believe our ancestors reserved for the day when their cave was entered by a monstrous premodern bear. It was 4 pm and all I had eaten was a single piece of toast: all I could stomach in the throes of anticipation of the awful day ahead. (To be fair, this was one of those rare times where the object of anxiety was truly worthy of the anxiety. But, I digress.)  

At this crucial moment, the thing that I next ate would determine if and how I recovered from said bad day. It was vital that it provided both comfort and satisfaction, but it also had to really feel like a treat. A bowl of pasta wouldn’t suffice. The perfect idea came to me and once it was in my head, there was no getting it out. I had to have, specifically, the Biko from F.O.B, a Filipino restaurant I had visited the month before. Biko, as described on their menu, is a “sweet coconut sticky rice with coconut caramel”, but it is so much more than that. 

F.O.B starts taking online orders at 5 pm, and by 5:00:01 I had placed an order for one Biko, to go. When I arrived at 5:07 to pick it up, I was greeted with big smiles from the front and back of house, a warmth amplified by the brightly colored walls and lush tropical plants. I should mention, too, that the other food on the menu is worthy of a sit-down meal, like the perfectly tender chicken skewers that have somehow become one with their barbecue sauce, accompanied by a simple tangy pickled papaya salad. I didn’t have the energy to hold my body upright at a table, so I left with my order in hand, to return another day. 

I will admit to putting a lot of pressure on my Biko. I expected her to not only neutralize the horrors of my day, but to bring me back into a net-positive mindset. And my Biko delivered. She presented herself slathered in rich, sticky caramel, thickly set over a thick, almost cake-like wedge of glutinous sticky rice. She was everything I needed her to be and more. In the mind-bending minutes during which I consumed my sweet Biko, the possibility entered my mind that I might not finish her, but she proved me wrong. Before I knew it, she was gone, along with all of my problems. It all happened so fast that I did not have a chance to capture her in a photo, so here is one I found online, complete with the banana leaf on which mine was also nestled. I now know that there is no earthly pain which Biko cannot cure. 

Slay

After much deliberation, this week’s Slay is a topic very close to my heart, like an old friend you know so well that you can never truly stay mad at them, no matter how many times they wrong you. I’m going to come out and say it: the New York City subway has been treating me right. Of course, as soon as I typed those words, I cursed myself with hellishness and grief for my next thousand rides. But, for now, we are on good terms. 

This winter, I read a piece in the NY Times called “An Ode to the New York Subway” while on one of my 45 minute commutes between Brooklyn and the Upper West Side. When you put the keyword “subway” into the Times search bar, titles pop up with such names as, “Man in Shot on Subway Train in Lower Manhattan”, “Man Killed by Subway Train When He Falls Onto Tracks During Fight” and, last but certainly not least, “Woman Burned by Chemical Thrown in Her Face at Brooklyn Subway Stop”. These, plus the stories I have heard from countless friends and have experienced myself, are enough to make me never want to step foot in this filthy underground circus ever again. 

Despite the general horrors, though, the Ode mentions that the sheer population of NYC actually results in a lower ratio of commute-based accidents than the suburbs, where cars are the culprits of such events. For me, when I’m not clenching my fists in anticipation of the acid that will soon be thrown in my face, I have come to – if not love – appreciate my daily 90 minutes on the train. Every day, I find myself hundreds of feet below the city, traveling at what seems to be the speed of sound with a new and random assortment of people I will never see again. I have a soft spot for the ads with terrible copy: “Avoid Cooking Like You Avoid Times Square” (Seamless) or “We Wanna Be On You” (FIGS, the scrubs brand). And don’t even get me started on those “cooking hack" videos, which usually consist of someone macerating a cupcake, rolling it into a ball, dipping that ball into the cupcake’s own frosting, and calling it a cake pop. 

If I’m lucky, someone will bring a dog into my car, where it will have no choice but to be pet by me until the next stop. As I mentioned earlier, I have gotten much fashion inspiration from well-dressed folks who usually get out between 14th Street and Chambers. When I’m riding the express and we miraculously sync perfectly with the local on the next track, I like to look at the people illuminated in the parallel car for a few precious seconds before they are lurched to a stop and I speed ahead into hyperspace, never to see them again. And there’s the moment of recognition when I spot someone from the same car a few blocks away after we get off at the same stop (this one can also be a little scary).

I feel immense satisfaction (if I’m not in a rush) when a line is shut down and I can solve the puzzle of what to take instead, a rat with pride in its mastery of its maze. A rat equipped with whistles and, soon, pepper spray, but a rat nonetheless. 

Slay.

More soon,

Alice