Upstaters: I love you. I love your accents, your Wegmans, and your mega-sized Wal-Marts. I love your weather that can’t pick a month to be spring. I even love your ever-persistent smell of manure. But goddamnit, you people just don’t know how to make a bagel.
Long Islanders in upstate New York: Consider this article your safe space (I get to make this otherwise shitty joke, I’m a gay Safe Zone trainer). I get it. You’re waking up in the middle of the night with poppy-seed-bagel-with-whipped-butter sweats. These people genuinely do not know that onion can be baked into a bagel past the toppings on an everything. It’s okay. We have each other, and we are going to survive this (but also, let’s consider sending in reinforcements).
Listen, by this point I have openly pledged my loyalty to the upstaters. I have denounced Long Island in many an article and casual conversation. This does not change the fact that they apparently think a bagel is made by cutting out a circle in the middle of a loaf of bread.
Still, a Long Islander does what a Long Islander has to do. At one point during your time at Geneseo, you’re going to break down and order a bagel from somewhere on campus. And it is going to be the worst betrayal of your life. At least make sure you’re getting a halfway-edible one.
Here are all bagels on the Geneseo campus ranked by a Long Islander who gets it.
Max Market
A decent contender in a pinch, the bagels of Max Market come in three flavors—refrigerated, refrigerated, and refrigerated. If you’re even thinking about eating this bagel without toasting it first, be ashamed of yourself. I know that you can pull that kind of nonsense back at home, but the raw taste of an upstate bagel might actually overwhelm you with disappointment to the point of killing you. At Max Market there’s a kind of a bodega feel to getting your bagel wrapped up and handed to you in plastic wrap, but the similarities end here.
Recommendations:
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Toast on level 4-5 in the Letchworth toaster—any higher will burn it.
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Try getting the blueberry if possible. The taste is strong enough to almost mask the fact that you’re essentially eating a round piece of bread with fruit embedded in it. Almost.
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If cream cheese is your poison, always ask for two packets. If your bagel ends up being too undertoasted, you can mask the taste of untapped upstate bagel with extra cream cheese.
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Nobody can open those damn cream cheese packets. It’s not just you. Take a knife and rub the serrated edge against the top of place you’ve been clawing at desperately to pull open. Eventually, you should be able to slit the side of the packet entirely open and slide all of the cream cheese out easily.
Upstairs Letch (or Food Studio North, but literally no one calls it that)
These bagels were put on earth by trickster gods with the express purpose of ruining a downstater’s life. On the outside, they seem to mimic a downstate bagel—they’re much rounder and fluffier than their other campus counterparts. You should be immediately suspicious upon opening the bagel—the inside of it will fleck and crumble like a bread loaf. But like so many a fool before you, you will tell yourself that it’s just a trick of the light. You’ll pop it into the toaster (you haven’t completely taken leave of your senses). You’ll take a thick glob of cream cheese or butter that for some reason Letch leaves dubiously exposed to the elements on a plate next to the toaster, sit down, take a bite—and then you’ll know. It doesn’t matter how long this demon is toasted. You’re still getting circle bread. I think I could literally char this thing to bits in a toaster and still taste that damn bread.
Recommendations:
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Don’t.
Mary Jemison
If you want a bagel from here you literally have to pull it out of a plastic sleeve from the supermarket. You already know the answer to this one.
Books and Bytes
Where the vast majority of campus-dwellers get their bagels from, and with good reason. The main draw of Books and Bytes is that they have a machine that automatically takes in your bagel and heats it to a perfect consistency. It’s just toasted enough that you can safely eat it without running the risk of becoming burned. Also, it’s the best tasting bagel on campus by a long shot. The colder it gets the less good it becomes, so eat fast—think of it like Cinderella getting in one last dance with the prince before the clock strikes twelve.
Recommendations:
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Try avoiding Books and Bytes in the mornings immediately after your class ends. It will be swarmed with like-minded people who also want their morning coffee and bagel combo, and you will be inevitably hip checked and elbowed over every movement towards the bagel counter. Just giving yourself fifteen to twenty minutes after your morning class ends before entering Books and Bytes can help make your mornings tremendously easier.
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But also, go in the mornings so you can have Dede as your cashier. She’s a lovely older woman who will invariably compliment you and be polite enough to not mention that this is the fifth time this week you’ve ordered the exact same bagel.
Proceed with caution, bagel-lover, and good luck.
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