Dear Sugar (CherylStrayed.com)

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.

"Okay," The Observer said, as the pretty Minnesota native took a bite of her chicken salad. "Bedbugs."

Ms. Strayed blanched. "Bedbugs?"
"What if you meet someone you really click with, but they have bedbugs? How soon should they tell you? And since they can be transferred by clothing, how are you supposed to let them touch you? Would you let them into your house? What about your children's welfare...bedbugs go after kids."
"And," we added for dramatic effect, "You can never, ever get rid of them. Even if you do, you'll probably go crazy and spend the rest of your life seeing bugs and developing a psychological disorder."
Ms. Strayed, to her credit, kept chewing. "Are bedbugs really that common in New York? Should I be worried about my hotel?"

"Your hotel, subways, furniture on Craigslist, movie theaters...bedbugs are the HPV of insects too, because some people aren't allergic to the bites, so they can give it to you without knowing they are infested."

"Well first of all, we're fooling ourselves if we think that only the people who tell us they have bedbugs actually have them. A lot of people wouldn't tell you. So in some ways, a guy telling you on a first date is being admirably honest," Ms. Strayed said after some thought. "They're being vulnerable and..."

She paused.

"Are there really no creative solutions to this?" Ms. Strayed asked, perplexed. "If every place had bedbugs, won't everyone eventually have them?"

We explained that as prevalent as the suckers are, the fear of contracting the little suckers has been overblown, now that you can look up every building in New York and see if they've ever had an infestation. "It makes people crazy, even the slight chance of getting them," we told her.

So what part of your first date should the bedbug story come out?

"This is one of the most perplexing questions I've ever had," Ms. Strayed admitted. "You should never lead with 'Oh, I have this problem,' but you want to be honest and tell them as soon as possible. Is it safe to hug someone with bedbugs?"

"Not really. Probably not."

"Okay." The advice columnist furrowed her brow and talked it through. "So the stigma for bedbugs is worse than the stigma of getting divorced."

"Right."

"Well, I always try to look at the underlying question. So this isn't just about bedbugs: it's about people's fears versus their desires. Trust your gut: if you really like the guy and you see a future with him, hop a plane and elope in a Vegas chapel. Because if it was going to work out, his problems...no matter what they were...would become your problems anyway. That's how relationships work."

(Side note: He should probably burn his clothes first, to be on the safe side.)

The nice part of that plan, we realized, was that if he turned you down, he'd reveal himself to be more afraid of an easily-annulled commitment than you were of his flesh-eating vermin.

No wonder Dear Sugar is so damn good. Now if you'll excuse us, we have to go scrub ourselves down now.

Down boy! We're clean.

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.

Indeed, there was so much baby talk and photo snapping, the scene shared more than a passing resemblance to a new-borns room in a maternity ward, as much as a City Hall press conference.

City Hall is clean.

Behind all the joie de pooch was the serious and very nasty issue of actually being bitten by those pesky bugs. Commissioner Wambua revealed how in the last fiscal year the department had received some 13,000 complaints and 3,500 violations.

"After you use the dogs you will really feel good about sleeping and you won’t have any mental health anguish," said Council Member Gale Brewer. The dogs, she said, have a 98% success rate, which should help put New Yorkers' minds at ease. "Bed bugs create, not a physical, but a major mental health problem," Ms. Brewer said.

With just two dogs, private contractors can also sleep soundly tonight. They have had the bed-bug-sniffing market pretty much cornered, but there is only so much the department can do. "I want to make clear that there is more that needs to be done," Speaker Quinn said. "Two dogs is clearly not enough for 8.4 million people, and god knows how many bed bugs.”

On the topic of private firms Ms. Brewer added, “Unfortunately some dogs aren’t highly trained when you call a private contractor. These dogs the HPD have are very highly trained.”

Speaker Quinn tags the dog.

Today’s announcement has been a long time coming—cities like Seattle and Chicago already have sniffer beagles in place. “In 2009, 1,000 people showed up in Washington Heights for the first meeting with the HBD to talk about this,” Ms. Brewer said. For the representatives at City Hall and residence of New York City, it’s a case of better late than never.

After thanking Commissioner Wambua, Ms. Brewer and everyone who has been part of the bed bug advisory board Ms. Quinn paused, giving her voice an air of gravitas, “Mickey and Nemo, thank you very much.” Mickey had nodded off by this stage. “Mickeys still asleep, I won't take personal offense."

Just resting up for a tough weeks of sniffing ahead, no doubt.

realestate@observer.com

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

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.

