Monday, June 9, 2008
New Post on Greeneyesonthecity.blogspot.com
For those who don't know it, I've moved my New York musings to their own location: Greeneyesonthecity.blogspot.com. I'll be posting there every few days. Check it out!
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
New post on other blog
Just in case any readers are RSSed for this blog but not the other, I just published a new post on my exclusively New York blog, http://greeneyesonthecity.blogspot.com/. I don't expect to be using this blog much for the time being.
Thanks for reading!
JJ
Thanks for reading!
JJ
Thursday, May 29, 2008
This blog is moving!
I'm in the process of transferring the New York portion of this blog to its own site (which I will then hopefully bedeck with pictures and such).
Keep up with my posts on the new site at:
http://greeneyesonthecity.blogspot.com/
Thanks for reading!
JJ
Keep up with my posts on the new site at:
http://greeneyesonthecity.blogspot.com/
Thanks for reading!
JJ
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Coffee and walking
Spent the day mostly at the apartment taking care of computer stuff (much to do now that I've got my machine back - but sans much of its data. Alas.)
I love my corner bodega's coffee so much that I don't even want to make my own anymore. So instead I shell out $1.25 daily for a large cup of their stuff. They prepare it for you (another thing I love about bodega coffee) and I always ask for mine with cream, no sugar. It comes out silky and creamy - almost like hot chocolate and never bitter. I love it. Plus it's a nice little walk in the morning - I justify it in that it gets me out of the house. And at least I'm not forking over $4.25 for a Starbucks latte.
Went to yoga in the afternoon and then did some walking errands. If it weren't for the pizza slices I indulge in I think I'd waste away to nothing here. Unless you're the kind of New Yorker who gets driven around in black cars with tinted windows, there's so much walking daily here. And I think I traipse about a bit more than the average New Yorker, since I'm so new and am into exploring. Honestly, my body aches (in a good way) at the end of most days and I can tell I've lost a few pounds. I think this is what the human body was made to do - get itself around, lug things. There's reason most people here are fairly slim... We may be in an urban jungle, but this amount of movement is natural to our species.
Had dinner with (cousin) Brandon and his fiancee, Jen. Met them at their place in Chelsea and we walked down the block to a newish Italian spot they like. It was a pleasant night and we sat at a table abutting the sidewalk. I love all the sidewalk seating in New York. (On Broadway, near my house, the rows and rows of sidewalk cafes recall the grand boulevards of Paris).
Had an endive salad, mussels and wine. Yum.
A note: One of these days I want to overhaul this blog. I'd like to give it its own site (don't worry, you'll know the address), redesign it and start posting photos. Right now I feel buried under my to-do list: job search, freelance work, getting my computer put back together and still trying to unpack and assemble furniture. Somehow I seem to have all these hours and yet there still aren't enough!
Tomorrow I plan to take the B train to a cafe in the East Village and work from there - should be fun. And then a PR contact of mine is taking me to dinner at a client restaurant of hers, STK, (in case you didn't guess, it serves steak). Yum!
I love my corner bodega's coffee so much that I don't even want to make my own anymore. So instead I shell out $1.25 daily for a large cup of their stuff. They prepare it for you (another thing I love about bodega coffee) and I always ask for mine with cream, no sugar. It comes out silky and creamy - almost like hot chocolate and never bitter. I love it. Plus it's a nice little walk in the morning - I justify it in that it gets me out of the house. And at least I'm not forking over $4.25 for a Starbucks latte.
Went to yoga in the afternoon and then did some walking errands. If it weren't for the pizza slices I indulge in I think I'd waste away to nothing here. Unless you're the kind of New Yorker who gets driven around in black cars with tinted windows, there's so much walking daily here. And I think I traipse about a bit more than the average New Yorker, since I'm so new and am into exploring. Honestly, my body aches (in a good way) at the end of most days and I can tell I've lost a few pounds. I think this is what the human body was made to do - get itself around, lug things. There's reason most people here are fairly slim... We may be in an urban jungle, but this amount of movement is natural to our species.
Had dinner with (cousin) Brandon and his fiancee, Jen. Met them at their place in Chelsea and we walked down the block to a newish Italian spot they like. It was a pleasant night and we sat at a table abutting the sidewalk. I love all the sidewalk seating in New York. (On Broadway, near my house, the rows and rows of sidewalk cafes recall the grand boulevards of Paris).
Had an endive salad, mussels and wine. Yum.
A note: One of these days I want to overhaul this blog. I'd like to give it its own site (don't worry, you'll know the address), redesign it and start posting photos. Right now I feel buried under my to-do list: job search, freelance work, getting my computer put back together and still trying to unpack and assemble furniture. Somehow I seem to have all these hours and yet there still aren't enough!
Tomorrow I plan to take the B train to a cafe in the East Village and work from there - should be fun. And then a PR contact of mine is taking me to dinner at a client restaurant of hers, STK, (in case you didn't guess, it serves steak). Yum!
Monday, May 26, 2008
Weekend wrap-up
It was sunny all weekend! Hallelujah. Friday afternoon had a job interview of sorts at a website called Flavorpill.com. They're expanding into style & design and need somebody to head it up. Cross your fingers for me! They won't be able to hire for maybe a month, but it sounds like a great gig. Also have an interview this coming week at the Post's Page Six magazine and heard back from Fashionista.com - they're not hiring until July but want me to get back in touch then! It's encouraging that people are showing interest - makes me think I'm less nutty for moving here without a job.
After the interview, left SoHo and met up with Caitlin and Gael at the Target in Brooklyn (there's no Target in Manhattan, if you can believe it). Bought a few household-y things, but decided I'd do most of my buying at IKEA.
Which I did... The next day.
But first, Friday night: middle Eastern food near Caitlin's place, followed by drinking at her apartment with friends. Caitlin and I went to a couple of bars later and talked to A) a pair of nice Brooklyn-eccentric guys, B) no one. Honestly, at a the second bar, everyone thought they were too cool for school and one guy even walked away from us after chatting for one minute. I can't do Brooklyn boys - they're too much like Austin boys! (Scruffy and aloof). In fact, I'm not too into Brooklyn at all - at least for living. Too quiet and too much hassle with the subway (it's always being fixed or something). But unlike most Manhattanites, I'm happy to visit.
Spent the night on Caitlin's futon that night as the trek between our places would be near-impossible late at night.
Saturday Caitlin and I caught the free shuttle from Port Authority to IKEA. We were measuring my room and lost track of time (hungover) and suddenly realized it was 2 and the last shuttle was set to depart at 2:30. So we raced down to Columbus Ave., caught a cab, told the driver to step on it, ran from the cab all the way to Gate 5 at Port Authority and made the bus with two minutes to spare. Whew!
Spent quite a bit at IKEA, so I really hope I get a job soon, but my room is going to be amazing! It will have tons of storage. Having most items delivered tomorrow (Tuesday) morning, though we were able to carry our smaller items on the bus. It's pretty convenient, that shuttle, and delivery was only $99 for up to $15 items. They'll carry them inside for you, too.
We got back from IKEA starved and decided to grab dinner in my neighborhood. Tried a spot that's literally around the corner - I'd been curious about it. Voza. Tiny, narrow place, with a distressed wood interior and probably only about seven small tables total, inside and on the sidewalk. It was great! When we arrived the waiter seemed slightly disgruntled, but I announced to him that I was a new neighbor and he ought to be nice to us and soon he was helping me with my sweater and being as sweet and attentive as can be. The menu had a mix of fresh bistro-type fare, with many seafood choices, and then the chef came to our table and recited about 10 more choices, many of them seafood. Just as I was about to order the mussels the last order sold out. But we did have the crab bruschetta special, and it was sublime. Definitely a new favorite spot for when I want to treat myself, in the meantime, I'll just walk by frequently and wave. I'll be a sort of ghost regular.
Well, more stuff happened over the weekend, involving sunshine, reading at Central Park, watching the water at Riverside park, exploring the posh part of the Upper West Side (where I live isn't too posh), a foiled attempt to have brunch in Brooklyn, and brunch and shopping in SoHo with Maria finished off by a trip to Trader Joe's - my first in four years. That was a happy moment.
After the interview, left SoHo and met up with Caitlin and Gael at the Target in Brooklyn (there's no Target in Manhattan, if you can believe it). Bought a few household-y things, but decided I'd do most of my buying at IKEA.
Which I did... The next day.
But first, Friday night: middle Eastern food near Caitlin's place, followed by drinking at her apartment with friends. Caitlin and I went to a couple of bars later and talked to A) a pair of nice Brooklyn-eccentric guys, B) no one. Honestly, at a the second bar, everyone thought they were too cool for school and one guy even walked away from us after chatting for one minute. I can't do Brooklyn boys - they're too much like Austin boys! (Scruffy and aloof). In fact, I'm not too into Brooklyn at all - at least for living. Too quiet and too much hassle with the subway (it's always being fixed or something). But unlike most Manhattanites, I'm happy to visit.
Spent the night on Caitlin's futon that night as the trek between our places would be near-impossible late at night.
Saturday Caitlin and I caught the free shuttle from Port Authority to IKEA. We were measuring my room and lost track of time (hungover) and suddenly realized it was 2 and the last shuttle was set to depart at 2:30. So we raced down to Columbus Ave., caught a cab, told the driver to step on it, ran from the cab all the way to Gate 5 at Port Authority and made the bus with two minutes to spare. Whew!
Spent quite a bit at IKEA, so I really hope I get a job soon, but my room is going to be amazing! It will have tons of storage. Having most items delivered tomorrow (Tuesday) morning, though we were able to carry our smaller items on the bus. It's pretty convenient, that shuttle, and delivery was only $99 for up to $15 items. They'll carry them inside for you, too.
We got back from IKEA starved and decided to grab dinner in my neighborhood. Tried a spot that's literally around the corner - I'd been curious about it. Voza. Tiny, narrow place, with a distressed wood interior and probably only about seven small tables total, inside and on the sidewalk. It was great! When we arrived the waiter seemed slightly disgruntled, but I announced to him that I was a new neighbor and he ought to be nice to us and soon he was helping me with my sweater and being as sweet and attentive as can be. The menu had a mix of fresh bistro-type fare, with many seafood choices, and then the chef came to our table and recited about 10 more choices, many of them seafood. Just as I was about to order the mussels the last order sold out. But we did have the crab bruschetta special, and it was sublime. Definitely a new favorite spot for when I want to treat myself, in the meantime, I'll just walk by frequently and wave. I'll be a sort of ghost regular.
Well, more stuff happened over the weekend, involving sunshine, reading at Central Park, watching the water at Riverside park, exploring the posh part of the Upper West Side (where I live isn't too posh), a foiled attempt to have brunch in Brooklyn, and brunch and shopping in SoHo with Maria finished off by a trip to Trader Joe's - my first in four years. That was a happy moment.
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Two weeks -making lists
Tonight the boy who might have done it called my name as I walked home. Or my sort-of name: "Jennifer." We were about a block from my apartment building and it was the first time I'd seen him Friday night. He's been laying low.
"Come here for a minute," he said, standing by the playground.
I shook my head vehemently and kept walking.
