Vive La France

It’s Saturday evening and my friend Lana and I are tooling around the Lower East Side looking for a place to eat. Since it’s eight o’clock on the busiest restaurant night of the week we know we have a snowball’s chance in hell getting a table anywhere soon. “How about...

Some People Just Don’t Get It

There was a recent article in the New York Times entitled “Hey Waiter! Just How Much Extra Do You Really Expect?” In it the author, David Sax, just regurgitates the ignorant and curmudgeonly responses certain people have always had towards tipping. So read the...

Riding Off Into the Sunset

It’s Tuesday and I’m in Home Depot looking for a Torx screwdriver. The reason I need such a device is to tighten the pivot screw on a pocketknife I purchased over the Internet. For what I paid for it, the knife should have come perfectly tuned. But such is life....

What do bad tippers drive?

Please answer the following question in the comments section. “When you think of bad tippers, what brand of car comes to mind?” List the brand of the car fIrst, followed by your reasons for saying so. This should be interesting!

Goodbye Spenser

It’s Tuesday night and I’m hungry again. But this time my larder’s stocked with food and the pickings are bountiful. I throw some rice, water, pignoli nuts and a bay leaf into my roommate’s rice cooker and turn it on. Then I break out some pork chops, trim away the...

The Privacy of Smoke

It’s a crisp winter’s night and I’m strolling though Union Square in Lower Manhattan. I’m supposed to be meeting a friend for dinner but when she texts to say she’s running late I suddenly discover I’ve got forty-five minutes to kill. So I duck into a cigar shop,...

What You Don’t Have

It’s Tuesday night and I’ve given up wrestling with words for the day. I’m tired and hungry. I toy with the idea of picking something up from a local restaurant but that costs money. So I decide to cook something for myself. Before indulging in any culinary...

The Ghost of Cain

It’s a cold Thursday afternoon and I’m at the gun range. But this time my usual shooting buddy isn’t with me. There’ll be no good-natured banter. No burgers and beers afterwards. I’m here to learn how to kill. “Ready?” the instructor, an old ex-marine, asks. A small...

Who Are The Worst Tippers?

If you’ve ever worked for tips you’ve probably formulated your own, albeit unscientific, conclusions about what kinds of people are bad tippers. Women? Doctors? Wall Street Guys? Republicans? Democrats? Country Club Wasps? African Americans? Latinos? Rich...