Pho Thanh Hoai I - NYC Vietnamese Restaurant - Mulberry Street

Pho Thanh Hoai I – NYC Vietnamese Restaurant

by malmilligan, posted in NYC

I went to Pho Thanh Hoai I with Johnny last night and we had a great experience. It was Saturday night at around 10:00 PM and we hiked to Chinatown from One World Observatory. I checked out the new vegan place at the end of Mott near the 5 corners and it was already closed. Wo Hops in the basement at 17 Mott had a line going out to the sidewalk – probably more than an hour wait to get in. I’ve eaten at Wo Hops over 500 times but we didn’t have time to hang… next stop was Vietnamese !!

We walked from Mott to Mulberry and landed up at Pho Thanh Hoai I. Lights were flashing “OPEN” which was good luck and there were about 20 customers in there although 80% of the tables were available. The place looked totally different. Yeah – new management 2 years ago and a rebuild of the interior which looked great. A combination of Hoi An style with the clay rooftop look and the Chinese style fish tanks in the middle. Classic Vietnamese desert refrigerator near the cashier / takeout station.

This restaurant for decades has had an excellent reputation for the quality of the food and the new management continued that tradition plus added a huge vegan / vegetarian menu to their already robust regular Vietnamese menu. I was totally stoked. We split vegan summer rolls made with fried tofu which were possibly the best I ever had in my life. I ate a vegan beef type Viet entree where the beef was substituted by seitan and it was very good. Johnny had a Pho Thai which was excellent and a bubble tea. I also had a home made tea / lemonade Viet style which was outstanding.

One more thing that was really cool… I’ve been to Vietnam 10 times and this reminded me of being in Vietnam a lot. It was about 85 degrees in Manhattan at 10:00 PM that night as it’s the first week of August. I absolutely love the warm weather in New York and we only really have 8 weeks of it all year. But about 20 Vietnamese ladies took advantage of it on this Saturday night and they were playing cards next to the restaurant just hanging out having tea and soda and chatting it up. They had kitchen chairs and small Viet style sidewalk stools and low tables plus some make shift tables made with milk crates or boxes. Next best thing to being there.

This restaurant is highly recommended.

73 Mulberry St, New York, NY 10013
Phone: (212) 233-8988

No website at the time of this article. Here are some iPhone 5S pics.

 

View from One World Observatory - NYC Freedom Tower

Visited One World Observatory – the Freedom Tower

by malmilligan, posted in NYC

Here are some cheap iPhone 5S pics from the Freedom Tower. I have an annual priority access pass and I’ve been to the top 3 times so far. Always cool. This time I went with my son Johnny and we had a great time. Crowds up there are very international. Heard many different languages being spoken by many family tourists. There was a long line to get in but we zipped through with no one in the priority access lines. The prime time for this location is sunset and we were up there an hour before sunset so we caught the perfect experience. There was a long line to go down close to closing time but it went fast. Highly recommended.

CIA releasing viruses

Does the CIA make Malware and release it into the wild?

by malmilligan, posted in Web Design

Yes they do according to Avast Anti-Virus maker using evidence from Wikileaks. They evaluated lots of different anti-virals to see which ones they could exploit and they created their own malware threats to test vulnerabilities.

Many consider it highly unethical to release malware into the general public (“into the wild”) but I guess they feel they can do what they want.

Here is the article from Avast

everyone uses WordPress

WordPress Taking Over the Internet

by malmilligan, posted in Web Design

I’ve been building WordPress sites for 10 years. I recently switched from building the super powerful and complex self-hosted WordPress.org type sites to simpler and much more bullet-proof WordPress.com sites. This site, MalMilligan.com, is now running on WordPress.com for example.

In 10 years, WordPress has taken over 28% of cyberspace. Which is an incredible feat considering all the competition and all the big bucks huge companies have thrown into web platforms.

Envato Article on WordPress taking 28% of the Internet

Ramsey NJ Day 2007

by malmilligan, posted in Ramsey NJ

A blast from the past. Found these Ramsey Day photos as I was managing some of my older photo folders. Now that it’s 10 years later, a lot of the kids in the parade are in college, a lot of the high school kids are done with college – hopefully they have good jobs – and they might already have kids of their own. Some of the older people may have already passed. Photography is cool that way, capturing a moment in time and freezing it in time while reality keeps getting older.

I lived in Ramsey for around 50 years and I went to a lot of Ramsey Days. They’re really great for the kids as the tots have kiddie rides, and there are carnival type games for all the grade school and high school kids. Everyone wins at these games, lol. The food which is not covered in these pics is extensive. There are about 20 vendors with all the family favorites like grilled to order hamburgers, cheeseburgers, hotdogs, pork rolls, pizza, sushi, fried dough, ice cream, and plenty of cold drinks.

Click any of the thumbnail images below to bring up the slideshow. Cheers !!

Remembering Hurricane Sandy – Ramsey NJ

by malmilligan, posted in Ramsey NJ, Uncategorized

It was October 2012 and the storm knocked power out to my house in Ramsey NJ for 11 days. Lots of trees down and water damage to flood prone areas. Utility crews responded from all over the US to assist. These are some drive-by photos I took the day the rain stopped so some are a little blurry. It’s just more or less a historical record for everyone to remember.

Click any of the thumbnail images below to bring up the slideshow. If you are watching the slideshow, in the upper right corner of the screen, there will be some controls in RED. Click the RED SQUARE to go FULLSCREEN. That looks the best. You can also click the RED X to EXIT. Hoover your mouse over an image to stop the automatic slideshow. Cheers !!

Ramsey NJ Road Resurfacing – September 2015

by malmilligan, posted in Ramsey NJ

I lived on Chestnut St. in Ramsey NJ for almost 50 years. I guess during that time period we saw the street resurfaced 3 or 4 times. The condition of the road in 2015 was horrendous. During the previous year or two, Ramsey patched the street around a dozen times I would guess. That was all in my opinion due to the poor quality of the previous resurfacing job. When these companies resurface a normal suburban street, they remove the old asphalt in one phase, and they put new asphalt down in 2 phases, one for each side of the road. On the previous job, I think they laid down asphalt on one day and then they waited till the next day to put the other half down. The result was a split right down the middle of Chestnut Street that started within months of paying for the road to be resurfaced. Cold asphalt does not bond well with hot asphalt apparently and the last company did not heat that seam well enough to bind both sides during the previous job. The other half of that problem is that the town let them get away with it.

I went to the Municipal building several times to complain about the quality of the road and they already knew it was bad but they told me it would be at least another 3 years before it would be done due to budget restraints. Luckily, maybe in part to my repeated trips to the Municipal Building, and maybe due to just good luck, or perhaps they re-evaluated and moved Chestnut Street up on the list… they did a fantastic job resurfacing Chestnut Street in 2015, just before we sold our house. The crew in these pics (and I’ll put up a video later) was excellent. They laid down the asphalt on both sides of the street one right after the other and the new road surface we landed up with on Chestnut St. was textbook excellent quality. Very impressive work.

So there are 2 take-aways from this experience. First, town employees have to watch vendors like a hawk to make sure they do the job correctly that the taxpayers paid for. Second, sometimes the squeaky wheel gets the oil.

Click any of the thumbnail images below to bring up the slideshow. If you are watching the slideshow, in the upper right corner of the screen, there will be some controls in RED. Click the RED SQUARE to go FULLSCREEN. That looks the best. You can also click the RED X to EXIT. Hoover your mouse over an image to stop the automatic slideshow. Cheers !!