about
I’m a hacker, attorney, beekeeper, writer, artist, and designer living in Brooklyn, New York. I founded the first legal occasional restaurant in NYC, was Art Director for the 2012 MIT Mystery Hunt, and started learning software development through writing a nifty little Chrome extension called Jailbreak the Patriarchy. If you want me to create something awesome and beautiful, make your project succeed, represent you in court, or teach you how to do any of what I do, you can reach me at dsucher@gmail.com.
coding
I’m currently spending most of my time obsessively programming over at Hacker School (and at home, and at Starbucks, &c &c). You can check out some of my code on GitHub, of course.
If you’ve heard of anything I’ve built, it’s probably either my accidental limerick detector (Nantucket) or my gender-swapping Chrome extension (Jailbreak the Patriarchy). I’ve been busy since then, though, building Considerating, working on machine learning and data scraping (for Ask MetaFilter, of course!) (well, and over at ScraperWiki) and convention-scheduling software and setting up game design simulations, writing algorithms to automatically generate solvable laser puzzles and so on, all sorts of fun stuff. I’m kind of in love with natural language processing at the moment.
I’ve worked with Ruby (with and without Rails), Javascript (JQuery, Node.js, and plain vanilla), PHP, Python, and bits of this and that.
law
When it comes to law, my passion is for criminal defense. This mention constitutes attorney advertising, because if you’ve been arrested or have a case that otherwise touches on my interests, you might want to retain me to represent you.
I volunteer at the general legal advice walk-in clinic and transgender name change clinic through LeGaL, defend community activists and protesters through the Mass Defense Committee of the National Lawyers Guild, and represent indigent survivors of domestic violence in matrimonial and family court matters through InMotion. I’m also on the Hearing Officer committee at the Park Slope Food Co-op.
bees
In 2005, I got it into my head that I wanted to keep bees. (And not let them get away! Yes, yes.) Of course, beekeeping was illegal in NYC at the time. What to do? I found a fellow to give me some hands-on experience with his hives, did my due diligence and research, and set about working to change the law. When beekeeping was finally legalized in New York in 2010, I promptly went out and ordered three pounds of bees.
Now that I can do it on the up-and-up, I’m the resident beekeeper on the roof of the East Midwood Jewish Center.
You can read about my ongoing beekeeping adventures here.
sketching and illustration
I take a sketchbook, pen, and waterbrush everywhere I go. I volunteered as Art Director and did all the illustration for the 2012 MIT Mystery Hunt, try to keep my illustration portfolio relatively up-to-date, and my ongoing sketching updates are available here.
glass art jewelry
I create one-of-a-kind lampwork jewelry from molten glass at my torch, often set with hammered silver or semi-precious stones. I blog about my glass work here, and here you can find a gallery of pieces for sale. If you represent a retail store, please email me at dsucher@gmail.com to get the password for my wholesale information, rates, and policies.
photography
My photography has been featured on Gothamist, CNN, NPR, and of course my food blog and regular blog. Please feel free to take a look around my photography portfolios!
volunteer work
I find it immensely satisfying to do pro bono work for good organizations. Places I’ve volunteered with include LeGaL, the Mass Defense Committee of the National Lawyers Guild, InMotion, the Family Center, East Midwood Jewish Center, the Bowery Mission, and St. Joseph’s Soup Kitchen, among other places. All great experiences, and I can’t recommend jumping in and helping them out strongly enough!
food
My recipes and food-related stories are collected at my food blog, Habeas Brûlée. Some also remain up at the archives of the recipe column I used to write for Gothamist.
In 2008-9, my partner and I were chefs/owners of Jack: an occasional restaurant, where we served 5-8 course tasting meals every month over at the Brooklyn Lyceum. (You can read reviews of the restaurant here. Jack was also mentioned in Edible Brooklyn and in Tribes by Seth Godin.)
I occasionally cater events, with past clients including the Fresh Fruit Festival and SalonCon. I’ve taught private cooking lessons, and I won Best Savory Pie at 1st Annual Brooklyn Pie Bake-Off. The closest I’ve come to baking a wedding cake was making 300 wedding cupcakes for a friend, but hey, you never know.
I cure pancetta in my windowsill, smoke bacon in the backyard, keep duck hearts in my freezer, and continue to make a whole lot of jam.
other projects
My brother and I curated a one-day art gallery of my mother’s works for her birthday in 2010.
I provided the tiny vials of honey and wrote the introduction for Amal El-Mohtar’s The Honey Month.
I also spin fire.
You can subscribe to the RSS feed for my writings and galleries here.