This Morning...

Last week I started to go for a walk every (nearly) morning before work. It's a nice walk from our apartment down Myrtle Avenue to the corner Fort Greene Park and back, and at the moment I'm starting my walk just as the sun's coming up, so when I'm heading back to the apartment the sky tends to look rather beautiful...

This was this morning's sunrise. It looked far more impressive in real life, but my phone camera's not too shabby really.

It's lovely walking down the road as things begin to start stirring, there are some lovely smells coming from some streets, smells of fresh bread, and when I walk past the bagel shop it's so hard not to go in and get one (lucky I don't take any money with me).

Some schools must start pretty early because there are a lot of children up and about before 7am, maybe they've got quite a long journey or they might have a breakfast club or something... eitherway, it seems a bit early to me.

Hopefully my walks will become runs... but for now, a brisk 3 mile walk will do. It's a lovely way to start my day (as long as it's not raining).

Lazy Weekend...

We've had a bit of a lovely and lazy weekend, it's been wonderful.

Yesterday morning we went into Manhattan and got breakfast at a place called Chat n' Chew, it's right round the corner from work. Abi and I had been there before on evening and noticed their breakfast menu looked rather tasty, and has said we should go back one time... so we did.

Abi had Triple Blueberry pancakes, with blueberry's in the pancakes, blueberry's on top of the pancakes and with blueberry butter melting over the pancakes... delicious. I had eggs benedict - having had some pretty disappointing eggs benedict experiences in New York, I have to say Chat n' Chew do a mean eggs benedict (nearly a rival for Chatters... nearly).

Then we went to the cinema, at noon! I can't remember the last time I've been to the cinema in the day time - but it was great. We went to a new cinema near work (new to us, not new in general, it was pretty old in general) to see a film called Easy A.

It's funny little film, it's a bit of a teeny film (like Mean Girls) but it's still funny and Emma Stone (who was in Superbad and Zombieland) is great in it... it's also got that man who seems to be in EVERYTHING, he was in Julia and Julie and in The Devil Wears Prada, but I'm not sure what his name is... I suppose I could look it up as I'm on the internet. Hang on...
He's called Stanley Tucci, it's also got Malcolm McDowell in too.

It was good fun, and a perfect afternoon film.

(Little coincidence, we spotted these A's in the subway station on the way home)

Then today, we've done very little but relax really (and boring stuff like tidy the apartment and take stuff to the laundromat), but we did go for a wander down Myrtle Avenue. We thought we'd keep walking after dropping off our washing, so we walked up to Maggie Brown's.

Tom and I went to Maggie Brown's last summer when we were house sitting at Malvina's, and I think I'd been back a couple of times since, but Abi and I had never been together and we were craving burgers, so we went in for some lunch. It's a great little restaurant/brunch place/bar with a very friendly local atmosphere. They were playing fantastic music (Elvis and The Beatles) and their burgers were absolutely DELICIOUS! So I have a feeling we'll be heading back there.

There was a section of Myrtle Avenue that had been blocked off and pedestrianised for the day. It had been taken over by all the local children, covering the tarmac with colourful chalk drawings, hoola-hooping and riding scooters up and down, it was great. As we walked back we walked past a band setting up their instruments to play in the middle of the street, and another local bar was blasting out tunes and filling the air with delicious BBQ smells, there was a little block party kicking off.

So despite not really going very far today (just 10 blocks up the road) we've made new discoveries (including a shop that Abi's going to spend all her money in, called Barking Brown which sells some rather nice hats and boots) and experienced yet another side of Brooklyn life.

I just wish I'd taken my phone or camera to Maggie Brown's so I could have take some pictures of the goings on, but it was quite nice to just take it in... next time I'll get some photos.

I know this hasn't been the most exciting of blog posts... but we've had a brilliant weekend and I hope you all have had too.

Inside Out...

I was walking behind this character the other day, just by work. For some reason he was wearing boht his big floppy hat and his t-shirt inside out...? It reminded me of when Tom wore all his clothes back to front to school in honour of Kris Kros, it brought a smile to my face.

Little Devil...

Ian Wright, Wright, Wright...

Last night Abi and went along to the Bumble & Bumble University to listen to an illustrator called Ian Wright give a little talk. It was part of the AIGA/NY 'Small Talk' series that I went to last year when Anthony Burrill was giving a talk.

I've liked Ian Wright's since my last year at Uni when I first saw his stuff, so it was fantastic to hear him talk about the work and talk about the piece that I've got a print of, his Jimi Hendrix portrait...

