THE NEW YORK DIARIES – DAY 2

Everything about New York was great apart from the weather. We had one beautiful day and four shitty ones! It was quite cute how the Bowery put their little weather forecast signs up in the lift, even though the forecasts were bad they kind of cheered us up.


Stupidly, I had only brought two pairs of shoes and both are on the leeky side. Tip: Do not wear leaky Converse to New York if you are planning to spend several hours a day on foot and the forecast is showers. We found that everyone wears snazzy wellies in New York when it rains – seriously, there were more wellies than Glastonbury. My wet squidgy feet and the constant up-and-down of the umbrella started getting on my nerves but I perked up when we got to Anthropologie. Mary Portas would love it! It has everything – charm, atmosphere, great merchandising. There is something to see wherever you look and even though the clothes don’t really float my boat, they have such a good selection of books and knick knacks you just have to buy something. I bought the Poppy King book, Lessons of a Lipstick Queen (part autobiography, part business manual, part self help) and a box of New York matches.

We also checked out APC (gorgeous store but nothing we can’t get at home), What Comes Around Goes Around (wanted everything but all madly expensive) and the MOMA shop. After lunch we headed to the New Museum of Contemporary Art which is a great space and has the biggest lift in the world. Seriously, the lift was about the size of a house. Alas, two of the floors were closed as they are putting together an Elizabeth Peyton exhibition which I would have loved to see but will eventually land at the Whitechapel Gallery in London according to the info on the New Museum’s website.
We consoled ourselves with more shopping. Why does being on holiday feel like shopping in the sales? You get into this now-or-never frenzy buying the most crazy amount of stuff like there’s no tomorrow. We bought a huge I Love New York scrapbook coffee table book and this New Museum laundry bag which I think should be tax deductable as I am so going to use it for my shoots.


We also popped into the John Varvatos shop a few doors down which used to be CBGBs. Although D turned his nose up, I actually thought they’ve done a really good job with it. They’ve kept a lot of the original stuff on the walls and sell records and vintage band tees from What Comes Around Goes Around.

Dinner was at Sala, a random restaurant we spotted across from the hotel. Phenomenal Spanish tapas, I could go there again right now. G wanted to take us out clubbing but we were too pooped so another early night for the lightweights.