Name: Jennifer Mascia
Age: 32
Neighborhood: East Harlem
Occupation: Reporter, New York Times; author of the memoir Never Tell Our Business to Strangers. She will be reading this
Sunday, March 7, at 3 p.m.at Sunny’s Bar, 253 Conover Street, Red Hook, Brooklyn.
Who’s your favorite New Yorker, living or dead, real or fictional?
Fictional: Tess McGill from Working Girl. Real: Jane Jacobs.
What’s the best meal you’ve eaten in New York?
I haven’t yet. Still patiently waiting for In-N-Out Burger to open an outpost here.
In one sentence, what do you actually do all day in your job?
Procrastinate, stress myself to the point of Valium, then surrender to the inevitable and just write the damn thing already.
Would you live here on a $35,000 salary?
I did it before and I could do it again. I wouldn’t like it, though — my annual rent is half that.
What’s the last thing you saw on Broadway?
Speed-the-Plow, post–Jeremy Piven.
Do you give money to panhandlers?
No, but I do give to buskers in the subway.
What’s your drink?
Alcoholic: Sauvignon Blanc from Marlborough, New Zealand. Non-alcoholic: iced latte, even in winter.
How often do you prepare your own meals?
My oven is for decoration only.
What’s your favorite medication?
Benadryl. Makes me loopy, then knocks me right out.
What’s hanging above your sofa?
An Asian gold leaf folding silk-screen painting that my parents acquired in the seventies. It hung in every house we ever lived in.
How much is too much to spend on a haircut?
$188. (That’s how much I pay for a cut and color at Q Hair on Bleecker.)
When’s bedtime?
Fifteen minutes into World News Now.
Which do you prefer, the old Times Square or the new Times Square?
New, because I work at the New York Times, and I’d hate to get mugged on my way home from work.
What do you think of Donald Trump?
Only a town like New York could have produced someone like the Donald. And I’d pay to see what he’d look like without the ginger hair helmet.
What do you hate most about living in New York?
Dirty snow. When it falls it’s blissfully clean, but twenty minutes later it looks like a mud Slurpee.
Who is your mortal enemy?
Loud teenagers on the subway before 8 a.m.
When’s the last time you drove a car?
In 2007, when I was visiting my family in West Palm Beach, Florida. It was a Jeep Cherokee and I’m not ashamed to admit I loved it.
How has the Wall Street crash affected you?
My 401(k) lost money. But that’s okay, because I barely had any in there to begin with.
Times, Post, or Daily News?
Times for the features and news analysis, Post for “Page Six.”
Where do you go to be alone?
I walk the streets of Manhattan between midnight and 3 a.m.
What makes someone a New Yorker?
Loudly complaining about the pizza in every other city.