He's a Londoner, in his late 50s and is a great character. He's very humble considering he's worked with and shared studio spaces with some amazing and famous designers like Neville Brody and has done some brilliant illustration work. His stuff is mainly based around music (which he said was his main love, above anything and everything else). He's now based in New York and does collaborations with different people and does work for a variety of clients, the latest being Saks of 5th Avenue.

He had some great stories about growing up and making the transition from being a student to being a professional, working for NME, growing up loving the Beatles, seeing Jimi Hendrix play on Top of the Pops, listening to the Who, having posters of Pete Townsend on his wall and then later getting to work with him on a couple of album covers. It was all great to hear and really inspiring.

He uses a lot different media to create his portraits - anything he can find really, he's made portraits out of cassette tapes, mascara brushes, scraps of paper, ink blots, toy beads... all sorts. His most recent work features badges a lot, like this album cover for Tony Bennett's Duets album...

It was an incredibly inspiring talk, in a great venue and we both left wanting to go home and start painting or making portraits out of our subway cards, it really made us think about all the creative stuff we used to do at Uni and school, and made us realise there's no reason we couldn't do it still.

I sent Ian a little email this morning, just saying thanks for the talk - I wasn't expecting a reply or anything, but I just felt compelled to write to him (trying not to sound to gushy in the message). I was incredibly surprised to later receive a reply from him saying...

Hello Ollie
You just made my day!
Thank you mate!
Warm Regards
Ian

What a nice man.

Me Too...

The Finish Line...

I made it.

I had seen from Tom's photos of his adventure into Harlem, that the top end of Central Park was rather lovely. There's a very well kept little gardens section that felt very English - it was obviously a popular place for weddings as I saw three different parties all waiting to have their photos taken.

The pond at the very top of the park felt very peaceful as the sun was beginning to set. I wish the colours came out properly in the sky, the sky was a beautiful blue - more like this...

It was such a lovely evening and great place to end my walk. It felt great to have done it, (my feet were blummin' sore though, I'd stupidly worn my Vans instead of my good trainers - I won't make that mistake again!)... I think there'll be some more walking adventures in New York before long.

Central Park...

When I reached the park I was feeling pretty good about myself, I knew that was a pretty big chunk of the distance done, but the park begins at 59th street, and I was planning on getting to 110th street - so there was still a fair distance to go and the sun was getting ready for bed...

I went into the park to get a break from all the concrete pavements and skyscrapers, the trees are just starting to turn, leaves are starting to get a little reddish and there's that autumn smell in the air that I love. It was also that crisp evening sunlight that makes everything look so beautiful...

After a while I realised that I wasn't really making any progress in walking up Manhattan, I was meandering across Manhattan because of the wiggly paths in the park. So I made my way to the edge of the park and headed back up the main roads, making my way to Museum Mile...

It wasn't long until I reach the Guggenhiem, and then after a couple of blocks I was the highest I'd ever been in Manhattan... it's pretty blummin' posh around there too.

Park Avenue...

As I've walked up 5th and 6th Avenue from work to Uptown quite a few times, I thought I'd take a different avenue to the park - so I went up Park Avenue... one of the posher avenues.

This amazing detailing was on the side of one of the bank buildings, it wraps all the way round the building... it's beautiful.

I'd never really appreciate how lovely some of the areas on Park Avenue are, you get a great view of the Chrysler Building, you walk up to Grand Central Station (and then have to walk around it because it sits right in the middle of the avenue) and then there's the Waldorf Astoria!

There was a lot of activity outside the Waldorf, lots of police, lots of security guards, lots of earpieces and roadblocks. I initially thought it must have all been in preparation for the big UN summit that's happening in New York this week (apparently Obama's planning on staying at Waldorf!) - but it turns out it was all in preparation for two V.V.V.V.I.Ps that are coming to New York in just over 7 weeks time!

Union Square...

As I got closer to work, I remembered that there's a building on 4th Avenue that always has a massive hand painted film poster on the side of it - a few weeks ago it was a big Inception poster, which I wished I'd taken a photo of it. As I walked up 4th Avenue I started wondering how they paint such a massive advert - and then I noticed the building in question...

They were painting a new advert!
I still don't know how they do it though, they must separate the painting into sections or something, but they obviously split it in half... I wonder how long it would take them to complete it? (Also, we've seen the adverts for this film and it looks good, so we might go and see it when it comes out).

Union Square was bustling with people shopping at the farmers market - it looks like Autumn is definitely just around the corner...