I didn't want to talk to him, to be pressured into telling him things. To consort with a possible stabber. I don't want to know any more than I already know.
I felt a little bummed today. Got the news late last night that none of my data was able to be recovered, after all. And the external hard drive where I thought I'd backed everything up - turns out I didn't do it properly somehow. It only has a little bit of data. From now on, I'm learning how to back it all up and I'm doing so every few days. I hope you all will, too.
It rained off and on all day, which made me think of umbrellas again. My second day here I bought my first New York umbrella and I opened it indoors. "Bad luck," I said, before I opened it. The store clerk scoffed and urged me to open it, to make sure it worked. So I did.
And I sure have had a lot of bad luck.
But my roommate (Dave, not Jen) reminds me bad things come in threes: 1) left a favorite jacket in a taxi 2) someone got stabbed at my apt 3) computer broke and I lost all my data. Now, he says, three good things will happen. I'm ready!
Three good things did happen today (not that I'm letting those count as my three - the real three better be big.)
1) I had lunch with my new neighborhood friend, David Duhalde. Jen and I met him at my friend Maria's party and it turns out he lives only a few blocks from us. What's more, he grew up in the neighborhood, went to the schools I walk by, saw the demographics shift and the crime decrease.
He took me on a mini walking tour (the corner where the last remaining Irish establishments stood when he was a kid - the Irish have since moved on to the suburbs, he said - upward mobility; a Dominican restaurant where you can get a whole roasted chicken for $5 - I may have to start eating chicken again; a wonderful cafe, whose name I already love: The Hungarian Pastry Shop). Then it started to rain in the center of Columbia's main plaza and we fled down Broadway, past the farmers' market, and took shelter in a favorite Cuban spot of his - Havana something. The menu had pictures of Kerouac and Ginsberg and other Beats on the cover. David didn't know if they had frequented the spot or not - I'll have to do more research.
It was a big place, nice, like the spots flanking broadway are, with a horseshoe-shaped bar, high ceilings and the kind of big wooden booths that can seat six or eight medium-sized people in a pinch. I had the Cuban sandwich and stopped myself from eating all of it.
2) In the afternoon I met up with Jean Scheidnes, former style reporter for the Austin American-Statesman, and current designer market editor for DNR, the men's equivalent of Women's Wear Daily. (Though DNR is now weekly).
We sat on the half-moon shaped bench of the lounge at Ringo, a round space, whose curved glass window jutted high and made me wish it were still raining, just I could see it from inside. We drank coffee poured restaurant-style into cups on saucers.
I had never really talked much with Jean before (she left the Statesman shortly after I started writing for the paper), but I was delighted by her. She was very calm (she looked tired, poor thing) and seemed unconcerned about time. I guess the magazine had just gone to bed for the week. We talked about Conde Nast, why she didn't want to work at Vogue, people we knew in Austin. I had a great time, and I hope to see her again.
3) After leaving Jean and picking up my computer (with new, blank hard drive installed and the wounded one handed off in a bubble-wrap pouch), I rushed home on the rush-hour subway, dropped my bag at the apartment and set off to meet Tim Elliott, PR director of men's wear for Barneys New York, the luxury department store that also does Barneys CO-OP. I had met him once in Austin and he had given me his card, so I emailed him once I was here.
He was very kind. I chose a sort of odd little coffee shop to meet, and then found myself wishing I'd picked a more sophisticated spot on Broadway. But I'm so new here, and he wanted to come to my neighborhood (it was on his way home, since he lives in the Bronx).
We talked for at least an hour, about men's fashion (which I had also talked about with Jean - a sign?), and the kind of bespoke items such as suits, shirts, shoes - custom made - that we both have an appreciation for. Maybe I would like men's fashion. I'm apprehensive about diving fully into women's fashion, because 1) I feel like I don't love it enough - there's too much bullshit about a lot of it 2) I'm not sure I want to insert myself into such a reputedly catty world.
But men's fashion has the tailor-made realm, and that aspect still has integrity.
He told me that everyone in the industry reads two blogs: 1) the Moment - on the NYT website under "T" magazine, and 2) On the Runway, Cathy Horyn's fashion blog (also on the NYT website). Good to know! The moment had a good list of links to other blogs, said, and urged me to check out the ones concerning men's wear. I think I will.
"Come here for a minute," he said, standing by the playground.
I shook my head vehemently and kept walking.
I didn't want to talk to him, to be pressured into telling him things. To consort with a possible stabber. I don't want to know any more than I already know.
I felt a little bummed today. Got the news late last night that none of my data was able to be recovered, after all. And the external hard drive where I thought I'd backed everything up - turns out I didn't do it properly somehow. It only has a little bit of data. From now on, I'm learning how to back it all up and I'm doing so every few days. I hope you all will, too.
It rained off and on all day, which made me think of umbrellas again. My second day here I bought my first New York umbrella and I opened it indoors. "Bad luck," I said, before I opened it. The store clerk scoffed and urged me to open it, to make sure it worked. So I did.
And I sure have had a lot of bad luck.
But my roommate (Dave, not Jen) reminds me bad things come in threes: 1) left a favorite jacket in a taxi 2) someone got stabbed at my apt 3) computer broke and I lost all my data. Now, he says, three good things will happen. I'm ready!
Three good things did happen today (not that I'm letting those count as my three - the real three better be big.)
1) I had lunch with my new neighborhood friend, David Duhalde. Jen and I met him at my friend Maria's party and it turns out he lives only a few blocks from us. What's more, he grew up in the neighborhood, went to the schools I walk by, saw the demographics shift and the crime decrease.
He took me on a mini walking tour (the corner where the last remaining Irish establishments stood when he was a kid - the Irish have since moved on to the suburbs, he said - upward mobility; a Dominican restaurant where you can get a whole roasted chicken for $5 - I may have to start eating chicken again; a wonderful cafe, whose name I already love: The Hungarian Pastry Shop). Then it started to rain in the center of Columbia's main plaza and we fled down Broadway, past the farmers' market, and took shelter in a favorite Cuban spot of his - Havana something. The menu had pictures of Kerouac and Ginsberg and other Beats on the cover. David didn't know if they had frequented the spot or not - I'll have to do more research.
It was a big place, nice, like the spots flanking broadway are, with a horseshoe-shaped bar, high ceilings and the kind of big wooden booths that can seat six or eight medium-sized people in a pinch. I had the Cuban sandwich and stopped myself from eating all of it.
2) In the afternoon I met up with Jean Scheidnes, former style reporter for the Austin American-Statesman, and current designer market editor for DNR, the men's equivalent of Women's Wear Daily. (Though DNR is now weekly).
We sat on the half-moon shaped bench of the lounge at Ringo, a round space, whose curved glass window jutted high and made me wish it were still raining, just I could see it from inside. We drank coffee poured restaurant-style into cups on saucers.
I had never really talked much with Jean before (she left the Statesman shortly after I started writing for the paper), but I was delighted by her. She was very calm (she looked tired, poor thing) and seemed unconcerned about time. I guess the magazine had just gone to bed for the week. We talked about Conde Nast, why she didn't want to work at Vogue, people we knew in Austin. I had a great time, and I hope to see her again.
3) After leaving Jean and picking up my computer (with new, blank hard drive installed and the wounded one handed off in a bubble-wrap pouch), I rushed home on the rush-hour subway, dropped my bag at the apartment and set off to meet Tim Elliott, PR director of men's wear for Barneys New York, the luxury department store that also does Barneys CO-OP. I had met him once in Austin and he had given me his card, so I emailed him once I was here.
He was very kind. I chose a sort of odd little coffee shop to meet, and then found myself wishing I'd picked a more sophisticated spot on Broadway. But I'm so new here, and he wanted to come to my neighborhood (it was on his way home, since he lives in the Bronx).
We talked for at least an hour, about men's fashion (which I had also talked about with Jean - a sign?), and the kind of bespoke items such as suits, shirts, shoes - custom made - that we both have an appreciation for. Maybe I would like men's fashion. I'm apprehensive about diving fully into women's fashion, because 1) I feel like I don't love it enough - there's too much bullshit about a lot of it 2) I'm not sure I want to insert myself into such a reputedly catty world.
But men's fashion has the tailor-made realm, and that aspect still has integrity.
He told me that everyone in the industry reads two blogs: 1) the Moment - on the NYT website under "T" magazine, and 2) On the Runway, Cathy Horyn's fashion blog (also on the NYT website). Good to know! The moment had a good list of links to other blogs, said, and urged me to check out the ones concerning men's wear. I think I will.
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Once more with the po-po
I got called into the station again tonight. Dectective B. called just after 6, as I was waiting for Maria to call me so we could go to dinner, and he needed me to come right away. So I hoofed it in a hurry down to the 24th precinct, past the housing projects with all their spooky sociological baggage. It is really a good idea to call a place where someone lives a "project?"
At the precinct, it was nice to be dressed as myself, not as some girl who was awakened by police at 5 a.m. Dectective B. was the handsome Bogey type, and I was the heart-of-gold heroine. "Where are you going to dinner," he asked, surveying my attire. I was a heroine - maybe. Okay, I exaggerate, but I was able to identify right away the guy that had been at the party among the six guys on the sheet. It was an old picture, but it was definitely the guy. He had seemed so baby-faced and actually kind of nice, and I wondered if he was the stabber. The victim was his cousin, though. Who stabs family? Who stabs anybody. Who knows?
Rushed to dinner with Maria - was late. She was sitting reading the Economist when I finally got to the restaurant, poor thing. Cute place - City Market Cafe. It had kind of neo-diner decor with turquoise benches and white tile. Downstairs, where the bathrooms were, the remnants of an old firesplace. A family had lived there once. I ordered the special pasta: spaghetti with spicy sausage. Yum.
On the way home it occurred to me that this is my life. This is not just some vacation, or a study abroad or something. I live here. Here, among all these people. And the way I get around is by subway. Crowding among all the people. Actually, I like the people. I'm energized and stimulated by them. Austin was too quiet. I'd walk through my neighborhood and not see another soul on foot. Not here.
At the precinct, it was nice to be dressed as myself, not as some girl who was awakened by police at 5 a.m. Dectective B. was the handsome Bogey type, and I was the heart-of-gold heroine. "Where are you going to dinner," he asked, surveying my attire. I was a heroine - maybe. Okay, I exaggerate, but I was able to identify right away the guy that had been at the party among the six guys on the sheet. It was an old picture, but it was definitely the guy. He had seemed so baby-faced and actually kind of nice, and I wondered if he was the stabber. The victim was his cousin, though. Who stabs family? Who stabs anybody. Who knows?
Rushed to dinner with Maria - was late. She was sitting reading the Economist when I finally got to the restaurant, poor thing. Cute place - City Market Cafe. It had kind of neo-diner decor with turquoise benches and white tile. Downstairs, where the bathrooms were, the remnants of an old firesplace. A family had lived there once. I ordered the special pasta: spaghetti with spicy sausage. Yum.
On the way home it occurred to me that this is my life. This is not just some vacation, or a study abroad or something. I live here. Here, among all these people. And the way I get around is by subway. Crowding among all the people. Actually, I like the people. I'm energized and stimulated by them. Austin was too quiet. I'd walk through my neighborhood and not see another soul on foot. Not here.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Oh yeah, forgot the heartbreak
That's right before I go - I did promise heartbreak, too.
