Although I've spent a lot of time in New York over the years, I've always stayed on Manhattan. Staying in Brooklyn with LouLou would be a real change. My journey was pretty uneventful - flew with Virgin Atlantic, watched some films (Doubt, Quantum Of Solace), some comedy (Curb Your Enthusiasm - laughing loudly at Larry) and a little music (Okkervil River). Grabbed my case sharpish at baggage reclaim and hopped on a subway into Brooklyn. Got to LouLou's at about 9.30pm. So great to see her and to meet Ted, her very cool Siamese cat (sadly, her lovely husband Andy was away snowboarding). Top apartment too - large open space, exposed brick, huge skylights - she said it used to be an artists studio. We chewed the fat for a while, drank tea, ate biscuits. Finally crashed out.
Next day, she had to go to work on a documentary she's editing, so I decided to have an easy day in the local vicinity. Started off with coffee and a bagel (I'm in New York - what else?), then a wander round Park Slope. Glorious sunshine followed me round. Eventually wandered to the Brooklyn Central Library. This building has a great facade, and opened in 1941:
Had a wander around inside - good exhibition about the history and decline of theatres in Brooklyn. The library is situated at the bottom of Prospect Park, a huge green space (585 acres!) in the middle of Brooklyn. Enough pottering - time for a bit of a lie down...and a listen to the new Bill Callahan whilst looking up at a very blue sky:
Heaven is a place called CallahanAfter a few hours, I wandered back to LouLou's and sat on her roof terrace. At this point, I caught my first glimpse of Manhattan's skyline. I hadn't even thought about it! When she got back, we went to a bar called Sidecar for food, then ended up in a bar called Lucky 13. It was like a home-from-home. A cross between the Crobar and a tiny Big Red. A couple of Jack and cokes finished the night off nicely.
Good Friday brought a change in the weather. Overcast and windy, so we reckoned we should do 'useful stuff'. So an itinerary was worked out which included:
- Dumpling Man, St Marks Place - little gem and a bargain, we ate a tray of dumplings each to fortify us for the trek ahead
- Café Pick Me Up - coffee and cake...well a girl needs a lot of energy when she's doing this much walking
- Other Music - to check out about Record Store Day and the Bill Calahan performance. As we entered the shop, I saw a bloke with a bad twitch and mentioned it to LouLou, who said (a bit too loudly), "what? he's got a twitch?" and then she had to wait outside, partly from laughing and partly from mortification...
- Dean & Deluca - foodie heaven. Got some herb tins to replace some I've had in the past. LouLou got a cute bowl for her daily yoghurt fix. It had an owl pattern - is it just me or are owls the bird du jour? They are EVERYWHERE.
- Uniqlo - I needed a vest. It was LouLou's first visit, and she ended up buying knitwear. It nearly did for us both. Banging techno on the decks. Very stress-making. I needed a beer after that...which we had in Sweet & Vicious
- Supper - we had supper at Supper. Does what it says on the tin. Had to wait a bloody long time for a table, but oh boy, it was worth it. The food was spectacular, and our seat faced directly onto the hobs where the chefs were making the food, separated only by a glass screen. We were mesmerised by the speed and skill with which they created such delicious grub. This is LouLou's fave restaurant and it was a top call on her part.
Day 3 brought rain. A lot of it. And it wasn't stopping. So we did sod all. Lazed about, watched a Woody Allen film (I keep tellin ya - I'm in New York!) called Alice, which was pretty funny. By late afternoon, the rain had just about stopped, so we went to LouLou's local supermarket, Eagle Provisions. What a great shop. Biggest selection of beer I have ever seen in my life, I kid you not. We got some goodies and dropped them off back at the apartment. Then we went to Blockbuster. The two ladies who work in there have a reputation. I think they're not so big on customer service as the rest of New York...I was served by Miss Charm Offensive 2009 (I believe the done thing to do here is put 'NOT!' right about now). Lucky that LouLou and I have sunny dispositions, so no harm done. Collected coffee from Haz Bean (nice guy in shop dissed our DVD selection, and went on to tell us he loves Meg Ryan - eh???) and nice wine from Alex's Wine Shop next door (Alex himself helped us make our selection, then embroiled us in a conversation about how he cannot understand why British police are unarmed. At this point, he flashed his gun in its holster...WHAT??? I only want a nice rosé...steady on, Dirty Harry...)
LouLou cooked the most delicious tuna pasta bake. We ate whilst listening to music, when a really nice piece of fingerpicking came on. I thought it was Mississippi John Hurt, but it turned out to be Elizabeth Cotten. I had no idea about her, so we looked her up on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Cotten Turns out that the lady who became Pete Seeger's nanny had hidden talents...great stuff. Another top find from LouLou's tune archive. We watched a dreadful buddy movie (my fault - chosen purely for Paul Rudd) called Role Models. I think it pretty much killed us both off, so we hit the sack.
