Gonzales...

Last Friday (at Midnight!) I went to go and see a show at Joe's Pub on LaFayette Street (it's opposite the Blue Man Group Theater), it was a 'Piano Talk Show' by Gonzales. Gonzales plays and produces for Feist and Jamie Lidell, so I thought it'd be good (I went hoping the Feist might make an appearance).

Please Note: None of these pictures are my own, my iPhone photos were a little shaky after I ordered a Jack Daniels and coke and they forgot to put the coke in it!

After queuing for AGES, I finally got in - it was lovely inside, much smaller than I was expecting, it felt like a very intimate lounge, with tables and booths near the stage and then a raised level at the back where the bar was...

Gonzales did his show first, he joked about no-one knowing who he was and that he never plays in America because the press hate him, but in Paris he's a massive rockstar, that's why he lives there. He was very funny, it was more like a stand-up performance than a gig.

Then a little later Jamie Lidell came on stage and sand a little song with him, Jamie Lidell's got a great voice (I hope this video works...)



Andrew W.K. had been challenged by Gonazales via. an internet TV channel to a piano dual, and he'd accepted and then went onto win. It was all very funny (and a little scripted me thinks), but it went on for bloody AGES, I was pooped after a bit of a busy week at work, it was 2am and it was still going on!

Gonzales doing a bit of showing off... he was incredibly good!

It was a fun night, and a really different kind of gig - I hope there'll be another gig coming up soon, I'll have to see who's playing...

The Brooklyn Fare...

On Sunday afternoon I went to find the Brooklyn Fare - I'd read about it on some packaging and design blogs recently so I thought I'd look it up. Turns out it's only a few stops away on the G train (the train that's right by my apartment)... Most convenient for a spot of food shopping at the weekends. Unfortunately I didn't take any photos, so I had to nab these from the internet...

It's a little bit like a small Chatsworth Farmshop, with a deli counter, a cheese counter, a butcher's counter, there's a little cafe bit too... they also do special eating things where you go and have a meal in the kitchens with the chef preparing your food infront of you - I suppose it's a bit like a Chef's Table, but it's a bit more rough and ready...

Their packaging and overall tone of voice is BRILLIANT! I love it, I thought it felt very British really, the play on words and stuff... the design was done by Mucca Design which is the agency Aaron's friend used to work for...

I went and stocked up on a load of meat ready for some cooking... it's so fantastic having a kitchen that I can use properly, I cooked myself a BIG lasagne last night, there's plenty left if you want some?!

The best thing is, it's cheaper than Whole Foods (which is where I go at the moment because it's just round the corner from work)... I think between now and Christmas there might be some culinary experiments at the weekends!

Ye Olde Barber Shoppe...

Last Sunday I went for a wander around Bed-stuy and Williamsburg, I was feeling particularly lue after saying bye to Abi, so I thought I'd go and take some photos and keep myself busy. I was walking around the roads near McCarren Park and stumbled across this amazing old, dilapidated shop which I assume was an old Barber shop judging by the old whirly sign shell...

It was incredible to see such an old looking, worn out shop in an area that's being regenerated or 'gentrified'. All the paint was discoloured and flaking off the wood, the flag in the window was fade and dusty, the random objects in the window were all old and sitting under a blanket of dust...

The colours in all the rusty bits of metal and aged bits of wood were beautiful... it was all so out of place - I loved it.

Dustin Bloody Hoffman!

I have just seen DUSTIN HOFFMAN!

He was strolling up 8th Avenue with his wife, I was strolling down 8th Avenue on my own...

Magnolia Bakery...

A very good friend of mine informed me that there is a programme called Sex & The City, and in this programme there is a cake shop called Magnolia Bakery and they do rather nice cupcakes... this very good friend of mine said they would very much like to go to Magnolia Bakery and have a cake or two - so that's what we did...


There was queue outside the shop and round the corner and they had a 1-in-1-out policy! They were doing a roaring trade, and with other Sex & The City fans arriving by the bus load (literally - they do Sex & The City Tours) we were lucky to get some cakes at all...
It was a perfect way to spend the last afternoon of a perfect holiday - it all just went far too quickly for my liking and now we're left with the holiday blues.

Bowling Green & Wall Street...

On Friday morning we went down to Bowling Green to get the Ferry to see the Statue of Liberty, unfortunately the queues were MASSIVE, so we decided that we'd rather not spend hours waiting and we'd just sit and admire it from a bench instead... it still looked beautiful.