Today my iBook crashed. I dropped it while I was sitting on the couch, chatting with mom on the phone, and then it wouldn't wake up. So I swaddled it up and rushed it as lovingly as I would a baby through the rain. At the Apple Store, which teemed with tourists (it's the famous, cube-shaped one at 59th and 5th), they delivered the bad news: it was fatal. The hard drive was failing. The little spinning hard-drive disk are more delicate than you would think and the fall seemed to have dislodged them. A transplant was my only hope: they pointed me to TekServe, at 23rd and 6th, so out into the rain I went once again, wishing I had a trench coat and some sort of really high-tech umbrella with a built-in plastic sleeve (dripping umbrellas on the subway - ugh).
Thanks to the move, it had been weeks since I'd backed up my data. There were things I needed for stories and pitches in the works, plus all my job-searching materials and emails. So I pungled up $925 dollars (including tax) and next week I'll have my computer back, with a new, larger hard drive, and hopefully all of my recovered data. Ouch, I'm still smarting.
I'm going to install a little button here where you can donate and help me offset the cost. Right. Here. Wait for it.
On the way home, my bag felt empty where the laptop had been, I kept expecting its weight to be there. There's your heartbreak.
Anyway, I refuse to believe this is a streak of bad luck or anything like that, because I believe those kinds of thoughts are self-perpetuating.
But I do wish it would stop raining. And I suddenly have an intense desire to invest in a trench coat and get up to speed on the latest innovations in umbrellas.
I think I understand New Yorkers' sartorial obsession: when you're actually out in the elements it matters tremendously what you wear. Think about it - all the other fashion-capital cities are walking cities: Paris, London, Milan... Dressing well is a desire to conquer the outer environment, And once you go there you start thinking along the same lines for your inner environment. I think I'm onto something here.
But I'm sad about my Mac! I may be making light of it, but this really sucks. As if things weren't chaotic enough, with the stabbing, and my room still in boxes, and my needing to job search, this had to go and happen!
I'll get it back in a week. In the meantime, my roommate's letting me use her laptop, which she dropped yesterday and cracked. Egads.
Today my iBook crashed. I dropped it while I was sitting on the couch, chatting with mom on the phone, and then it wouldn't wake up. So I swaddled it up and rushed it as lovingly as I would a baby through the rain. At the Apple Store, which teemed with tourists (it's the famous, cube-shaped one at 59th and 5th), they delivered the bad news: it was fatal. The hard drive was failing. The little spinning hard-drive disk are more delicate than you would think and the fall seemed to have dislodged them. A transplant was my only hope: they pointed me to TekServe, at 23rd and 6th, so out into the rain I went once again, wishing I had a trench coat and some sort of really high-tech umbrella with a built-in plastic sleeve (dripping umbrellas on the subway - ugh).
Thanks to the move, it had been weeks since I'd backed up my data. There were things I needed for stories and pitches in the works, plus all my job-searching materials and emails. So I pungled up $925 dollars (including tax) and next week I'll have my computer back, with a new, larger hard drive, and hopefully all of my recovered data. Ouch, I'm still smarting.
I'm going to install a little button here where you can donate and help me offset the cost. Right. Here. Wait for it.
On the way home, my bag felt empty where the laptop had been, I kept expecting its weight to be there. There's your heartbreak.
Anyway, I refuse to believe this is a streak of bad luck or anything like that, because I believe those kinds of thoughts are self-perpetuating.
But I do wish it would stop raining. And I suddenly have an intense desire to invest in a trench coat and get up to speed on the latest innovations in umbrellas.
I think I understand New Yorkers' sartorial obsession: when you're actually out in the elements it matters tremendously what you wear. Think about it - all the other fashion-capital cities are walking cities: Paris, London, Milan... Dressing well is a desire to conquer the outer environment, And once you go there you start thinking along the same lines for your inner environment. I think I'm onto something here.
But I'm sad about my Mac! I may be making light of it, but this really sucks. As if things weren't chaotic enough, with the stabbing, and my room still in boxes, and my needing to job search, this had to go and happen!
I'll get it back in a week. In the meantime, my roommate's letting me use her laptop, which she dropped yesterday and cracked. Egads.
Day - who knows? I've lost track! Crime, heartbreak and passion in the city
Okay, I've promised crime and heartbreak, and I've got them. But where to begin....
Let's start with the crime.
Remember that club near me called the Underground I mentioned in the last post? Well, I went there with my roommate and a couple of her friends Friday night. It was raining and we stayed in first and made margaritas and painted our nails, and then we decided to go out but didn't want to go far. So we walked over there after a couple of spots even closer proved dead . It was perfect. I've always had a thing for basement bars - so nook-ish and cozy. I started talking to some Austrians and a Brazilian and they invited me to go to a disco with them, but it never panned out. I talked to someone who had lived in Austin who bought me a drink and then got engrossed talking to someone else, who also bought me a drink. Before I knew it, my friends were leaving (I think they assumed I wanted to stay, but I didn't). So after about 20 minutes I walked home through the rain and when I got to my apartment a small party was going on with my roommate and the neighborhood kids. They all live with their parents and I'd gotten the feeling they were used to partying at our place, since they couldn't do it at their own places. Well, it wasn't my ideal scenario (these kids struck me as a bit rough), but I hung out for 10 minutes and then went to bed.
An hour or two later I was awakened by pounding on my door. "Open up, it's the police!" came the loud male voices. I told them to fuck off and go away, thinking it was the boys from the party trying to prank me. The pounding continued. I was hardly awake and wholly confused (and also somewhat frightened - would you have opened the door?) when I heard "Okay, we're going to kick the door in." Something clicked in my brain then, and then I heard my roommate yell, "Jenny it really is the police!" I shook my arms into my robe and opened the door and it was the police. Three of them, with guns, and very suspicious. After haranguing me about who else was in the room (no one, but they upturned the mattress to make sure), they told us to get dressed: we were going downtown.
(Well, actually were going to Precinct 24, 10 blocks away, but downtown sounds better).
I'm not sure if I knew what was going on at this point. I had been drinking and then sleeping and I don't think I'd seen the blood. But as the police escorted my two roommates and me out of the apartment, I saw it then. Blood - lots of it. Not so much pooled as splattered, like an abstract work by a painter who really liked red (and whose canvas, most unfortunately for us, was our apartment floor). And as we walked down the stairs it became more like a trail - drips and spots of it, as though the witch really had gotten Hansel and Gretel, and instead of breadcrumbs they'd left a trail of blood.
Someone had clearly been stabbed - and it hadn't been fatal. Even, I, whose experience with crime had been previously limited to Agatha Christie novels, could determine that.
I assumed it was some of the boys at the party. They were rough, they were drunk, I could envision them carrying knives - you put it together. I had been totally passed out and heard nothing until the police banged on my door.
It was a rude awakening - in many ways. Welcome to New York.
At the precinct, still half-asleep and starting to feel queasy, they took our statements one by one. "Us" is me, Jen and our other roommate Dave, who's a great guy but hardly around and has the good sense never to have associated with any of the neighborhood kids. Jen was still drunk (and had been when the whole thing happened - making her an unreliable witness. She doesn't remember clearly how it happened. We still don't know how it happened. She got knocked over in the shuffle.
After the statements came the waiting. And then more waiting. At 7am the juvenile delinquents showed up. Paint rollers were retrieved from cupboards - community service. I was tempted at one point to turn to the 12-year-old sitting next to me and mutter, in a low voice out of the side of my mouth, "So, kid, what YOU in for?" But I didn't, though it would have been oh-so cinematic. I stuck to my role as the proper girl who didn't belong in jail (or wherever we were). "For god's sake people, I went to STANFORD!!"
The juvies and their paint rollers left. We were waiting on the detectives, who didn't start work until the civilized hour of 8am. They get private offices, too. And they make people wait. So we did. Jen, still half-drunk, and feeling responsible, asked to go outside and then started to cry and hyperventilate. They separated us and I could hear her alternately crying and laughing around some corner as I squinted to read the New York Times on my iPhone from the cold metal bench in the juvie questioning room. Finally, as my battery power dipped precipitously, a nice cop brought me the Post - Thursday's edition. I didn't even mind the date. I read it cover to cover, sipping the Dunkin' Donuts coffee he had brought me (what, no doughnut?) and learned all about news anchor scandals and crime of all sorts and celebrity gossip. The Post is very sensational and I think I'm in love with it. It's shaped like a tabloid and written like one, too, only you do get snippets of real news here and there. Read the Post and the Times and you've got it all covered - high and low). After I finished Thursday, I read every poster in the room they'd put me in: the juvie questioning room. In a stack of books sat a yearbook from a nearby school. It's like having your favorite Chinese restaurant on speed dial. Is crime around here that bad?
Well, apparently it is. It was bad for us. The detectives finally showed up and I gave my spiel, but the apartment was a CRIME SCENE and we couldn't leave. They called for a search warrant. And then we waited. And waited. And waited. And waited.
We got word - the victim was alive. He was fine, already out of the hospital. But he wouldn't say who did it. He wanted to "handle it himself." What a fucker - that meant my roommate was still under suspicion.
The cop brought me today's post and I read it, and all its crime, and its gossip - cover to cover. I developed a fondness for the police blotter and hoped maybe this incident would at least get us mention in there (it didn't).
And even after I'd finished Saturday's paper we waited. Finally a reprieve: could I come upstairs to identify subject.
Sure I could (anything but sit in the juvie room).
Only I couldn't. Not one face. Mug shots, bleary and blurry, are a terrible likeness. And I'm bad with faces anyway. I once shared a coffee shop table with Fiona Apple for 30 minutes and didn't realize it was she until she got up to leave. Catch me on the street out of context and it will take me a second to place you.
Jen was up there, too, and we waited some more. And more. I was starving. Coffee on an empty stomach had made me queasy. But we weren't allowed out of the precinct, and had no change for the vending machine. "Well, you could have something delivered," a nice cadet said. Out came his sheaf of takeout menus and we settled on Chinese. I wanted soup, Jen got the lunch special. They put us in another room while we waited, maybe to tape record our conversation, but probably just because Jen is chatty (even in the aftermath of crime), and I think she was distracting them from work.
Finally the food arrived. We ate it in the lunch room with the Mets game on (our roommate had been let out early to attend that very game. No fair). The warranted continued to not go through.
We ate. It was suddenly 5 pm and all of "our" cops, the ones being (mostly) nice to us and worrying about our welfare, started to leave. It had been six hours since the request (and 11 hours since we'd arrived there) and still no warrant. "Can't we just give you permission to search?" we sputtered. No answer. They moved us downstairs, to the chairs with built-in desks that reminded me of school. One by one, our cops left.
Probably about two hours later, as our throats grew so parched we begged for water and somebody went out and got us bottles. And after I became so bored and frustrated and started to think we might never get to leave and that we'd spend Saturday night her rather than going to parties, that I teetered on the brink of throwing a fit, or maybe going crazy and stabbing someone (ha ha), the warrant came through. About 40 minutes or maybe two hours later (time had little meaning at this point) the cops returned. We were at last free to go.