The dawning of Day 4 brought Easter - and Green & Blacks for LouLou, Godiva for me (whooo! look at us with our fancy choccies). We decided to check out a fleamarket nearby at Front St, a short subway ride away. It was OK, but nothing spectacular. On the spur of the moment, we decided to go to Coney Island. I'd never been, so we got extra layers and set off on the subway. I have to say that I'm glad I went, but there isn't a huge amount to see once you get there. I'm a;ways pretty happy just looking at the sea, and it's a good job, cos that's about it. We had some fast food from Nathan's famous hotdog takeaway:
(they put the calorie count next to the price - very depressing to know how much flab you're necking...), had a wander, then got the subway back. LouLou had mentioned a place called ChipShop to me before. It's basically a nice greasy spoon, owned by an English couple, and it sells proper fish and chips, crumble and custard, PG Tips etc. You'd think that after travelling across the Atlantic, I'd be wanting to eat pretzels all day, but I have to say that a beautifully cooked fish and perfect mushy peas, washed down with PG and followed by rhubarb crumble and custard was pretty much heaven.
Thoroughly stuffed, we had to summon the energy to head over to Manhattan for Crippled Black Phoenix at the Mercury Lounge. We had a quick drink in a bar called Max Fish in the Lower East Side (doubled up laughing at this huge piece of 'art' over the bar - 4ft high):
Honestly - who painted that kitty???And then we decided to head to the venue. On arrival, it became clear I should have brought ID. The doorman was a sweetheart, though, so he let me in. I went to wait inside while LouLou finished her cigarette. The door-list guy had a face like a smacked arse right from the off. I can normally charm anyone, but this miserable door Nazi got cross because I didn't have the credit card for the e-ticket list. I was so put out by his rudeness, I went back into the cold to wait with LouLou. At this point I remembered that LouLou had two spare tickets to sell. I told the nice doorman outside that his colleague wasn't the friendliest...
When we went inside, it got worse. Door-Nazi was now annoyed that LouLou wanted to try to sell her spare tickets. He actually suggested that he didn't want her hassling people. LouLou explained patiently to him that when we'd bought the Walkmen tickets from this very venue a few days earlier, the box office had said that we couldn't pick them up in advance, which would have avoided this problem. At this point, the first act was going on, so we went into the gig hall. First act not up to much, so we went back out to the bar. I suggested to LouLou that as he was being such an arsehole about her selling them, she'd be better to just give the tickets away. Oh, how I'm laughing now to think it could be that simple...
LouLou saw a guy and his friend planning to buy a ticket. She went over and said 'you can have one of my spare e-tickets for free'. This enraged Door-Nazi. But there seemed to be nothing he could do... A few minutes later, a couple of girls came in and again, LouLou approached to offer the final spare. Door-Nazi jumped off his perch and shoved LouLou away. Yes, that's right, Reader - the nasty little fucker pushed my friend because his angry little mind couldn't cope with her generosity. Or he was pissed off that his Door-Nazi powers had been diminished? Fuck honestly knows. I was completely floored by this. LouLou came back to the bar, visibly shaken and upset. Ordinairily, LouLou is one of the most eloquent, smart, erudite women I know. His behaviour rendered her competely speechless. I've been going to gigs for over 25 years and I honestly don't think I've ever seen anything like it. I could have understood it back in the days of punk and hardcore, but at some middle-class chi-chi arty venue? What a total cock.
We didn't stay. Upon asking for the venue manager, we were told they weren't in the building (hmmm...), but got the name of the bar manager who had witnessed the incident and also the name of Door-Nazi (damning letter winging its way to the Bowery organisation as I write this blog). As we left, I let LouLou go ahead. I hung back and very quietly and calmly told Door-Nazi that his behaviour had totally ruined the evening for both myself and my friend, and as a customer-facing representative of the Bowery organisation, he should be ashamed of himself and his actions. And then I chopped his head off with a huge machete I keep in my handbag (that last bit is a lie).
We got on a subway back to Brooklyn, and went for a nightcap in Lucky 13. The locals had Star Wars on the TV and we chilled out watching that over a JD and coke. Back at the apartment, we still couldn't believe how the evening had panned out. I'm just hoping Door-Nazi gets a huge bollocking at the very least once my letter drops on the Bowery doormat. That, or they can borrow that machete I keep in my handbag (oh...no, keep forgetting the machete-in-handbag is a made up thing).
