2003-04-17 - 7:41 p.m. more NYC A girl needs her beauty rest, and I got a good 7 or so hours of it my first night in NYC, sleepily calling room service for some tasty coffee and brioche French toast with a side of applewood smoked bacon to help me get moving. I engaged in a bit of phone tag with the interior designer friend who is renovating a loft in Tribeca. His final message to me noted he was going to grab some coffee in SoHo with his design partner. I decided then and there to just go out and find him. This probably sounds silly or impossible to those of you who consider the population of NYC, but not only did I make this decision, and march out of my hotel with this in mind, I ran up to this friend no more than 3 blocks from my hotel, as he was walking down Spring Street, and gave him a big hug that nearly scared the crap out of him! Go me! The three of us roamed through SoHo and Nolita, checking out home furnishings and accessories (it appears, if you are wondering, that moroccan themes are going to be hot this year). We also stopped at H&M where I picked up two cheap red t-shirts to use in my screenprinting endeavors! My only other purchases were -- no surprises here - at Dean & Deluca. I'd order the coffee beans by mail and be charged shipping and handling, so I was actually saving money by buying four pounds of beans, you see. I also brought home some gorgeous shortbread and sugar cookies shaped lke bunnies, with the intent of making a stencil similar to each of them for future craft or baking projects. I also narrowly avoided bringing home some vanilla-scented perfume spray and bubble bath from the various beauty product shops we kept popping into. I have such willpower. All right, that's not really the case. I'm saving myself for Paris. So there. All the while, the text messages were fast and furious, as I made impromptu plans to meet up pre-museum for lunch w/my new friend and a trio of his friends. I figured out quickly that the Crooked Tree Creperie, our luncheon location, was around the corner from Tokio 7, the designer resale shop my fashionable dinner partner from the night before had highly recommended to me. The entire neighborhood is full of funky vintage clothing shops, it seems, including one called Amarcord (like the Fellini film) that all looked enticing. Alas, I didn't have time to check out anything other than Tokio 7 before arriving for lunch. Tokio 7 had a few tempting dresses, but, in the interest of wanting to save up my girlie dress shopping for Paris' vintage and secondhand shops, I didn't take anything home with me. Lunch at the Crooked Tree was tasty and much more entertaining than any lunch I can recall having. As I sipped my hot cocoa to take off the chill, and ate a nutella-filled crepe, these four boys bantered back and forth, good-naturedly showing each other up and making each other the objects of much ribbing. Although other diners may have viewed their antics as obnoxious, I admit to feeling highly entertained. It was refreshing to avoid making small talk, and instead have varied, interesting conversations, with people I'd only just met. They are a good bunch. We then traipsed around the neighborhood, with continuing banter, up and down Rivington, Ludlow, etc., including a stop in a cool guitar shop where the boys played w/guitars and I, upon seeing flower and heart-shaped guitars, told the cute indie rock shop boy they should make a Hello Kitty shaped guitar. Unfortunately, he was British and had no idea who or what Hello Kitty was. Have you ever tried to explain who Hello Kitty is to a stranger? I will be much more careful about throwing out that name again! Unable to locate tapas and wine bar Belly on Rivington (it was 155 Rivington btwn Suffolk and Clinton, and doesn't open 'till 5:00 so we would've been outta luck regardless), the group wander ended up in < A HREF="http://www.usatoday.com/life/music/2002/2002-06-25-moby.htm">Teany, a tiny tea shop owned by Moby (which is clearly why, despite the neighborhood's gritty, college kid allure, was full of blond uptown tourist types. The vanilla-infused earl gray cr�me tea was quite tasty though, so I have no complaints. En route to MOMA/QNS for Matisse Picasso (not Manet/Velasquez, or Basquiat/Schnabel, Kiefer/Klee, or Monet/Cezanne, or any of the countless other silly variations on said theme we volleyed back and forth) we stopped off at Grand Central Terminal's dining concourse for French fires, coffee, and more conversation. We allowed ourselves 30 minutes to get to QNS on the #7, yet made it there 15 minutes early! Luckily the doorman let us in ahead of schedule rather than forcing us to stand outside in the cold. A lot of those blockbuster art shows are, at worst, redundant, boring, contain too many paintings I've already seen, and are packed full of way too many tourists. This was, happily, not one of those worst case scenarios. There were many Matisse paintings that expanded my view of his oeuvre, and several really good Picassos. There were a few Picasso pieces though that provoked my friend to ponder if, at times, Picasso was joking when he called a piece finished. As in, given his stature, did he ever just churn out something not so good, for, let's say, someone he didn't like too much who had commissioned a piece? It's something to consider when faced with the occasional piece that isn't up to the same stature... We made it through the exhibit in a smidge over an hour, then breezed through the permanent collection in time to be asked to go home so they could close. We set off back to Manhattan, back to the Greater NYU area, to grab some dinner at Dojo's, a college pub type place with Guiness on tap and fabulous veggie burgers, then went on to have drinks at a bar called the standard (158 First Ave) that had a cool backlit red bar, and this weird wall lighting effect that made the wall seem like it was glowing, especially after you had that first cocktail... This bar and its patrons gets an entry all its own, very soon... any comments? (0 so far) previous - next recently on almostgoldsf... in defense of an email box I came to do battle with SPAM - 2008-05-17 hello 2006 - 2005-12-31 Happy Thanksgiving - 2005-11-14 bon voyage - 2005-11-05 October already? - 2005-10-09