Inspired by a friend who suffered the plight of New York's most notorious bugs, Mr. Fine -- who works in advertising but declined to elaborate -- began setting up these mini-hotel structures just this weekend on the Lower East Side. So far he has nine built, and a Tumblr for the project, encouraging others to make their own "Bed Bug Hotels" and place them outside residents that are infected. If you email him a photo, he'll even put it up on the site.

"It's not a viral marketing campaign," Mr. Fine told us by phone. "It's an art project." But not one meant to humiliate those renters who have to walk past a structure declaring their apartment bug-riddled every day. It's to shame the landlords into doing something about their infestations. "There's laws against landlords not alerting tenants to bug problems...they're obligated to care of it. But it hardly ever happens."

As for using street art to get the message out, Mr. Fine gives all the credit to the Internet. "Using a street for a canvas, something about that’s really cool. But with the Internet...with Reddit and other sites...it's entirely changed how many people can be reached. You get a much larger audience: that’s what’s cool about social media."

If others start jumping on the project, Bed Bug Hotels may start being as ubiquitous as the little critters themselves.

How did we find this out? From only the finest news source in the land, Next Media Animations.

The Taiwanese CGI specialists have a thing for our bed bug problem, having chronicled the arachnid invasion of Times Square and other U.S. landmarks last fall.

Whether or not we can solve this national crisis, no one seems to know. One thing is for sure, though: We're never eating deep-dish pizza ever again.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @mc_nyo

Well guess what! You may not have to spend this Christmas hunkering down in fear of bites from tiny insects! BedBug Central, a site devoted to assisting the bug-inflicted in finding exterminators, is giving the gift of insect death this December, the New York Daily News reports. The site has reached out to several extermination firms in the city, asking them to provide needy New Yorkers with free service. The efforts can save those without means up to $3000 in fees.

"It's to give back to the community," Peter Scala, owner of Parkway Exterminating in Long Island, told the Daily News. A saint, this one!

To gain this opportunity of a lifetime, all one has to do is take a few minutes out of their bed bug-ridden day and write a 300-word statement to BedBug Central. So get writing! Bed bugs multiply fast.

nfreeman [at] observer.com | @nfreeman1234

The Wall Street Journal has a trend story about the wave of unsuccessful actors who work for Bed Bug Busters NY — vermin cleansers with an eye for the dramatic. Showbiz dropout Janet Friedman founded the company after "42nd Street," where she was a stage magager, closed, leaving her without a job. Now, she hires out-of-work actors because they "have great personalities and follow directions well."

Getting through the day seems like a piece of cake! All you have to do, according to failed actress Meagan Gilliand, is "pretend to be OK, like you're still having a good time with friends and stuff, while you're choking on a lot of dust." 

Hopefully your acting skills weren't too insufficient — that sounds like a lot of pretending!

nfreeman [at] observer.com | @nfreeman1234 

• You knew this day was coming. Bedbugs at Carnegie Hall. Insert obligatory "practice" joke.

• Columbia Business School students apparently have issues with personal hygiene. Bunch a hippies. No jobs left for those of you who don't get "professional haircuts."

• What if Obama made avant garde web videos?

• RIP Paul the Sooth-Sliming Octopus. You will be missed. You were kind of like Punxatawney Phil, only with more legs. Underwater. And squishy.

• Things you need: solid gold Monopoly set! See what they did there? A game...about acquiring wealth...made out of gold...So Meta!

• You know that creepy Elmo dude in Times Square? Yeah, he's officially creepy. Proof exists. Whither sad panda?

Who needs Saw 3D when you have Bedbugs Take Over USA. Granted everything in the video seems to take place in New York. But since this is the capital of the world, that kinda makes sense.

>> Click for a look at Tiger Woods, Sarah Palin and more of Next Media Animation's greatest hits.

My Fox NY notes that as recently as July a cop took a shot at a coyote spotted in a Yonkers public park, but after a series of attacks in June, they've begun to look like a real problem in Westchester. Coyotes may love their ACME products but they are usually afraid of people. If you see one you are advised to call the authorities. If your pet comes in contact with one, call health officials.

[MyFoxNY]

Pest control technicians are on the job.

Toronto has been battling the nasty and seemingly ubiquitous parasites all summer and was alerted to the possible infestation Monday by a guest who claimed they were bitten while visiting the venue. Theater owners are all over the problem and want to reassure members of the press and movie industry who will be heading to Toronto in September that "the safety and security" of visitors as well as staff is their "No. 1 concern."

Update! Cineplex reports no bed bugs found in the Scotiabank. Any itchiness felt while there for TIFF will be purely imaginary or perhaps even produced by whatever you're watching at the time.

[THR]