I hadn't breathed outside air in hours. Saturday had been a sunny day and Sunday it was set to rain, and we'd missed the whole thing. But we caught a few last daylight moments, walking home past the housing projects teeming with the energy that precedes Saturday night. Despite my bedraggled, dressed-in-the-dark appearance, a distant night's mascara smudged beneath my eyes, I was elated. If my legs hadn't been asleep from sitting so long, I might have sprung rather than stepped.
We rushed home, I hopped over the blood in the hallway and the blood outside the bathroom door and cleansed myself of all of it in the shower. Then I dressed and blow-dried and rushed out the door into my old life, my rightful life, the one of a girl who goes to parties and makes charming conversation with cute English boys, not one who is detained in police precincts for 14 hours and eyed suspiciously all day.
I left my roommate to clean up the blood. I think that makes me a bad person. But I blamed her, partly. I knew of course it wasn't her fault, but I felt she had poor judgment to let the kids have their party here. And I had to get out. Had to. Or I really might have gone crazy and stabbed someone. And if that happened, they probably wouldn't have been as obliging as they were down at the precinct.
We still don't know exactly what happened, but here's what the three of us have pieced together: we think the stabbing took place in our hallway, or in the hallway just outside our door, as my roommate was kicking everybody out for the night. We think that the victim knew our door was unlocked and ran back into our kitchen for a knife. That would explain the blood on the refrigerator and the silverware drawer. And for some reason he spent a lot of time standing just inside our door bleeding. Thanks a lot, guy. I don't feel bad for him so much as violated that he turned our home into a crime scene and put us all in such an awful situation. I feel like I served his jail time down at the precinct. I'm pissed as hell at the perpetrator and the victim. Maybe if he had been wounded worse I could summon up some sympathy. But probably not.
Let's start with the crime.
Remember that club near me called the Underground I mentioned in the last post? Well, I went there with my roommate and a couple of her friends Friday night. It was raining and we stayed in first and made margaritas and painted our nails, and then we decided to go out but didn't want to go far. So we walked over there after a couple of spots even closer proved dead . It was perfect. I've always had a thing for basement bars - so nook-ish and cozy. I started talking to some Austrians and a Brazilian and they invited me to go to a disco with them, but it never panned out. I talked to someone who had lived in Austin who bought me a drink and then got engrossed talking to someone else, who also bought me a drink. Before I knew it, my friends were leaving (I think they assumed I wanted to stay, but I didn't). So after about 20 minutes I walked home through the rain and when I got to my apartment a small party was going on with my roommate and the neighborhood kids. They all live with their parents and I'd gotten the feeling they were used to partying at our place, since they couldn't do it at their own places. Well, it wasn't my ideal scenario (these kids struck me as a bit rough), but I hung out for 10 minutes and then went to bed.
An hour or two later I was awakened by pounding on my door. "Open up, it's the police!" came the loud male voices. I told them to fuck off and go away, thinking it was the boys from the party trying to prank me. The pounding continued. I was hardly awake and wholly confused (and also somewhat frightened - would you have opened the door?) when I heard "Okay, we're going to kick the door in." Something clicked in my brain then, and then I heard my roommate yell, "Jenny it really is the police!" I shook my arms into my robe and opened the door and it was the police. Three of them, with guns, and very suspicious. After haranguing me about who else was in the room (no one, but they upturned the mattress to make sure), they told us to get dressed: we were going downtown.
(Well, actually were going to Precinct 24, 10 blocks away, but downtown sounds better).
I'm not sure if I knew what was going on at this point. I had been drinking and then sleeping and I don't think I'd seen the blood. But as the police escorted my two roommates and me out of the apartment, I saw it then. Blood - lots of it. Not so much pooled as splattered, like an abstract work by a painter who really liked red (and whose canvas, most unfortunately for us, was our apartment floor). And as we walked down the stairs it became more like a trail - drips and spots of it, as though the witch really had gotten Hansel and Gretel, and instead of breadcrumbs they'd left a trail of blood.
Someone had clearly been stabbed - and it hadn't been fatal. Even, I, whose experience with crime had been previously limited to Agatha Christie novels, could determine that.
I assumed it was some of the boys at the party. They were rough, they were drunk, I could envision them carrying knives - you put it together. I had been totally passed out and heard nothing until the police banged on my door.
It was a rude awakening - in many ways. Welcome to New York.
At the precinct, still half-asleep and starting to feel queasy, they took our statements one by one. "Us" is me, Jen and our other roommate Dave, who's a great guy but hardly around and has the good sense never to have associated with any of the neighborhood kids. Jen was still drunk (and had been when the whole thing happened - making her an unreliable witness. She doesn't remember clearly how it happened. We still don't know how it happened. She got knocked over in the shuffle.
After the statements came the waiting. And then more waiting. At 7am the juvenile delinquents showed up. Paint rollers were retrieved from cupboards - community service. I was tempted at one point to turn to the 12-year-old sitting next to me and mutter, in a low voice out of the side of my mouth, "So, kid, what YOU in for?" But I didn't, though it would have been oh-so cinematic. I stuck to my role as the proper girl who didn't belong in jail (or wherever we were). "For god's sake people, I went to STANFORD!!"
The juvies and their paint rollers left. We were waiting on the detectives, who didn't start work until the civilized hour of 8am. They get private offices, too. And they make people wait. So we did. Jen, still half-drunk, and feeling responsible, asked to go outside and then started to cry and hyperventilate. They separated us and I could hear her alternately crying and laughing around some corner as I squinted to read the New York Times on my iPhone from the cold metal bench in the juvie questioning room. Finally, as my battery power dipped precipitously, a nice cop brought me the Post - Thursday's edition. I didn't even mind the date. I read it cover to cover, sipping the Dunkin' Donuts coffee he had brought me (what, no doughnut?) and learned all about news anchor scandals and crime of all sorts and celebrity gossip. The Post is very sensational and I think I'm in love with it. It's shaped like a tabloid and written like one, too, only you do get snippets of real news here and there. Read the Post and the Times and you've got it all covered - high and low). After I finished Thursday, I read every poster in the room they'd put me in: the juvie questioning room. In a stack of books sat a yearbook from a nearby school. It's like having your favorite Chinese restaurant on speed dial. Is crime around here that bad?
Well, apparently it is. It was bad for us. The detectives finally showed up and I gave my spiel, but the apartment was a CRIME SCENE and we couldn't leave. They called for a search warrant. And then we waited. And waited. And waited. And waited.
We got word - the victim was alive. He was fine, already out of the hospital. But he wouldn't say who did it. He wanted to "handle it himself." What a fucker - that meant my roommate was still under suspicion.
The cop brought me today's post and I read it, and all its crime, and its gossip - cover to cover. I developed a fondness for the police blotter and hoped maybe this incident would at least get us mention in there (it didn't).
And even after I'd finished Saturday's paper we waited. Finally a reprieve: could I come upstairs to identify subject.
Sure I could (anything but sit in the juvie room).
Only I couldn't. Not one face. Mug shots, bleary and blurry, are a terrible likeness. And I'm bad with faces anyway. I once shared a coffee shop table with Fiona Apple for 30 minutes and didn't realize it was she until she got up to leave. Catch me on the street out of context and it will take me a second to place you.
Jen was up there, too, and we waited some more. And more. I was starving. Coffee on an empty stomach had made me queasy. But we weren't allowed out of the precinct, and had no change for the vending machine. "Well, you could have something delivered," a nice cadet said. Out came his sheaf of takeout menus and we settled on Chinese. I wanted soup, Jen got the lunch special. They put us in another room while we waited, maybe to tape record our conversation, but probably just because Jen is chatty (even in the aftermath of crime), and I think she was distracting them from work.
Finally the food arrived. We ate it in the lunch room with the Mets game on (our roommate had been let out early to attend that very game. No fair). The warranted continued to not go through.
We ate. It was suddenly 5 pm and all of "our" cops, the ones being (mostly) nice to us and worrying about our welfare, started to leave. It had been six hours since the request (and 11 hours since we'd arrived there) and still no warrant. "Can't we just give you permission to search?" we sputtered. No answer. They moved us downstairs, to the chairs with built-in desks that reminded me of school. One by one, our cops left.
Probably about two hours later, as our throats grew so parched we begged for water and somebody went out and got us bottles. And after I became so bored and frustrated and started to think we might never get to leave and that we'd spend Saturday night her rather than going to parties, that I teetered on the brink of throwing a fit, or maybe going crazy and stabbing someone (ha ha), the warrant came through. About 40 minutes or maybe two hours later (time had little meaning at this point) the cops returned. We were at last free to go.
I hadn't breathed outside air in hours. Saturday had been a sunny day and Sunday it was set to rain, and we'd missed the whole thing. But we caught a few last daylight moments, walking home past the housing projects teeming with the energy that precedes Saturday night. Despite my bedraggled, dressed-in-the-dark appearance, a distant night's mascara smudged beneath my eyes, I was elated. If my legs hadn't been asleep from sitting so long, I might have sprung rather than stepped.
We rushed home, I hopped over the blood in the hallway and the blood outside the bathroom door and cleansed myself of all of it in the shower. Then I dressed and blow-dried and rushed out the door into my old life, my rightful life, the one of a girl who goes to parties and makes charming conversation with cute English boys, not one who is detained in police precincts for 14 hours and eyed suspiciously all day.
I left my roommate to clean up the blood. I think that makes me a bad person. But I blamed her, partly. I knew of course it wasn't her fault, but I felt she had poor judgment to let the kids have their party here. And I had to get out. Had to. Or I really might have gone crazy and stabbed someone. And if that happened, they probably wouldn't have been as obliging as they were down at the precinct.
We still don't know exactly what happened, but here's what the three of us have pieced together: we think the stabbing took place in our hallway, or in the hallway just outside our door, as my roommate was kicking everybody out for the night. We think that the victim knew our door was unlocked and ran back into our kitchen for a knife. That would explain the blood on the refrigerator and the silverware drawer. And for some reason he spent a lot of time standing just inside our door bleeding. Thanks a lot, guy. I don't feel bad for him so much as violated that he turned our home into a crime scene and put us all in such an awful situation. I feel like I served his jail time down at the precinct. I'm pissed as hell at the perpetrator and the victim. Maybe if he had been wounded worse I could summon up some sympathy. But probably not.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Day 7 - getting my street legs
Well, I've been here a week now - hard to believe. I feel totally at home, like it's been much longer. But then, in many ways I'm like a toddler having to learn all the basic things all over again. How to get around, where and what to eat, the best way to dress myself.
Everyone gets food delivered in New York when they're hungry for dinner, but I don't even know how to do that (do they take credit cards? how much to tip? How long do you have to wait?) I'll wait til my roommate's here to show me the ropes. So instead I decided to wander in search of a light, cheap dinner. I figured if nothing seemed appealing, my backup was the falafel place at 104th and Broadway, where a hot, fried-to-order falafel wrap is only $5.50 - but maybe I'd find something between here and there. I'd go on an urban safari. As I left the apartment, I encountered my predators: the Dominican boys who hang around on the sidewalk outside our apartment building. One of them surveyed my figure, grabbed my hand and introduced himself, calling me baby. I smiled bashfully, ducked my head and said nice to meet him, and then went on my way, leaving behind the tigers of the Upper West Side.
