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We’ve conquered coffee. Let’s move on to bagels, shall we?

In 1996, I was working for a little software concern down in Greenwood Village. I was a greenhorn consultant sharing an office with an honest-to-God, type-A-personality, New York Jew. For the sake of argument, let’s say his name was Woody. Being a Midwestern boy, this was my first exposure on a daily basis to an New Yorker, let alone a guy so stereotypical he had to be made up.

Woody was a project manager. He had two principal clients in the financial services industry which happened to be bitter rivals. Woody has this charming habit of having long conference calls with them, naturally on speaker phone, during which he would pace the office or bounce a racquetball against the wall or both. More often than not, he’d play them off of each other. “Barco just bought our MegaFop software,” he’d tell the guy from Jarco. “Jarco’s going live next week,” he’d tell the guy from Barco. The usual response from either of these guys was usually some form of malevolent hate which Woody seemed to thrive on even while shrugging it off. “Cut the bullshit,” they’d demand as Woody bounced the racquetball. Good times.

One day I brought in to work a bagel from the local chain bagel place — the one that makes somewhat doughy bagels under the marketing guise of being run by a couple of neighborhood Jewish guys straight out of Hell’s Kitchen. You don’t get cream cheese on your bagel there, you get a “shmear.” You get the idea. Anyway, I bring this thing into work, Woody sees it, and begins to lecture me on what is and what is not a bagel. My over sized, doughy bagel from the local chain bagels place was apparently not a bagel. A true bagel, I was informed, can only be formed in the sanctity of the rarefied New York air, and only then in the morning, preferably before or just at dawn. And furthermore, chocolate, asiago cheese, and (Heaven forbid) cinnamon, have no business anywhere near a real bagel.

My curiosity about these mystical “O”-shaped chunks of paradise at this point was defeated by my growing annoyance with Woody’s insistence that everything outside of his beloved city was crap. In addition to the bagels being utter refuse, I was further informed that it was impossible to get decent Chinese food in Denver, the sushi was inedible, there was nothing to do downtown, and people here don’t know how to dress. Why are people from the biggest city in the country so small-minded? It’s a scientific mystery.

At any rate, my breakfast being criticized, fairly or not, I became annoyed. So I recommended to Woody that if he really wanted one of his incredible bagels, perhaps he should find his way back to New York. Why not right now?

Naturally this only endeared me to him. Maybe he liked my chutzpah, I don’t know. But he laughed in that “you’re OK, kid,” way that some people can, and left for a meeting.

Years later I traveled to New York and tried one of those mystical bagels. Woody was right. The ones we get out here are crap.