fattmink@gmail.com The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic aside, Peter Luna opened his Crunchy Red Tacos at an opportune moment. Region-specific Mexican food has only recently gained popular ground in New York, at least compared to Mexico-adjacent California. Birria, a stewy culinary staple of the central-west Mexican state of Jalisco, hasn’t been difficult to find in New York for a long time. But according to Luna,
good birria is a recent development. The young restaurateur, whose vividly designed truck sits on Wyckoff Avenue a block from the Jefferson L Stop, isn’t shy in admitting why that is: Birrialandia. Responsible in large part for New York’s current obsession with birria, Birrialandia is an absurdly popular food truck permanently ensconced on the corner of 78th and Roosevelt Avenue in Jackson Heights, Queens. It’s been written about glowingly by Pete Wells of the New York Times, among other professional gourmands who normally pen odes to, or screeds
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Two socialists emerged from a flower shop in Astoria, Queens, with a bouquet of red roses. Jabari Brisport, 33, a newly elected state senator from Brooklyn, sported a red Democratic Socialists of America hoodie while Zohran Mamdani, 29, a newly elected assemblyman from Queens, wore a red-and-black checked Arsenal jersey an item he’d just purchased and later characterized as “this ridiculous shirt” yet was plainly excited to show off. NYC-DSA endorsed both this year, and the pair spent the overcast November weekend surprising each of the organization’s freshly endorsed City Council candidates at home with a rose. (The color red has represented socialism and communism at least sin