It was getting dark, and I was glad to be out at that time of night. I'd only walked in my neighborhood during the morning and late at night - and the early evening had a festive air. Today was a warm day, and New Yorkers seemed to be out reveling in the balmy night. Columbia students, Dominicans, African-Americans and the occasional young professional like me passed between one another peacefully on the street, all of us speaking our own languages and happy to be out.
There's so much to explore here - every walk I go on widens my eyes as I take in all the new destinations. I keep telling myself, there will be time (time once more to murder and create/and time for all the works and days of hands/to lift and drop a blessing on my plate), but my roommate tells me that in fact there won't be. That this is New York, and I should do as much as possible now since there won't be time later. Problem is, I barely know where to start! I take it in as I can, and I wander.
I settled on Roti Roll for dinner - Indian wraps of sorts that are only $3-$5 each. One makes a light meal or filling snack. I had a Palak Paneer (and borrowed the Thursday Styles from a cute Columbia boy while I waited). That's the thing here, when you're hungry there's plenty to be had for under $5. On 110 and Broadway there's the famous Coronet Pizza. Slices as big as your head and cheap. Open late. I realize as I pass that I've been there before. A friend from college took me there a few years ago on a one-night jaunt into New York. On broadway, I go into to one of my stores to buy a bottle of wine, but they don't have any. The next shop over (there are three great ones within two blocks of each other) had no wine - and it was a very gourmet place. I wracked my brain: did liquor laws here forbid alcohol sales in grocery stores? No, I seen it before.... Then I figured it out: New York spots are so small that most of them specialize. Groceries or wine, but not both. Food or drugstore, but no megashops like we're all used to. You want toothpaste, you go to the drugstore. Food, the grocery store. Flowers, the flower shop. Wine, the wine store. I found one across broadway and while there discovered a club I want to return to: it's called the Underground, and it's in the basement and looks very beat-ish. They had live music tonight and I'm sure they have spoken word poetry. If I can find an accomplice, I plan to invest in a beret and make it one of my hangouts.
Everyone gets food delivered in New York when they're hungry for dinner, but I don't even know how to do that (do they take credit cards? how much to tip? How long do you have to wait?) I'll wait til my roommate's here to show me the ropes. So instead I decided to wander in search of a light, cheap dinner. I figured if nothing seemed appealing, my backup was the falafel place at 104th and Broadway, where a hot, fried-to-order falafel wrap is only $5.50 - but maybe I'd find something between here and there. I'd go on an urban safari. As I left the apartment, I encountered my predators: the Dominican boys who hang around on the sidewalk outside our apartment building. One of them surveyed my figure, grabbed my hand and introduced himself, calling me baby. I smiled bashfully, ducked my head and said nice to meet him, and then went on my way, leaving behind the tigers of the Upper West Side.
It was getting dark, and I was glad to be out at that time of night. I'd only walked in my neighborhood during the morning and late at night - and the early evening had a festive air. Today was a warm day, and New Yorkers seemed to be out reveling in the balmy night. Columbia students, Dominicans, African-Americans and the occasional young professional like me passed between one another peacefully on the street, all of us speaking our own languages and happy to be out.
There's so much to explore here - every walk I go on widens my eyes as I take in all the new destinations. I keep telling myself, there will be time (time once more to murder and create/and time for all the works and days of hands/to lift and drop a blessing on my plate), but my roommate tells me that in fact there won't be. That this is New York, and I should do as much as possible now since there won't be time later. Problem is, I barely know where to start! I take it in as I can, and I wander.
I settled on Roti Roll for dinner - Indian wraps of sorts that are only $3-$5 each. One makes a light meal or filling snack. I had a Palak Paneer (and borrowed the Thursday Styles from a cute Columbia boy while I waited). That's the thing here, when you're hungry there's plenty to be had for under $5. On 110 and Broadway there's the famous Coronet Pizza. Slices as big as your head and cheap. Open late. I realize as I pass that I've been there before. A friend from college took me there a few years ago on a one-night jaunt into New York. On broadway, I go into to one of my stores to buy a bottle of wine, but they don't have any. The next shop over (there are three great ones within two blocks of each other) had no wine - and it was a very gourmet place. I wracked my brain: did liquor laws here forbid alcohol sales in grocery stores? No, I seen it before.... Then I figured it out: New York spots are so small that most of them specialize. Groceries or wine, but not both. Food or drugstore, but no megashops like we're all used to. You want toothpaste, you go to the drugstore. Food, the grocery store. Flowers, the flower shop. Wine, the wine store. I found one across broadway and while there discovered a club I want to return to: it's called the Underground, and it's in the basement and looks very beat-ish. They had live music tonight and I'm sure they have spoken word poetry. If I can find an accomplice, I plan to invest in a beret and make it one of my hangouts.
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Day 6
Woke early and unhappily to the sound of the buzzer blaring this morning. At first I thought it was the apartment phone - then I remembered that we don't have one. It was the USPS man, delivering the last of my boxes - at 7:30 am! Oh yes, he told me as I half-blindly signed the slip (didn't have my contacts in yet) - we start delivery at 7 am. Egads.
Spent the morning making my room into some semblance of a home. I realized it's about the size of the single room I had briefly senior year in college, so surely I can make it work. But no standard-issue college furniture to work around. No furniture at all in fact. Makes me kind of wish I had the college-issue stuff... Now I have a comfy bed, a closet full of clothes and the rest of the square inchery is boxes. But I know where things are. Kind of.
It was a pretty, sunny day but I stayed inside fretting over my room and over job applications, and finally I got fed up and escaped to Central Park. It was the first time I had been there and it's only a block-and-half away! And that block-and-a-half makes all the difference. Baby-faced drug dealers on our street give way to doorman buildings the tree-shaded parkside avenue that is Central Park West. I'm saving hundreds of dollars living that one block over.
Jen and I were supposed to go get mani/pedis but Lisa B. from Austin invited me downtown to a bar where she was meeting friends, so I convinced Jen to go to that instead, even though she'd just come from downtown. I hadn't been able to tell her not to come Uptown, since she was on the subway and didn't get my call. That's one of the few inconvenient things about New York, communication-wise: zero phone service on the subway. When will they install cellular towers underground?
We met up with the crew at a bar called Heathers, which loops the movie Heathers over and over and is self-consciously unpretentious. I liked it. They have happy hour during the week until 9, and it's two for one drinks - Austin prices in New York!
Then Lisa had to go and Jen and I followed the bartender's recommdation to a little Thai spot a few blocks down Avenue A, which must have been in the guidebooks because it was full of foreigners. But yummy! And Austin prices again. I think I love the East Village (it's where I can afford to eat and drink, but not to live).
Then it was home on the train as usual.
Spent the morning making my room into some semblance of a home. I realized it's about the size of the single room I had briefly senior year in college, so surely I can make it work. But no standard-issue college furniture to work around. No furniture at all in fact. Makes me kind of wish I had the college-issue stuff... Now I have a comfy bed, a closet full of clothes and the rest of the square inchery is boxes. But I know where things are. Kind of.
It was a pretty, sunny day but I stayed inside fretting over my room and over job applications, and finally I got fed up and escaped to Central Park. It was the first time I had been there and it's only a block-and-half away! And that block-and-a-half makes all the difference. Baby-faced drug dealers on our street give way to doorman buildings the tree-shaded parkside avenue that is Central Park West. I'm saving hundreds of dollars living that one block over.
Jen and I were supposed to go get mani/pedis but Lisa B. from Austin invited me downtown to a bar where she was meeting friends, so I convinced Jen to go to that instead, even though she'd just come from downtown. I hadn't been able to tell her not to come Uptown, since she was on the subway and didn't get my call. That's one of the few inconvenient things about New York, communication-wise: zero phone service on the subway. When will they install cellular towers underground?
We met up with the crew at a bar called Heathers, which loops the movie Heathers over and over and is self-consciously unpretentious. I liked it. They have happy hour during the week until 9, and it's two for one drinks - Austin prices in New York!
Then Lisa had to go and Jen and I followed the bartender's recommdation to a little Thai spot a few blocks down Avenue A, which must have been in the guidebooks because it was full of foreigners. But yummy! And Austin prices again. I think I love the East Village (it's where I can afford to eat and drink, but not to live).
Then it was home on the train as usual.
Monday, May 12, 2008
NYC Day 5
Was finally able to sleep until a decent hour today - after being woken early as usual by the clanking of our super with the recycling bottles in the air shaft, I went back to sleep.
Was the kind of blah gray day I hate, so I worked on my computer, and then the buzzer rang and it was the postman with 20 of my boxes. I was so excited to get all of my clothing and shoes after days of wearing my gold flats, alternated with galoshes and sneakers. My belongings are now scattered all over my room (which is tiny) and a few are in the living room - thank god I have tolerant roommates.
Later, I learned how to use the DVR, went to Pilates with my roommate and met up with Adam Rio, Samir's friend from Austin, to chat about New York and go on an impromptu walking tour through Times Square and then down to Union Park. We tried to use the city's only automatic public toilet at Madison Square Park (not affiliated with Madison Square Garden), but as a homeless woman informed us, it closes at 8pm. Instead we visited Starbucks for the bathroom and bought 40-cent 80-calorie double chocolate cookies.Adam enjoyed telling me all about the city - I learned things like whenever Broadway intersects one of the Avenues, there's a square. Union Square, Herald Square, Times Square and all the products of these criss-crossings.
I've been getting so much exercise here, walking all around like we did tonight and going to the cute little independent gym I found, which also has an affiliated yoga studio. Haven't been eating that much either - it's all kind of grabbing things on the run, and somehow all the moderate exercise makes a person less hungry.
But speaking of food, tonight I emerged from the subway at 103rd and Broadway hungry, so I walked north looking for something that was open. I crossed the street to a promising-looking falafel shop, which turned out to be open until 3:30 in the morning (It was about midnight when I arrived). An Algerian guy with kind eyes was the only one manning the shop and while he deep-fried chickpea paste to order for me he gave me some hummus and pita to try and we chatted about New York. He liked it okay, he said, though it was too big for his taste, and I sensed that he was lonely. Do you want to eat here? he asked, and I said no, I'd take it to go. He offered up a clumsy reason to stay, his mind roving off into unseen corners for the words - But the sandwich will be warm if you eat it here and cold if you eat it later... That seemed true, but I was tired, so I left rather than summon up the energy to stay and keep him company with my conversation. The food turned out to be very good (and cheap), so I'll be back.
Was the kind of blah gray day I hate, so I worked on my computer, and then the buzzer rang and it was the postman with 20 of my boxes. I was so excited to get all of my clothing and shoes after days of wearing my gold flats, alternated with galoshes and sneakers. My belongings are now scattered all over my room (which is tiny) and a few are in the living room - thank god I have tolerant roommates.
