Freaking. Love. Her. When @VictoriaBeckham comes to New York, (and we LOVE when she does!) she always makes a splash. On top of showing her newest line, Victoria by Victoria Beckham, at New York Fashion Week, she, along with Anna Wintour, were on hand at Grand Central Station to launch the Britain’s Great Campaign, an advertising campaign aimed to drive travel to London. She also took time to pay a visit to this gigantic painted wall featuring her soccer superstar husband, David Beckham for H&M. Who says she doesn’t have a sense of humor?! The Beckhams have conquered New York (and apparently the advertising industry too! - guess Simor Fuller is pulling his weight).
Posts tagged with New York City
Fifth Avenue, 22 stories up! I heart #NYC.
Chrysler Building, New York City, New York, USA - July 2011
Grade Pending
If you live in New York, then you must have noticed all of the letters popping up in your favorite neighborhood eateries. This is the new grading procedure that the New York City Department of Health enacted last year. Restaurants are graded on a number scale, getting one point for every violation that they incur during the Health Inspector’s visit. Based on how many points a restaurant gets, a letter is issued. (0-13 points = “A”; 14-27 points = “B”; 28+ = “C”). “C” is the lowest grade given — restaurants are closed down if they do not fall within “C” range.
Today, while walking down West 45th Street, in between 5th and 6th Avenues, I found the entire spectrum: “A,” “B,” “C” and “Grade Pending” rated restaurants. Under this new system, any restaurant that does not initally obtain an “A” has the opportunity to improve their grade with a repeat visit two weeks from the first. The restaurants that recieve “B’s” and “C’s” get inspected more frequently than the restaurants that recieve “A’s.”
I feel like every restaurant that I ever pass has a blue “A” proudly displayed in the front. Some of the nicer establishments even frame their “A’s.” It reminds me of a proud parent mounting their child’s spelling test on the fridge. Does the Department of Health also give gold stars and smiley faces? I mean milk is graded, meat is graded, why shouldn’t the locations in which these are consumed be graded as well? I get the whole idea behind the grades. Continuity.
I can’t tell you how excited I was today to find a “B.” Not only because the “B’s” are green and that’s my favorite color, but because it seems like those are the rarest of all grades. “A” is for abundant. “C” is for common. But, “B” is for bewilderment: the feeling you have when you actually see one!
Now, this data only reflects the first 250 restaurants to be inspected. In a city like New York where one of the cultural staples is cusine, there are nearly 25,000 restaurants! Tha’s crazy, right?! (@TGH3RD and I have eaten at about 15,000 of those….) But it seems to me with nearly half of these resturants acing their inspection, that the standards set by the Department of Health may be too low.
The grades must be placed within customer view. However, how may times have you eaten at a restaurant only to discover on the way out that it only had a “C” raiting? Believe me, it happens more than you think! And then you feel sick to your stomach, but you don’t know if it’s psychosomatic or if the food was actually bad. I’m going to go with psychosomatic becasue I really, really liked that Chinese noodle place that got the “C.”
