DADWAGON

Listen, I know that we didn’t win everyone over when we went public with our desire to drag our children to bars. In fact, we made quite a few enemies among the hipsters, the hipster-haters, the Koran-burners and presumably some Koran-lovers.

But if there’s one figure, one quest, that can unite the theocrats and the hatemongers with the pleasure-seekers and child-bashers, it is Frank Bruni on his Infusapallooza mission to get drunk everywhere in New York.

Therefore we found the opening to his story today about drinking in Harlem to be, well, a bit of intoxicating validation:

So long as there’s not a soundtrack of screeching to go with it, I kind of like seeing a stroller in a drinking establishment — and not, I should add, because I’m cavalier about child welfare. Diligent parenting can surely accommodate a glass of wine or stein of beer at happy hour, and procreation shouldn’t prevent the new moms and dads of the world from hanging with the rest of us, who appreciate reinforcements and some diversity around the bar.

Around 6:30 p.m. at Bier International recently I spotted not one stroller but two, babies snug inside, their (moderately) tippling caretakers close at hand. I also spotted two open laptops, attended by tap-tapping patrons who looked to be about 15 years younger than the strollers’ stewards. To scan the crowd was to behold the kind of mosaic New York so often promises but doesn’t always deliver, at least not within four walls: younger people, older people, flip-flops, neckties, black skin, white skin and skin of various shades in between. I found it — along with a polyglot collection of Belgian, Czech, Turkish and Kenyan brews — in a freshly bustling corridor of Harlem, which is where Bier International makes its home.

Did you hear that, haters? “Procreation shouldn’t prevent the new moms and dads of the world from hanging with the rest of us, who appreciate reinforcements and some diversity around the bar,” said Bruni, a man who, due to being gay and utterly devoted to tippling and gourmanding, is perhaps unlikely to do any procreating himself soon.

Bravo, Bruni. Thank you for settling our long disputation. We will see you, drunk and babied-up, in Harlem.

[Update: Bruni apparently suffered a taste of the backlash that came around these parts. He blogs about it, and backtracks a bit on his position, here]

We have our share of boro battles here on DadWagon: half of us live in Brooklyn, half in Manhattan. I live on the real island, but have my share of Brooklyn envy (easy parking! Polish beer!) Theodore claims to be a proud Brooklynite, but I did notice that his recent baby shower was in Manhattan proper.

I would like to point out that it appears that God has weighed in on these disputes. Yesterday evening all of New York City got whumped by a brief, intense torment. Tornado warnings on Staten Island, pelting rain and whipping winds where I was near Harlem.

But it was Brooklyn that bore the worst. The scaffolding at Grand Army plaza blew into the subway entrance, residents talked about trash cans and tree limbs spinning in wild circles 50 feet above the ground (“a poltergeist”, said one). And Park Slope, with all its precious leafy arbors, seemed to be full of downed trees that uprooted sidewalks and crushed SUVs (sadly, in neighboring Queens, someone was actually killed by a falling branch, something that normally only happens in Central Park).

One redeeming quality about Brooklyn is that many great photographers seem to hang out there. My TIME colleague Anthony Suau just posted a nice slideshow of his pictures of the storm (thanks MaryAnne for the link).

Pretty pictures aside, though, I want to know what displeasure Brooklyn has brought our vengeful God. I believe that in Williamsburg many people are still trying to do right by Baal Shem Tov. And few would accuse the Caribbean diaspora in Bed-Stuy of forsaking their Creator. So I’m going to ask Theodore and Matt (though he’s traveling) to look inside. What did you do? What did you say? God is always watching, and he tried to kill you and your families last night. Figure out why, before it’s too late.

On Wednesday, Jean got an unusual phone call—from New York’s Office of Children and Family Services. No, this had nothing to do with our daily subjection of Sasha to an Elmo video. Actually, OFCS (I’m pretty sure it was them) was following up on the latest drama to hit Preschool of America, the daycare chain Sasha goes to in Chinatown.

I’m driving aimlessly around Ireland right now, so I’ve been hearing all the juicy details secondhand from Jean. First of all, this has nothing to do with the labor troubles that rocked/are rocking the Upper West Side branches of the school. This issue seems more localized: At the beginning of September, Sasha’s class got a new second teacher: Miss Daniela joined Miss Zhuo in the 1-to-2-year-old room. But apparently, Miss Daniela quit after just four days, and furthermore is alleging that Miss Zhuo has been abusing the kids—something about taking them into a dark bathroom and then, at naptime, holding them down with blankets until they fall asleep.

Weird, huh? On the one hand, Jean and I both like Miss Zhuo, who seems to love Sasha, who seems to love Miss Zhuo. Sasha’s a happy kid, naps easily at home, and displays no sign that she’s being mistreated at school. At the same time, how can we really know what’s going on there during the day? We picked PoA because it seemed like the right place, the right approach (bilingual), the right building (brand new!), and the right price, but after that it’s a crapshoot. You have to cross your fingers and hope for the best.

In the phone call from CPS, Jean defended Miss Zhuo because, as far as we know, she’s been nothing but loving to our kid. I hope the investigation comes to the same conclusion.

And I hope that next time a big drama erupts in my household, I’ll be around to enjoy it.

I just recently broke down and got cable, which means that now the television is on in my house twenty-four blissful hours a day instead of just twenty-three and a half. This also means that JP’s viewing options have significantly expanded beyond just PBS Kids (Word World!) to include ESPN (I wish), Cartoon Network, and Nickelodeon. Which is why I was a bit annoyed, but not entirely surprised, to come across this bit in the Times’s “Media Decoder” blog, about a new Nicktoons show, “Zevo-3” brought to you by the fine people at Skechers Entertainment.

Let’s put aside the idea that Skechers–a shitty shoe company–has a fucking entertainment division. The world needs a shoe company pumping out content like I need..well…uh…someone help me out here…like something I don’t really need.

But this is the country we live in, the world we populate, and there is a grid from which one can choose to unplug, for those of us who really don’t like commercialism and indoor plumbing. Shoe companies sell shoes, any way they can, and I’ll just have to get used to it.

But then you read what the show is all about, and all that Marxism stuff starts sounding good again, what with the show trials and the backyard smelters and the parading teachers around in the street and whipping them (look it up):

A problem with the show…is that the characters are known to children solely as representatives of Skechers shoes because they have appeared only in Skechers spots, comic books and other marketing materials. Another problem…is that the animated stars of the series — named Elastika, Kewl Breeze and Z-Strap — embody shoe lines, making their very appearance onscreen the equivalent of an ad for those shoes.

Really? (don’t you just love the Old Gray Ladies’ version of underselling?) This is bad enough that I may just have to start putting JP in Weejuns.