Later, I learned how to use the DVR, went to Pilates with my roommate and met up with Adam Rio, Samir's friend from Austin, to chat about New York and go on an impromptu walking tour through Times Square and then down to Union Park. We tried to use the city's only automatic public toilet at Madison Square Park (not affiliated with Madison Square Garden), but as a homeless woman informed us, it closes at 8pm. Instead we visited Starbucks for the bathroom and bought 40-cent 80-calorie double chocolate cookies.Adam enjoyed telling me all about the city - I learned things like whenever Broadway intersects one of the Avenues, there's a square. Union Square, Herald Square, Times Square and all the products of these criss-crossings.
I've been getting so much exercise here, walking all around like we did tonight and going to the cute little independent gym I found, which also has an affiliated yoga studio. Haven't been eating that much either - it's all kind of grabbing things on the run, and somehow all the moderate exercise makes a person less hungry.
But speaking of food, tonight I emerged from the subway at 103rd and Broadway hungry, so I walked north looking for something that was open. I crossed the street to a promising-looking falafel shop, which turned out to be open until 3:30 in the morning (It was about midnight when I arrived). An Algerian guy with kind eyes was the only one manning the shop and while he deep-fried chickpea paste to order for me he gave me some hummus and pita to try and we chatted about New York. He liked it okay, he said, though it was too big for his taste, and I sensed that he was lonely. Do you want to eat here? he asked, and I said no, I'd take it to go. He offered up a clumsy reason to stay, his mind roving off into unseen corners for the words - But the sandwich will be warm if you eat it here and cold if you eat it later... That seemed true, but I was tired, so I left rather than summon up the energy to stay and keep him company with my conversation. The food turned out to be very good (and cheap), so I'll be back.
Sunday, May 11, 2008
First a note on the colors and fonts of this blog: they're not where I want them to be at all. If you have any suggestions, drop them my way - I'm feeling big on greens right now.
Now for the post.
NYC, day 1
Woke at 5am in a cheap hotel snuggled up with Jason. I almost cried when I realized it was the last morning I would wake that way in a long time, but I had already cried a lot, so I resisted and enjoyed the moment. On the plane, sat by Texans (West Texans I think) reading the financial pages and conversing in twangy accents, and thought about how I would miss a lot of things, but not that sound.
The flight was a cinch, but once I arrived the hard part began, getting 80 pounds of luggage from outer Queens to the Upper West Side of Manhattan. I took the subway rather than pay $50-$60 for a cab, and let's just say I wasn't the most popular person on any of the trains I took. I actually got reprimanded by an MTA guy for keep my shoulder bag on the seat next to me instead of on my lap... I think I strained a tendon lugging the 50-pound suitcase up the subway stairs - I bent the suitcase's expanding handle, anyway. A nice guy with some kind of Latin accent carried my other suitcase up the steep subway stairs. New Yorkers have been kind, on the whole. More open to everyday interactions, I think. My roommate says she thinks that's true, but that it's harder to get to know people on a deeper level here. We'll see. Luckily I've already got several good friends here that I've seen over the last few days. My roommate is Jen, (she also goes by Jenny and Jennifer sometimes) is a lot of fun, too. We went to my friend Maria's Salsa party together last night. People like Valerie say they like to have me around because I'm an easy laugh, but Jen laughs way more than I do - a big, full, appreciative laugh at the littlest thing. No wonder the neighborhood Dominican boys who hang out on our steps are so smitten with her.
Speaking of them, they're a noteworthy bunch - at least for me. They loiter constantly and the front steps (they live in our building), and they're always bugging to Jen to come hang out with them and drink on the stoop. They smoke pot, too, but she doesn't. Today (after they bought me drinks in my first foray to a neighborhood bar) I found out they deal drugs. These are kids we're talking about - 19, 20, 21, 22. As Jen said, they make way more money than she and I will for a long time. That made me feel better about having let them buy me drinks, but worse about keeping company with them. And the funny thing is, they seem like really nice kids.
Last night when we came back from Maria's (my high school friend's) salsa party in Brooklyn around 1 am, the whole group was outside on the sidewalk drinking and smoking and being louder than you can imagine. A group of girls that also like Jen was there, and they were sorts I've never encountered before: loud, brassy, sassy, trashy, drunk, French-manicured and full of attitude. But they liked Jen and they were sweet to her. I quite obviously didn't fit in, but despite that, I've earned a nickname: "Houston." At least they got the state right.
So much has happened since I got here that I've hardly had time to blog, but here's a short synopsis:
Thursday evening I headed to midtown to meet up with Caitlin when she got off work. I arrived thinking we'd have dinner and catch up but instead she said, "Hey, we're having a work party and you're coming!" So we all trooped over to a nearby bar with her co-workers, many of them rather attractive young men (though I was turned off when I realized most of them were way more accessorized than I was - one wore a cap glasses, scarf, watch, American Apparel tee, designer jeans and sweet kicks).
I only bought one round of drinks ($5 per beer), but we stayed out until midnight on the rooftop bar and then repaired to the .99 cent pizza shop for a gooey slice with hot sauce. Then off to our separate subways, where my train proceeded not to arrive for 40 minutes - finally I left that station, walked to 42nd street and immediately caught the 1. Now I know to take the 1. It's the worst being drunk in the subway under the bright lights but there are two consolations: 1) most other people out at that hour are also drunk 2) it's New York - nobody gives a shit!
I think that's one of my favorite things about this city so far - the anonymity. I could walk down the street on my hands wearing a rainbow tutu and hardly anyone would even bother to look.
Friday it rained. That pretty much sums it up. When it rains in New York, you do nothing. You brave the elements with your sturdy umbrella (the kind with a lifetime warranty, which you will inevitably leave in a restaurant or on a train, necessitating the purchase of a cheap newsstand umbrella which will flip open in the wind and remind you why you bought the nice umbrella. You'll buy another one and repeat the cycle. Really there should be an umbrella exchange program, like the Yellow Bike program. You leave yours in a bin and others take it when they leave the building if they need it. Then when you leave, you take an identical one. If the socialists ever get their way in this country, maybe we'll have such a program).
So it rained Friday and i got absolutely soaked trying to buy toilet paper (and an umbrella) and then I went to Caitlin's office in Midtown to meet her for lunch and my shoes squished-squashed as i walked through her office. Not only was it rainy but cold as well and fully miserable. After a noodle soup lunch I made an emergency dash for the Strawberry at Penn Station to buy galoshes. I then wore my galoshes out Friday night, having packed all rain-appropriate attire in boxes that are currently en route across the country. My roommate said good luck getting any phone numbers in those shoes, but I got two! (one on the bus - a black man who talked to me about his work as an HIV/AIDS educator, and about gentrification - smart guy - and one from a very drunk firefighter from queens.
Saturday I opened a bank account and asked so many of the right questions about interest rates and such that the guy opening my account took me for a savvy native New Yorker - or so he told me anyway, maybe he was flattering me. Then I bought a bed - my first (and hopefully only) big purchase, because sleeping on a thermarest on the floor just don't cut it. It's indignity enough that my window looks out onto an entirely un-picturesque airshaft - sheer curtains are in order.
Saturday night Jen and I trekked out to Brooklyn for Maria's party, where I saw a girl I randomly remembered from Stanford, made two possible work connections and danced a little Cumbia.
Sunday woke up feeling like Johnny Cash - alone while all the families and couples paraded up and down Broadway. I woke early to meet the guys delivering the bed I had bought and after it was here felt a little down. Went to yoga and felt a little better. It's just the yin and the yang - go, go, go for days - stay out late drinking Sangria and don't sleep enough and it's natural to have a down day. Tomorrow will be my first full work day in a while - nose to the grindstone! I need to get me a job! But from what people have been telling me, I don't think it's going to be as hard as you might think...
Now for the post.
NYC, day 1
Woke at 5am in a cheap hotel snuggled up with Jason. I almost cried when I realized it was the last morning I would wake that way in a long time, but I had already cried a lot, so I resisted and enjoyed the moment. On the plane, sat by Texans (West Texans I think) reading the financial pages and conversing in twangy accents, and thought about how I would miss a lot of things, but not that sound.
The flight was a cinch, but once I arrived the hard part began, getting 80 pounds of luggage from outer Queens to the Upper West Side of Manhattan. I took the subway rather than pay $50-$60 for a cab, and let's just say I wasn't the most popular person on any of the trains I took. I actually got reprimanded by an MTA guy for keep my shoulder bag on the seat next to me instead of on my lap... I think I strained a tendon lugging the 50-pound suitcase up the subway stairs - I bent the suitcase's expanding handle, anyway. A nice guy with some kind of Latin accent carried my other suitcase up the steep subway stairs. New Yorkers have been kind, on the whole. More open to everyday interactions, I think. My roommate says she thinks that's true, but that it's harder to get to know people on a deeper level here. We'll see. Luckily I've already got several good friends here that I've seen over the last few days. My roommate is Jen, (she also goes by Jenny and Jennifer sometimes) is a lot of fun, too. We went to my friend Maria's Salsa party together last night. People like Valerie say they like to have me around because I'm an easy laugh, but Jen laughs way more than I do - a big, full, appreciative laugh at the littlest thing. No wonder the neighborhood Dominican boys who hang out on our steps are so smitten with her.
Speaking of them, they're a noteworthy bunch - at least for me. They loiter constantly and the front steps (they live in our building), and they're always bugging to Jen to come hang out with them and drink on the stoop. They smoke pot, too, but she doesn't. Today (after they bought me drinks in my first foray to a neighborhood bar) I found out they deal drugs. These are kids we're talking about - 19, 20, 21, 22. As Jen said, they make way more money than she and I will for a long time. That made me feel better about having let them buy me drinks, but worse about keeping company with them. And the funny thing is, they seem like really nice kids.
Last night when we came back from Maria's (my high school friend's) salsa party in Brooklyn around 1 am, the whole group was outside on the sidewalk drinking and smoking and being louder than you can imagine. A group of girls that also like Jen was there, and they were sorts I've never encountered before: loud, brassy, sassy, trashy, drunk, French-manicured and full of attitude. But they liked Jen and they were sweet to her. I quite obviously didn't fit in, but despite that, I've earned a nickname: "Houston." At least they got the state right.
So much has happened since I got here that I've hardly had time to blog, but here's a short synopsis:
Thursday evening I headed to midtown to meet up with Caitlin when she got off work. I arrived thinking we'd have dinner and catch up but instead she said, "Hey, we're having a work party and you're coming!" So we all trooped over to a nearby bar with her co-workers, many of them rather attractive young men (though I was turned off when I realized most of them were way more accessorized than I was - one wore a cap glasses, scarf, watch, American Apparel tee, designer jeans and sweet kicks).
I only bought one round of drinks ($5 per beer), but we stayed out until midnight on the rooftop bar and then repaired to the .99 cent pizza shop for a gooey slice with hot sauce. Then off to our separate subways, where my train proceeded not to arrive for 40 minutes - finally I left that station, walked to 42nd street and immediately caught the 1. Now I know to take the 1. It's the worst being drunk in the subway under the bright lights but there are two consolations: 1) most other people out at that hour are also drunk 2) it's New York - nobody gives a shit!
I think that's one of my favorite things about this city so far - the anonymity. I could walk down the street on my hands wearing a rainbow tutu and hardly anyone would even bother to look.
