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Florence and the Machine played at Le Poisson Rouge on Bleecker St on the 8th - and I only just found out! FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK
I'm sorry Florence I still love you. This won't happen again. I'm trailing yo' every move.


On the plus side, here's my new favourite website -

http://www.latfh.com/

'Look at this fucking hipster' - ahhh, balm to my soul. Those oversized glasses make me die a little inside. I will comment no more because I guarantee someone will read this and decide I'm a total hypocrite and maybe I am but I would just like to say - people who were probably born wearing American Apparel shiny leggings and have neon coloured plastic toy replicas of everything imaginable and wear those painfully lame forehead band thingies...suck. There is a line, and it is a sad fact of life that some people cross it.

So...getting a backlog of pictures and LBD pages.


Here's the other side of the City, the Upper East Side, taken from Carl Schulz park.

Here the river obsession ends, I swear. On the other side you can see Queens and Roosevelt Island.

So, on a whole 'nother day, this happened:
There has been a brief hiatus in my explorations while I lived life on the edges of the City (sunny days at Riverside) - but now I'm back in my New York dreamland. Travelled to the edge for a final farewell visit, then plunged back into the middle of things. After me and Iris went to Hippo Park , Lynne was kind enough (and perceptive enough to understand the desires of a 19yr old Vogue addict) to let me go with her to the Alice Temperley store in Soho, where she would be trying on her La Cage opening night dress. Wow oh wow.....it honestly physically hurt me to be in the presence of so many beautiful, oh-so-divinely beautiful clothes and not be able to have them. I promptly fell in love with the entire new S/S line and mentally wore it all over NYC; to the cinema, to the park and at home to the pub. Sadly it will never be...unless I suspend my principles and find a wealthy chap who will buy me the whole collection - for Temperley, its an idea that I am seriously entertaining. Go look on the website, you'll understand. Lynne's dress is a gorgeous confection of flowy black silk with a bouquet of gathered fabric cascading from the left shoulder - it is wonderful, and I can't wait to see her on opening night with the shoes (not sure I should join her on that shopping trip, it may sink me into an abyss of yearning despair) and earrings et al cos she's going to look AMAZING, which she deserves to cos she will be a hit, no doubt. So, once finished with being materialistic and fashionistic I went swinging down Greene St, basking in the sun and the extreme chicness of the Village. Was so wrapped up in NYDW (NY Dreamworld) I could forget about the peanut butter stains on my dress, the tarmac marks on my legs from kneeling on the playground floor and all the other unsightly flaws to my appearance - unwelcome in the Village you understand. Spent a good 40 mins in bookbook, a great Bleecker St bookshop with lots of things on sale and came away, after much deliberation, with 4 cracking books for $20. Can't wait to read them on the Staten Island ferry - today's planned destination.

But first I will sit in my wicker chair outside a gelato shop (yes gelato is actually just ice cream...just rollin' with the lingo) opposite Father Demo Square, being a trendy intellectual with my notebook, my Norse Myths and my huge red Tibetan canvas bag. Eating my tiramisu ice cream with whipped cream on top (yyyyyyup!) and watching the beautiful people go by.

So, after that happened, this happened -


This is the actual Brooklyn Bridge, not the Williamsburg one. Wasn't as great a day for weather but still some lovely views to be had - you can see the S of L, on which more later, from the Brooklyn Bridge. Who knew?

And here we have the Southernmost tip of Manhattan - Tribeca, Wall St, financial district n all that. The Skyline.

What's that tiny pinnacle in the distance you say? Well. After this happened, this happened...........

.......And I took a little trip across the bay. Because I had seen How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days and the bit where they are on the Staten Island Ferry is really nice. Also, it is free, I like the water, and it gets you a nice view oooof........

From sea to shining sea, like Lady Liberty.....yup, that is the aforementioned S of L. The weird angle was necessary due to the many hands with cameras and bits of ferry that got in the way when I tried to do it straight. Here's a few more in a similar vein. It's a lovely lovely view in real life. I've decided I really, really like the Statue of Liberty - when I put my finger on why I'll let you know.

See? Bits of ferry invading my photos.

Anywho, these are all taken from the front of the ferry. Do an about turn, walk the entire length and go out of the back doors and you will be rewarded with this.....I am really enjoying using the ellipsis instead of finishing my sentences it heightens the suspense so very well...ooh I wonder what's coming next..........

Well, it is Manhattan being attacked by what look like giant birds.

Nah, its that most-famed of skylines. And it is getting further away. The ferry takes about 25 minutes to get from the South terminal to Staten Island. I find it entirely bonkers that Staten Island, which is so close to New Jersey all along its west coast it is practically attached, is part of New York City. When it is a 25 minute journey.

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=staten%20island&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wl

Look how far away it is from Manhattan! Whose idea was that?????


When the ferry docked it was almost dark and the Island was quiet. I had no knowledge of the area or any particular agenda in mind, so I just wandered, enjoying the peace and the seasidey-town only scarier feel of the place. It was a little like a shrunk-down, toy village version of Manhattan itself. The same kinds of buildings only much, much less densely packed, and smaller. Endearingly so in some cases. I think it must be a nice place to live - I could see a few people still in offices working but I thought 'well when they are finished they can go home to their nice suburban house and their family' whereas in the main hub of NYC people who work in offices either never leave their offices or when they do it is to go for dinner, go for drinks or go home to an apartment full of people having dinner and drinks. It was quite nice to know that life pauses, in some parts of New York. Maybe that's why they hung on to Staten Island, so they wouldn't lose all sense of average reality.

So after doing nothing and going nowhere for a while (also a novelty I enjoyed) I wheeled round and headed back to the ferry terminal. Thoroughly enjoyed the return journey in spite of the freeeeezing winds gushing through the mysteriously wide open windows. This became less mysterious when I went out on deck for a photo opp - the wind out there was mad, I could barely push the door open and when I got out there I could neither hold my camera still nor stand the temperature so I scarpered back in and found a post close enough to be able to see everything outside but not so close that I got chills.
I was lucky enough to see the Statue with her torch aflame - sadly there is little evidence of this as I did manage a few blurry pictures and some less blurry videos but the wind in said videos is insanely annoying, so I will spare others. Instead here's a nice quiet video of the ferry coming into dock, and the lit up skyline approaching. (Ditto with the skyline by the way - photos all came out too shaky. Ever tried taking pictures of a far off cluster of teeny lights whilst on a moving object being boshed about by gale force winds? Don't.)

And finally...I am 20 in exactly 7 days! Gooood grief!xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx