Someone's Got It Right

My friend Gary Langenheim took this picture, I think somewhere around the West Village. I just love the message. If I was a graffiti artist, this is exactly the kind of stuff I'd say :) His wife, Holli Moon, is an amazing artist. I'm working on getting the link to her site so you can check her out.

I picked this photo because there is a general euphoria that is wrapping itself around me as I prepare to return home tomorrow to NYC. LIFE. IS. WONDERFUL!

EMBRACE

Home Sweet Home

After 3 long months, I'm heading home this week. xoxo

Improv Everywhere: Carousel Horse Race

This is WHY I LOVE NEW YORK. It provides the perfect stage for theatrics like this one to go down. I've been following Improv Everywhere for some time now and will be participating in an upcoming mission as an undercover agent in September. Stay tuned ;)

Improv Everywhere is a New York City-based prank collective that causes scenes of chaos and joy in public places. Created in August of 2001 by Charlie Todd, Improv Everywhere has executed over 100 missions involving tens of thousands of undercover agents.


Enjoy!

Non-Profit POOP

Yes, this chick is dressed up as a giant poop. I was crossing the street on the UWS at 66th and Broadway, standing in the center median, when the costumed poop girl ran up behind me. I tried to listen in as she explained her cause to the other pedestrians on the median but I was really focussed on grabbing my iPhone to snap a few pics before the light turned green. She was part of a campaign to raise awareness about dirty water in the pipes in Africa. Some American college students went down there, got some water samples, tested them back in the states, and found fecal matter in the water. They are raising money to build wells.

Kid in the stroller is totally trying to figure this out. I am mesmerized by the complete artistry that went into forming/shaping the poop costume.

Twinkle Lights

Click on the picture for total wow factor

Manhattan/Queens/Brooklyn from the Top of the Rock
Photo credit: Bocetos

Can't Get No Penny Lane

Beatles + Stones Graffiti Mural
Taken on MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, NYC

Cupcake Wars

There are oft times heated debate discussions over who has the better cupcake: Crumbs or Magnolia Bakery. And from the description, I think that Magnolia might just be better (unanimously voted 'moister'). But dammit, I can never get in there. The lines are always wrapped around the corner. So Crumbs, you win by default because I've actually tasted your cupcakes. Wink. Wink.

My fave? The Baba Booey, a chocolate cake filled with peanut butter frosting, topped with peanut butter and chocolate cream cheese frosting and rimmed with peanut butter chips. A portion of the proceeds from the Baba Booey cupcake is donated to LIFEBEAT.

Love on the Highline

Jack Kerouac's Favorite NYC Hangs

Jack Kerouac, the American novelist and poet, had a number of spots where he lived, drank, and jammed in New York. At one point in his life, Jack lived at 454 W. 20th Street (Between Ninth and Tenth Aves.) in NYC. Some of the places he frequented in the city are still classics places till this day.

Kettle of Fish

Greenwich Village neighborhood bar

59 Christopher St.

New York, NY 10014


(212) 414-2278


Hours:
Mon-Fri, 3pm-4am;
Sat-Sun, 2pm-4am

Nearby subway stops: The 1/9 at Christopher St. and the A,B,C,D,E,F,V at W. 4th St.


Map it


Caffe Reggio

Caffe Reggio offers an abundance of art and leisure in the heart of historic Greenwich Village, just steps away from Washington Square Park.

119 MacDougal Street

New York, NY 10012

(212) 475-9557

Map it


White Horse Tavern

One of the oldest full service bars in Manhattan, once known for it’s 1950′s and 1960′s Bohemian culture.

567 Hudson St.

New York, NY 10014
(@ 11th St)

(212) 989-3956

Hours:
Sun-Thu, 11am-2am; Fri-Sat, 11am-4am

Payment Methods: Cash Only

Nearest Transit 1/9 to Christopher Street or ACE and L to 14th Street and 8th Ave.

Map it

Birdland

Birdland is home to such popular musical events as the Umbria Jazz Festival in NYC and the Annual Django Reinhardt NY Festival.

315 West 44th St. (between 8th and 9th Aves. on the west side of midtown Manhattan)


By Subway: 1, 2, 3, 7, N, Q, R, S, W to Times Square; A,C,E to 42nd Street/Port Authority.

Map it

Below are Jack’s 30 essentials from Belief and Technique for Modern Prose, some of which I find amazing.

