NYC: Looking East

Why does even a whole week in New York have to fly by so quickly, returning me to the rain of London before I've barely even had time to blog about it? Until this trip, the furthest south I've stayed in New York has been 24th Street and although I did once stay at the W on Lexington Avenue, my hotels and hostels have almost all been west of Broadway. This time, though, my hotel was on East Houston Street, right on the corner between Nolita, the Lower East Side and the East Village (possibly NoHo too), which meant I got to explore plenty of new areas within the city. Here are a few of my favourite new places that are east of Broadway, in approximate order of the time in the day I would visit:

1. Bluebird Coffee Shop (East Village). Bluebird has been on the to-visit list in my NYC Moleskine for quite a while but it always ended up being too far south and east. Happily, it was just across Houston Street from my hotel, this trip, and I made several visits. The espressos and macchiatos were very good and on a sunny morning when the huge windows are open, it is gorgeous to sip and caffeinate on the porch.

2. Think Coffee (NoHo). This is another coffee purveyor I've been meaning to try, having walked past the Mercer Street branch on many occasions. On this trip, I found that the branch on the corner of Bowery and Bleecker was the perfect place to stop for a bagel and a coffee on the way uptown or to the West Village. The coffee was great (and the triple- and even quad-shot coffees sound like heaven) and the bagels were pretty tasty too. Unlike many of the too-hip-to-have-more-than-three-seats coffee bars, there is also plenty of seating at Think.

3. Everyman Espresso (East Village). I wasn't quite sure I was cool enough to drink here and I'm fairly certain I was deducted points for asking for my macchiato to go (some of these coffee bars won't even let you order a macchiato or espresso to go; paper cups ruin the flavour, you see). It was, however, a good macchiato on a fairly quiet stretch of 13th Street. Close enough to Union Square to be very handy, however. I'll just remember to wear my fake tattoos next time.

4. Prune (East Village). Prune is open for lunch and dinner but everyone really goes for the weekend brunch. You can't book and you'll probably have to wait a good 45 minutes but on a sunny day — and when Bluebird is just down the block — who cares? As well as more standard brunch fare (or, rather, one large pancake — with bacon and maple syrup), the menu also contains dishes as varied as spaghetti carbonara and sausages and oysters. 

Unusually, I didn't order the pancakes (I wanted regular and not Canadian bacon) but opted for the scrambled eggs with bacon, potato rosti and an English muffin, which was delicious and filling. The Prune juice, which actually contains OJ, grapefruit, lemon and lime, is a good alternative for those who can't quite stomach one of the vast number of different bloody marys.

5. Market NYC (Nolita). When it's time for a gentle wander to walk off brunch, Market NYC is a good first port-of-call. It's open from 11-7 pm at the weekend and hosts a huge number of different independent jewellery designers selling their wares in an old church building. It's definitely difficult to narrow down your choices if you only want to buy one or two items. I got a bargain from Delicate Raymond: this gold initial necklace is $48 online but was on sale at Market NYC for just $10. I also bought a lovely purple necklace from a seller whose business card I've lost, unfortunately, which was only $22. Later the same day, I saw a very similar necklace selling in a shop in Williamsburg for closer to $60.

6. Walking over the Williamsburg Bridge (Lower East Side). Another great way to walk off brunch. Not only is the walkway a pretty shade of pink (well, pale red), but you also end up in Williamsburg, funnily enough, which is a great place to spend a Sunday afternoon.

7. Pulino's Pizzeria (Nolita, I think!). This place serves great pizza and is a very fun place to eat or drink of an evening (particularly a warm evening when you can sit at one of the tables outside, if you're lucky), but they also have the whole all-day-dining concept covered thoroughly, with menus for breakfast, lunch, late lunch, dinner, supper, brunch and late lunch as well as cocktails, wine and puddings! 

We got there at about 9 pm on a Friday night and the place was heaving but we only had to wait about 20 minutes for a table just next to the gorgeous, back-lit bar. I was so full I couldn't manage a pudding but they looked good too. I'll definitely be returning. (I just discovered that Pulino's is a sister restaurant to places like Pastis, Balthazar and Minetta Tavern; I love those places too, so that makes a lot of sense.

