NYC (now with pictures!)

So the problem with posting pictures about NYC is that I took a lot like this:


See great b/c I want to learn to draw people. Baaad b/c well, family and friends keep asking about the NYC trip and all I have is a bunch of crooked pictures.

OK so the basics: Zach and I went for 9 days. We stayed with our friend Lin and his boyfriend Marc. Marc has great design sense and I should have dropped everything and taken pictures of their apt the moment I walked in. Because it was cute and designy and had fresh flowers and nicely placed posters. It was sort of everything a Brooklyn apt should be. By the end of our stay, all the pictures would have had my socks, books and the aero bed in them and wouldn't have done it justice.

BUT to show off Lin and Marc's tastes, here are some shots from a bar they brought us to our second night in town.

Beautiful. And excellent drinks. This is the main thing I learned in NYC, people may not know how to make a good latte (I'm looking at you lady in deli across from the MOMA) but man the bartenders, at least the ones we experienced, know their craft. It's not just a job like I think it might be for a lot of people in Portland. It's sort of an art.

So my favorite part of New York was the people watching and the art. We went to a ton of art. So much art that I think my body started shutting down somewhere in the middle of hipster capital PS.1. PS1 is something that I found totally boring when we went. I didn't connect at ALL to the exhibits but they had really nice walls....



And looking at their website I know I'd be there all the freaking time if I lived in NYC. But the current show was a lot of video installations and soundscapes and Zach found it very cool but I found it boring. Also a security guard with a Queens accent and attitude yelled at me unnecessarily and I kind of wanted to cry.


We of course went to the MOMA, which lets you take non-flash photos inside. Sweet! But super crowded and a bit overwhelming. I like galleries. Small galleries you discover, explore and then leave. (Which was by the way our entire art experience in Miami, South Beach, and the Keys.) But the new exhibit at MOMA (where you couldn't take photos unfortunately) was awesome. The other museums visited were Neue (think Klimt and late 1800 to early 1900s Austrian artists) and the Cooper-Hewitt (AWESOME). The latter had an exhibit on felt but you weren't suppose to touch the pieces. Very very strange sensation. But along with PS1, Cooper-Hewitt is a place I'd be all the time. Plus all your Christmas gifts would forever be cool stuff from their gift shop. Seriously worth checking out even if you don't spend the $15 to go into the museum.

My favorite art however had to be the American Watercolor Society Show. It's the big deal for the watercolor artists we know from work. We knew a bunch of people who had work in the show and it was just such a cool experience to walk around the room and know a half dozen of the personalities that went behind the names.

Theater was another cool experience. With the help of my Grandma, Zach and I got to see South Pacific. Well done production. Apparently it's about racism. Who knew. The woman next to me was conducting at times along with the music. She even sang a little. She glared the hell out of me when I coughed...once. OK, so I coughed a fair amount more but it was all during the clapping in between songs. (Thank god for clapping in between songs.) And for heaven's sake I wasn't CONDUCTING. Whatever.

The other show is now up for a bunch of Tonys and is called God of Carnage. It was a one act (no intermission) about two sets of parents discussing an incident that happened between their sons. It was fantastic! Hope Davis, James Gandolfini, Marcia Gay Harden and Jeff Daniels. All fantastic. Such a treat to see people you know from the movies and TV act right in front of you.



Before the trip Zach and I got recommendations from 4 main sources: Lin (our friend who lives in NYC), Andy, Judah and a stranger named Erin. Zach did a ton of research before we went. He really did a fantastic job finding random cool stuff. My one major contribution however ended up being a gold mine. I randomly came across a blog and emailed the woman for NYC recommendations. She is a freelancer graphic designer who lives in Brooklyn and her blog made it clear we shared some tastes. Absolute win. I still have to email her a HUGE thanks b/c we kind of knew everything on her list was going to be fantastic.

Cooper-Hewitt Museum?
Fantastic.
Hot chocolate and salt croissant at city bakery?
Fantastic.
Greenwich Letterpress store.
HOLY CRAP FANTASTIC.

She pointed us to a bunch of paper stores and some galleries and just a bunch of random cool stuff.

Actually it was really neat to compare how our various sources (friends and strangers) had overlapping tastes. We knew if two people recommended it it would almost perfectly fit our tastes. The people we asked for suggestions all really went out of their way to create fabulous lists for us. Really generous.



One of the places Zach found prior to departure was something he'd heard about on one of the 10 million public radio shows he listens to. He had saved this particular show for three years just in case he ever visited NYC. It was a perfume gallery called CB I Hate Perfume. AWESOME. Ironically we visited the day my head cold was at its sloppiest and I only had one nostril in working order but basically this is a gallery... but of smells. The designer creates smells based on personal experiences so he'll have one called something like "Summer at the Beach 1967." On one side of the small gallery were boxy bookshelves filled with his perfumes. On the other side are all the scents he created to combine to make the perfumes. So on one side of the room would be "Summer at the Beach 1967" and on the other side would be scents like, freshly cut grass, peony, lemon wedge, rubbing alcohol. He had the individual scents divided up into categories: fruits, foods, body (shaving cream, suntan lotion), earth (mud), etc. Really truly cool. Zach bought a perfume scent in a house spray called Russian Caravan Tea and it literally smells exactly like my second host family in Slovakia's kitchen during breakfast when they brought out the tea. INCREDIBLE.

So that is the trip in a nut shell. Really kind of fantastic. Very very different than our Florida trip but equally great.