TASTE: New York City tap water

New York is reputed to have the champagne of tap water. The crust and loft of our bagels and pizza crust have been attributed to its properties. At restaurants, when given the option “Bottled or tap?,” seasoned New Yorkers choose tap without hesitation, and in some spots a carafe of local water is part of the place setting.

I decided to sample New York’s miracle beverage in three forms: straight from my Brooklyn tap (free), from a plastic bottle of Duane Reade’s “New York Spring Water” ($1.56), and from a glass bottle of Molecule Water Project’s ultra-purified tap water ($2.50).

At home, I let the tap run cold, then filled up a glass. The water was clear and smooth with a faint bitterness that turned to sweetness before dissolving. The water was refreshing, clean, and utterly forgettable: exactly what most of us are looking for in a glass of water.

Duane Reade, the iconic New York drugstore, sells its “New York Spring Water” in a plastic bottle with the bar code shaped like the Statue of Liberty. The back of the label states: “Bottled in New York State, for New Yorkers.” The front of the label reassures skeptics and tourists: “It’s clean, it’s natural, we promise.” Duane Reade’s water was crisp and had a resinous tang, but overall it went down pretty easily. I felt energized and refreshed, perhaps because it was chillier than even the coldest water I could summon from my faucet. 

Finally, I went to the East Village storefront Molecule Water Café: a slice of prime Manhattan real estate—gleaming tile, wood counter, bay window—devoted to one thing: selling purified tap water (as well as filters for faucets and showers).

Molecule’s water passes through a twenty-five-thousand-dollar machine that subjects it to an eight-stage process involving ultraviolet light, reverse osmosis, and ozone treatments to rid it of all impurities (chlorine, fluoride, and lead, among others). It costs $2.50 for a sixteen-ounce glass bottle with a tin cap. Molecule recommends drinking water at room temperature so the body doesn’t have to exert as much energy. The handsome packaging, the satisfying glugglugglug as the water passed through the neck of the bottle, and the texture of the glass lip contributed a sense of value, but the water itself tasted the least smooth of the three. Though I’d heard Molecule’s purified tap water described as “velvety” and “round,” I tasted lemony and floral notes, and a decidedly bitter aftertaste that lingered, unlike the previous two waters.

One wall of the café features a row of glass tubes filled with colored liquids. For a dollar or two more, you can supplement your tap water with alkaline and electrolytes, vitamins, or one of several “Signature Blends”: luo han guo and shiitake mushrooms for immunity; biotin and grape-seed extract for hair, skin and nails; holy basil and white willow bark to counteract inflammation; and ashwagandha and rhodiola for energy.

In addition, there are “Suggested Combos” to take the most vigorous New Yorker from dawn to dusk: “Fountain of Youth” and “Body Repair” to get you out of bed in the morning; “Strong Bones,” “Cold Buster,” and “Glamour Shot” to transition from work to a night on the town; “Base” and “Night Vision” to help you keep your bearings; and finally  “Relax,” “Recover,” and “Hangover” (the most popular combo).

I decided to try “Molecule Energy” ($3), a “unique blend of herbs, fruits, and roots from around the world” that promises to “sharpen your mind and enliven your body so you can get out there and carpe diem.” The water in my glass bottle turned a murky green with sparkly sediments. It tasted like weak green tea. After a few sips, I did feel a tingle of replenished energy. Could it have been the caffeine anhydrous? The guarana? Or maybe it was the alchemy of a quaint café, a designer bottle filled from a test tube, and faith that if tap water could be transformed for three dollars, so could I.

The Molecule Water Project is located at 259 East Tenth Street. Readers might be interested to check out The Tastes of Drinking Water, about a table correlating the varying tastes of drinking water (“fishy,””grassy,” “cucumber” water to the particular organisms it contains.

TOUCH: Korean body scrub

In Sense & the City annual tradition, the first post of the new year is devoted to a sensory cleansing experience. This year I chose to cleanse my touch faculties with a traditional Korean scrub, meant to slough off layers of dead skin (ddae) and, some claim, the existential baggage accompanying it.