1.     Scribble in secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for your own joy

2.     Be submissive to everything, be open, be listening

3.     Try to never get drunk outside your own house

4.     Be in love with your life

5.     Something that you feel will find its own form

6.     Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind (I have no idea what this means)

7.     Blow as deep as you want to blow

8.     Write what you want, bottomless, from the bottom of your mind

9.     Write the unspeakable visions of the individual

10.  No time for poetry, but exactly what is

11.  Visionary tics shivering in the chest

12.  In tranced fixation, dream upon object before you

13.  Remove literary, grammatical, and syntactical inhibition

14.  Like Proust, be an old teahead of time

15.  Tell the true story of the world in interior monolog

16.  The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye

17.  Write in recollection and amazement for yourself

18.  Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea

19.  Accept loss forever (WOW)

20.  Believe in the holy contour of life (yes)

21.  Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind

22.  Don’t think of words when you stop, but see the picture better (brilliant)

23.  Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in your morning

24.  No fear or shame in the dignity of yourr experience, language, and knowledge

25.  Write for the world to read and see your exact pictures of it (yes)

26.  Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form

27.  In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness

28.  Compose wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, the crazier the better

29.  You’re a Genius all the time (remember this)

30. Writer-Director of Earthly movies - sponsored and angeles in Heaven

My favorite Jack Kerouac quote:

"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles, exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!"

-On the Road, Jack Kerouac

Love on Lock Down

Mysterious padlocks couples use to symbolize their eternal love appear on the Brooklyn Bridge

Hundreds of padlocks, usually used to secure gym lockers, are attached to the metal lacework of the Brooklyn Bridge near its granite towers, puzzling many who walk the bridge. Close examination reveals that the locks are inscribed with names, dates, and often hearts. The locks, sometimes called 'love padlocks' represent a custom whereby sweethearts symbolize their eternal love by attaching a padlock to a bridge, then throwing the key into the water below.

Save the Mermaids!

Today is the annual Mermaid Parade which pays homage to Coney Island’s forgotten Mardi Gras. The annual parade is the nation’s largest art parade and is held the first Saturday after the Summer Solstice. We New Yorker's MUST weave masquerade events in all through the year...Halloween just isn't enough.

The Parade will be followed by the Mermaid Parade Ball which is an extremely unique gathering of costumed parade participants. There’s live music, cocktails and in true Coney Island wackiness, trapeze artists, fire-eating, and a burlesque show (of course!).

There are just so many delicious pictures of this event, I had to put them all up. For more information about the parade, click here.

Coney Island | Brooklyn, New York

In The Heights

One of the best Broadway musicals I've seen, the now defunct 'In The Heights' was the winner of 4 Tony Awards for Best Musical, Best Choreography, Best Original Score, and Best Orchestrations. The story was set in New York City's Dominican-American neighborhood of Washington Heights and portrayed the lives of 3 generations of family, music, and traditions living and loving together.  The art direction and set design were unreal. The last curtain was April 3, 2011.

Creepy? Hell yeah!

Fortune Telling Tarot Card Reading Gypsy Swami Grandmother Prognostication Booth at Coney Island
Brooklyn | New York


For more scary pictures of Gramma visit a fellow documentarian's Flickr pics here.

Green House Effect

Summer is here!
The Mall, Central Park

Windows to the Soul

My dear friend Cheikh | Brooklyn, NY

PIZZA licious

Francesco's Pizza | 186 Columbus Avenue | Upper West Side

In Sweet Ruins

The Keith-Albee is a massive theater which has sat abandoned in Flushing, Queens for the last twenty-five years. It opened on Christmas Day, 1928 at 1:00 p.m. and was designed by Thomas Lamb, an architect known for his theater designs, which can also be seen in New York's Ziegfield Theater and Proctor's 58th Street (which was built simultaneously with The Keith).

Matt Lambros has spent a year documenting it in great detail, in an attempt to stir the city into preserving the building. I hope he succeeds- it's an enormous, beautiful relic of a by-gone age, and it still has many features worth saving, including this beautiful decorative arch. Unfortunately, the current plan is to demolish everything except for the lobby and replace it with a 17-story mixed use tower.


Photo credit: BlueJake

A Chaos of Conscious Forces

"A city is, properly speaking, more poetic even than a countryside, for while Nature is a chaos of unconscious forces, a city is a chaos of conscious ones. The crest of a flower may or may not be a significant symbol. But there is no stone in the street and no brick in the wall that is not actually a deliberate symbol - a message...as much as if it were a telegram or a post-card."
-G.K. Chesterton

There's No Place Like Home

Back To Manhattan
By Norah Jones


I'll go back to Manhattan,
As if nothing ever happened.
When I cross that bridge, 
It'll be as if this don't exist.
Have a prince who is waiting,
and a kingdom downtown.
I'll go back to Manhattan,
as if nothing ever happened.

