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As the Crumbs Empire Crumbles

August 5, 2014 by LAUREN PUGLISI

Yes, Crumbs really closed all 19 locations in New York City. But while some cupcake lovers mourn the fall of the empire, others search for cupcake stores to fill the vacuum.

Some attribute the massive size of Crumbs’ cupcakes to their failure. Hilary Stout of the New York Times writes, “There was little dainty about Crumbs. Its signature product was a softball-size cupcake with a calorie count that sometimes topped 1,000.” For many, the cupcakes were too big to eat in one sitting, contradicting what many believe a cupcake should be: a small indulgence.

This would explain the success of Baked by Melissa, a store dedicated to selling bite-sized cupcakes which has many locations throughout Manhattan. Although its bestselling cupcake is the classic red velvet, it sells a variety of interesting flavors including chocolate chip pancake and peanut butter and jelly. And the benefit of the cupcakes’ small size is people can try many different flavors.

However, the cupcakes can be considered expensive for their size. Each cupcake is $1 and it is about the width of a quarter. In my opinion, the cupcakes are overrated. Their size seems to be their only claim to fame, as their flavor is just mediocre. I consider them too small to really taste the complexity of the flavor; they just taste sweet.

Less well known is Sugar Sweet Sunshine, a small cupcake shop located on the Lower East Side. According to the store’s owners, Peg Williams and Deb Weiner, the store was created to “make people happy every time they walk through the doors.” And they do. Sugar Sweet Sunshine scored four out of five stars from over 1,000 reviews on Yelp. One reviewer wrote “ooooo, it tastes like MAGIC! This was, by far, one of the best cupcakes I’d had in NYC…made me wonder even more why anyone likes Crumbs.”

I agree. The cake is moist and the texture is just right. The icing and cake are not overly sweet and very flavorful.

Its Ooey Gooey cupcake, chocolate cake with chocolate almond buttercream, has just the right amount of almond flavor and its Holla Back Girl, banana cake with cream cheese icing, has visible banana chunks with a real fresh banana taste. I would highly recommend all of its cupcakes as it has many simple but delicious flavors. It also has amazing puddings and pies!

Sugar Sweet Sunshine is not overdone or overrated like Crumbs and Baked by Melissa. Instead, it is humble, intimate, and warm. Although the space is small, it is cleverly designed with thrift store finds, hand-me-down furniture, polaroid pictures, and holiday cards. It looks like a grandmother’s living room! And, as soon as you walk in, you can smell the aroma of fresh baked goods.

Butter Lane is another cupcake store which is often overlooked. Butter Lane is small like Sugar Sweet Sunshine so you could almost walk by without noticing it if it wasn’t for the smell. Much of Butter Lane’s space is used by its cooking class, which is often in session, so you can smell the delightful store from a block away.

Butter Lane is unique because you can mix and match your cake and frosting. Although cake flavors are limited to chocolate, vanilla, and banana, there are about ten different frosting flavors, not including seasonal flavors. My favorites are the chocolate salted caramel frosting on any cake, which is the perfect mixture of salty and sweet, and the cream cheese frosting on the banana cake. You can taste the time and care it puts into its cupcakes.

I would highly recommend both Sugar Sweet Sunshine and Butter Lane. I believe they are superior to Crumbs, although I doubt Butter Lane and Sugar Sweet Sunshine’s owners have the desire to create empires. But that is fine with me. When cupcake stores become chains they seem to lose their charm.

Redress the Dress Code

August 5, 2014 by NIKKI LEE WADE

Public school dress codes seem to exclusively target girls.

Already in the middle of summer, New Yorkers find the weather outside increasingly hotter and hotter. The dramatic change from an intense frozen winter to a sweltering summer calls for a new wardrobe of shorts, tank tops and flip-flops.

With the transition in clothes, public school students (mostly girls) find themselves called out for disobeying dress codes. School officials enforce dress codes now more than ever, in an attempt to cover up as much of the female body as possible. This includes shoulders, midriffs and legs, body parts you would expect to see in the blistering heat.

Most public school dress codes include the fingertip rule: a girl’s shorts pass her fingertips when her arms are down at her sides. Another common rule is the ban of spaghetti-strap tank tops; all straps must be wider than two fingers. Some public schools have gone as far as completely banning leggings, yoga pants and flip-flops.

Almost all dress codes are targeted towards girls; exposed legs, shoulders and midriffs are all unacceptable. The same cannot be said for restrictions for the boys, for “offensive” clothing on boys is considered baggy pants or shirts referencing drug use. They are not forced to go home and change or wear oversized school uniforms over their clothes. They are simply asked to pull up their pants or turn their shirts inside out. School officials don’t seem to care about what boys wear, but how they see their female peers.

On May 21st, Lindsay Stocker was accused of wearing too short shorts by authorities at her high school in Montreal. Two vice principals walked into her sophomore classroom and asked students to perform the “fingertip test.” Lindsay’s shorts did not pass her fingertips and she was asked to change.

“In front of all my peers and teachers they said I had to change,” said Lindsay, according to the Huffington Post. “They continued to tell me that I would be suspended if I didn’t start following the rules…they told me that it doesn’t matter – I don’t have to understand the rules, I just have to comply by them.”

