In the City of Blinding Lights

Clearing out my camera, some random pics from around the city.

My neighborhood in the East Village.

Harumi Ori, exhibition in Think Coffee on Bleeker Street.

Hanging out with my best frend at Think Coffee

Random guy playing the guitar in Washington Square Park one morning

San Gennaro Festival in NYC. This is toward the end, where the crowd's thinning out

Info sheet for La Sirena, a really cute little Mexican store hidden in my neighborhood.

Graffiti in East Village, I think it's based on something in the Sistine Chapel.

Studies on a watch and my shirt...

Ditto.

Break Down, Plead Your Case, I Don't Know What to Say

Oh again, so much happened.
Last night, as one of my friends was coming downtown to visit me, she made friends with a local indie band who was heading down to perform.
Obviously, we made a night out of it. Some random guy paid for all our drinks and we had a pretty good time at Lit Lounge just hanging out. Afterwards me, friend and band headed back to my apartment and we all hung out for a little while. Friend was way more into one of the boys... who kept on trying to hook up with me. Awkward. Apparently this is not the first time, she told me that a guy that I was hanging out with at her housewarming two weeks ago really wanted my number... haha, and she took his number under the pretext of passing it to me and have being trying to hook up with him since. I suppose I really should be annoyed... but for some reason it amuses me more than anything else. I would like to think that it's because I put bros before hos... but you never know.
Anyhow, after bumming more alcohol and weed from this cute guy, I passed out on the bed and basically lost consciousness until about an hour ago. Now I'm up, sautéing delicious chicken for brunch.

The night before that, me and best friend for the past three years T hooked up. Awkward. Again. He has a girlfriend. I'm really not quite sure what to do about that. I don't think he really wants to break up with her, though he wants to hook up with me again. He kept on trying to kiss me as we were sorting things out on the roof the morning after. Of course I pushed him away... though I can't say I really wanted to. I've known him so well for so long that it's hard to separate the affection that I feel for him as a friend from the actual desire to be with him. Maybe I just need some time apart from him to recover... though to make things more awkward, he told me that he's liked me for the past three years... oh and I'm meeting his girlfriend today. Great.
To make myself feel less shitty about the hookup, I went shopping with friend yesterday afternoon. Went around Soho and went through some of my favorite stores. Ended up picking up a few cute things from  Uniqlo and  Topshop. Honestly, I think that was the first time I went shopping for anything other than food.

Oh, I thought this was funny: Signs That You're Poor: City Dweller Edition

I think I need to start a guide for frugal living in the city. God knows that I'm not great at it, but you just collect so many little tips from living here...

He's My Brandy Alexander, Always Gets Me into Trouble...

Right now I'm really confused. I can hardly figure out what I should think...

I have spent almost every single evening with my best friend T, who I think I might have a thing for.

Two nights ago, we sat in the park and nursed bottles of beer. When I got cold, he took me in his arms and kept me warm. It was such an affectionate gesture that for a moment I forgot all about the mess with him, his girlfriend and the my friend who liked him...

When he left me that night, I couldn't stop thinking... so I texted him, half tipsy, telling him that I am confused.

He asked why; I had no answer.

Last night, we studied together for the GRE and then went onto the roof of my apartment with a bottle of wine and got really tipsy. He held me in his arms the entire night and wouldn't let me fall asleep. Every time I dozed off with my head against his chest he would gently lift my chin with his fingers and wake me up. He kept asking why I was confused. I know he knows, but he wanted to drag it out of me, a blatant confession. 

Nice try, but my walls are way to high to let that happened. 

It was freezing cold on the roof that night, but somehow it didn't matter that much. I was just happy in his arms. We eventually migrated back to my bed and he spent the night with me.

No, we didn't sleep together.

I think he's one of the few close guy friend I have that I have not hooked up with drunkenly at one point or another. In all truth, I feel closer to him than I do to anyone else in this city. I think that is one of the main things that keeps him behind a glass wall for me. He's the thing that made this city bearable for me when I was desperate and in pain. I don't want to lose him.

