I almost never leave the city on holiday weekends. At least not to the usual escapes – Hamptons, etc. – or for the entire weekend. We’ll be headed to @endotique’s abode for the night on Sunday, but that’s about all the traveling that I can handle on a holiday weekend.
Why? For one it’s super expensive. Flights? You better be ready to pay top dollar. You’re going to skip around all the airfare and drive? Hah. Good luck being stuck in traffic for endless hours.
But you know what’s also nice? Being in the city – in your neighborhood – when it’s all locals who’ve also decided to stay put. Restaurants are emptier. Your local bookstore is quiet. And you can actually get a table at your favorite cafe to sit and read without having to get to said-cafe when they unlock the door when they unless unlock the door on the morning.
The streets are also empty. Which is nice.
I’m started my weekend with seeing along Day’s Journey Into Night. Nothing like a 3 hour & 45 minute drama to get the weekend off on the right foot.
I needed this weekend. After seeing a ton of shows these past few weeks, I needed a weekend off from dealing with any plans. J and I went to one of his childhood friend’s weddings on Friday night in Westchester, but we managed to be home by midnight (somehow!). It was a really pretty, simple wedding on the small(ish) side and we both had an awesome time.
Then a weekend of nothingness commenced. We slept in on Saturday until 10-ish and then ordered in from one of our favorite diners and ate ourselves into semi-hungover oblivion. We spent the rest of the day watching Hush and a couple of episodes ofSilicon Valley. And after we went for a painful run (french toast is not a good primer for running, FYI) before stopping off to buy a new kind of wet food at Petco (which my cat will totally not eat and will barely look at it) and eventually ending up at a bar to refuel and watch a basketball game. I started to kind of understand how basketball works but mostly I just watched the guys running back and forth in between bites of my rice bowl.
We slept in again on Sunday (though I admittedly did not sleep in as late, and I used the extra time to write) and made eggs and chicken sausage (and coffee, duh) for breakfast and lounged around for the next few hours. We watched the documentary The True Cost, which is a horrifying expose about the price that the poorest in other countries pay so we can buy a $5 tank top at H&M. Result: I’m halting my long-time obsession with cheap shit at Old Navy and expensive-except-when-on-sale shit at Gap. I’m OK paying more for clothing as long as people aren’t dying to make it. /end rant
We made a plan to meet up at the movies after I went to a yoga class and we saw Captain America. This really should’ve been called “Avengers 3″ as it was not solely about Captain America at all. And it was really long. I enjoyed some parts but watching a bunch of characters that you know won’t be killed off fight gets old really quickly.
The night ended with Game of Thrones, which I didn’t really pay attention to. When I did look at the screen, it looked like a medieval version of The Walking Dead.
I also finally bought a Roomba and although Playbill didn’t know what to make of it, she did enjoy the box and I caught this adorable shot. She totally has Pixar eyes.
One of my favorite things about New York is wandering. You never know what hole-in-the-wall restaurant/bar/bakery/shop is around the corner just waiting to be discovered.
Saturday started out almost exactly like every other morning: get up (though a couple of hours later, of course), go to the gym, shower, eat, etc. Of course it was all much slower and more relaxed because I didn’t have to go to the office, duh. Anyways, I digress, around 1:30 I made my way to Times Square to meet Justin and see when the earliest date we could buy tickets for Hamilton was. Spoiler alert: It was far away, so now I’m planning on going through my contacts to try to pull strings for house seats in a couple of months. We’ll see what happens.
We walked over to 44th and 10th Ave to try pizza from Claudio’s after hearing it was good on RG. It was good, don’t get me wrong, but probably not worth the walk to 10th Avenue to Times Square. Still: good to check it off the list.
mmmmmmm, health food.
After pizza, Justin wanted sneakers so we headed down to SoHo to Under Armour. After successfully procuring the aforementioned basketball sneakers. we wandered down and around SoHo. I saw the graffiti below somewhere south of Houston and Mercer but I can’t remember the exactly location. Can someone do this in my apartment? I couldn’t get a good photo of it either because some tourist was trying to take her best casually-walking-with-my-latte-in-front-of-some-gritty-street-art-how-cool-am-I selfie. Spoiler: tourist + selfie-stick = not cool.
We wandered to Broome Street to Black Tap Burger and thought there was no line when we walked in, but the line was actually outside around the corner and down 6th Avenue. So completely ridiculous. We aborted mission and popped into Broome Street Bar for sustenance instead.
Our last stop on our wanderings we decided would be Meow Parlour. I had no idea what the wait would be like but we wandered for a while (it’s probably a mile or maybe more from Broome/6th to Hester/Ludlow), passing through streets and around corners that we were both unsure whether or not we’d ever passed through before in 10+ years of residency in New York. It’s definitely gritty in some parts, hipster-ish in some parts, and gross in others. Upon arriving, we were told there was a list and it could be up to 45 minutes to an hour. They had a cafe you could wait in around the corner, we headed there and a few minutes after receiving our lattes, we were called back.
This place is worth a separate post, but here’s one photo to hold you over:
That’s Matt, a Maine Coon cat and so pretty. Here are the other cats we hung out with. I wanted to take him home with me but he was kind of skiddish. He’d give you a few minutes of petting time before running away.
We journeyed home on the D train and stopped for dinner and a drink at Amsterdam Tavern before calling it a night. As the weather gets nicer again, I look forward to having more of these days because I think if you’re living here and not exploring on a regular basis, you should probably just save your money and live in the suburbs.
Sunday’s Run
Even though the 4-mile race that my dude and I signed up for is over, we’re going to keep up running because it’s a good burn and it’s fun to do together. I think we’re going to aim to do a bunch of 5k’s in the spring and just try to get faster. We’re both not distance runners, by any means, and also it’s been proven timeandagain that distance running is not good for your body. So, why would we ever wreck our bodies?
I mistakenly paused my app from 98th Street until 88th Street and then realized it and hit go again. So, we did more like 2.5 miles. We ran down Riverside Drive, then in Riverside Park, and ended near Lincoln Center, so we went to get brunch at The Smith afterwards. I tried the banana french toast – so good, but such a huge portion.
I had once toyed with the idea of running a 10k (I have, on my own, once) but I’m not married to the idea and if it never happens, I’ll be okay with that.
This weekend was way too short. It felt like it went by in a day and a half despite the fact that we gained an hour. I didn’t do anything out of the ordinary for Halloween so I didn’t lose time being hung over. I just woke up on Sunday and the weekend has vanished behind me.
I was able to get to a 6pm yoga class on Friday with one of my favorite yoga teachers. Then I proceeded to buy a purple sweater at TJ Maxx in an attempt to create a half-asses “Hipster Ariel” costume. It’s a really cozy sweater and I will continue to (over)wear it through the winter. I spent the rest of Friday eating whatever was left in my fridge (spoiler alert: not much) and watched the next episode of The Leftovers (still the weirdest, nonsensical show on TV).
I watched Real Time with Bill Maher on Saturday morning and then went for a way-too-hard 2.10 mile run. It should not have been as difficult as it was. I was just running too fast, I guess. Later in the evening I joined my friend Selena and at the “Girls Pint Out” booth at the NYC Craft Beer Fest for a couple of hours. I sampled too many beers.
The rest of the night included a drink with my dude at my friend’s bar in midtown, and after his friend and her man showed up, we migrated to an Irish pub a few blocks away hoping to see some shameless costumes (and oh my goodness, we did).
Sunday was lazy. Very lazy. Justin and I watched a few more episodes of The Walking Dead (we’re still on season 5) and enjoyed some caffeine from The Hungarian Pastry Shop before I met up for a long overdue brunch with @endotique at Melba’s in Harlem. We split the eggnog waffles and fried chicken which was delicious, to say the least. It was lovely. We watched some people running the marathon at 110th and 5th for a while, noting that they’re all insane (seriously, people who run marathons are insane – it’s unhealthy).
The rest of the evening was filled with the rest of season 5 of The Walking Dead with Justin and later (much later) some Italian food to get us through the final episode. I read, went to bed early, and kissed inexplicably short and unremarkable weekend goodbye.
After seeing Old Times on Friday night, I slept in on Saturday, watched the third episode of season 2 of The Leftovers (weird) and then headed to an intermediate bikram yoga class as a guest at Pure Yoga on the west side. The studio is so, so pretty but it’s also filled with so many superfluous perks that you end up paying dearly for ($195/month). The class was intense. I do bikram yoga about once a year because I think it’s somewhat beneficial but not on the regular. I’m glad I did it but it would never become a regular thing for me.
I spent a while curling and hair spraying my hair which fell out as soon as I went outside, but it looked pretty for a hot a second. We met up with some friends of ours, sat for a very cheesy seance, listened to Miss Ida Blue, and drank too much prosecco before happily hopping on the train home sometime after midnight.
It was a neat experience, but probably not something we’d do again. The venue was incredibly cool though! I’m glad we went though.