I chose Koreatown’s no-frills Zen Spa & Sauna (formerly known as Yi Pak Spa), recommended by several Korean American New Yorkers as the most “authentic” experience. For one not in the know, it would be easy to overlook Zen Spa & Sauna as yet another Midtown day spa, with its generic name, sidewalk placard, and flyers featuring orchids and bamboo. In fact, the spa’s sign abuts a sign for “99¢ fresh pizza,” giving the impression that body scrubs and “2 slice & can or water” can be had simultaneously.

In the dressing room, my ajumma, a Korean woman dressed in black yoga pants and a tank top, greets me and offers me a perfunctory towel (every time I attempt to use it, she yanks it off) before leading me to a lukewarm steam room. I am the only customer in sight. The room begins to fill with spurts of steam that smell distinctly like boiled celery. I shiver as I watched the cardinal-themed wall thermometer climb from 98 to a still-tepid 110 degrees.

After ten minutes of steaming, my ajumma—who now has her yoga pants rolled up to her groin—leads me to a tiled room outfitted with a plastic-sheeted table, where she tells me to lie facedown. Beneath the spigots on the back wall, steam issues from a row of plastic garbage bins brimming with water, colored bowls floating on top. “Too strong you let me know,” she chirps by way of introduction, then tosses a few bowls of scalding water over my back. My skin flinches at first, then begins to throb pleasantly. She dons two blue plastic mitts (which look like they might have originated in a housewares section), lathers up, and begins to scrub.

I feel like a piece of furniture being sanded: she approaches the scrub not as a fine woodworker exposing the hidden grain but like a carpenter readying a two-by-four. She pins me down with one hand as my body rocks beneath her mitts; the sensation isn’t painful, but it isn’t relaxing, either. The rasping echoes off the tiles. After five minutes, I am becoming chilly, but just in time she douses me with another bowlful of hot water. This is such a relief I almost tell her to skip the scrub and just throw water on me for an hour. But the mood here is one of industry, not pampering, as she flips me up and down and side to side. At one point she announces, “Lots of dead skin!” and I peer from beneath the head towel to see a few graying curls—not unlike eraser crumbs—accumulating on my arm. I had sort of hoped to see drifts of ddae piling up around the table, like when I got my carpets steam-cleaned and the Sears guy kept coming back to brandish the vessel of tainted water.

The exfoliation continues, the silence in the room punctuated only by the susurration of her mitts and the splats of water hitting the tile floor. Finally I feel squirts of melon-scented lotion followed by warm oil trailing across my skin. As her hands pummel my shoulders, I nearly slide off the table, but she catches me and pushes me up into a seated position, where I find a bowl of lukewarm milk resting between my knees. She points. “Wash face.” I dunk my face a few times and looked to her for approval, milk dribbling down my chin. She nods, then pours the remaining milk over my body. She hoses me down from one of the spigots like a child just returned from the beach and pronounces, “Scrub done.”

Finally, I lie in a cold sauna, my head resting on a wooden-block pillow, waiting for the feeble heater to warm up. A few items of clothing have been hung to dry on the railing. In the dressing room, I notice the rug features a purple zipper half-undone.

Peeking back into the spa, I see my ajumma—who has changed her yoga pants for a pair of black underpants--on her hands and knees, scrubbing the tile floor with the same relentless urgency. She flashes a smile, then bends back to her work.

TASTE: Roasted chestnuts

The Rockefeller Center Christmas tree is up, and Midtown—that hub of New York City holiday fanfare—is starting to fill with its yuletide smell of pine needles, wet wool, hot-dog steam, mingled perfumes—and roasted chestnuts, the quintessential holiday treat, available around an open fire or, if you’re an urbanite, from the same street cart that peddles pretzels and Gatorade.