Though you know what I love most of him
I'm walking on needles and pins
My addiction to the worst of him
The low moon helps me sing.

I'm Broke but I'm Happy...

So much has happened in the last few days... I hardly know where to begin! 

First of all, I finally have furniture!!!

I got most of it free on Craigslist.com. People who are moving away who don't want to have to deal with furniture disposal often take this route. They put up an Ad specifying the things they are giving away and a time. Then it's a free for all, first come, first serve.

I answered an Ad last Saturday for someone living in Harlem. Apparently, (he told me when I went to pick up) he has another apartment in the Village and between that and his place in Milan, he found this extra apartment rather extraneous. Oh, and he works in fashion. Apparently he just got back that morning from a show when I went to pick up. Being the nosy person that I am, I naturally Googled him and discovered that he is really quite successful at what he does.  Works with some AMAZING big names in fashion, apparently.

Funny thing though... not so sure how I feel about sleeping on his giant queen sized bed now that I know whose it is... well, beggars can't be choosers. Besides, I am just eternally thankful to him for providing me with furniture when I had none.

In other news, I've been playing with my camera!

Of course, I'm no good at all, but it's still fun to play around. Here are some random shots... mostly studies to see what the camera can do.

Personal journal. I write rabidly...

Studies on an apple, take one...

Take two...

Take three...

Apple: the Conclusion of...

It's kind of funny, but this song "Hands in My Pocket", describes my life pretty well.  I'm not a huge fan of Alanis Morisette, but every single line seems to be written for me. Strange, no?

I'm broke but I'm happy
I'm poor but I'm kind
I'm short but I'm healthy, yeah
I'm high but I'm grounded
I'm sane but I'm overwhelmed
I'm lost but I'm hopeful baby

What it all comes down to
Is that everything's gonna be fine fine fine
I've got one hand in my pocket
And the other one is giving a high five

I feel drunk but I'm sober
I'm young and I'm underpaid
I'm tired but I'm working, yeah
I care but I'm worthless
I'm here but I'm really gone
I'm wrong and I'm sorry baby

What it all comes down to
Is that everything's gonna be quite alright
I've got one hand in my pocket
And the other one is flicking a cigarette

What it all comes down to
Is that I haven't got it all figured out just yet
I've got one hand in my pocket
And the other one is giving the peace sign

I'm free but I'm focused
I'm green but I'm wise
I'm shy but I'm friendly baby
I'm sad but I'm laughing
I'm brave but I'm chicken shit
I'm sick but I'm pretty baby

And what it all boils down to
Is that no one's really got it figured out just yet
I've got one hand in my pocket
And the other one is playing the piano

What it all comes down to my friends
Is that everything's just fine fine fine
I've got one hand in my pocket
And the other one is hailing a taxicab... 

I guess it all comes down to being young, poor and living in New York City. Trying to figure how the world fits together.

Rainbow over fountain in Washington Square Park

A Day in the Life of...

After several marathon day of drinking and playing, I decided to take it easy yesterday and spent the day wandering around the city with my friend T. We walked all over lower Manhattan. Here's a few of the things we saw. Unfortunately, most photos had to be eliminated for the sake of anonymity.

9/11 Demonstration. This is the anti-teaparty group

More angry 9/11 protesters

Washington Square Park at night. A musician was playing great covers of old songs and the crowd sang along 

Sand Art in Washington Square Park by Joe Mangrum. This man is amazing, you can watch as he lay out each color in on the ground with colored sand to form that beautiful amalgam above

Wake Up in the Morning Feeling Like P. Diddy...