Friday it rained. That pretty much sums it up. When it rains in New York, you do nothing. You brave the elements with your sturdy umbrella (the kind with a lifetime warranty, which you will inevitably leave in a restaurant or on a train, necessitating the purchase of a cheap newsstand umbrella which will flip open in the wind and remind you why you bought the nice umbrella. You'll buy another one and repeat the cycle. Really there should be an umbrella exchange program, like the Yellow Bike program. You leave yours in a bin and others take it when they leave the building if they need it. Then when you leave, you take an identical one. If the socialists ever get their way in this country, maybe we'll have such a program).
So it rained Friday and i got absolutely soaked trying to buy toilet paper (and an umbrella) and then I went to Caitlin's office in Midtown to meet her for lunch and my shoes squished-squashed as i walked through her office. Not only was it rainy but cold as well and fully miserable. After a noodle soup lunch I made an emergency dash for the Strawberry at Penn Station to buy galoshes. I then wore my galoshes out Friday night, having packed all rain-appropriate attire in boxes that are currently en route across the country. My roommate said good luck getting any phone numbers in those shoes, but I got two! (one on the bus - a black man who talked to me about his work as an HIV/AIDS educator, and about gentrification - smart guy - and one from a very drunk firefighter from queens.
Saturday I opened a bank account and asked so many of the right questions about interest rates and such that the guy opening my account took me for a savvy native New Yorker - or so he told me anyway, maybe he was flattering me. Then I bought a bed - my first (and hopefully only) big purchase, because sleeping on a thermarest on the floor just don't cut it. It's indignity enough that my window looks out onto an entirely un-picturesque airshaft - sheer curtains are in order.
Saturday night Jen and I trekked out to Brooklyn for Maria's party, where I saw a girl I randomly remembered from Stanford, made two possible work connections and danced a little Cumbia.
Sunday woke up feeling like Johnny Cash - alone while all the families and couples paraded up and down Broadway. I woke early to meet the guys delivering the bed I had bought and after it was here felt a little down. Went to yoga and felt a little better. It's just the yin and the yang - go, go, go for days - stay out late drinking Sangria and don't sleep enough and it's natural to have a down day. Tomorrow will be my first full work day in a while - nose to the grindstone! I need to get me a job! But from what people have been telling me, I don't think it's going to be as hard as you might think...
Monday, February 11, 2008
Feb Glossy - my leg on the cover!
So, the latest issue of Glossy is out, and by a twist of fate called "too low-budget to hire a model," my leg is on the cover! Check it out:
http://adserver1.harvestadsdepot.com/austint/ss/075131/
I also have stories on pages 9, 10 and 22!
http://adserver1.harvestadsdepot.com/austint/ss/075131/
I also have stories on pages 9, 10 and 22!
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
One thing leads to another
It's funny.. as much as I used to get annoyed by people who want to take up my time just chatting when I'm busy, I've found that some of my best story ideas have arisen this way.
My first story idea for Glossy (which led to a regular contributing gig with the Statesman) came about because of something a sales associate mentioned while I was at a local boutique researching wedding gowns for Tribeza. I'd probably be a lot poorer if she hadn't given me that idea.
A recent chat with a woman who does PR for MommyMixer (which I'm writing about in an upcoming Statesman feature) led a monthly feature idea for Glossy, which my editor loved. (It will start in October)
During an extended visit with two local moms who were handing off something to be photographed for my recent baby gear story, one of them gave me a great idea for the "Coffee With..." piece that comes out Thursday in the Statesman.
An unwanted tour of a store where I had only intended to rush in and pick up something for a photo shoot led to multiple upcoming story ideas.
I guess the lesson here is not to view time spent just visiting with professional contacts as wasted time - you never know where it might lead.
My first story idea for Glossy (which led to a regular contributing gig with the Statesman) came about because of something a sales associate mentioned while I was at a local boutique researching wedding gowns for Tribeza. I'd probably be a lot poorer if she hadn't given me that idea.
A recent chat with a woman who does PR for MommyMixer (which I'm writing about in an upcoming Statesman feature) led a monthly feature idea for Glossy, which my editor loved. (It will start in October)
During an extended visit with two local moms who were handing off something to be photographed for my recent baby gear story, one of them gave me a great idea for the "Coffee With..." piece that comes out Thursday in the Statesman.
An unwanted tour of a store where I had only intended to rush in and pick up something for a photo shoot led to multiple upcoming story ideas.
I guess the lesson here is not to view time spent just visiting with professional contacts as wasted time - you never know where it might lead.
Saturday, July 21, 2007
mired in munchkin land
Somehow I've wound up on the baby beat down at the Statesman. It's my own doing, really. I pitched one baby story to my editor (an easy sell since she has a one-year-old at home) and another spun off from that.
The first piece ran Thursday and involved an interactive online feature teeming with locally made baby gear.
(Read it here, and be sure to separately click on the interactive portion: http://www.statesman.com/life/content/life/stories/style/07/19/0719baby.html)
This story had me skulking the baby boutiques all week for appropriate items. A few local "mompreneurs" mailed their stuff instead, and when I asked about the best way to return it them, they told me just to keep it.
So now the 400-square-foot studio of this twentysomething-about-town contains not only an impressive shoe collection, a closetful of minidresses and a coffee table collapsing beneath too many fashion magazines, but also a) one Baby O On the Go nursing ring and scarf and b) two packages of Diaper Baggies, cute plastic bags designed to eliminate messy diaper disposal. Naturally I have nowhere to put any of this, so it's sitting on my couch.
If my dwelling were spontaneously buried in rubble and unearthed hundreds of years later, I wonder what future archaeologists would conclude.
The first piece ran Thursday and involved an interactive online feature teeming with locally made baby gear.
(Read it here, and be sure to separately click on the interactive portion: http://www.statesman.com/life/content/life/stories/style/07/19/0719baby.html)
This story had me skulking the baby boutiques all week for appropriate items. A few local "mompreneurs" mailed their stuff instead, and when I asked about the best way to return it them, they told me just to keep it.
So now the 400-square-foot studio of this twentysomething-about-town contains not only an impressive shoe collection, a closetful of minidresses and a coffee table collapsing beneath too many fashion magazines, but also a) one Baby O On the Go nursing ring and scarf and b) two packages of Diaper Baggies, cute plastic bags designed to eliminate messy diaper disposal. Naturally I have nowhere to put any of this, so it's sitting on my couch.
If my dwelling were spontaneously buried in rubble and unearthed hundreds of years later, I wonder what future archaeologists would conclude.
Mom-sight
Just talked to Mom on the phone. Since she left a quotation in a previous comment, I'll share one she related today. Some background: Mom and my Aunt Lynda are both 60ish and single. Neither wants a relationship much, just lots of money. Here's Mom's take on things (borrowed from Sophie Tucker): From birth to age 18, a girl needs good parents, from 18 to 35 she needs good looks, from 35 to 55 she needs a good personality, and from 55 on she needs cash.
Naturally, I'd like to have all of the above all the time.
Naturally, I'd like to have all of the above all the time.
Thursday, April 26, 2007
How to live to be 80
1. Make vibrantly-hued silk pajamas your party attire.
2. Eschew wine and beer and go straight for the bourbon and coke.
3. Smoke cigarettes incessantly from an elegant gold holder.
That's what I learned anyway, from Betty, whose 80th birthday party I attended in San Antonio this weekend with my dad. I'd never met the birthday girl before, and though she was prune-wrinkly, she had a cute gray bob and carried herself like she was still young and beautiful. When I arrived she was wearing pink silk pajamas with an orange over-wrap (also silk). Her voice was low and husky, and she didn't seem to mind that she was the oldest person at the party.
For an 80th birthday party, it was actually a lot of fun. The youngest guest was 21, then there was me, and a bunch of people in their 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s.
I hope I look that good and have that much spunk when I'm 80. I'll have to start on that bourbon and cigarettes regimen tomorrow.
2. Eschew wine and beer and go straight for the bourbon and coke.
3. Smoke cigarettes incessantly from an elegant gold holder.
That's what I learned anyway, from Betty, whose 80th birthday party I attended in San Antonio this weekend with my dad. I'd never met the birthday girl before, and though she was prune-wrinkly, she had a cute gray bob and carried herself like she was still young and beautiful. When I arrived she was wearing pink silk pajamas with an orange over-wrap (also silk). Her voice was low and husky, and she didn't seem to mind that she was the oldest person at the party.
For an 80th birthday party, it was actually a lot of fun. The youngest guest was 21, then there was me, and a bunch of people in their 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s.
I hope I look that good and have that much spunk when I'm 80. I'll have to start on that bourbon and cigarettes regimen tomorrow.
These boots are made for...anything fabulous
It's unusual to be peer-pressured by a parent into extravagant fashion expenditures, but my dad kind of talked me into buying this pair of $200 vintage white cowboy boots with gold eagles on them. As he said, sometimes it's worth spending a little money to get something special. They are truly awesome - my eagle eye spotted them on a high shelf after I'd tried on and rejected five pairs and was on my way our the door.
These fit perfectly and I couldn't bear to walk out of there without them, so I ponied up.
This was at The Wild West Shop in Wimberly, Texas, which is in the Hill Country between Austin and San Antonio. It's run by a German lady with butt-length blond hair who can eye your feet and pull down boots that will fit you. Check them out www.koolboots.com
These fit perfectly and I couldn't bear to walk out of there without them, so I ponied up.
This was at The Wild West Shop in Wimberly, Texas, which is in the Hill Country between Austin and San Antonio. It's run by a German lady with butt-length blond hair who can eye your feet and pull down boots that will fit you. Check them out www.koolboots.com
Saturday, April 14, 2007
Julia Roberts in the Garden
Sometimes I love being a journalist. Okay, make that most of the time. The pay may be lousy (at this point anyway), but the job is an entree to...well, basically anyplace that a person could want to go.
This job is just cool. For instance, you can call up people like Project Runway's Season 2 winner Chloe Dao and they'll actually call you back - that happened this week.
Anyway, while I'm in the business of name-dropping, I have to relay this anecdote:
For an upcoming Statesman story I visited several homes recently that have appeared in movies. The first was a big blue Travis Heights house that was featured in the kids' movie "How to Eat Fried Worms." Just Monday I went out to Pflugerville (about 30 minutes north of Austin) to visit the home that was Dolly Parton's brothel in "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas." Pflugerville used to be a tight-knit German community, and it was funny to hear the 74-year-old owner of the house talk about first getting the call back in the early '80s from the film's location scout.
"At first we were a little uncertain about doing it, because of the name - Whorehouse," she said. "But then we realized if they didn't make it here they'd make it somewhere else, so we wouldn't be stoppping it anyway."
I thought I was finished with the research for the story (and that I'd had a pretty good run of it already), but then my editor asked me to visit one more house to round things out. My contact at the Texas Film Commission told me about a movie being filmed right now in Bastrop (30 minutes south of Austin), and I managed to get permission from the production manager to visit the set.
The morning of (i.e. yesterday morning), I figured I better Google this film, "Fireflies in the Garden," so I would have some idea of what kind of questions to ask. I clicked on the IMDb link and up popped an all-star cast: Julia Roberts, William Dafoe, Emily Watson, Hayden Panettiere (one of the teen stars of "Heroes"), Shannon Lucio and a couple of other names I recognized.