8. Spitzer's Corner (Lower East Side). The LES is, of course, heaving on a Saturday night but we managed to get a table at this busy gastropub on Rivington Street (great for people watching). There is a big selection of beers but the wine list suited me fine. They do burgers and also plates of three sliders but my roast chicken was lovely.

9. Peels (East Village). Peels is something of a polymath: rated for its coffee and its cocktails, they're also open for breakfast, lunch and dinner, serving food with a southern spin. The cocktail bar upstairs feels like the conservatory in someone's plantation house just outside Charleston. My cocktail (the spiced colada mentioned in the Time Out review) wasn't to my taste (a little too creamy and not quite fruity enough) but that's my fault really and I could tell it was very well mixed. The friendly bar tender also gave us a free sample of a drink she was making for someone else, which was very good. Plus, you don't have to deal with the queues or attitude of certain other bars in the area.

10. The Back Room (Lower East Side). Going to the Back Room is a great experience. You enter through a little gate with a sign for the LES Toy Company (you can spot it because there will probably be at least one bouncer outside), then you go down the steps, along an alleyway and up some more steps into a fabulous speakeasy where cocktails are served from teacups and bottles of beer are brown bagged. I can't remember what I ordered but I think it involved gin and cucumber and tasted delicious. 

There's an even more secret back room, hidden somewhere at the back, but we didn't see anybody going in. Although they managed not to play any songs I really loved, the music selection was great and appeared to be sorted approximately in date order, such that we arrived at the start of the Mad Men era and left just before Sex and the City got going. More fun and less hassle than PDT.

On my list for my next visit to the East Side:

1. Gentleman Farmer (Lower East Side). In Paris earlier this year, we were bemused by a French clothes retailer called Gentleman Farmer (tagline: "pour le Mellors dans ta vie" (well, it should be, anyway)), which seemed to follow a common French practice of naming your shop after two words selected at random from an English dictionary. Perhaps the owners of the tiny, 20-seater LES restaurant of the same name also spotted this shop on a trip to Paris and adopted the name in an ironic fashion. I hope so (and the fonts are pretty similar). The food seems mainly to consist of American takes on regional French cuisine.
2. The Bourgeois Pig (East Village). This was highly recommended by my friend and her husband but we didn't have time to go on this trip. It's a very cool wine bar that does a range of fondues (sweet and savoury) and sharing platters. They're technically not licensed for the hard stuff so the cocktails are all based around wine, champagne and beer.
3. Madam Geneva (NoHo). Another secret speakeasy we didn't have time to visit. You enter through a secret door in the Double Crown restaurant and the cocktail list is pretty heavy on the gin (which suits me fine).

NYC: Brooklyn Abridged

In the two dozen-odd trips I've taken to New York over the past 16 years, most of my forays out of Manhattan have centred around morning runs over Brooklyn Bridge and walks around Brooklyn Heights. I have also been to Williamsburg to shop a couple of times (one unsuccessful as it was 10.30 am and many of the shops don't open until noon). On Sunday, though, we took advantage of the unexpected sunshine and spent most of the day and night across the bridge.

Novelty #1. Walking over the Williamsburg Bridge. It's not quite as stunning as its more famous sister but the views are still good, particularly if you like urban wastelands and/or Lower Manhattan. Oh, and the walkway is pink!

The bridge brought us into an area reminiscent of Château d'Eau in Paris but it was only a short walk to the more gentrified part of town, where residential streets are dotted sporadically with cool bars and friendly cafés. Strolling up Bedford Avenue on a sunny Sunday afternoon is a gorgeous experience. I love the boutiques, like Catbird, the funky coffee bars, like the aggressively hip Verb, and the independent bookshop. It definitely has a much more chilled vibe than Manhattan. We stopped for a coffee and a crack pie, of course, at Momofuku Milk Bar. Both caffeine and cake were yummy.

Novelty #2. Off-off-off-Broadway theatre (off-off-off-Broadway in Williamsburg, that is). At the moment, there are a lot of shows as part of the Comic Book Theater Festival and we chose a "web comic in 3D" called Five Things, which is about a lonely would-be ukelele player girl who gets a cat and a life with the help of her fairy dragmother. It was very sharp and very funny (even if some of the references went over my head — what's wrong with the G train?) and for $15, definitely a better bet than some of Time Out's pricier offerings.

