Lunch Dates

Dear Sugar (CherylStrayed.com)

Lunching with Dear Sugar’s Cheryl Strayed: On Love and Bedbugs

We rushed into Midtown’s fancy french bistro Cognac, already five minutes late to meet Cheryl Strayed, the recently (or not) outed authoress of the Dear Sugar advice column. On Stephen Elliott‘s site The Rumpus, Dear Sugar has blossomed in the two years since Ms. Strayed took it over from her predecessor, Steve Almond. It went from snarky relationship advice to something much more personal…and universal, under the 43-year-old Portland author’s touch.
Dear Sugar always answered her readers’ questions with anecdotes from her own life, but instead of over-sharey, Dear Sugar became something of an online Oprah. She’s been there, honey!

She was only in town for the evening, to read selections from her new memoir, Wild, at the Powerhouse Arena in Brooklyn. The New York Observer had approximately 1 hour to pick the advice queen’s mind…but we created a catch for the Portland native. Instead of answering for a general audience, our questions were specific to New York (or at least a major city).

To be honest, we spent all night thinking of questions that Ms. Strayed already hasn’t answered: Facebook relationships, money, jealousy, infidelity. We had only been able to come up with one. But it was a dozy. Read More

Humbugs

Down boy! We're clean.

Who Let The Dogs In! Bed Bug Bloodhounds Join HPD Inspection Team

To combat the city’s growing bed bug problem, the Department of Housing Preservation and Development has gone to the dogs. Say hello to Nemo and Mickey, the latest members of the department’s Maintenance Code inspection team. And rather than the vet, the two Beagles were fortunate enough to get their tags—we mean badges—from Council Speaker Christine Quinn and Housing Commissioner Mathew Wambua.

“Awww, look at their little jackets,” cooed Ms. Quinn when she first set eyes on the dogs. Read More

Street Art

You can checkout any time you like, but you can never leave

Bed Bug Hotels: Creepy-Crawly Street Art Doubles As Public Service Announcement

Earlier this year, Hunter Fine and his friend Jeff Greenspan gained some viral notoriety for their street art: starting with “Hipster Traps” (where PBR and goofy sunglasses were set as bait inside a cardboard bear trap) in New York City, the two soon expanded their repertoire to include “Tea Party Traps” and “Bridge and Tunnel Traps.”

Now Mr. Fine is working solo on a new kind of public service, one that alerts new residents that their LES apartment may actually be a front for a bed bug hotel. Read More