Tuesday, February 20, 2007
New York is Always Full of Surprises
We did a little shopping Saturday. Sadly, the Aldo Liquidation store has closed since I was there in November, so no cheap Aldo shoes for Adrian. Surprise #1. But the rest of the shopping day was nice, with a visit to Uniqlo and a nice lunch in Chelsea. Oh, and new sunglasses for me, so yay.
That afternoon we headed over to a Chinese New Year party thrown by a friend of a friend of Adrian's. It was down in SoHo in a great little...well, not little...2000 square foot loft with a great open space and a terrace and two bedrooms and a bunch of zeros on the price tag. Definitely the nicest home I've been in while in New York, and couple that with the fact that Friday night we'd had the nicest looking cabdriver we've ever seen in New York, and you've got one helluva goodlooking weekend. We met some very nice people there, and some very drunk ones, and some very nice drunk ones. Something I love about New York even more than DC is the great diversity of backgrounds, interests, professions and so on that you find -- lots of people in DChave interesting jobs, but they're all working for the government, and often doing many of the same things in their off-time. Not so in NYC where it seems everyone is totally different. The guy throwing the party does about 4 of these events per year and the invite list keps growing, so I'm looking forward to the next one.
Afterwards we headed to Adrian's friend's house with some folks to hang out, have some Thai food delivered, drink too much and watch a cute Japanese boy dance and kiss all the other asians. That was fun. And a great photo op as well. I'll have to figure out where to post those. And where to post the video. Which will not be suitable for children under 17 unless accompanied by an adult.
Did I mention I recently bought a small digital camera for casual stuff, and it has video capability? Hooray, I say.
Adrian and I wandered down to The Ritz for a couple drinks and ran into none other than Jase, who had taken me there last December with his friends. Surprise #2. Pics to follow. It was very cool seeing him and his comrades again, and I think he was a little surprised too. As well as being more than a little cute.
Sunday was a little more shopping, though we didn't end up buyijg anything. We went to the Young Designer's Market in SoHo, kind of a "farmer's market" for fashion I guess, only it wasn't going on. No idea why not, I even checked their website before we went. Weasels.
The big surprise came as we were walking into Century 21, a huge discount clothing store in Tribeca. If you'll notice in the previous two entries, I was feeling bad about not being able to see Scooter on this trip, but I was determined to see him next time. Fate, however, had a different idea. As we were walking into the store I saw two guys walking right next to me and thought "wow, that guy looks a lot like Scott. And that looks remarkably like Chris." Yes, it was indeed Scott and his boyfriend. Millions upon millions of people in NYC, and I happen to run into the guys that I was disappointed about not seeing. Some good karma was definitely going on that day. And the boys are doing well, and prepping for a trip to Argentina, so that's very cool.
It should be no surprise that Bebe Neuwirth was fantastic in Chicago. We really like the show when we first saw it a few years ago, and we loved it again. Much more comical than the last time, and Bebe did a wonderful job. We chose not to hang out afterwards to congratulate her, as the wind chill below 0 convinced us that hanging out at the stage door was not a great idea.
Later we made our way to Alegria, a big party that happens in New York on 3-day weekends and other occasions. Our friend Ethan had mentioned he was coming up for it with friends and said we should get tickets, so we did. After standing in line at the wrong club for a few minutes (hey, it happens) we finally found the right one. A very good time was had by all, and yes, there will be pix. Despite my self-image issues, I actually spent most of the night shirtless, the first time in a while for that. Don't expect photos of that part. Anyway, Ethan, Adrian and I stayed until 5am, then we put Ethan into a cab back to his hotel (his friends staggered in between 6 and 8:30am) and we wandered back to our own. 4 hours of sleep and we were off to the airport. USAir managed to leave on time (suprise!) but they messed up our luggage when we got home...no surprise.
Some cool stuff with friends Monday and Tuesday nights, so more will follow. For now I'm off to bed as I have to get up and fly to Florida Wednesday.
That afternoon we headed over to a Chinese New Year party thrown by a friend of a friend of Adrian's. It was down in SoHo in a great little...well, not little...2000 square foot loft with a great open space and a terrace and two bedrooms and a bunch of zeros on the price tag. Definitely the nicest home I've been in while in New York, and couple that with the fact that Friday night we'd had the nicest looking cabdriver we've ever seen in New York, and you've got one helluva goodlooking weekend. We met some very nice people there, and some very drunk ones, and some very nice drunk ones. Something I love about New York even more than DC is the great diversity of backgrounds, interests, professions and so on that you find -- lots of people in DChave interesting jobs, but they're all working for the government, and often doing many of the same things in their off-time. Not so in NYC where it seems everyone is totally different. The guy throwing the party does about 4 of these events per year and the invite list keps growing, so I'm looking forward to the next one.
Afterwards we headed to Adrian's friend's house with some folks to hang out, have some Thai food delivered, drink too much and watch a cute Japanese boy dance and kiss all the other asians. That was fun. And a great photo op as well. I'll have to figure out where to post those. And where to post the video. Which will not be suitable for children under 17 unless accompanied by an adult.
Did I mention I recently bought a small digital camera for casual stuff, and it has video capability? Hooray, I say.
Adrian and I wandered down to The Ritz for a couple drinks and ran into none other than Jase, who had taken me there last December with his friends. Surprise #2. Pics to follow. It was very cool seeing him and his comrades again, and I think he was a little surprised too. As well as being more than a little cute.
Sunday was a little more shopping, though we didn't end up buyijg anything. We went to the Young Designer's Market in SoHo, kind of a "farmer's market" for fashion I guess, only it wasn't going on. No idea why not, I even checked their website before we went. Weasels.
The big surprise came as we were walking into Century 21, a huge discount clothing store in Tribeca. If you'll notice in the previous two entries, I was feeling bad about not being able to see Scooter on this trip, but I was determined to see him next time. Fate, however, had a different idea. As we were walking into the store I saw two guys walking right next to me and thought "wow, that guy looks a lot like Scott. And that looks remarkably like Chris." Yes, it was indeed Scott and his boyfriend. Millions upon millions of people in NYC, and I happen to run into the guys that I was disappointed about not seeing. Some good karma was definitely going on that day. And the boys are doing well, and prepping for a trip to Argentina, so that's very cool.
It should be no surprise that Bebe Neuwirth was fantastic in Chicago. We really like the show when we first saw it a few years ago, and we loved it again. Much more comical than the last time, and Bebe did a wonderful job. We chose not to hang out afterwards to congratulate her, as the wind chill below 0 convinced us that hanging out at the stage door was not a great idea.
Later we made our way to Alegria, a big party that happens in New York on 3-day weekends and other occasions. Our friend Ethan had mentioned he was coming up for it with friends and said we should get tickets, so we did. After standing in line at the wrong club for a few minutes (hey, it happens) we finally found the right one. A very good time was had by all, and yes, there will be pix. Despite my self-image issues, I actually spent most of the night shirtless, the first time in a while for that. Don't expect photos of that part. Anyway, Ethan, Adrian and I stayed until 5am, then we put Ethan into a cab back to his hotel (his friends staggered in between 6 and 8:30am) and we wandered back to our own. 4 hours of sleep and we were off to the airport. USAir managed to leave on time (suprise!) but they messed up our luggage when we got home...no surprise.
Some cool stuff with friends Monday and Tuesday nights, so more will follow. For now I'm off to bed as I have to get up and fly to Florida Wednesday.