(An over saturated market perhaps? There were 7 human statues in a row...)

We strolled around and took some photos and walked around the WWII Memorial which is very moving and very impressive, they have all the soldier's names on huge white concrete slabs that are standing infront of a big Eagle Sculpture.

After that we wandered round the corner to find Wall Street...

I hadn't realised how close the Charging Bull statue was to the Bowling Green subway station, so we went to find it... unfortunately walking from Bowling Green the first sight you get of the Bull is his... er... locks... his Bull-locks! There were two middle aged men who seemed to taking an fair few photos of themselves squatting very very closely to these said body parts, and resting their hands quite unfortunately on them...

I thought I'd spare you my photo of that and show you the nicer end of the statue instead.

ROCK & BOWL!

After travelling round the culinary world, Abi and I went to Brooklyn Bowl - officially the greatest bowling alley in the WORLD!
Tucked away behind the Brooklyn Brewery in Williamsburg, Brooklyn Bowl is a super fancy but super relaxed bowling alley with a fantastic bar, a stage, a restaurant, leather sofas and coffee tables at the alleys, massive projectors showing 2001: Space Odyssey, a waitress service while you bowl!

Not suprisingly there was a wee bit of a wait before we could bowl, so we went and made the most of the bar and watched the first house band for the night, Via Audio - they were great and since seeing them have noticed they're on Amazon and iTunes, so they're a proper band... then the next band came on, The Spring Standards (also on Amazon/iTunes), they were great too and carried on playing when we started bowling...

Finally it was time to start bowling, so we donned out fetching footwear and hit the alleys...


It was so much fun... the whole atmosphere was incredible and having a live band playing while you're bowling was really great, especially when the last song, they invited their friends up on stage and they all sung 'I Shall Be Released', it made the hairs on my neck stand up.

Having waitress service while you bowl is a little dangerous... we had a fair few Amaretto and cokes during our 3 games... for some reason our accuracy seemed to lessen throughout the night?!

It was a FANTASTIC night!

Around The World...

On Wednesday afternoon we went into Manhattan to have a mooch around China Town, in our mooching we went from China Town into Little Italy - it happened to be San Serrano Day (or something like that) and there was a bit of a street party going on. There were lots of little food stalls and gift stands and a lot of the restaurants had stalls, there were bouncy castles and shooting alleys (and bizarrely a couple of freak show tents). Abi almost got a free ride on a rollercoaster flight simulator because of her hair! (I think the man was actually saying that he loved my hair)...
Walking down the streets felt just like being in another country (Italy I suppose!) all the restaurants had their seats spilling out onto the streets and were all inviting you in. We decided to stop at one of them for a glass of wine and a little smackeral, we thought we'd have our starter in Italy and then go onto to China for our main course. So we had some delicious mussels and some shrimps coated in pesto and wrapped in priscuitio ham... Mmmmmmmmmmmm!

China Town's fantastic - full of different kinds of shops, lots of fish mongers, Chinese Medicine shops, tacky gift shops, takeaways, supermarkets... it's great. We saw lots of huge and fascinating looking fish in the different mongers, we bought some chinese sweets in the supermarkets (they sold Malteasers too!) and we thought about buying a Terrapin to rescue it from the cramped little tub it was being kept in. We were also rather taken with the Pig necklace in the middle of the photo above - complete with 8 little piglets! Very tasteful.

We decided that instead of China, we'd go to Japan for our next course - so we went to an old favourite Wild Ginger up on 51st Street, right next to the Pod hotel where we stayed when Abi was working here. Abi has got a wee bit addicted to their duck fajitas (3 times in 1 week last time!), so we went and shared some of those.

On our way up to the restaurant there was a singer in Union Square station - she was Anne, a big mama with a even bigger voice, she was incredible. She was sweating a lot and at first she seemed to just be sitting and singing, but then when she put Billie Jean on she sprung into life, so did the audience that was growing around her. She got up and was dancing, and the crowd were clapping and singing a long and then a middle aged man just came out of the crowd and started moonwalking! It was fantastic - I'd never seen such a happy crowd stand and watch a performer in the station before, it was absolutely brilliant.

The Rockaways...

