What the hell is egg cream?

[devi]

We braved a downpour to go and see Jonathan Lethem read from his new book last night. He reads very nicely, and sings well too despite apologising for his voice, and I stood at the back and dripped quietly, enthralled. Then it was time for the Q&A session.

This doesn't usually happen to me, but towards the end, a question leaped into my head. And it actually wasn't a bad question. It was something I really wanted to know his answer to. (He's that rare sort of writer, a literary type who uses sci-fi plot devices. I was going to say, "There's a school of thought who think science fiction can never be literature. What would you say to them? What do you think it has to teach us?") Three hands shot up, including mine. "Two more," he said, "you [a bald guy on the other side of the shop] and... you." Eep! Me! I'm sure he was pointing at me.

But a guy who was sort of in front and to the left of me jumped in. And I don't want to be a sore loser, but the guy asked a really boring question about JL's life in Manhattan, and JL went off on a ramble about how much he missed something called "Dave's Egg Cream".

Like I said. What on earth is egg cream?

Afterwards, Matt said he'd been thinking of asking the very same question. There was speculation about telepathy and who thought of the question first. It all hinges on whether thoughts are lighter than air, and thus float upwards, or are heavier and fall to settle on heads below the level of the original thinker.

Me, I'm for lighter than air, but then I would be.

Still. Egg cream! Humph.

Comments

[silme.livejournal.com]

It's a New York thing. I grew up not too horribly far away from New York City, so that's how I know what they are. And I like them. They're not made with eggs anymore.

http://www.nycvisit.com/content/index.cfm?pagePkey=674

[iresprite.livejournal.com]

Egg cream soda... it's... hard to describe. From here.

Egg Cream

The egg cream is a New York tradition. Ironically, it doesn’t have any egg or cream in it. Even so, it’s still a soda fountain favorite. Put 3oz of chocolate syrup in a large glass. Fill half full with milk and stir. Top with seltzer from a seltzer bottle for that frothy real 'cream' head or use club soda.

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

Thank you kindly, Americans. I'm relieved - it actually sounds nice. I was visualising some sort of egg mayonnaise.

[strange-powers.livejournal.com]

Only love is lighter than air.

Thoughts exist in a parallel dimension where mass and gravity have no influence. The thought was likely generated by a precisely simultaneous firing of synapses in your brains, causing a confluence of energy in the other dimension. You created the thought together, like a child, and the boring question stole your child and punched it's face off.

Track him down and exact revenge. It's the right thing to do.

"It rises like the falling snow..."

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

Punched its face off? Drowned it in a vat of egg cream, more like. But still worthy of bloody revenge. :)

I have 'Love is Lighter than Air' in my head now, which is nice.

It's a crime, crime, crime...

[strange-powers.livejournal.com]

I messed up the apostrophe there, but at least I got you thinking about The Magnetic Fields.

Pardoned with a slap on the punctuative cortex.

[arosoff.livejournal.com]

Weird, I posted a comment earlier, it said it was posted, but it's not here now!

Anyway, egg cream: milk, seltzer, and chocolate syrup, preferably Fox's U-Bet. Seltzer goes in last :-)

[fabulousfrock.livejournal.com]

One of my best friends did a really long interview with Jonathan Lethem for her zine some years back...I checked to see if maybe she asked him the question you were going to ask, because it would've been nifty if I could've told you what he may have said, but she didn't. Ah well. ^_^

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

Ooh... that was quite a coup, and I doubt many zines will be able to get hold of him now, as people are saying he's finally hitting the big-time.

Thanks very much for checking for me!

What the Hell is an Egg Cream?

[(Anonymous)]

Your question is completely off base. An egg cream, as people have said, is an old-fashioned NYC soda fountain drink. Who cares?

The question is: "What the hell is a Dave's Egg Cream?" An egg cream can be made anywhere, any time, by anyone who has seltzer, milk and chocolate syrup. But no one, anywhere, ever again, can make a Dave's Egg Cream. For someone who is interested in the relation between science fiction and literature, you should have realized it was all about Dave's.

To give you an idea, I found this thread because I did a Google search for "Dave's Egg Cream."

I'm still a tourist in the City I was born and raised in. I'm a walker of the City streets. One night, in the middle of the night, in the drak time of the night, a couple of deals before dawn, I stopped at Dave's on the corner of Canal and Broadway. It had been there for years. When my father was a boy, and his father baked bread six days a week downstairs in a bakery on Essex Street, the marble counter at Dave's served up egg creams. There was a stinking hulk of a garbage truck and a police crusier and a cab. We all stood on the sidewalk and drank egg creams from soda glasses in the thick Manhattan night air.

It's gone and nothing can ever bring it back.