THE SANDWICH OBSESSION CONTINUES

Life, being what it is, I had never heard of a Chipwich until today.  My ignorance, of course, and again an all-American form.  As the name suggests, it’s another version of the sandwich, and I had some vision that it might be potato chips between two slices of bread (a sandwich which does not have, and definitely, needs a name, perhaps The Nicholson).  Anyway, I was clearly letting my imagination run away with me.  The Chipwich, as I’m sure everybody but me knows, is a slab of ice-cream between two chocolate chip cookies.

It’s a fine idea, but one I’d have thought that didn’t need much “inventing,” however, one Richard LaMotta is credited as its begetter. Wikipedia tells me that the Chipwich date back to 1981 when LaMotta invented the thing and began a guerilla marketing campaign, "in which he trained and enlisted 100 street cart vendors (mostly students) to sell the Chipwich on the streets of New York City."

Now, the only reason I’ve heard of the Chipwich even now is because I just read the article about Kim Gordon in the New Yorker, and how deeply tragic it is that she and Thurston Moore have split up, but there’s kind of an upside because she’s “been working on being more open.  On being more comfortable with who I am.” 

The article tells us that when she and Thurston got married in 1984, she was working in a copy shop and he “manned a Chipwich stand in mid-town Manhattan.” Now, we all know that the Internet is in many respects pure evil, but one thing it does allow you to do is a run a search for “Thurston Moore Chipwich” and come up with this deeply wonderful image of the boy himself. 

And here is a picture of the couple, and the rest of the band, in happier days, in cartoon form, eating together.  Ah, memories.