Edible Happiness

A friend of mine has a few weeks off from working this month, and has taken the opportunity to explore what New York has to offer in the form of activities. He's been to meditation groups, free yoga (suggested donation of $5, apparently), taken up voice lessons, the works.

Today, after work (yes! I'm working for PAY this week...), I met up with him for another event he wanted to try out, a group called Rooftop Films. They arrange screenings of films (sometimes short, sometimes feature length, sometimes fiction, sometimes documentary, sometimes somewhere inbetween) that aren't distributed through other channels. It's a great opportunity for the filmmakers they select to get an audience and create some hype around their films.

Usually, apparently, when weather permits, these screenings are done on rooftops all around the city. Today, however, since it was so freezing my arm almost fell off, they hosted it indoors at a warehouse type building called Chelsea Market. There was free beer, sponsered by Radeberger and hundreds of people showed up.

The event lasted about three hours, and was made up of about 4 short films about half an hour each in length, and 2 about 5 minutes in length. All of them were slightly odd, but very entertaining. The last one was a documentary about this 3rd grade class in China that was learning about democracy, and was going to have an election for class monitor. At first, they didn't understand the concept of democracy, but by the end, they were screwing eachother over and saying whatever it took to get votes so they could get into power. It was hilarous and kind of sad and telling seeing what elections can do to even cute Chinese 10 year olds.

When the three hours were up, my poor friend was starving since he hadn't really eaten anything all day, so I accompanied him to a sandwich place called 'Swich (104 8th ave, between 15th and 16th, 212-488-4800). They specialize in pressed sandwiches, all of which looked awesome. They have a sandwich called "Thanksgiving Every Day" with turkey, stuffing, and cranberry bread, one called "Tuna-na-na, italian tuna, tomato and marinated artichokes with olive tapenade on 7-grain", and a "Trojan Horse, ground lamb with tomato, tzatziki, and fresh mint on rosemary focaccia." All sandwiches I would definitely want to try from a place that boasts that they've tried every sandwich at least 15 different ways to make sure they're serving the best one.

However, it isn't the savory sandwiches that inspired me to write about this place. It's the desert my friend got: three types of chocolate (dark, white, and nutella) pressed between two slices of brioche. Luckily, it was shared with me, and I found myself saying, "This is like happiness in a dessert," because I could actually feel the smiles coming on as I ate. It actually made me happy because it was so good.

Then I realized that the actual name of the thing is "Edible happiness". A very fitting name.