Real New York street style and an anniversary

Here's a little real life New York street style. No fashion week. No SoHo neighborhoods. Just regular people looking sharp. For our 19th Anniversary we took a day off to just walk around Manhattan. Always good cheap entertainment.

 

Love the statement necklace above.

 

The African print above incorporates dollar signs and euro signs.

Ecumenical tattoos.

 

Little kids are pretty good at mixing prints. On the right, these girls were mock ballet dancing to the opera music being piped outside of Lincoln Center. They managed to make tennis shoes, knee socks and plaid work really well.

 



And then there are your random celebrity encounters. We met Mayor Bloomberg on the East River ferry. Apparently he appreciates a $4 boat ride as much as we do.

Partly cloudy

Rain: the story of our lives

I don't even want to talk about it.

Yanks and more rain

We attended our first game in the new Yankee stadium last night.

Here is what the sky looked like one hour before we were supposed to leave.

Here is the sky when we were supposed to leave.

We took the A to the D to the B. Got an elbow stuck in the subway door running from the D to the B. By 7:30 p.m., the rain stopped and a little sun came out. Here's the field after the plastic cover came off, and the water was dumped in the grass. The rolling up of the plastic held fan attention better than the game, which started at 8 p.m. Because the drunk guy in front of us kept jumping up after every good play, we saw most of the action from the gigantimous stadium TV screen.

Our young friend shelled and ate half a bag pistachios, followed by a bucket of popcorn bigger than his head. (This is not idle hyperbole. He actually stuck his head in the bucket.) His family ate about $500 worth of food (which, at Yankee stadium, amounts to a tray of nachos and a sandwich). By the 5th inning we were pooped. Got home at midnight.

The Yankees beat the Mariners 8-5.

Weekend with family

I jogged to the Borough Hall farmer's market for fresh spinach, and Tom made spinach and swiss omelets for six. Later, we nervously rolled Max and Danny to Battery Park via stroller to avoid having them trampled in Century 21 ('Fashion worth trampling children for'). The boys watched street dancers, chased pigeons, poured gravel on each other's heads, picked up glass and dug in the dirt. There were no tears, injuries or trauma except for a small whimper from Danny when the stroller flipped backwards with him in it.

SoHo with kids

Sunny spring day

Block after block

To the same cafe everybody ate at last year

Cram jammed in

With creme fraiche, organic beer, crab cakes

Wee wobbly table

Teeny tiny food

Barely blending in

Until the diaper comes off

The teeter tot

Z Gallerie left New York

Dim the lights on Broadway (or at least the lower Manhattan section). Z Gallerie is gone, replaced with a teeny bopper clothing store - just what the neighborhood needed. Apparently the company has closed a third of its stores citing the bad economy. What a disappointment to cross the Brooklyn Bridge on foot, walk five blocks up Broadway and find Unnecessary Clothing in lue of my favorite home goods spot.

Z Gallerie, I will miss your affordable accessories, wild vases, cool botanicals, weird rubberized versions of things in the natural world, resin faking as metal faking as wood, and clean bathrooms on the lower floor.

At least we still have cb2, one of only six in the galaxy.

F-f-f-fashion Week

Isn't she chilly in that?

Thursday. Fashion Week begins. Hundreds of designers descend on Manhattan. I’m nowhere near Bryant Park, but in a nod to élan, I wear a chic little coat to work, one of those shapely down styles that taper at the waist, along with narrow toed boots and leather gloves. I notice that. It’s. Really. Cold.

Friday. The temperature drops below freezing. Pointy toed footwear doesn’t accommodate socks very well. At lunch, I switch to a pair of clunky but spacious rubber boots, a temporary measure, I’m sure.

Saturday. I dump the cute coat and dig out a marshmallow circa 1994. Monochrome is back, which is consoling since the coat and everything else I’m wearing is brown. It’s also enormous, a down comforter with sleeves. Not a lean silhouette, but I wear it anyway. My arm is too thick to get through the strap of my Prada bag. I ditch the bag.

Sunday. The weekend shows emphasize layering. On my way to the coffee shop, I try draping the hood of my coat loosely over my head like some Russian princess. But it captures wind like a sail. I cinch the hood shut until fur trim encloses my face like tentacles on a star-nosed mole ─ a good look only if you’re Shackleton returning to Elephant Island with a rescue party. I sense I’m losing some kind of battle here.

Monday. At least four designers have featured elbow-length gloves. I am reduced to mittens, which encase all fingers in one fat flipper with a stiffly opposable thumb. They are red. I harbor not even a faint hope that they will read as ironic.

Tuesday. I’ve got crab claws for hands and tree stumps for feet. My arms hang away from my sides, and I tilt my head back just to see where I’m walking. I burrow through four waistbands to scratch an itch.

Wednesday. My clothes weigh more than Kate Moss.

Thursday. I don’t have style anymore. I don’t even have gender. I may not be human. I am Sasquatch. Peer deep into my fuzzy hood and you will find, not the pert nose and rosy lips of a fashionista but darting eyes and pointed teeth and the fetid breath of a carnivore.

Friday. Who cares? I ask myself bitterly. Not me. Not anymore. Because, finally, I’m warm.

Wild and woolly

High winds today. Dust clouds blew from the construction on the waterfront. Buildings swayed. Elevator shafts howled. Contact lens wearers wept.

Hint of spring

It went from six degrees on Thursday to 60 degrees today. Everybody, even the locals, were grinning like tourists. The clouds were moving fast, opening up patches for the sun to shine through like a spotlight. If you look very closely, you'll see the Statue of Liberty behind the tree.

New York is great and all but...

Been looking at this.


Been wishing for this.

Found the Trinity Root sculpture during a recent walkabout of lower Manhattan. It's been there more than three years, but this winter was our first time seeing it. It's a bronze cast of the tree that was pulled up at at St. Paul's Chapel by 9/11. New York is great like that - take a wrong turn and it's like 'whoa, when did they build that?'

The bottom pic is Hawaii. No explanation needed.

Never get tired of this view

After days of rain - sun again

Day in lower Manhattan

We took our friend Mark on a walking tour of lower Manhattan Saturday. We walked more than 50 blocks on a lovely cold sunny day.


So many fun things to do in the city - like bagel soccer in Rockefeller Park.