Novelty #3. Cocktails, Brooklyn-style. This week's Time Out had a cocktail special and we picked Huckleberry Bar, a sleek, dark place that had an awesome chilled-out Sunday evening vibe. The barman was very friendly and extremely knowledgeable. My drink — Article 57 — was immaculately mixed, all lemon and ginger and tonic. I stayed well clear of the jalapeño-infused tequila though.

For dinner, we went to Five Leaves, back up the top of Bedford Avenue. It's a small bistro with a low-key ambiance and which seemed to be populated mainly with locals. We sat on a table on the pavement to soak up the hipster vibe (and watch some graffiti artists in action). We started with oysters, which really hit the spot. The menu was filled with lots of interesting dishes that nearly succeeded in tempting even me away from the burger. Not quite, though, and the burger was perfectly medium rare. I couldn't manage a pudding but the affogato, with its local ice cream and coffee, is supposed to be among the best in the city.

Walking back to the L train, we caught a glimpse of the distant Empire State Building — blue, green and yellow, in honour of Caribbean tourism — through the fence of a high school sports field. Manhattan ain't so far away after all.

It was a Sunday so near perfect that it will ensure my return to the wrong side of the river...

NYC: Notes on a Sample Sale

As I may have mentioned one or two times before, J. Crew is one of my favourite US stores and so when I found out (thanks to J. Crew Aficionada that they were having a sample sale this week, while I was in New York, I couldn't not go. I turned up to the Garment District location about 45 minutes after the sale opened for the first day and the queue stretched about a block. I was told I'd probably have to wait about 25 minutes and this was pretty accurate. Most of the other people in the queue were 20- and 30-something females, although there were a few men, including some who appeared to be buying on behalf of someone else.

I'm not exactly a sample sale expert (although I do have some experience at Bicester Village) but here are my tips and observations:

1. Most of the stock was old, or at least current, rather than samples of upcoming seasons. I spotted a few items that were on the website back in March. As I only get to go to J. Crew about twice a year, this was fine but regulars may be more irritated by this.
2. Not many items are available in small sizes (i.e. anything smaller than a US 4 or maybe even a 6). This is bad news if, like me, you take a 0, 00 or, preferably, a 00P.
3. You can only take your wallet and a cell phone into the sale; bags have to be checked. So it's worth wearing a jacket with pockets.
4. There are no changing rooms and there isn't even much space in which to change. This means it's worth focusing on skirts, cardigans and jackets rather than trousers unless you're confident the clothes will fit. I wore a pull-on jersey skirt as I knew it would be easy to try on shorts or skirts underneath but leggings could also be a good move.
5. All of the items are organised by garment type and then size but it's worth checking other sections too. A lot of people dump (or hide, maybe) clothes in the wrong section.
6. All clothes of the same garment type cost the same price: a skirt will be $50 whether it's a wool, lined pencil skirt or a flimsy, polyester skirt. Some things are thus better value than others.

In the end I only bought a wool, lined pencil skirt in a pretty shade of teal. I've been eating such a skirt for a while — in navy or charcoal really but I like teal and it goes with most of my wardrobe. Initially, I saw it in a size 2P (wow, a petite size! That's the right length on me!) and when I tried it on, the fit was OK but a little loose. I was deliberating when I happened to catch a glimpse of the same skirt, dumped on some shoes. It turned out to be a size 0P, which fit pretty well. As these skirts usually retail for about $120, I think $50 was a bargain. And I don't care whether it's last season's colours.

I didn't see anything else that tempted me much; not in my size, anyway. There were some nice tan ballet pumps but they were too tiny. I'd say that visiting the sale was worth it for me — for the experience, if nothing else, although I might not rush back to the next one now that I know it won't contain exciting new stock.

Then, because I hadn't spent enough time waiting in line, I headed to nearby Madison Square Park and queued for 45 minutes for a Shake Shack cheese burger (also worth the wait)...

