a fifth avenue crawl

Day 89-90 IHOP, Chelsea, Fifth Avenue, FAO Schwarz, Staten Island Ferry, LA

My uncle's back in town. We have two choices for breakfast, he says. "We go to Chelsea Market. There's lots of nice places. Good sandwiches." Sandwiches. Okay. "Or we go to IHOP."

the harlem shake

Day 88 - Lower Harlem, Upper Harlem, Columbia University

On the subway to Harlem, a large mountain of a man walks up and down the subway cars, promising the "greatest show" if only someone would give him some quarters or even pennies. "I take pennies!" he hollers. He's studiously ignored. I play Temple Run 2 on my phone. He starts to bless Bill de Blasio, the current mayor of New York at the top of his lungs. "GOD BLESS BILL DE BLASIO. SO LONG AS BILL DE BLASIO'S THE MAYOR, IMMA DO ALRIGHT. GOD BLESS HIM AND HIS BLACK WIFE AND ALL HIS LITTLE CHILDREN." An older man gives him a dollar bill. He's so surprised by this that he trips on someone's feet in an attempt to hug the guy. "It's fine, it's fine," says the guy who gave the dollar, looking nervous and quickly backing away. He gets out at the station and our Bill de Blasio fan sits down. Essentially, his performance consists of someone paying him to shut up.

off broadway shenanigans

Day 86-87 Brooklyn Flea at Crown Heights, Pete's Tavern, and off-Broadway

Honest, we can't not go to the Brooklyn Flea. My aunt Carol does an admirable job of not twitching a facial muscle when we announce that we're gonna get on the 4 train (yet again) and speed into Crown Heights. I hear her on the phone later on. "They've even made it to Brooklyn. They've gone to Brooklyn a bunch of times."

I don't think she quite understands our fascination. Mine came from too much time reading internet blogs of mid-twenty to thirty somethings having fairy-light lit dinners inside cavernous brick buildings, discovering Mast Brother Chocolates, Saipua, and Bellocq, and seeing pap photos of Michelle Williams and Heath Ledger, in 2012, wandering around Boerum Hill and Williamsburg. Topped off by liberal sprinklings of Girls, of course.

star spotting and two pools in the ground

Day 84-85 East Village, Little Italy, Financial District, Tribeca, Greenwich Village, Times Square

We're strolling downtown to the East Village. It's frigid but the sun is out. I don't know why it bothers. It plays very little purpose in warming anyone up. We wander into a school's basketball court and Rob gets nostalgic for his school in Queens, PS 19. We're pretending to slam dunk without a basketball when school is let out and the high school kids are peering at us through the chain link fence. Shame.

understudy blues and the day we finally get into shake shack

Day 82-83 Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, back to Broadway, Studio 54

We lose both our umbrellas in the torrents of rain and wind crashing down on everyone. They committed suicide as we rushed across the intersection to get to Shake Shack on Fulton Street. We're back in Brooklyn, drenched and dodging infuriated, gridlocked drivers. 

off the island

Day 80-81 Nolita, Chinatown, Lower East Side, Brooklyn Bridge, DUMBO, Central Park

Today, there's no aim to our wandering. We're dawdling on the streets.

the most wonderful time of the year

Day 78-79 Still in Midtown, Broadway, and Times Square

Last night, we sweated it out in the overheated basement of Strand Books, getting flustered by the giant stacks. One floor up, somewhere in Fiction, a lucky stranger will happen upon a lurid raspberry wool hat (seen here in 2009), dropped by yours truly during a feverish hunt for a non-existent paperback version of Emily Gould's Friendship. 

I mourn it overnight until I realise there's an Anthropologie on Fifth Avenue that's five minutes from where we are. This store is a legitimate tourist destination for me. I touch everything possible in the store. Even Rob manages to occupy his time fiddling through the mindblowing range of pretty unnecessary decorative door handles and drawer pulls. He looks at them like an alien life form arriving on earth for the first time.

uptown midtown downtown crosstown

Day 77 Midtown, Lincoln Centre, the High Line

The Lufthansa pilots are flying today but striking tomorrow. We're off but sans three jars of Parisian terrine. Heathrow confiscates it from our carry-on, deeming it a paste, liable to be used as a type of deadly but delicious meat bomb. The guy is apologetic. Rob is sweet. "Don't worry. You're saving us from heart disease," he says, as if it's the guy sliding our meat paste into the bin that needs consoling. My mum admonishes me later on. "You packed it in your carry on?!" she cries. Read between the lines, she means, Beginner's mistake.