Don't have to speak at all.
One look in your eyes,
and I won't have to fall,
don't have to speak at all.

Brooklyn holds you
and holds my heart too.
What a fool I was to think I could live in both worlds.

Don't have to speak at all.
One look in your eyes,
and I won't have to fall,
don't have to speak at all. 

I should go back to Manhattan,
It's just a train ride away.
I know nothing about leaving,
but I know I should do it today. 

Alwyn Court Building

For some people it's the mountains. For some people it's the beach. For me, the most gorgeous landscape in all the world is historical architecture.

(click on the picture to see the detail of this baby)

I love this building. Built in 1908, you could pick up an Alwyn Court mansion apartment with 12-34 rooms, which included a music conservatory, billiard room, and wine cellar for $17,000.00. It's located one block south of Central Park and one block north of Carnegie Hall. Around the time of World War I, people started downsizing and the building was split up into smaller apartment homes. Today a 2 bedroom/2 bath goes for about 2.8 mill. The Petrossian Restaurant is located on the ground floor and is famed for it's ornate French decor and caviar. If you're curious about such things, you can read more about the Alwyn building here.

198 Shopping Days Left

Till we see windows like this at Bergdorf Goodman.

The Snoop Rides Jet Blue

"A lot of people like to fool you and say that you're not smart if you never went to college, but common sense rules over everything. That's what I learned from selling crack."
-Snoop Dogg

Snoop Dogg on Flight 204, Long Beach to JFK

No Pants on the Subway. WHA???

On a VERY FREEZING day in January 2010, my boyfriend, our two visiting  friends, and I were on the subway when we saw a dad with his two young sons next to us in their underwear. I whispered to my boyfriend, "What the eff is wrong with that dad? His kids must be freezing their choneys off."

Next stop, the doors open. More people get on in their underwear. But no one seems to know each other. No one is talking or laughing or saying things like "I love our sassy underwear club." There were Wall Street types reading the WSJ, briefcase in hand, their suit jackets on but no pants. We started snickering with some of the other fully-clothed subway riders, exchanging raised eyebrows.

We got off around Union Square and a literal ocean of underwear-only people  walked through the subway, out onto the street, business as usual. Temperatures were in the mid-20's. Our out-of-town pals asked "WTF?" My boyfriend and I shrugged, "It's New York, man."

Turns out, the No Pants Subway Ride is an annual event staged by Improv Everywhere every January in New York City. The mission started as a small prank with seven guys and has grown into an international celebration of silliness, with dozens of cities around the world participating each year. The idea behind No Pants is simple: Random passengers board a subway car at separate stops in the middle of winter without pants. The participants do not behave as if they know each other, and they all wear winter coats, hats, and gloves. The only unusual thing is their lack of pants.

There was something about seeing so many people in every shape and size, white, pasty winter skin, walking around fearlessly in their underwear without a care that was so freaking inspiring to me. One more reason I LOVE living in New York: Be who you are, fully expressed.

Especially in Manhattan....

Taken at the very cool Ace Hotel in Chelsea, I snapped this on my lunch hour one day last summer. Dark, cavernous and incredibly entertaining, you can make a day of just people-watching here as right coast hipsters gestalt their Pacific Stumptown sisters with thrift-store bargains that prove style doesn't need to be borrowed, bought, or faked.

Portland in Manhattan? Sure, in some weird way-but interpreted for the trans-Atlantic B-class set who imagine that the American west coast is akin to a David Lynch movie set.

There are cool places inhabited by cool people in New York and this is one of them. Too earthy for rope-line pretense (thank God), however, it gets packed after 4 p.m. with those looking to start early rounds of cocktails. Before that, you can kick back, drink the best coffee this side of the Continental divide, mess around with your iPad, put your feet up on the industrial strength 'furniture' and no one will pay you any attention. Which is a bit like heaven.

The sweet-ass bar. Ask for a vodka-lemonade with salted rim.

Not New York, But It Should Be

I rented a house in Salt Lake City for the months of May and June. When I walked in I knew I had to have it - it reminded me so much of my old brownstone on the Upper West Side. This house was built in 1882. I just love the moldings, chandelier, and antique door knob. The door has a number 1 on it because the house was split into two apartments back in the 1940's. I rented both sides of the house and had a wonderful home office.

This is the Situation Room where it all went down. Like running my business and ordering wine off the internet.