On Tuesday afternoon we went down to the Rockaways... some more very lovely beaches at the bottom of Brooklyn. The Rockaways are known for their surfing beaches, and there a few people surfing - the waves weren't that big though.

It was sooooo peaceful - there was hardly anyone there at all. Although we later realised that we weren't really at the best bit of the Rockaways, we needed to go quite a lot further a long the train line to get to those beaches. I think we would have had more luck trying to get a drink or something had we gone further down - we ended up walking down the beach rather a long way trying to find something, we were nearly starting to see Oasis mirages!

There were lots of lovely shells on the beach, and some parts of it felt like Shell Beach on Herm, the sand wasn't really sand, it was lots of broken and softened shell bits. We were there around sunset again, it was beautiful...

Coney Island!

On Monday we went to Coney Island for a day at the beach! It was a gorgeous day, it was so hot and sunny (but not sticky or humid like in the middle of summer).
It was odd being in Coney Island in off-season, it was deserted, the fairground was closed and a lot of the little bars and food stalls along the board walk were closed too... It felt quite special to be there really - it couldn't have been more different to when Tom and I went, back then you could hardly see the sand for the number of people on the beach, now there was hardly anyone there...

Luckily Nathan's Hotdogs was still open - pheeeew! As was one of the food stalls on the beach, so Abi I enjoyed a couple of hotdogs with some Brooklyn Lager... then we shared a corn dog... then we tried a chili dog... then we had another hotdog... We needed some fruit, so we had some in the form of a strawberry glazed Dunkin' Donut.

It was beautiful to be down at Coney Island as the sun was setting - and there only really seemed to be locals about which was great. Being by the sea made it feel like a real summer holiday, I definitely want to try and get to the beach more, I think it would be really interesting to see Coney Island in the snow or something... I think going on a grey day would be quite atmospheric too, get some good photos of the rundown stalls and rides.

We're all going on a summer HOLIDAY!

Abi and I have had the most fantastic week here - we had a brilliantly relaxing and fun Summer holiday, so prepare yourself for some serious bloggage because I've a fair few posts to make...

Starting with our trip to NEW JERSEY...

What trip would be complete without getting on the wrong train? Abi and I went to New Jersey to go to the Kings Of Leon gig at the IZOD Center, but our journey there was a little more eventful than we'd planned. We started off well, getting a nice box of Krispy Kreme donuts from Penn Station and getting on the Long Island Railroad to Secaucus Station NJ (we intially went to the wrong part of Penn Station, or the wrong station entirely, but we'll skim over that bit...), when we got to Secaucus we got on the train that we thought was going to Rutherford. The announcement said Rutherford, the times matched up... so we thought we were fine, but when the conductor came and checked out tickets he informed us that the train was NOT going to Rutherford...
So - we got off the train at the next stop, Woodbridge - a ONE TRACK station in the middle of what felt like no-where. We didn't feel tooooo bad because there was someone else on the train that made the same mistake, but that didn't really help the fact that we were a wee bit stranded.
Luckily we found a taxi number and we able to get a taxi to the place we were meant to be going - it turned out it was only a few miles away, but needless to say it wasn't the best start to the trip. At least we still had two donuts left - just incase we needed provisions.

(Lost, but happy at Woodbridge Station - moments later there was an unfortunate incident with some Cherry Dr. Pepper and Abi's lovely white t-shirt wasn't quite so white anymore...)

When we finally made it to the gig - The Kings Of Leon were AMAZING! As were the support act Glasvegas, it was so funny to hear Glaswegan accents, it made it even more special. The camera doesn't show it too well (it's form the iPhone) but we actually had really good seats...

The next day we officially started out summer holiday - the sun was beaming! It was beautiful. We decided that as we were close by we'd pop to Walmart so Abi could experience the wonderment first hand and see where all our hard work had been going... then we went to Bonefish Restaurant and enjoyed some Bang Bang Shrimp for a late lunch (again, not the most perfect outing, we walked from Walmart to Bonefish, only to find that it wasn't open for another HOUR! Luckily they had some comfy seats outside - the shrimp was WELL worth the wait). I hadn't realised that there was Bonefish in New Jersey, it was/is one of my favourite restaurants in Arkansas and the Bang Bang Shrimp is DELICIOUS!

T minus 23 hours...

Abi will be here in less than 24 hours! WOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

Finished...

Well, I think I've just about finished making the new apartment look a little more homely - so here it is...

All it needs now is visitors!