Road to Ruin

Here are some sports I enjoy watching: gymnastics, athletics, football, swimming, rowing and volleyball. I used to play or practice most of these myself at some point. Motor racing would probably come fairly near the bottom on this list; I don't like loud noises generally, especially the whines and roars of fast cars, and maybe I'm just a typical girl but I've never been interested in finding out who can drive a fast car the fastest. Nonetheless, I really enjoyed watching Senna this afternoon and by the end of the 1h45 documentary about the life of Formula 1 driver Ayrton Senna, I was wiping away my tears.

I was ten when Senna died in 1994 and although I remember it being reported in the press, I didn't know any of the details until I saw the film today. I do remember the clever headline "The Ignited Colours of Benetton" appearing in The Sun but this turns out to refer to a fire that affected another driver slightly later in the 1994 season. 

Senna opens in the late 1970s when Senna first comes to race competitively in Europe and then follows him through his phenomenal rise during the 1980s. The documentary has no voice-over and there are no contemporary vox pops; the story is told entirely through archival footage, which made for an interesting and original film.

The rivalry between Senna and Alain Prost remains a key focus throughout the film. Senna complains that the French president of the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile favoured his compatriot Prost over Senna when it came to certain rulings. Prost argues that Senna's driving is dangerous and his behaviour unprofessional. "Ayrton's problem is that he thinks he cannot kill himself," Prost says, a few years before Senna's death. But Ayrton insists that if you are a true racing driver and you see a gap through which you can overtake your competitor, you will always go for it and that if you don't go for the gap, you're no longer a serious driver. 

Later, Senna grows frustrated because his rivals on the Williams-Renault team have more advanced cars that use a computer to help balance the car on difficult corners. He moves to the Williams team and then, of course, the technology is banned.

The last twenty minutes of the film are pretty emotional. You know that any minute, you're going to reach Senna's final race and with Senna making comments on camera along the lines of, "I'm not ready to die yet" and "I've got plenty more to do and plenty of time left," every few minutes, it's even more uncomfortable. In the fateful weekend at the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix that saw Senna's fatal car crash, two drivers had already experienced crashes (one of which was also fatal). Poignantly, after these two accidents, Senna's doctor friend Sid Watkins told a freaked-out Senna that he should quit and they could both go fishing instead but of course Senna was never going to quit.

And so of course the ending was sad; that goes without saying. It's a tragic story with a talented, likeable hero. I was more impressed by the way the film even managed to get me excited about the racing sequences. I was worried there would be too many of these and that they would be too long but actually, I got caught up in the excitement and was willing Senna on whenever he pulled off his latest plucky come-back. I was also cringing every time the gap through which he wanted to drive seemed impossibly small. 

So, I agree with what most of the reviews of this film seem to be saying: it's a real treat for F1 fans but it's also a well-constructed and highly engaging documentary for people who would usually prefer to watch damp paint dry than a grand prix.

Riding High: Riding House Café Review

When I was looking for a new flat two years ago, one of the nicest ones I viewed was on Riding House Street in Fitzrovia. Unfortunately, that flat didn't pan out but the newly opened Riding House Café has given me a new reason to pass through the street. Fitzrovia can be quieter at weekends but when I tried to reserve a table at the RHC on Friday, the only available slots were 6:30 and 9:30 pm, which bodes well for them.

Where Angels Fear To Tread

As soon as I saw the trailer for Vallanzasca: Gli angeli del male ("Angels of Evil"), I realised it was clearly trying to be an Italian version of Mesrine. This isn't a bad thing; I really enjoyed both parts of the film about the life and death of France's John Dillinger, Jacques Mesrine. They were stylish, had a great soundtrack and great acting from Vincent Cassel (among others), and the fact that the total running time was over four hours was ameliorated by the fact that it was well paced and split into two parts.

I liked Gli Angeli del Male, which looks at the life of Italian mobster Renato Vallanzasca, but I suspect I would have liked it a lot more if I hadn't already seen Mesrine. The antiheroes — and thus the plots — are pretty damn similar: they both grow up in lower middle-class backgrounds and are pushed, in part by events in their formative years, into a life of robbery, violence and murder. 