I didn't figure I'd see any of these people, though, since the production manager had told me to come at noon - during lunch.
When I got there, though, there had been a schedule change and they actually were filming. As somebody gave me a tour of the house, we passed right by a pregnant Julia Roberts, who was sitting on a couch waiting for the next take. I didn't even look at her the first time, not wanting to be the dorky girl who stares at the celebs, but I did catch some good glimpses later. In fact, she walked by a few feet away from me as I was standing outside the house and she was going in. I saw her hold out her hand and say,"Oh, it's raining," in a surprised voice.
Later, as the location manager was finally able to take me upstairs, we walked in front of Julia as she sat on a bench facing the stairs. She definitely looked at me, probably thinking "Who the fuck is this girl who keeps taking surreptitious sidelong glances at me?" Or maybe she was just thinking, "I'm pregnant - where that's jar of pickles?" We'll never know.
This job is just cool. For instance, you can call up people like Project Runway's Season 2 winner Chloe Dao and they'll actually call you back - that happened this week.
Anyway, while I'm in the business of name-dropping, I have to relay this anecdote:
For an upcoming Statesman story I visited several homes recently that have appeared in movies. The first was a big blue Travis Heights house that was featured in the kids' movie "How to Eat Fried Worms." Just Monday I went out to Pflugerville (about 30 minutes north of Austin) to visit the home that was Dolly Parton's brothel in "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas." Pflugerville used to be a tight-knit German community, and it was funny to hear the 74-year-old owner of the house talk about first getting the call back in the early '80s from the film's location scout.
"At first we were a little uncertain about doing it, because of the name - Whorehouse," she said. "But then we realized if they didn't make it here they'd make it somewhere else, so we wouldn't be stoppping it anyway."
I thought I was finished with the research for the story (and that I'd had a pretty good run of it already), but then my editor asked me to visit one more house to round things out. My contact at the Texas Film Commission told me about a movie being filmed right now in Bastrop (30 minutes south of Austin), and I managed to get permission from the production manager to visit the set.
The morning of (i.e. yesterday morning), I figured I better Google this film, "Fireflies in the Garden," so I would have some idea of what kind of questions to ask. I clicked on the IMDb link and up popped an all-star cast: Julia Roberts, William Dafoe, Emily Watson, Hayden Panettiere (one of the teen stars of "Heroes"), Shannon Lucio and a couple of other names I recognized.
I didn't figure I'd see any of these people, though, since the production manager had told me to come at noon - during lunch.
When I got there, though, there had been a schedule change and they actually were filming. As somebody gave me a tour of the house, we passed right by a pregnant Julia Roberts, who was sitting on a couch waiting for the next take. I didn't even look at her the first time, not wanting to be the dorky girl who stares at the celebs, but I did catch some good glimpses later. In fact, she walked by a few feet away from me as I was standing outside the house and she was going in. I saw her hold out her hand and say,"Oh, it's raining," in a surprised voice.
Later, as the location manager was finally able to take me upstairs, we walked in front of Julia as she sat on a bench facing the stairs. She definitely looked at me, probably thinking "Who the fuck is this girl who keeps taking surreptitious sidelong glances at me?" Or maybe she was just thinking, "I'm pregnant - where that's jar of pickles?" We'll never know.
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Cocktails at Tiffany's
Since breakfast tends to occur a tad on the early side for mingling (see earlier Macy's breakfast post), the folks at Austin's new Tiffany & Co. hosted a cocktail reception last night to celebrate one month of business. It was about my seventh trip to the Domain, a funny thing since I've never been one to frequent luxury shopping centers - as the following anecdote illustrates.
Always on the lookout for my next Street Cam, I stopped a pretty woman in a green dress (Zac Posen, as it turned out), who was one of a handful in the room actually trying on the jewelry. She was already wearing all Tiffany for the occasion, I learned, from earrings to necklace to ring to brooch, and just looked smashing despite being a mother of two young kids.
As we talked about her favorite places to shop (Neiman's - collectors' section) and her favorite designer (Missoni), she complimented my dress and asked where it was from. For a second I was set to drop the name of some chic boutique, but I always lie terribly so I told her the truth - Forever 21. (I didn't tell her it cost $24). "What's that?" she asked, to my amusement. I told her it was kind of like an H&M, and she looked surprised."In Austin?" A few minutes later, as we were wrapping up, she complimented by necklace, which had a black braided cord and an oversize gold heart pennant. "Forever 21 again," I said, sotto voce. "You have to check it out."
Always on the lookout for my next Street Cam, I stopped a pretty woman in a green dress (Zac Posen, as it turned out), who was one of a handful in the room actually trying on the jewelry. She was already wearing all Tiffany for the occasion, I learned, from earrings to necklace to ring to brooch, and just looked smashing despite being a mother of two young kids.
As we talked about her favorite places to shop (Neiman's - collectors' section) and her favorite designer (Missoni), she complimented my dress and asked where it was from. For a second I was set to drop the name of some chic boutique, but I always lie terribly so I told her the truth - Forever 21. (I didn't tell her it cost $24). "What's that?" she asked, to my amusement. I told her it was kind of like an H&M, and she looked surprised."In Austin?" A few minutes later, as we were wrapping up, she complimented by necklace, which had a black braided cord and an oversize gold heart pennant. "Forever 21 again," I said, sotto voce. "You have to check it out."
Friday, March 23, 2007
The woman with the feather in her hair
If you ever go to a department store breakfast reception, eat first. Do it or you'll spend the morning balancing cups and saucers and lukewarm mini-quiches (that you don't really want anyway) and attempting to gracefully ingest cantaloupe while you mingle amid the mid-priced handbags. You'll inevitably end up not eating what's on your plate and will eventually find yourself glancing furtively around to see if any of the minglers have noticed that you just left a plate of half-crumbled danishes next to the Liz Claiborne tote bags display.
If you ever do attend such a gathering, arrive late to avoid all of the above and feign a need for the restroom in order to wander the store's empty aisles. There you might have the luck to encounter someone such as Miss Jane Sibley, whom you'll recognize by the feather in her hair.
Miss Jane's feather is fitting, since she herself is tiny and birdlike. She's one of the breed of Texas women that captures the imagination - strong, feminine creatures who demur to the males around them but wield far-reaching and subtle power behind their honeyed manners. There's a spark of feistiness to these women that draws me to them.
On this morning, Miss Jane was polite as ever, just as she had been the other time I met her - at a party where we discussed books about Texas. She remembered me, or said she did, and introduced me to a young Latino man who was kind of her assistant. After a few minutes of conversation she excused herself. "We're going to a preview of the Long Center," she explained, and then we talked briefly about how 2008 (when it would open) was not so far away. Then she was gone, leaving me standing in the juniors dresses aisle, wondering what it was I admired about her so.
Some Texan women deserve their own version of the French phrase "Je ne sais (pas) quoi." From now on, when I meet somebody like this, I'll just describe her by saying, she's got that certain, je ne sais pas, y'all.
If you ever do attend such a gathering, arrive late to avoid all of the above and feign a need for the restroom in order to wander the store's empty aisles. There you might have the luck to encounter someone such as Miss Jane Sibley, whom you'll recognize by the feather in her hair.
Miss Jane's feather is fitting, since she herself is tiny and birdlike. She's one of the breed of Texas women that captures the imagination - strong, feminine creatures who demur to the males around them but wield far-reaching and subtle power behind their honeyed manners. There's a spark of feistiness to these women that draws me to them.
On this morning, Miss Jane was polite as ever, just as she had been the other time I met her - at a party where we discussed books about Texas. She remembered me, or said she did, and introduced me to a young Latino man who was kind of her assistant. After a few minutes of conversation she excused herself. "We're going to a preview of the Long Center," she explained, and then we talked briefly about how 2008 (when it would open) was not so far away. Then she was gone, leaving me standing in the juniors dresses aisle, wondering what it was I admired about her so.
Some Texan women deserve their own version of the French phrase "Je ne sais (pas) quoi." From now on, when I meet somebody like this, I'll just describe her by saying, she's got that certain, je ne sais pas, y'all.
Monday, March 19, 2007
Mastering the Domain I
I practically lived at The Domain (Austin's new luxury shopping development, for the uninitiated among you) last weekend. Between interviewing Michael Knight of "Project Runway" fame, talking to fashion designer Sunny Leigh, watching fashion shows, lunching with models (Yes, they eat! Well, some of them do, anyway...) and taking advantage of the discounts from my newly opened Macy's card, I barely ate, slept or visited my apartment.
Posts to come on all of these occurrences, plus on my week of SXSW madness - I've got stories! Stay tuned.
Posts to come on all of these occurrences, plus on my week of SXSW madness - I've got stories! Stay tuned.
Don't let it be forgot
This blog is named for a lyric from the 1960 musical "Camelot" that resonates with me and with a lot of people.
The line goes like this: "Don't let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment, that was known as Camelot."
It's said that John F. Kennedy liked the song and would play it over and over in the early days of his presidency. However true that is, the song is the reason the Kennedy era - a time that celebrated youth, style and idealism - is known as Camelot.
It's a phrase that knocks around in my mind both because I've studied history and, like so many others, have fallen under that Kennedy-era spell (and the Jackie Kennedy style spell), and also because, as much as I gad about swilling cocktails, suntanning, and generally taking my youth for granted, I know it won't last forever. Botox and lipo and yoga aside, my youth and anybody else's - and life, for that matter - is one brief shining moment.
Lastly, I've been privileged over the last few years to run across many great people in Austin whose creativity, energy and inventiveness make this city what it is. These people throw unforgettable parties, of course, and I've had the chance (especially lately) to attend a few of their fabulous fetes and other celebrations. The occasions are brief and shining and usually lose their glitter in the morning, but though my dress may be rumpled, my head may ache and my eyes may be rimmed with leftover mascara, I'm always glad I went to the fair.
So I've started this blog to chronicle the fun I've been privileged to be a part of lately. The stories I have now are good. I hope they'll soon be far too good to ever consider keeping to myself.
The line goes like this: "Don't let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment, that was known as Camelot."
It's said that John F. Kennedy liked the song and would play it over and over in the early days of his presidency. However true that is, the song is the reason the Kennedy era - a time that celebrated youth, style and idealism - is known as Camelot.
It's a phrase that knocks around in my mind both because I've studied history and, like so many others, have fallen under that Kennedy-era spell (and the Jackie Kennedy style spell), and also because, as much as I gad about swilling cocktails, suntanning, and generally taking my youth for granted, I know it won't last forever. Botox and lipo and yoga aside, my youth and anybody else's - and life, for that matter - is one brief shining moment.
Lastly, I've been privileged over the last few years to run across many great people in Austin whose creativity, energy and inventiveness make this city what it is. These people throw unforgettable parties, of course, and I've had the chance (especially lately) to attend a few of their fabulous fetes and other celebrations. The occasions are brief and shining and usually lose their glitter in the morning, but though my dress may be rumpled, my head may ache and my eyes may be rimmed with leftover mascara, I'm always glad I went to the fair.
So I've started this blog to chronicle the fun I've been privileged to be a part of lately. The stories I have now are good. I hope they'll soon be far too good to ever consider keeping to myself.
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