Fly Away
I was able to spend a really chill Friday night by myself at an advanced vinyasa class followed immediately by a restorative class. After being at my stupid for over two hours, I took myself home, made dinner, and watched American Sniper (which was really good, but I wonder how much was Hollywoodified, and it just proves my point that you should not be allowed to own a gun, especially when you come back from war and are likely traumatized – and rightly so).
On Saturday, I took the Metro North up to Bridgeport to meet my parents and drive to Keene, NH to see my brother (who’s in college there). It’s a pretty town and it’s where the movie Jumanji was filmed. The college is pretty, but 4 hours there was enough for me and we headed back to the ferry and me to the city. While I was there I had a pumpkin latte, pumpkin ice cream, and pumpkin beer. It’s fall, y’all!
During the last 10 miles or so to the train station, there was a a load of traffic, so when we saw the sign for the station before it, we pulled over and headed up to it and I made the train. Phew. Justin met me at Grand Central at 10pm and we had drinks at the Campbell Apartment (love that place, but it’s so expensive) before we cabbed it back to my place.
Sunday was brunch at L’Express with my best childhood friend and her husband, which was awesome, and then we headed to 23rd and the FDR for an Oktoberfest celebration, hosted by Zum Schneider’s (the photo above is us with Sylvester Schneider, the owner). It was super fun and over the course of 2.5 hours I nursed one stein, which was more than enough for me. We grabbed some pizza after and cabbed it home.
It was literally the quickest weekend ever. This weekend I am doing my best not to do anything at all.
Movies, Marshmallows, and Moving
I had planned on going to my first yoga class in three (3!!) weeks on Friday afternoon until I received a notification that there was a fire in the building. Well, damn. Elliptical in my building’s gym it was.
The rest of Friday night was spent eating a delicious meal at Cascabel and watching Rosemary’s Baby with my dude. He really liked Rosemary’s Baby and I didn’t find it scary at all – just more silly than anything else. I was also admittedly falling asleep through parts of it. I just appreciated that they lived in The Dakota.
On Saturday we went for a nice run, followed by a long walk back up to my apartment, and brunch at The Ellington. We both had some things to take care of during the day (I cleaned out my closet and reorganized the storage underneath my bed – score!) but we reconvened at night and watched Catching Fire (because he’s a good sport) and made s’mores in the microwave. Seriously, it’s the best snack ever.
Sunday was spent brunching at The Penrose with my friend Ben and then finding this $1,250 rare breed of short haired Persian cat in a pet store on the UES. That cat is huge and it’s only 5 months old. I know you shouldn’t get pets from pet stores, but he was SO cute. Should I put together a GoFundMe to rescue it from the pet shop? We went into the UES Housing Works where I bought a dress for a 1920′s themed seance party that I’m going to later this month and I saw the above dress which looks shockingly like Glinda’s from Wicked. I have no idea how much it is, but if you’re looking for a Halloween costume, you should totally buy it.
I hit up a yoga class on the UES afterwards (never again – the teacher kept the room freezing the entire time which to me is a big no-no), went grocery shopping, and started going through my pictures from Scandinavia. More photos to come, don’t worry….
Weekend Things.
Friday night: BANG! Said the Gun had their second installment. It was, again, AWESOME. I highly encourage you to check it out, last Friday of every month. It’s a slam poetry night that originated in London.
Saturday: Yoga, duh. Then I chatted with a lovely International Politics professor from Baruch in The Hungarian Pastry Shop, picked up “Street Justice” for $6 from Book Culture, and listened to the Columbia University band practice out on their quad. Saturday night I celebrated my best friend’s husband’s birthday at Subject, L.E.S. It was a cool place with $6 Abita, but it was too crowded. They also lost my credit card (which I’d just activated that day) until I looked on the floor behind the bar and was like ‘IT’S ON THE FLOOR. RIGHT THERE.’ I don’t think I’ll be heading there again. Also: the Lower East Side on a Saturday night? Shit show. We all know this, but come on. Really, it’s a shit show.
Sunday: I tried out a class at the new 104th/Broadway Yoga to the People. It’s a great place to go for experienced yogis but I wouldn’t suggest it unless you have a solid practice already. I bought the wallet (on the right) that you see above at the street fair on Broadway. It’s from a company called Big Skinny and it’s amazing and so compact. I ventured later on to Brooklyn to see Ghosts at BAM (review coming!) and went with a lovely guy to an Italian restaurant called Frankie’s 457 in Carroll Gardens. Another upside to my new purse? The middle part is the perfect size for fitting Playbills.
That Girl Allison 