This morning we woke up with the sorest butts in the whole of New York… But we got back on our bikes again and rode over to the Metropolitan Museum. It was quite close, about the same street just across the other side of the park…Central park of course isn’t quite the size of most Australian ones though, it took us around 15-20 minutes. About half way along the reasonably flat road I felt a little exhausted, Kaz zoomed passed me and as I pushed my legs round and round I thought, how come it’s so easy for him? We finally got there with me lagging behind a little and Kaz realised that one of my tires was flat… Great! At least I had an excuse! Not so great though as the bike place was back on the other side of the park – plus we were having some trouble with Kaz’s chain so it added to our frustration of paying so much for bikes that weren’t perfect!
I forgot to take one of The Met so I knicked this off another site!
Anyway, we chained them up and decided to deal with it after we snooped round The Met. We walked up the stairs and into the beautiful entrance where only a week before The Met Costume Institute Gala was on. We had a quick look around some of the historical ‘stuff’, however, sorry to any historians who are appalled by reading this… to be honest we had seen enough in London and Paris and weren’t too keen on spending half our day wondering around! We quickly found the Café and got breakfast. I had my first NY bagel, which even the waiter suggested wasn’t the best in NY. It was average. Then we headed on up stairs to the Fashion Exhibition ‘The History of the Muse’. It was nice to be able to see this – the week before when I was in Sydney reading about the Costume Gala I had seen that the exhibition was on, at that point, New York was a world away and I had very little idea I would be right there! It turned out to be nothing we didn’t already know. Conde Naste (publisher of Vogue US) was a main sponsor which really annoyed me because every image was of course from Vogue. This also meant that they mostly focused on ‘Vogue’s’ models and excluded any models who were contracted to other magazines such as Harpers. The overall styling was also quite poor. It looked like yr 11 students from Goulbourn put it together. I understand they wouldn’t have had the biggest budget in history – but still… Anywhoo rant over. We were on to our next destination after this.
The bike store! We got out and remembered the silly tire was flat. We contemplated riding it back flat but thought we better pop it in a cab. This wasn’t too tricky. One cabbie was helpful, but both didn’t fit. So I jumped in and Kaz rode over by himself. When I got to the bike store I put my business face on to the little Hispanic lady at the counter. I said, bikes no good. Flat tire, chain broke. She said. You pay tire we fix chain. I said very expensive bikes, we take again today, you give discount. One free bike. She agreed! Woo. Kaz just got there at the end of my negotiations and they brought out two new bikes for us. These ones were uglier which was sad – we got over that and rode off down Columbus Ave. (Nice shops)
Ji Chen's
24th and 8th Ave (The novelty of actually using these street names still hadn’t warn off) was the next destination. Here we found a whole heard of galleries. This was to be expected – Mum and Dad had directed us here, as one of their artists (Ji Chen) at Paintbox was part of a group exhibition, also a friend Kate had noted to try and get to this area. You could walk into any building, press a button on the lift and you would be dropped off into a gallery space. Kind of annoying because you couldn’t window shop to see if you’d like to go in, you just had to hope! We found Ji Chen’s work amongst some other (inferior) Australian artists and also popped around to some other galleries. The staff at these places were ridiculously snobby. Sure, neither of us were about to buy something, however MAYBE ONE DAY WE WILL! Every time we would go into a new place I would try to make them respond to me in someway, it was like prodding dead cattle with a folk. I’d sing out Thank you when I left and smile, they would just keep their heads down and not even flinch. I did make one person talk to me. It was worthwhile too! I over heard them saying something about Art Basel, so I asked if they would be there. They said yes so I said ‘ooh well I might be too’ pre-empting the fact that Mum and Dad are looking at going, they said oh well here, have some tickets! SO there you go Mum and Dad I got you free passes!
This painting didn't really show up in the photo but was really interesting
Next I asked a random in the street which street in The West Village had the nicest Café’s (good street to ask in as I knew most people looking at art wouldn’t just send us to Starbucks). They were really nice and helped us a lot, turned out to be one of my favourite areas. We rode down to I think about 13th and 9th Ave where there were some really amazing boutiques. There was also a big film crew on the street along with paparazzi down the end, they took interest in us from afar and snapped away but as we were closer realised we were of no interest! I asked them what was being shot, they said it was Harrison Fords new film. We continued down a little to Gansevoort st. A quiet little area with a bundle of very sweet cafes, one quite well known one called Pastis. 2 people had told us to go there however we didn’t, we had decided not to over spend on breakfast and lunch and to go out to a nice dinner that night. So we went to a great Mexican place that was really yum. They had the best guacamole I think I’ve had! Here we also found a shop with a label called ‘Theory’ that we both liked.
Read it.
Best bill board on Broadway
After lunch we rode top to tale of Bleeker St, a great shopping area with nice independent labels and concept stores. Then all the way uptown, to try go to the Empire State Building. We just looked up to it’s point and followed it to the base. When we got there it didn’t look too inviting so I went in and realised it was the Chrysler Building… Oops! Apparently a common mistake, The Empire was back 20 blocks so we couldn’t be bothered as it wasn’t something we felt we HAD to see. We were more interested in heading over the Broadway to get ourselves some tickets for a play that night. We found a guy offering advice and pamphlets with an English accent. We felt he was a little more reliable for an opinion as he would be a little more frank and not just tell us how fabulous every play was. We said we didn’t want to see a musical, anything lame or basic – possibly something a little funny. We chose ‘Reasons to be Pretty’ – a hack at America’s obsession with aesthetical beauty. It was about 5.30 and the play was at 8pm so we thought we’d try pop passed MOMA (Museum of Modern Art) and then head home, get ready, go. We got to MOMA (we had already been the day before but it was shut) and got upstairs only to find security guards to tell us they were shut again… So instead we went to the gift shop, which was amazing and bought some goodies. We then went home and foolishly decided to have nap, we woke up feeling horrid, but dragged ourselves off to the play. We both really enjoyed it. Kaz was really tired but he managed to not fall asleep! (rare). It was very comical, however still quite powerful. Only four actors and not a massive budget but a great script with very intense scenes. After I bought the script, quite interesting to read and think back to what choices the actors made. After this we were spent. We went back to 86th and slept while New York buzzed away.
Marc Jacobs on Bleeker
Knicked this off a site too. The middle two were in our cast the other two weren't
