I always fall for that one...

Today's agenda:

#1: Buy a pack of tic-tacs in every borough.
Submitted by Christian Scanniello, web designer, Washington D.C..

#2: Eat ice cream for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Submitted by Caterina Megan, Brooklyn 9 year old, who would like you to know that she made up her own pseudonym and that it might one day be the name of her future daughter. Who will be born when she is 30.


Staten Island gets taken care of, right off the bat. I like Staten Island, but it's not easy to get around without the car. I don't even leave the ferry station. The first pack of tic-tacs (cinnamon) are from the newstand right there. I'm on the next ferry back 45 seconds later. Everyone on board looks exhausted.

Then it's up to Jackson Heights for kulfi, delicious Indian ice cream. I wander around looking in at the wedding shops with fancy saris, jewelry shops and Pakistani restaurants. A variety store has a handwritten sign in the window "BUY A PRESENT FOR YOUR MOMMYDADDY". I find a newstand with kulfi, and buy a cardamom flavored bar with almonds (breakfast). It's excellent. So good, in fact, that I buy a pistachio one on the way back to the subway. The second bar is Rajbhog brand ("taste of the east") and when the kulfi is gone, the stick underneath has a 718 phone number printed on it. I buy a pack of orange tic-tacs from a Pakistani sweetshop, and also some unidentifiable candy, from a refrigerated case full of neat little rows of squares. The candy was really good: spicy and sweet and chewy. The man behind the counter was SO eager for me to like it, it seemed like my whole reaction to tasting it would either validate or dismiss Pakistan. I told him I loved it and said, "If I ever go to Pakistan, I'll get some more." He said, "No. Do not go to Pakistan. Just come back to my store."

After Queens, I head over and up to 231st street, for some Bronx tic-tacs (green) and some gelato (lunch). I gave the green tic-tacs to a homeless guy on the subway platform.

Back to Manhattan. I buy white tic-tacs at K-Mart. When we were small, my little brother and I played games in which white tic-tacs had medicinal or magical properties, and sometimes both. I distinctly remember, when he was about 5 and I was about 10, "prescribing" him a few white tic-tacs and him asking, "So I can fly now?" and me saying, "Yes. And also your strep throat is cured.". Ice cream dinner is at Cones, on Bleeker. I get almond cream and dark chocolate. Dag. Their ice cream is so good. I'm so absorbed in eating it that I don't notice the rain has washed a lot of it onto my jacket. A little girl walking by with her mother points at me, a grown-up living the third grade fantasy of eating as much ice cream as you want all day long, and wearing a lot of it too, and says, "she made a mess".

Back in Brooklyn, I buy the last pack of tic-tacs at a deli on my street. Pulling out the ice cream stick from my first stop, I dial the number for Rajbhog. A woman answers. I say, "Your kulfi is really good. It's delicious." There's a silence and then she says, quietly, "thank you," and hangs up.