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Hi friends!
Remember when I did those trash pickups around the city? Since it’s warm again, I’m going to one tomorrow in Bushwick along the J at 8 p.m. You should stop by.
I hope you have the day off today or at least a chiller day than most. I was supposed to go to my first Mets game today, but the rain had other plans. Nevertheless, I’m getting this entry done early.
Introducing…Balena Bagels!
I am so excited to talk to you because I finally get to speak publicly about something that’s been bubbling for quite some time: my mom is opening a bagel shop in Pittsburgh! Get ready for your new bagel, sandwich, and coffee fix.
My Pittsburgh readers know that the city does not have many bagel options, especially up until the last few years. Growing up in the suburbs, I only knew of chains (Bruegger’s or Einstein’s) or the Bagel Factory in Squirrel Hill.
Now, the South Hills of Pittsburgh will have Balena Bagels, fresh, New York-style bagels made by the coolest person I know. Balena Bagels will open this summer at 3805 Willow Avenue in Castle Shannon next to Anthos, across from the T stop and Ice Castle. This is basically the equivalent of the New York-New Jersey-Connecticut tri-state area but instead it’s four suburbs: Mt. Lebanon-Castle Shannon-Bethel Park-Baldwin.
If you’re close with me, you’ve probably known this for quite some time. My mom has always wanted to open her own shop and has been baking pure yumminess for Ben and I our whole lives. She first told me about her idea for Balena a little over three years ago, opening the kind of place she wishes existed nearby. What better time to start than when she becomes an empty nester?
Everyone says they have the best mom, and I’m happy for people who feel that way about theirs, but I am in the one-in-a-bajillion position of actually having the best mom. Most people who meet my mom like her more than me, which is the appropriate response. I owe any cool part of my personality or success to how she raised me.
My mom exemplifies all of the best qualities any person can have; she’s kind, chill, sophisticated (as much as Pittsburgh can handle), and the funniest person I know. She truly let me be whatever kind of kid I wanted and never put her expectations of me above what I wanted to become. Part of why I’m scared to ever become a parent is because I know I’ll never match up to her selflessness, awareness, and curiosity.
Audrey (I just realized I haven’t said her name once…but why would I? It’s my mom.) spent the first few years of her life on an Air Force base in the small town of Smyrna, Tennessee with her Air Force dad and new-to-the-U.S. mom. They soon moved to Pittsburgh, living within a five-minute drive of what would become the bagel shop. My mom was fine with Pittsburgh but loved her summers spent in Milan where most of her mom’s family lived.
She went to college nearby for art and wound up with a preliminary version of a graphic design degree (communication graphics, what a funny name). Before I was born and took up all of her energy, Audrey found most of her purpose through her work, zhuzhing everything from restaurant menus to national ad campaigns. She also spent a few years as an adjunct professor at Carnegie Mellon teaching the youths about fonts and design.
I came around and was a super demanding baby, Ben less so. Nevertheless, my mom switched over to freelancing so she could focus on raising us. She has never once made me feel this way, but I always feel bad for curbing her career. She did a lot of great work as I grew up, my favorites being an annual report for a non-profit ever year, a short-lived Pittsburgh Jewish magazine, and countless Bar Mitzvah invites.
For the past few years, she’s been the secretary at an elementary school near where I grew up (two other district secretaries include her sister and one of my childhood bestie’s moms), slowly giving away all of my old Pokemon stuff to children that will get better use out of it and calming down angry dads on the phone. She loves the kids but is ready for something new that’s 100% hers.
A lot of people say their mom is their biggest inspiration, and I am one of those people. Imagine being in your 50s and doing a complete career pivot and doing so by starting your own business. Over the past few years, I’ve watched my mom grow in so many ways through this process. She’s taken multiple business courses, learned from a bagel guru, and absorbed all of this knowledge about what it takes to open a bagel shop (hint: a lot).
Where the name came from is a funny story: Balena means whale in Italian. At the beginning of her bagel journey, my mom had a really vivid dream about a whale. When she looked up what that meant in the morning, apparently dreaming of whales signals big things coming your way. Starting a business is one of the biggest things someone can do.
She really wants to get this right — finding the right space, getting the right people in her corner — even if it’s taken a while to figure out how any of Pittsburgh’s old, asbestos-ridden buildings can support a whole bagel operation. She’s pushed through every hurdle, truly embodying 2010s feminist phrases such as Nevertheless, she persisted and We are the granddaughters of the witches you couldn’t burn.
I can now tell you about this exciting update because there’s really no going back now. Construction is fully underway. I made a spontaneous trip home this weekend to see the space and help her set some things up. This is the kind of place you’ll pop into, order your bagel, pour your coffee while you watch people make your order, and leave to go about your day. Whether it’s a fixture to your commute or a place to make a weekend morning feel special, Balena Bagels hopes to be this for you.
Now this is where I need your help and will probably be annoying about this for a while: please engage with us! No matter where you live, ask questions over email, check out our website, sign up for the mailing list there, and follow/like/comment on social media (accounts posted below).
If you live in Pittsburgh or have friends there, tell everyone you know that there’s a new bagel joint in town. Especially for suburban folk, this will be the closest bagel shop to you (and from what I’ve tasted, it’s going to be really good).
Help in any department is appreciated. If you work in food service or know someone that wants to, email [email protected]. You can ask general questions there, too, or on social. I’ll be making a lot of the social media posts, but let me know if you have ideas. My mom made the logo and website, but I’ll get my grubby hands on the site soon.