As a response, Lindsay put up flyers around her school saying, “Don’t humiliate her because she is wearing shorts. It’s hot outside. Instead of shaming girls for their bodies, teach boys that girls are not sexual objects.” There have been similar acts of protests in other schools, of people putting up posters with the same message. One poster read: “Instead of publicly shaming girls for wearing shorts in warm weather, teach male students and teachers not to over sexualize normal female body parts.”

“Slutty Wednesday” was an act of defiance by the students of Stuyvesant High School. The school’s dress code included a ban on exposed shoulders, lower backs, midriffs and undergarments. According to the New York Times, students “…peeled off sweatshirts, revealing tank tops and spaghetti-strap blouses.” Students also passed out flyers with slogans like “Redress the Dress Code” and drew X’s through printed versions of the school’s clothing restrictions.

School officials continue to argue that girls who reveal bare shoulders, legs, midriffs or backs distract male students and teachers. The revealing of girls’ bodies apparently causes the boys to be unable to compose themselves in an appropriate manner. “We could, instead, try having some more faith in young men – they are, in fact, fully-formed humans with the capacity to exercise self control,” says the Guardian.

Public schools are now teaching girls that they must cover up their bodies in order for the comfort of their male peers. When a female student is sent home to change, she is essentially told that her education is not worth that of male students. She is taught to be ashamed of her body, and must cover up every inch of bare skin because she is on display. Instead of teaching girls that their physical appearance must adhere to the comfort of boys, we must teach boys not to over-sexualize female body parts.

With the new school year coming just around the corner, we can hope there are changes in schools targeting young girls for their bodies.

New Art Installation Revives Wasteland

August 7, 2013 by SEWARD CHEN

Mary Mattingly was checking and developing her art piece "Triple Island" last Wednesday. — Mary Mattingly was checking and developing her art piece “Triple Island” last Wednesday.

The Lower East Side Waterfront Alliance (LESWA) has launched “Paths to Pier 42” to revive the wasteland of Pier 42. The partner organizations in LESWA selected five artists in spring of 2013 to design the art installation with public involvement throughout the summer. The five art pieces were installed and displayed after a celebration on July 20^th, 2013.

Pier 42, or “Banana Pier” was abandoned when Dole, a fruit company that mainly imported bananas, departed to Delaware. To gentrify the neighborhood, LESWA drafted “A People’s Plan for the East River Waterfront.” “Paths to Pier 42” is the first step of the plan to use art and public involvement to transform wasted Pier 42 into usable public place.

Five proposals were accepted out of 60 submissions. Nana Debois Buhl’s “Do You Remember the Bananas?” Interboro Partners’ “Rest Stop,” Mary Mattingly’s “Triple Islands,” Chat Travieso’s “On a Fence,” and Jennifer Wen Ma’s “Inked Garden”, which were chosen by a jury of six people, assembled by LESWA.

The Livable Island

“I appreciate doing things in public,” says Mattingly, “I was ecstatic with how much [space] I could take up … [The art’s] proximity to the river can expand to a new land,” she added.

Mattingly’s art piece “Triple Island” provides a livable land for the future. It will float on the water, due to the barrels underneath, once the sea level rises in the fall. With the assistance of Rand Weeks and “The Spark” Ray, who major in environmental science, the artwork became a display of sustainable systems. The solar generator inside is able to produce 1.5 kilowatts of energy everyday, equal to the amount of energy two people needed to live daily.

Mattingly hopes the piece will be inspirational, having an impact on people who look at it and helping them consider how to make ecosystems more livable.

Though the deadline for the removal of the art is the end of November, Mattingly hopes to develop the art piece and “give it to whoever wants” it or recycle the materials for new art piece.

The Garden Full of Vitality

“I never worked in New York City,” Ma says. She says her project became the opportunity to “work for community here.”

Ma’s “Inked Garden” was completely black on the first day with the painted cover of Chinese black ink over the living plants. Community members water her garden daily. “As the time passes, the garden will change in two ways — the flowers will blossom and the black garden will be transforming to more green color,” she explains.

It is a spiritual way to show how the life of nature goes. “Each life has a decision to make. They always have choices to either succumb to the stress, or survive thriving under it,” she says.

“Before the winter comes, the plants will be adopted by the communities,” Ma says. She will invite people to ask for the plants.

The Fence for Inclusion

Travieso states, “One of the great things about the project is they wanted us to promote with something that was an initial idea … very much influenced by the community.”

A collaboration with graphic designer Yeju Choi, Travieso’s artwork “On a Fence” seeks to change the chain of fence that separates a bikeway and the Pier 42 site to “something brings people all together” through the creation of an interactive sculpture. One side incorporates signage and color, and inside, there is seating and a playground. This transforms the physical barriers into a place where people can gather and share.

Travieso says that at the end of the art display he hopes to reuse the materials as much as possible or donate them to project like “Paths to Pier 42.”

Looking Forward to the Future

Dylan House, the community design director at Hester Street Collaborative, is leading “Paths to Pier 42” project. He explains that Pier 42 would be a place “to picnic, to do things like in a usual park … and to give visitors more reasons to come”.

According to House, the project was started last year’s summer. He said State Sen. Daniel Squadron and U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer provided $14 million to the project and to plan to the future park. Due to Hurricane Sandy, the project has been delayed to this summer. Paths to Pier 42 held a Community Build Day on July 13, a Space Potluck on July 16 and Summer Launch Celebration on July 20.

The art pieces will last until the end of November 2013. House hopes to restore the project for next summer with the same process of “Paths to Pier 42” this year.