Sunlight On Your Face

If you've ever possessed the thrilling opportunity to live in The City, you recognize your heart palpitations of sheer excitement in flying in high above the skyscrapers or walking low along the streets among their foundations.

Sometimes you're in bliss, sometimes you're in rage.  But overall, you are madly, blindly, utterly in love.




You fantasize of mercilessly razing through deep, curbside crowds, yet contain your sidewalk rage because you truly adore and thrive in this motley crew of 8 million people.

Your bedtime lullabies soothe with the comforting sounds of sirens and horns and blasphemy reigns by the mere suggestion you close your blinds, ever, even while modestly dressed in your birthday suit.

You pay $7 for sliced cheese and bicep curl all your $2 million groceries home.

You trudge up 5! flights of stairs to your current palace of 420 square foot dreams, dread like the plague your search for a new apartment and hurl the moment you hear the price tag for this fresh, new home of nightmares.

You frolic among the shimmering lights and merry sounds of the festive holidays with their chestnut aromas. Then, your joyous memories freeze maddeningly when you can't feel your nose, your face burns and tears well up in the early winter frost.  

You efficiently and structurally navigate by the grid system and after years manipulating streets and aves you still, continuously, walk dazed and confused among the diagonals of the West Village.

You refuse to accept the kindness of disease-ridden subway handles, then, unceremoniously trip, roll and land into the shocked and unsuspecting lap of your fellow New Yorker.  And now you can't get up.

You never cease to be mesmerized by the unbelievable piece and serenity among the trees, breeze and even horse crap in Central Park.  What a genius idea.  

You sometimes want to push the old lady who somehow had the balls to cut you in line and then scream at you.

You grope the sans seatbelt leather cushion of your screeching cab infused with masala curry potpourri fearing that you are going to die by swerve and then, realize...happily, you are out of the rain, watching live with kelly updates and can pay by credit.

You only asked for a reservation for two, yet you sit thigh to thigh to each person next to you.  Yes, all six of you prior strangers still refuse to chat with one another yet you now know the other's most private, intimate, salaciously funny life stories.

You pay district tax?!  And no, that's not a cute neighborhood squirrel but a fat, ole, nasty rat.  The 21st century version of danger lurking in the night streets.

You spend waaay too much money, you party obscenely and you work like a dog.

You take your big dreams to this gargantuan city and you savor every teeny-weeny leap towards success.

You love The City, where the streets all have a name.  But you're still building up love.  It's all you can do.  

His Royal Kebabness

Brooklyn...Queens?....Staten Island?!  

No nose-up-in-the air Manhattanite dares step off the isle of trend for the wild, mysterious regions of the boroughs north, east and, god forbid, south.  

Over the ground trains.  Under the tracks streets.  Urbanized suburbs!
Ferries coup'ed by untamed instincts of unruly tourists.  Que horrorers, only ventured to by wily explorers and hardened adventurers!

Alas, I say, cease your elitist ways.  Put down your Pastis french fry, your Balthazar baguette and Nobu straight from the sea fish.  Stop!, with the purple.  Emperors of the Big Apple, I besiege you, make one exception, clamor aboard the N train and walk your royal pampered aaa...feet to Astoria.  There, you find your kin, your brethren, your fellow ruler by divinity: The King of Queens, His Royal Highness, Fares "Freddy" Zeideia.  The King of Falafel.  

At 30th and Broadway in Queens NY, you may feel in another world, you may gaze agog at the richness around you.  Yet, drop your worries of the unknown, for the full aroma of The King's falafels will adequately serve to guide you directly to his enthralling market.   

Falafel, Shawarma, Kebab!  Veggie or carni, pita or rice, The King delivers to your palate's suffice.  Make friends with the Zeideia family and you create a pact of peace for life.  A treaty of food that expands excitement, love and happiness to those from all boroughs near and far.  

Eventually, return to your native land, your West and East Villages, your buildings to the sky, your central park of champions, for Manhanttanites never conquer or invade.  But, certainly, bring back the riches of the land you have discovered, the flavors of the King, the world of Falafel.

Fares Freddy Zeideia

Glory to the Divine

"Ohhhhh lord, where art thou?" 

Hell knows I've uttered that biblical...shakespearean...erk?...that phrase in some odd, quirky and sometimes tragic circumstances. 

And ain't religion a funny thing.  We live among the devout, the spiritual, agnos and the atheists.  Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, Muslim....Sufi, Sikh, Shinto, Baha'i...Oh, and the Scientologists, "Where IS my spaceship?!" 

Whether you believe or not, all possess faith in the grandeur and beauty of deific, wholly and energetic global traditions, practices and monuments created in the name of some glorious divine.  So you scream that religion satisfies only the truly fanatic or you pontificate that non-believers ride the fast train to the inferno - One tenet we can all find peace in rests in the visual allure manifested in the decor and drama created by this mysticism.

After a weekend of hedonism in the Big Apple, lay your tired feet at the house of the St. John.  If the tale is true, the Divine invites and accepts all.