I don’t think I ask for much other than patience when my writing is lackluster, but supporting my mom’s business in real life and on the internet would seriously mean everything to me. She deserves so much success, and (I guessssss more importantly) the South Hills deserves a good bagel shop. You’d be supporting 1. an entrepreneur 2. a female entrepreneur 3. a Jewish female entrepreneur 4. a very cool Jewish female entrepreneur.
I am so, so proud of her, and I’ll keep you guys updated going forward. Again, be prepared for me to be really annoying on social media, but at least it will be lots of posts about bagels.
Follow Balena Bagels everywhere, and please tell everyone you know to do the same!
This week’s photo is two girlies chillin’ at the shop. I am so excited to see how it changes as construction continues. Ahhhhh!
Current fixations I want to mention
Food & Drink
East Williamsburg past Bushwick Avenue kind of feels like no man’s land, especially on Metropolitan. The restaurants and businesses around there feel like the last shops on Earth whenever I walk by them, cute outposts ready to say goodbye or hello to Brooklyn travelers. Meera and I finally went to Cozy Royale last Monday for some burgers and general American fare. Is this the best food I’ve ever had? No. Is it the kind of vibe I want to constantly emulate? Yes in spades. The aura lives up to the name: cozy! I could go here every week until I die, probably. We walked in around 7:30 and got seats at a counter in front of the window and watched the sun set (except when we turned around in the swivel chairs and watched Celebrity Jeopardy). The server told us they had a special for a $30 bottle of rose that night, but there was only one left. Can’t fight fate, right? It tasted more like white wine than rose but was still good. Apparently Monday is steak night with discounted steak frites. Meera got that and I got the burger my friends have been raving about. We split both, and each of our dishes had a mountain of fries. The steak was fine but had way too much pepper that overwhelmed the taste. The burger was extremely flimsy but tasted like exactly what I wanted. The fries were heavenly. I should return for their happy hour or late nite burger deal. It’s funny because the familiarity of this place makes it feel like it could be in any other city (reminded me of a bygone Pittsburgh fave, The Whitfield at the Ace Hotel in East Liberty), but being here also gave me another Wow, I love living in New York moment. It made living in a neighborhood with tons of broken glass on the sidewalks feel like something I could do longer than I originally thought I could.
Music
If I finished getting ready early enough in the mornings before middle school, I had time to sit on the couch and watch Full House in the mornings on Teen Nick. During the last commercial break of the half hour, they would play music videos (“Shark in the Water” anyone?). One I saw a few times was “Ghost” by Fefe Dobson. The song is about being vengeful after their ex cheated and stayed with someone else. I never remembered the song’s name or artist but did remember 1. Her catchy Gho, Oh, Ohst in the chorus and 2. Her upside down on the ceiling staring down at her ex and his new partner. Years later, this visual informed an angry poem I wrote at an ex who wasn’t over her ex. I haven’t thought of the song in a long time. Anyway, I was watching Canada’s Drag Race and the singer (they call her Canada’s Rihanna) was the guest judge. I didn’t know she sang this song until the lip sync song began, and all of the Teen Nick memories flooded back to me. I had to pause the show and scream about it at Meera. It’s such a fun song that gets in your head, and the video is worth a watch for its 2010s aesthetic.
Internet & Pop Culture
Kids are so funny. I don’t know if this video is as funny as I think it is. This girl is graduating kindergarten and has to go up to the podium and say what she wants to be when she grows up. You need to watch with the volume up to know the answer, but it results in the entire ceremony pausing for a while so everyone can laugh.
Television & Maybe Movies
After our trip to Cozy Royale, Meera and I ended up watching a bit more of Celebrity Jeopardy, which is a much less stressful experience than the OG. Differences: longer show, more interviews, easier questions, MUCH more silliness. We watched the first episode of this season, which was really just a fancam of Abbott Elementary’s sexiest star, Lisa Ann Walter. I’ve always found her attractive, but her stint on CelebJep was both something to desire and aspire to. She completely owns herself and doesn’t evaporate in the way society wants older women to. Just her earnestness and little smirks are so attractive. I want to be like her when I grow up. This entry is less about the show and more about how into her I am.
Journalism & Literature
My mom adopted an ideology that it’s okay to ditch a book if you’re not liking it. I almost ditched The White Album by Joan Didion because I just could not get into it. This series of essays and articles is my first Joan Didion book, and I chose this one, specifically, because the cover was pretty. I liked when Didion would talk about herself but was pretty bored by the stories casually name dropping people I would know if I came of age in the 60s and 70s but don’t know now. Around page 130, I started liking the book way more when she talked about 1. feminism 2. travel 3. herself. She made me want to live on the West Coast and experience all of its wild beauty. It was wild to hear her talk about Malibu and the PCH going through it as a place without businesses or things to do when that’s completely changed. Didion writes about women and observes the world around her in a way that continue to inspire female thinkers, her prose leading to various bastardizations, most recently being Hannah Hannah Horvaths, pre-pandemic girlbosses, and, unfortunately, Dimes Square “alternative” (read: racist) young writers. I realized that my travel diary newsletters are lesser imitations of hers, like her Hawaii and Colombia entries at the end of the book. I’ll definitely read more from her, especially if it’s about herself. As much as I like to think I would care about little anecdotes with dead celebrities or criminals on trial, I really do not. I just want to see inside her mind more. Oh also, I learned two adjectives that I need to figure out how to integrate into my vocab: desultory (lacking purpose and enthusiasm) and querulous (whiny).
Something I Saw in the Wild
Bathroom messages are ubiquitous in dirty bars around the world, and I love reading them. At Nancy Whiskey Pub in Tribeca, the ladies room has a low ceiling, apartment-like shelves, and lots of etchings. I read a message that felt very millennial but still tickled me: If you ever feel powerless, just remember that a single one of your pubic hairs can shut down an entire restaurant.