I have takes—on restaurants, bars, books, articles, movies, shows, albums, concerts, exhibits, cities, clothes, and gear, among other things. I want to share them. I want to remember them. But I don’t want to spend a lot of time on them. And given that, I don’t want to demand a lot of yours.
So here’s the deal: with the exception of this intro, I will be limiting myself to ten minutes per post (with a brief grace period to finish my sentence). Six hundred seconds in which to strive to give coherent and captivating voice to the raw or inchoate opinions swirling around my brain. I’m allowed to gather my thoughts beforehand (e.g., reminding myself what I ate or saw), but all writing must take place during that interval. Afterwards, only post-production (pun intended!) is allowed (e.g., adding links or fixing typos).
I predict this will be a fun and fulfilling exercise—the race against the clock, the balance between spewing and editing, the mercifully low word counts. I mean, we’re all already doing a version of it whenever we dash off an email or a series of texts expressing our views; there’s a lot to be said for a format that’s a little more polished, public, and permanent—the fertile ground between the text and the essay.
People say there are too many takes on the internet, but I‘m not sure that’s true. There are too many takes of the wrong sort—people piling on about ethics, politics, philosophy, and other big questions they’re not sufficiently up on, in order to feel like they are part of something greater or to vent or attack. So much of online discourse—Twitter, Reddit, newspaper comment sections, and the like—seems to consist of the expression of underinformed and underconsidered opinions about the most weighty and complex of issues. So many people feel the need to take a strong position on, say, pandemic policy or financial regulation, even if that stance is basically just parroting their preferred podcaster pundit’s. Imagine if instead everyone took a little time to leave a thoughtful and reasonably detailed Google or Amazon review every time a place or product made an impression—or started a blog for the benefit of their friends. I don’t care what some rando thinks about the lab-leak theory, but if she‘s waxing eloquent about the crab curry at the new Sri Lankan place, she’s got my attention.
Accordingly, I intend to focus here on two subjects on which I’m eminently qualified: my tastes and my impressions. No one needs my two cents about the latest crypto scandal or (what year is it?) bank run. What I really want to do is to try to articulate why the prik khing tofu (a pretty vanilla dish) at Playground (a pretty adventurous establishment) is worth ordering (the slightly crispy, spongy-in-a-good-way, and substantial tofu, a surprising gem from a place that doesn’t seem to be throwing vegetarians much of a bone; the rich, thick red curry sauce with its light but vital sweetness; the generous portion of crunchy-fresh longbeans; the intensity of the spices), or the thoughts I had about architecture, neighborhoods, and density when walking around parts of Philly for the first time (here’s one: I’d underappreciated how great it is that so much of NYC can support the existence of at least one bodega on pretty much every block). Don’t be surprised if half these takes end up being restaurant reviews.
I’m glad that’s out of the way. Writing is hard. Let the brain-dumping begin!
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