Thursday, May 21, 2009

More running do's and don't's

Do: end your run at Bouley Bakery's new, spacious Tribeca café, the one with mysteriously reasonable prices (and pitchers of iced water and cups just sitting there, for your post-run hydration). But beware the no-lock restroom. A blonde Eastern European woman very near caught me trying to extract the cash I'd brought (to pay for my pain au chocolat) from my running shorts' weird inner pocket. I hope she recovers.

Don't: follow up with a trip to the Whole Foods nearby, where summer fruit has just arrived, and where, in your post-run state, buying a checking-account's worth of plumcots, apricots, and whatever other -cots they're selling seems like a good idea. (I want to swim in a sea of these plumcots, so I suppose I don't totally regret the purchase.)

Do: run from one borough to another - it provides a nice, arbitrary sense of accomplishment without the need to run 26.2 miles.

Don't: take the Brooklyn Bridge. It has two lanes, one for elementary school field trips and slow-moving Northern European tourists, the other for racing bicyclists, and only those two. You can try to create a third lane in the middle, but in vain.

Do: get one of those stupid-looking early 1990s fabric headbands to keep your hair back during the run.

Don't: exit the train besides a woman you recognize from your department but don't know well, but know to be French, and whose French well-dressed-ness makes your 1991-aerobics-instructor look appear all the more ridiculous.

2 comments:

Matt said...

That is a good bakery. I get lunch there sometimes, though it's _just_ far enough away from work to make it not the most convenient. I'm always happy when I go, though. Also, they almost seem to have too much help, at least when I've been there.

Phoebe Maltz Bovy said...

Too much help, too much space, pastries that are just a bit too tasty (cannelles especially)... the whole thing doesn't quite make sense - how does it stay in business? But having seen Bouley Bakery's various incarnations since around 1997, I'm guessing this will be the layout for a few months, then onto the next thing. Whatever they do, though, they might want to put a lock in that bathroom.