But they are highly charismatic and attractive to women (during one of his incarcerations, Vallanzasca is seen wading through giant sacks of fan mail letters describing, as his friend puts it, "the perverse fantasies of housewives across Italy") and to the audience.

Gl Angeli del Male opens in the early 1980s; Vallanzasca is seen in solitary confinement, inciting the guards and ultimately being beaten up. He then flashes back to crimes — and incarcerations — past. His first gang of cronies included two childhood friends with whom he let out tigers and other wild animals from the circus, earning him a bout in reform school, which provided excellent reprobate training. But after a father-figure for Vallanzasca kills his (own) wife and himself, his crimes soon accelerate. 

By the early 1970s, Vallanzasca is in his early 20s and, with a bunch of mates is romping around Milan holding up banks, killing cops and sleeping with sex workers. His big rival is Francis Turatello, a club owner who seems to have taken Ross Geller (circa his high school prom) as a style icon. He has a son with Consuelo, a woman he meets in a club and who ultimately leaves him for a more respectable guy. He gets imprisoned, he escapes, he gets caught again, he gets transferred between prisons, he escapes again. And so on...

All of this action is set to a cool soundtrack but although the two-hour film moves along fairly quickly, it gets quite repetitive and there isn't the same sense of progression you got in Mesrine. The central character keeps on making the same mistakes over and over again, he doesn't show any remorse for what he's done (when asked why he kills, he replies, "to defend myself") and he doesn't really show any signs of changing his ways. He just carries on escaping, re-offending and making blasé statements along the lines of, "well, I've got to rob banks and do all this because it's what I do and what I'm good at." 

This may well be accurate and actor Kim Rossi Stuart may well have the charm and presence to carry off the role but by the end of the film, I was wishing I had a watch to check. A few of the almost-subplots could easily have been removed and 20 minutes shaved off the runtime, which would have resulted in a much tighter and more exciting film.

Stress Shopping

I can add yet another item to the list of things that are dangerous for me to be doing/feeling while shopping: checking the BBC Sport website on my phone every five minutes to find out whether or not my consistently inconsistent football team have been relegated. Although dear ol' Wolves have been hovering in or near relegation for much of the season, they've actually been doing reasonably well. 

The trouble was that this has been a rather high-scoring season for the bottom of the table and depending on the results of today's matches, any two clubs from Blackburn, Wolves, Birmingham, Wigan and Blackpool could have joined West Ham in being relegated.

The nerve-wracking relegation saga really began last Sunday. We'd already won our match against Sunderland and so on Sunday afternoon, Mum and I were listening to the weekend's other matches on the radio on our terrasse. We wanted West Ham to beat Wigan, Birmingham to lose to Fulham and Blackburn to lose to Man U. Having gone 3-0 up on Wigan, West Ham proceeded to lose 4-3. Man United, having just been declared the most successful team of all time, in the known Universe (well, in England, anyway), couldn't manage to beat Blackburn. At least Fulham did what we wanted.

Today, though, was Premier League D-Day, according to the BBC website (surely R-Day?). By the time I checked the scores today, mid-shopping, Wolves were 3-0 down to Blackburn, Blackpool were beating Man U (sounds like a variation on the Sports Illustrated jinx to me), and Wigan and Birmingham were drawing their matches. If everything had stayed like that, we would likely have been relegated on goal difference. 

And then came the desperate goals. The Wolves managed to pull two goals back — not enough for a draw but it at least looked a little less embarrassing. Luckily for us, Birmingham and Blackpool ended up losing too and so even though Wigan won, thanks to their late goal, we were safe, while Birmingham and Blackpool went down with West Ham. If Spurs hadn't scored a winning goal against Birmingham in extra time, though, we would have ended up on the same points as Birmingham. 

We would also have had the same goal difference — hopefully, the next criterion used to determine who stays up wouldn't be alphabetical order. (Incidentally, the names of the bottom seven clubs in the Premiership this season all begin with b or w — my initials — coincidence? I think not).

This was all rather stressful at the time and having been fairly good on the shopping front for the past few weeks, I indulged in some retail therapy, including a new skirt. I do blame my football-related nerves for going ahead. I must remember not to go shopping this time next year when my consistently inconsistent team will no doubt be in the very same position.