Top Chef Lisa Entry

On Sunday, after [some friends of mine were done] participating in the walk-a-thon for Breast Cancer Awareness, we stopped by the UWS Shake Shack then headed t'ward the Central Park playground society....

I lived on the Upper West Side for four glorious years, right by Central Park West, but I've always maintained an ignorance of the multitude of playgrounds inside the park unless I happened to be in the company of other people's children.

For some cosmic reason, it seemed to be BABY WEEKEND last weekend. Everybody I went to hang out with seemed to have at least one child.

My Sunday friends found an absolutely massive playground near the southern hemisphere of Central Park. There, we spotted Lisa from TOP CHEF series 4. And I stole the above shot with my DRRRROOOOOIIIIIDDDDD phone.

She was sitting across the way from us and we were trying to divine the narrative. She was either serving as a "big sister" to a young African-American girl, or she and her partner had adopted. The little girl was, perhaps, 8 or 9, and I think I saw her steal a look at me... probably because I'd taken a picture of her Big Sister/Mom. Or because I'm simply irresistible to little black girls. (Probably a little from Column A, a little from Column B.)

A little further on, I was at the swings, pushing my friend's child. For the record, in those rare occasions when I'm entrusted with looking after someone else's child, I'm just trying to make sure they're relatively entertained and don't get abducted by aliens.

Suddenly, I notice Top Chef Lisa's kid run up to the vacant swing right next to me. I heard her call out, "LISA!!! COME HERE!!!"

Then Top Chef Lisa comes over and suddenly we're side-by-side. We are both pushing kids who are not our own. We are both top chefs.

That's my New York story of the week.

As an aside, over the past few months this blog went from averaging about 60 unique hits a day to well over 100 a day. I don't get it. And a lot of random people have been going straight to the archived month of June 2010. Who are you people and why are you here?

TGIF, America.