Last weekend I went to New York. I took an early flight. It didn’t help. I didn’t surprise anyone and there was a small ticker-tape parade on my way in from JFK. Such a bore.
Every time I go to New York it’s changed a little. Not always a lot, but just enough to make me wonder if I really still like it or like it more. Kind of a like a boyfriend with a new too-trendy haircut. Erm... yes... no... yes... no... maybe.
And because it’s a great big shiny mutable ball of a city – just like the one that drops in Times Square every New Years' Eve and that no New Yorker’s have ever really seen in real life – there’s always something new to do and something old to revisit.
The bestest old thing I did was see my rad friends. I miss my East Coast friends in LA. When your friends are as awesome as mine, they make you feel better about everything, including yourself, it’s like you’re in the best gang ever. That’s what being with my friends is like.
Not like being with YOUR friends. Oh no, not like those losers at all. Hah! Call them friends? Pah!
(Damhave, you might want to kill me for posting this pic but you know how cute and fetching you are to me...)
Whenever I’m in New York I run into someone I know from LA. Which is kind of surprising and not surprising. It’s not surprising because we are all modern and well-traveled and rad these days, are we not? And it’s surprising because we all live two and a half thousand miles away on the other side of a continent and WTF are you doing here!?? A century ago Robert Louis Stevenson would have written an epic novel about meeting a friend that far from home. These days we blithely put each other on guest lists.
I met Farmer Dave at Sway on Sunday night. He’s playing with Interpol now. He put me on the guest list. On stage he looked awesome in his suit and his Farmer Dave hat and with his new-improved-Farmer Dave M-Audio Keyboards. He even had a little hobbitty roadie behind him, which is nice although a pet is for life, not just for Christmas, Dave. I was so pleased I wriggled my way all the way through their secret gig at the Bowery Ballroom. Btw, if it was a secret show how come there were 800 people there? Some secret. New Yorkers must all be inveterate gossips.
Went to Lit on Monday night and got Lit. Which is probably where they came up with the name. Getting home at 3AM is always so much fun that I did it twice in a row. Actually, the second time, I was having so much fun coming in late that I went back out again to go to the all-night deli (because you can in New York) so that I really got home at 4AM. That was even better fun. I looked at the clock and thought: I’ve been out until 4AM. Sweet.
As well as doing all the old things I usually do in New York I did some new things too. Uptown Manhattan, in the suburbs of the Upper West Side, is rad – but don’t go there in case you spoil it for me. It’s kind of nice that it’s so clean and quiet. Not like downtown where the streets are packed with people on skateboards filming their autobiographies for their blogs. Central Park is beautiful and it's a nice route across it to walk to the Apple Store on Fifth Avenue and 59th – which is a huge, underground space full of delightful Appley things. (I know, crazy right? Gwyneth Paltrow’s kid already has her own store franchise…) Café Sabarsky, the amazing wood-paneled restaurant in the Neue Gallerie on 5th and 86th is a great place to eat and spill water – especially their delicious pea and ham soup with mint; kind of just posh enough. Across Fifth Ave I saw the Venice and the Islamic World Exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum and then, solely in order to support the arts (I am nothing if not altruistic), I went shopping in their store and didn’t even shoplift anything. Not even the gifts I bought for my rad West Coast friend, Vietnamese Soul Sister, Jenny. Big, right? I am going to try Christmas this year without shoplifting. It's always such a drag when my sister wants to return what I've bought her and I can't give her a gift receipt.
After gorging myself some of the UWS’s resident DST I went to Café Ronda on Columbus (everything uptown is Eurocentric – café this and bistro that. I mean, c’mon, get over the colonials already. It was 200 years ago now….they’re GONE) and feasted on their delicious chorizo and lomo saltado. Delicious food was the theme for the whole weekend actually; Chinatown treats of noodles with sesame sauce, fresh fish, and delectable octopus of the gods to name a few. It wasn’t called octopus of the Gods but it may well have been (Cho, thanks for link which we discussed over the meal). Humberto is a famous singer in Chinatown, Carol, Olivia, YP and I have since learned; or famous in one restaurant, at least.
And when i got home, this song randomly popped up on my iTunes and made me giggled as I swayed to it in my bedroom.
Meat & Potatoes.mp3
Mike took me on his velo to Chez Omar for some delicious couscous. The lamb and beef were super juicy and tasty. Just super.
We rode by Café La Perle but I couldn't deal with how many fashionistas there were on the sidewalk. I guess when the weather's this good, you gotta enjoy it while you still can.
We ended up at Café Pop In and met these nice and friendly young French boys who took a liking to us as we spoke English; well I speak American which is an entirely different language but I had them fooled!