That was NOT a small dinner party. Yikes.
Dinner was small, there was only nine of us eating all the food... I spent the entire afternoon with my roomie cooking and everything turned out great. The food disappeared in a surprisingly short period of time and we soon moved the party upstairs to the roof.
That's where things got messy.
People started showing up out of the blue, at one point, I think we had at least fifty or so people wandering in, out and around my apartment and roof. People brought wine, vodka, beer... things began appearing out of the blue and soon there were more people than I can keep track of. I hooked up with one of my best friends... let's call him S, out on our fire escape. We have had a bit of a rocky history and he had been dating someone before, so the entire business made me really rather annoyed.
Anyway, after I left him, I got completely drunk, gave way too many people lap dances until we finally kicked everyone out. Two of my roomie's friend stayed over and drunkenly, I ended up hooking up with one of them during the night.
I woke up at seven this morning, thirsty and annoyed at the guy next to me on the sleeping bag. I walked into the living area and found it completely trashed. It was a terrible mess, food and bottles everywhere. Too tired to clean, I took a shower and left before my hookup awoke.

1, 2, 3, Not Only You and Me...

Oh my, what a night...
We decided we're going to have a smaaaaall dinner party tonight, so last night was going to be the prep night.
What actually happened was that my roomie and I ended up sitting in tiny girl boxers, in our kitchen floor, hands covered with Mayo and mustard as we drunkenly tried to marinate chicken. Then, hands still sticky with sauce, we ran to our friends room and drunkenly told him we are OK with a Ménage à trois.
Don't worry, I fixed it this morning... the sauce.
It really didn't start out that way, it was suppose to be a quiet night. After roomie and I got off from our respective classes that day, we decided to go grocery shopping. Being tiny and girls, we asked one of our giant guy friends to come grocery shopping with us. Great idea, except then we decided to uncork a bottle... or three and within a surprisingly short frame of time, we all got completely wasted. We spent half the night rolling around on the roof of our apartment, dangerously close to falling off.
And now, we are going to cook for eleven people. Eh... well, my roomie doesn't cook so I guess I'm cooking for eleven. Lucky that I have a crazy tolerance and never get hangovers... thank you high school Cross Country!
Surprising how a small dinner party can blow up in a small amount of time... and so much cooking! I'm using all my own recipes, so I'm a bit nervous about scaling it to such a magnitude. Whatever. They will eat what they are fed. 

I Best Tidy Up My Head, I'm The Only One in Love...

I'm absolutely exhausted and more than a little confused.
I had my first day of classes as a Senior at NYU. I had two economics classes this morning and linear algebra this afternoon at six. Both my economics professors seem amazing, funny and knowledgeable. Since they both are 300 Level courses, the class was very small, capped at around 20 people. It was a welcome breath of fresh air after a year of hundred-people classes in drafty lecture halls.
Between classes, I went uptown to my storage again and got more essentials. On the way there, I stopped by DHL and picked up a book that could not be delivered to my apartment. The woman at the counter was so bored that she spent quite a while chatting with me about her son and his expensive college books. Quite a friendly woman, and honestly, very right about the steep prices of American textbooks.
On my way to my storage, I was stopped by a thin, blond woman with a faint Eastern European accent and asked for direction to an address printed on a piece of paper. I tried to explain, but she looked even more confused. Since her destination was near my storage area, I told her I would walk her there.
Apparently Leah (or some Russian rendition of that name) is here for the BCBG fashion week, modeling, I think. She's here from Russian for two weeks and has never been in New York before. I don't think I've ever seen anyone so excited by everything n Chelsea. She even took pictures of the industrial buildings! When we passed a Porsche dealership, she practically shreiked with delight.
 "That's my dream car!" The camera came out again and clicked at every single Porsche in the lot. It took a full ten minutes to walk past the half a block of cars.
We finally got to the location and I left her with a equally skinny and excited girl.
From there, I wandered over to my storage in the boiling sun and picked up more underwear, towels, books and a power strip.
Time to bum it out for another few days.

In other news... I'm rather in a pickle. I think I'm getting these feelings for my best friend again. T, I think I called him. Well, I've had these strange ticklings before... but well, the recurrence worries me. After all, it would never happen. For one, I told him I had no feelings for him a year ago when he told me he had feeling for me. In addition, a good girlfriend of mine is practically in love with him... oh, and he has a girlfriend, which doesn't help. So what now? What am I suppose to do? Perhaps I'll forget him, but that's just hard when I see him everyday and miss him when I don't.
Perhaps some time apart is the answer.
Perhaps meeting his girlfriend might help.
Perhaps it's just a stupid time in my cycle.
God knows. Whatever it is, it needs to stop soon before I go insane.