Downtown...

I took a bit of a long way through downtown, wandering through SoHo, walking up Bowery and then going off through lots of little streets working my way up past Bleeker Street and Houston...

There's a great looking place called the Corner Deli which is apparently another secret bar. The upstairs bit is a rough and ready deli/takeaway place, serving tacos, burgers and stuff, but downstairs (hopefully through a secret door) is supposed to be a rather swanky bar. Ben asked us to go and have a look as part of our audit but we couldn't get a reservation, we'll keep trying though...

During the day it's obviously a very popular place for Hipsters to hangout.

as I went passed the New Museum and remembered that near by there was a huge Shepard Fairey mural, I'd been wanting to take photos of it for months and had never got round to it, so I walked up to Bowery again to find it...

When I got there, I found that it had been replaced by a big white wall full of red graffiti tags. I was too late. The wall is part of a big art project and changes every few months - so the new installation is this red and white tag wall... Oh well, it still looks pretty cool.

There were some other great little murals and grafitti tags around the area...

There's always so much to see down in the SoHo/Village/Downtown area, there's always so much to see anywhere in New York, but I love it down by SoHo...

I also spotted this chap...

Perhaps I should have stopped to hear one of his stories... next time.

China Town...

The Manhattan Bridge comes down into China Town, going above (and very close to) all the roof tops. You can see people hanging out their washing in the fire escapes, and all the graffiti-ed rooves, I cant' imagine what it must be like to live so close to the bridge...

Coming into China Town really does feel like visiting another country, it's extraordinary. It seemed to be heaving on Saturday, lots of people buying things from all the stalls, although some shops were busier than others...

I love the little fish mongers in China Town, they always seem to have a massive variety of fish, both alive and dead - and some other rather unusual culinary delights...

I saw a lady picking out a toad (or a frog)... I hate to think what she was going to do to it. There was one fish monger waying out a bag of fish that was still moving, the fist was flapping about like mad! I'm not sure I'm ready to buy fresh fish from China Town just yet...

The Bridge...

Once I managed to negotiate the busy roads, the cycle paths (which apparently I should not have been walking on according to one cyclist) and the ramps up to the road, I finally got onto the pedestrian's footpath for the Manhattan Bridge... it's not very clearly signposted.

I like going over the Manhattan Bridge in cabs because you get to look at the Brooklyn Bridge and the Manhattan Skyline, so I thought I'd walk over the Manhattan Bridge instead this time.

It was an amazingly sunny afternoon and the view of Brooklyn Bridge was fantastic...

As you come off the bridge, down into China Town there's this cheery chappy to greet you!

Our Neigbourhood...

One of the nice things about the walk was that it I could explore some the streets near our apartment, I deliberately got off Myrtle Avenue (which runs right to the Manhattan Bridge), so I could see some of the other little side streets.

Turns out there's some quite interesting places about...

There are quite a few hand-painted shop signs around, I particularly like this one, I'm not really sure why, but I think the lights and the different coloured holding shape make me think of Coney Island for some reason...?

I LOVE old signs like these - unfortunately the Bakery was no long in business.

Opposite the old Bakery was a placed called the Wallabout Society - it looked more like a crazy person's house though. The building was completely covered with the ranting and ravings of the 'society' expressing their wish to preserve the area and keep High-Rise buildings out (which is fair enough). Each letter was individually stuck on the wall, and in term each letter was individually starting to peel off. I don't think the society was running anymore...

I don't think I've ever seen one of these Obama prints in real leaf, not up in someones window at least. The colours have started to fade a bit - but it's still a powerful poster... it's a shame they've let it fade, they're worth a fortune now!

Little Stroll...

On Saturday afternoon, I thought I'd try and see who far I could walk from our apartment. Inspired by Tom's mammoth Manhattan walk when he was here in the summer, I told my self I'd try and get from Myrtle Avenue to 110th Street in Harlem...

I did it.

I took a bit of a wiggly-waggly route in some parts, so it was probably a bit lengthier than it needed to be, and I was stopping to take lots of photos (230ish) along the way, so it took FAR longer than it needed to (6 hours!). My route ended up being 12.64 miles (annoyingly close to 13).

I hope you're ready for some photos, because I took quite a few...

After The Storm...

Here are some rather dramatic photos of last nights storm,
and the aftermath this morning...

(they're all from www.gothamist.com)

Luckily our little apartment survived, there was just a big chunk of tree a couple of doors down from us, but not too much damage... Phew!