The city’s fleet of diminutive orange “NUTS 4 NUTS” carts plies street corners year-round, copper pans brimming with oily mountains of honey-roasted cashews, coconut bits, almonds, and peanuts. Chestnuts, however, are available only in the colder months, and are harder to find.

There are usually a few carts stationed near Fifty-Third Street and Fifth Avenue, their tinfoil-lined chestnut pans clipped to the edge like a hand on a hip, an incandescent bulb keeping the nuts warm. [image 2] The flashiest chestnut cart features no fewer than five sunshades and a digital sign scrolling, in mid-November, HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Vendors slit the chestnuts’ outer skins, then roast them till the yellow nutmeats peek out like grinning gnomes. Five dollars buys you a scoop in a paper sack. It’s worth postponing your snack to carry the bundle around in your pocket for five minutes, enjoying the warm orbs tumbling around beneath the paper.

The nutshells are smooth and woody, and as satisfying to peel as mahogany veneer from an old end table; the shell slips off with a papery crackle. You can take the whole nut out, or bite into it while it’s still half in its shell pocket. The meat is dense, sweet, slightly rubbery, and drier and more grainy than most nuts; it lacks the oil of a cashew or peanut. Laid bare in the palm, the nut is fleshy, wrinkled, and vulnerable looking, its interstitial crevasses creating a pleasing pop with each bite.

Be warned: a few roasted chestnuts go a long way. Carry your treat with you as you as a talisman while you imbibe the rest of Midtown’s sensory delights: the tolls of Salvation Army Santas’ bells, the white beard of smoke issuing from a manhole smokestack, the unexpected swishing of ski jackets as we jostle our way through holiday throngs.

TOUCH: Roosevelt Island Tramway

Despite the views and the novelty of an airborne form of public transportation, the thrill of a ride on the Roosevelt Island Tramway really comes down to a single moment: when the tram is suspended over the East River, just before plunging into its port on Roosevelt Island.

As the tram begins its journey from the Manhattan side, there’s the same clutch of inevitability experienced at the start of a roller-coaster ride: you are putting your life in the hands of a metal box on wheels and a narrow track, in this case hardly more than two metal strings looped across the river. But all is smooth, rumbling efficiency as you are scooped up out of the terminal and begin to climb over the rooftops. You feel weightless as the East Side shoreline slips away, a sensation rare among the canyons of skyscrapers you’ve left behind.

Ahead lies Roosevelt Island: apartment buildings crammed together like too many teeth in a mouth, an unfamiliar breed of buses, narrow streets, outdated shops and restaurants, patches of grass, the rusted blisters of the tennis-court domes, the sinister hulk of the hospital at the southern end. It’s cozy inside; tourists jostle good-naturedly for window space, and even the locals don’t seem to be jaded by the view.

But as the island looms, you realize the tram is going to have to land, and there’s not much space in which to do so. You look around you: what will become of the baby fussing in the stroller, the girl with a tennis racquet poking out of her backpack? To the right are the pink towers of the Queensboro Bridge; to the left is sky. Below is gray green water and white wakes of boats, a slumbering barge or two, some birds, some buoys.
 

The cables mutter; the terminal is at once so close and so far below. The brakes clamp and tremble, there’s a rumbling above, the whole car vibrates as the tram grips the wires and inches down them, like a child on the bunny slope. You can see the great spools of cables winding and unwinding in the terminal below; the whole operation suddenly seems too rudimentary. In that instant you feel a thrilling buoyancy—and a deep distrust. How can this little red box slip down the cables without crashing? Then the tram bumps and grinds over the top of the support tower and begins its terrifyingly steep final descent.
 

But the tram slows, and somehow, at the end of it all, practically tiptoes into the dock. The doors swish open; your pulse slows. Above the turnstiles is the mechanism responsible for this feat of engineering and vertigo: coppery cable threading through a hole in a Plexiglas window that looks like it was hacked out with an X-acto knife. The power and force rumbling back and forth through that little manmade hole humbles you, like touching a rivet in the side of a skyscraper.