Wintertime in New York Town.

Can I use the “I’m sorry for not calling” line again?

Let me begin the tast of back tracking to our adventure to New York Town. The royal we and us in this post refers to the couple to which I am the extra girlfriend (minus all the mushy stuff) - Kelsey and Sean.

So on a bit of a whim and despite changes of plans, battling of colds, and dwindling bank accounts, we decided to hop on a bus and head to the great city of New York. We went super economy and did the bus thing – leaving form a side street of Baltimore and arriving at Penn Station 3.5 hours later. In the time that passed between we were serenaded with sweet stories of burning down houses, beating up boyfriends, and killing people as some lady gabbed away on her phone.

We arrived in Midtown and I quickly realized that not all cities are set up in a logical fashion like DC. Oh how I now have a greater appreciation for The Grid. At nearly every opportunity of “do you think it’s this way or that way” that we encountered, we inevitable chose the wrong direction (silly me, trying to pull reason into the equation “well, 250 was North on broadway, so it should be North on park” WRONG!). The good thing was none of us seemed too concerned with spending 2 days getting lost, so it didn’t really affect our fun. What did (ever so slightly) was the sudden unseasonable plummet of temperatures. Eeek! It was CHILLY!

Thanks to hotwire, we found an incredible deal on a hotel right in midtown, and they were kind enough to upgrade us for free to a reasonably nice suite. Sweet!

So we dropped our packs and took off (in the wrong direction, of course) towards the MoMA. First stop – some pizza. Considering it was just the first place we stumbled upon, it was very delicious pizza.

We stuffed our faces and continued in what we thought was the direction of the MoMA (fail) Our misguided direction led us to the Tree Hut installation in Madison Square Park where Tadashi Kawamata constructed large treehouses throughout the park.

We enjoyed looking at them.

We also made friends with a New Yorker and her Washingtonian niece who pointed us in the direction of the subway to get us back to where the MoMA actually was, and also recommended a lounge for us to visit later on (which we did…more in subsequent paragraphs). This is when I had another “I love DC” moment when I discovered that not all metro systems are logical either.

I am an avid DCist reader, finding it to be a great source for local news and events as well as a way to infuse the occasional smirk or giggle with the frequent commenters. So I thought I’d check out Gothamist to bum up on some NYC happenings. It was a bit of an overload to sift through, but I happened to click my way to finding out about a Pipiloti Rist installation that had just opened at the MoMA. This became one of only two musts on the destination list for the weekend (Kid Robot was the other item on the list, contributed by Sean). The installation was incredible. Approaching the MoMA we were greeted with this window of fiber goodness (please excuse the reflection crap)

She is known to use two or three channel videos, taking advantage of corners or other architectural elements of a room.

In this she used a three channel video, as well as adding curvilinear wall coverings over the projectors to allow the image to sweep over that space

and complementary thick cloth hangings along the spaces coming off of the atrium in a beautiful fuchsia color.

In the middle of the space she had a huge circular rug, with an upholstered ring bench and an additional carpeted nook in the center with lounging pillows. By signs, she invited the viewers to make friends with strangers, a notion that people seemed to take to heart as everyone let down their personal space barriers and nestled into the nook together.

We sat in awe for at least 30 minutes, and could have easily stayed for hours.

But the hours of operation were nearing a close and we hadn’t made it to any of the gallery spaces yet, so we moved on. Though we only made it to one area of one floor, we were able to see some really great work in the small area that we covered. Some of the highlights include:

A knitted piece by Rosemarie Trockel:

I saw a corner of a stack of papers on the floor from another room and my eyes lit up like a toddler on Christmas morning – Felix Gonzales Torres!!! Sean and I ran over to see it. It’s always fun to interact with his work in a crowd that isn’t familiar, as we got some horrified and then confused looks as we each grabbed a paper and started to roll it up. He is known mainly for two categories of pieces: a one-line biography of events in a person’s life painted around the upper border of a room, and pieces that invite the viewer to take part of the piece away with him or her. One of my favorites is a piece in the Art Institute in Chicago with a pile of candy that originated as matching the poundage of Torres. Then there is a constant flux as people take away and eat a piece of the candy and the gallery attendants add candy each night. This one was one of his poster series, depicting the faces of people killed by guns.

Adjacent to that piece was a biography.

In the next room we found a beautiful series by Walid Raad of tiny organic shapes in desaturated colors that upon closer inspection turned out to be the shapes of various explosions.

Then we spent a very long time (“ooooh, he said 35 minutes, not 3 to 5 minutes” after about half an hour of viewing”) watching The Ballad of Sexual Dependency by Nan Goldin. Lengthy, intense, very interesting.

That concluded our quick trip to the MoMA and it was food time. So we walked ourselves around SoHo for a while (with a stop by Kid Robot) and then down to Chinatown and ate at an asian restaurant with Peruvian infusion. We couldn’t find the infusion, but the food was delicious anyway.

Then we meandered back up to 230 fifth, a rooftop lounge located at 230 fifth ave. The view was incredible

But so was the frigid wind, so we retreated back inside to enjoy the view in the heat.

It was a lovely night!

Oh yea! And the karate/junk belt from our initial meeting of Jon Wye way back at Crafts n Kisses made an appearance in New York!

We spent most of Sunday in Greenwich Village. The brunch spot we were aiming for wasn’t open yet, which led us to an even more exciting discovery: ___ . The coffee was delicious, the people super friendly, which was all just icing on the cake. The cake being the willy wonka-style coffee machine. These are acrylic tubes of all of the coffee beans they have. The bottom is a dispenser – pretty standard – but the top is linked in to clear plastic tubes that travel along the ceiling into a machine in the center island counter.

So you choose your bean…the machine sucks beans up through the tube, they fly across the ceiling, then into this machine that grinds them up and turns them into one delicious caffeinated beverage. So awesome.

Then we walked around the area for a little bit, finding this awesome shirt that I went back to buy after brunch.

By then the next-door Bonelick BBQ (our destination for all-you-can-drink mimosas/bloody marys/margaritas and blueberry corn muffins with southern brunch) was open. It was pretty incredible. We love the area so much, we decided to spend the remainder of our day walking around there. We had to check out the Jonathan Adler store, of course.

Then we found our way to a yarn shop that came by recommendation of a woman at the coffeeshop.

Kelsey and I were in heaven. I’ve never seen so many colors of Malabrigo (one of my favorites).

Once we wiped the drool from our faces, I stocked up on many many skeins of yarn for my list of holiday projects. Top secret, though, so no documentation of that amazing purchase! Sean was very patient to put up with our time admiring all of the beautiful fibers.

I forget the order of some of this stuff (slap on the wrist for postponing posts for this long) but at some point we were back in SoHo to a little chocolate shop with gourmet drinking chocolates. Kelsey got the white chocolate that was infused with lemon and … rosemary? Oh geez, I forgot. Some herb. It was yummy though. Sean got the traditional hot chocolate – very rich, very good. And I got the one with chili peppers that warms you doubly. Yum yum yum.

More walking and Sean found this awesome sign of passive-aggressive greatness.

Our tuckered feet eventually made it back to Penn station and we were southbound. Lucky for me (and probably because I was the only normal-looking girl sitting by herself on our classy bus), I was honed in on by some really awesome dude “just back in the states”. I believe I put on one of my best performances of Ice Queen thus far, and eventually he gave up and went back to reading…Harry Potter? Haha – awesome. Nothing against Harry Potter fans in general, but you have to admit that it’s not exactly…what you would expect from someone who is being “that guy”.

And that concludes our tour of New York Town. Next adventure: Twensday and then a Floridian Thanksgiving.

Happy catch-up posting!