I love NYC, I just gotta remember that and pull through these really, really long days.

The Halls Of Fear... Right Here!

My landlord is a real deal mobster!!! I love it!!!

No, it's not because he's Italian, though that certainly helped the image. I have proof.

I think he's laundering money through our rent. Our monthly contract rent is a full $400 less than what we really pay... and it's not just us, it's the whole building. He had us sign another contract under the table with our real rent... but that's on the down low.

He showed up to sign the contract with a bodyguard in black and shades. Slowly he lowered his rotund body into a chair across the table, picked at his face and gestured behind himself, "this is my friend V."

V grunted and crossed his hands behind his back. V did not sit. I don't think V is allowed to sit.

From what I gathered from the neighbors, he gave us the same suspicious beat down as everyone else.

Regarding my passport: "Is this thing real?"
Time to think: "you sign this today... NOW."
When we tried to barter: "How do you afford NYU if you have no money, you think I'm stupid? IS that what you think?"

Trying to be funny, I tried to ask him innocently about his creative money management. He waved his hand, "awwww, don't worry about it, it's all taken care of."

V, Still wearing his shades, crossed his arms and grunted.

I know I should be scared, but I could hardly stop laughing. It's just so stereotypical. It's as if they used the Godfather as the family training video for new recruits. I can imagine the multiple choice portion of their initiation:

    Virgil request the Don to protect the Tattaglia family's potential:
       A. Protection business
       B. Heroine business
       C. Smuggling business
       D. Apartment business
       E. Loan business

I guess I should be taking this a lot more seriously. After all, everything in New York tend to be magnified several times in terms of everything. The skinny are anorexic, the chubby are obese, the rich very rich, and the poor very, very poor. Whereas landlords everywhere else would chuck your stuff out for not paying your rent, the mobster New York landlords will probably stuff you in a suitcase and feed you to the mutant fishes in   the East River.

Lost!

"Just because I'm losing,doesn't mean I'm lost..."

That's the sort of day yesterday. Everything that could possibly go wrong went wrong. But you know what? I was ecstatically happy.

First of all, someone took my wallet. 

Yup, out of the blue, my wallet and the keys attached were gone. 

So I spend the better part of yesterday afternoon calling my card company and canceling my cards and then getting the keys to my apartment copied. It seems that my key can only be copied at certain places since it was a special design. Thus we spent hours hunting for locksmiths with that specific machine. Luckily, one of my neighbors found one...

Without any bank cards and with all the banks closed on Sundays, I have no way to get money for ANYTHING. Since Monday is labor day, that's two days with no money, no I.D. In New York City. 

Then we found out that it would take another week before we could get internet in our apartment. Time Warner sucks. Really sucks. I was running on a bare minimum when it came to sleep. I was exhausted, out of underwear, feeling sick hungry as hell and still sleeping on the floor. 

But you know what? I was pretty happy. I'm in the city, loving the personal space, the neighbors, the sunshine and the music in the park. Life's really all right.

Walked around the city until almost morning with my best guy friend... Lets call him T.

We started out in Washington Square Park, where some guy was threatening to commit suicide by jumping out his window. Apparently he had a really terrible fight with his wife and well... decided suicide was the answer. The entire northeast corner of the Park was roped off and surrounded with police vehicles. Judging by the lack of splatter on the concrete today, I'm going to sat that he failed. 

Then we made our way over to the Hudson River, and sat on the docks watching the lights in Jersey glitter. There was a group of clearly intoxicated couples dancing slowly and sloppily to music blasting from someone's speakers. A chubby man in a tux slurred drunkenly that he's going to jump into the water. Someone else laughed and dared him. He started climbing the rails...

He's fine.

By the time I got home I was so exhausted I couldn't even drag myself to the two parties planned that night. I crawled into my sleeping bag and pretty much passed out.