I biked in the Pouring Rain today

Jam Packed Blog Today. Feel Free to Skip to sections of interest. Blog covers:

• Yummy yet unapetizing looking breakfast

• Free Bagel Monday Coworking experience

• Attempts to land video sales in the rain

• Polish Meat Shops

• Awesome experience at Viral Bakery

Today it was very rainy. It was one of those days with 65% chance of precipitation but the rain clouds decided to dump water on me. Welp

Breakfast

We all like posting our pretty pictures of food but you know what it may not look pretty but boy it was nice.

Hard Boiled Vital Farms Eggs with Organic Avocado and Trader Joe’s Canned Black Beans (& of course a healthy dose of Palloncino). Ran out of salt so instead doused the Reduced Sodium Kikkoman Soy Sauce all over my eggs. It’s quite fun to find salt alternatives. Try it some time

Coworking

I then subwayed and grinded out a Pita Bread Video at my coworking Space Nomadworks. Skipped the gym today thinking there’d be ultimate frisbee tonight but nope… cancelled. To be transparent, I’m trying to simultaneously improve and systematize the video-making process. My advice to others would be to focus on one or the other, but this harder path shows me a path of delegation, which is enough motivation to push through the edit. Sort of my light at the end of the tunnel.

Today was free bagel Monday and even though I told myself “no food” when coming into the office I couldn’t resist the whole wheat bagel and scallion cream cheese. Paired with some of the complementary English Breakfast Tea and I was locked in until ~1pm.

1-2pm I subwayed back to Brooklyn and after some canned sardines and chia seeds (no pic which I’m not upset about) I hopped on my bike and decided to go on an adventure.

Pre Biking Through Greenpoint

For proper context, we need to backtrack to Friday Night May 2nd ~11pm. I had just left an event at Reunion in Brooklyn and on my way home passed by a tiny Japanese restaurant named Okonomi. Over the past month I’ve stopped in Okonomi to try and make a video but time after time was met with the same person who told me to email the team. I decided mid-April to stop visiting but at 11pm I saw 4-5 people around my age hanging around playing cards.

I checked if the restaurant was open on Maps. Nope - closed at 10pm.

Bingo.

I walk in and bluntly tell them I want to make a video with them. They asked me what kind of videos I made and 30 minutes of great conversation and some Tito’s Vodka later I came out of that with 4 places I must visit for videos. Two of which happened to be in Greenpont:

• The Meat Hook

• Greenpoint Fish and Lobster

So I revolved my afternoon joyride through Greenpoint around these two spots. For context in my first month in Williamsburg, I ran through Greenpoint 3-4 times and kept asking myself when I’d actually spend time in the area. Didn’t expect it on a bike in the pouring rain lol.

Biking Through Greenpoint

I’m going to rapid fire through these otherwise I’ll be typing in this random Dunkin Donuts on Manhattan Ave until the 2nd half of the Knicks game.

Reminder - it was a torrential downpour throughout this entire journey. Including now when I had to leave Hungry Ghost Coffee and park in the corner of Dunkin’

Stop 1: The Meat Hook

Super impressive inside. Reminds me a bit of Center Cuts in Mattituck. In my research I came across a cool YouTube Documentary Series of the shop on Eater. I like that - means the shop values video media.

Anyway the reason I wanted to visit was to get a cow butchering video. The goal would be to get something like the Bearded Butchers cutting through a whole cow. This shop gets the cow partially cut up but I believe there’s still plenty of content to go around. Hopefully I can get a video because they seem pretty cool. Met the right guy, now just have to deploy intense follow-up mode.

Stop 2: Prospect Butcher.

Not a planned visit. Smelled good in there. But when I asked to “take a picture for my blog” of them cutting liver I may have lost their interest. Oh well. Now I know to stick to the normal pictures. Still a great vibe - i’ll check it out again soon.

If you notice on the left side of the below picture, it says Lard Cookies on the Window. You heard that right. Lard Cookies. That would be a sick thing to film — Lard Extraction + usage in the cookie-making process.

Stop 3: Greenpoint Fish and Lobster

They have a 40M view YouTube video (Epicurious) on how they filet Fish. That’s good.

I was told this place has a booming wholesale business and the workers there confirmed that.

All the Instagram posts about them are about their Lobster Rolls

TBH I don’t care about the Lobster Rolls. I want to get to the warehouse and learn about the operation and teach people about it. Footage of weighing and packaging the fish. How they come off boats, etc.

But if I land a video I may use the Lobster Rolls as the Hook. We’ll see. Like “trying the best Lobster Roll in NYC” but then 180ing into a massive seafood warehouse. We shall see…

Stop 4: Random Polish Meat Shop. The smell reminded me of Ben’s Deli. I’m intrigued by this food. Meat, Potatoes, and Vegetables. But for some reason looks so appetizing to me.

If you grew up eating Polish Food, Greenpoint is worth the visit. There are soooo many cool authentic Polish bakeries, butchers, and restaurants.

Stop 5: Another Random Polish Meat Shop

No English! Maybe a reader here understands what these labels say…

And outside this shop I learned I missed the Polish Spring Festival. Not gonna lie I was kinda pissed. Would have been fun

Stop 6: Fusion Bites SUSHI!

All time advertisement. Couldn’t pass on a $1.25 bite. I went with a Glan Piece with some Ginger. Fire

Random observation: Chicken Pelicana - what kind of restaurant would you think this place is based on the title?

I bet you guessed wrong

Stop 7: Radio Bakery

I’ve been meaning to go here. A ton of hype but I’m a sucker for a good pastry shop. I knew it would be a tough place to get BTS given how popular it is, but I still decided to go.

And I could never have imagined what they had available. It was so tempting that I actually bought it for $14.50.

I was so excited that I figured I had to make a review video. Posted it to Instagram. Nothing I expect to go viral (not posting to TT or YT), but it’s such a me sandwich and deserves a place on the @extravirginguy page haha.

For my review of the Sweat Pea Mint Feta Sandwich, yes you heard that right, click the video below!

Before arriving back home to pick up this laptop and start writing this blog I almost stumbled upon Gold… but I’ll have to wait until a Thursday-Sunday :(

Honorable Mentions

Stopped by a design agency that had a pretty display. They sell these books on Saturdays.

Thought this was a cool picture

If you made it to here, thanks for reading. This was a long one today. Hope you enjoyed!

Tomorrow expect some pizza footage!

-Jack