Jersey City

I went to Jersey City!

This clock was the best thing there...

New York Graffiti

A couple of blocks away from my apartment is a huge young offenders institute. Basically a prison for kids. It's a huge block with bars over all the windows and a massive wall around it. All rather oppressive and depressing.

In order to make the area around it a little nicer, they recently commissioned to guy below to do huge murals on the walls surrounding it.

I'll come back and take another photo once he's finished.

Would you trust this man?

Prescriptions

I realise I'm photographing a lot of type right now. They just don't make um like this anymore, ya know?

OK OK I'll do some more insightful blog posts...

Big brother

The subway stations in NY don't have anything like the quantity of CCTV cameras the tube in London does. However, it does have some really creepy mosaics which are probably more effective.

UUUMMMBBRREELLLLLLAAAAAAAA!!!!!!

Possibly the worlds largest umbrella. Wonderfully amplified by being held by a tiny girl.
It was nice of them to pose near a pink sign wearing pink clothing, holding a pink umbrella.

Water sampling station

Lovely debossed metallic typography. These things are dotted around street corners. There is no reason they have to be this pretty, I guess they always have been so they kept making them this way. NYC water is actually pretty damned good. If you're used to god-awful London water you'll be pleasantly surprised. If you're used to water from Norway, then frankly, you're spoilt.

Happiness in Washington Square park

Shiny happy people! Not to blow my own trumpet, but this photo makes me really happy. It's not brilliantly taken, in fact it's a little blurry and colours aren't accurate, but it embodies a great deal of what I love about New York.

I love the line from the pretty little girl in the foreground, through the japanese jazz band, to the guy wearing a cockatoo and the tourists behind him. All under the shadow of Italy's greatest biscuit.

View from a clients office #2

Not really as pretty as the first view. Does look rather like a piece of Op-art though.

Statewide

I have much love for the type on this truck. You'd be hard pressed to find something more "man" and American.

Hot Tub

Best comedy gig I've been to so far in NYC. Hot Tub with Kristen Schaal ('er off of Flight of the Conchords) and Kurt Braunohler. 


A mix of bad music, bad dancing, bad singing and great comedy. Also terrible photos, as you can see below. Sorry about that. 

http://www.littlefieldnyc.com/event/40587/

Nice subway photo

Nothing interesting to read here. Just a photo of the subway that came out nicely.

Mister Sunday

On a hot summers day what better way to relax than to dance under some trees with a bunch of hipsters?

Mister Sunday has become something of a Brooklyn legend. The younger brother of the heavier going, "Mister Saturday night", every sunday throughout the summer, DJs, hipsters (and a lot of gay men) gather to drink heavily and dance to some delightfully tasteful house music. It's attracted Four Tet and Mr Scruff in the past, which speaks for the high profile nature, it's also the friendliest club you could imagine with the best selection of killer hipster tattoos.

www.mistersaturdaynight.com

Twitter play

My friend Kate (standing below) is both a talented cook and play write. As well as occasionally sampling her delicious cooking, for once I got to sample on of her plays at the first reading of her new Twitter play.

The play has 139 characters, each of whom speak in sentences of no more than 139 characters. Frankly there was a lot going on. Some of it was excellent, and it was damned interesting to see a new play take shape, with Kate making notes at the front based the timing of the skits and the audience reaction.

(the gin and tonic samples we were given didn't hurt the reviews either :)

Sunset in Washington Square Park

Beer Pong

The great game of beer pong is a frat boy tradition in America. As Interbrand is basically run by a bunch of grown up frat boys (you know who you are) the New York office puts on a tournament every year.

The rules are as follows:

There are two teams to a game.

Each team consists of two people.

Each team has six cups, arranged in a pyramid. (red cups are traditional)

Each cup has a couple of inches of beer in it.

The aim is to throw a ping pong ball into the opposing teams cups. If you get the ball in, their team has to drink the beer in the cup, and you get another go.

Whooping and drunkenness ensues.

Brain vs Brawn

Our biggest meeting room wall is (supposedly) regularly re-wallpapered to freshen up the 4th floor.

This time is was my turn to create something for the wall, so I came up with this brain vs brawn design. Admittedly I got the idea from a british illustrator. I'd like to quote Picasso here, "Good artists copy, great artists steal", but in reality I just saw something online I thought was cool so I made my own version.

Chris Kline is the brawn.

I'm jealous.

Village Chess Shop

King me! Oh, hang on..

Air Conditioning rain

"Hot town, summer in the city. Back of my neck getting burned real pretty"

Summer in NY has a lot to recommend about it. For a start it gets hot and then stays hot for four months! None of that teasing that British weather does. It actually gets really god damned hot. This summer I didn't wear a jumper for three months. Even the nights are in the mid 20s.

The downside of all this lovely heat is the total reliance on air con units to keep your apartment manageable.

Most people have one of these little window units. While they are meant to be securely fixed to your window, the vast majority of them are kept in the window by the weight of the glass resting on them. Opening the window would result in the air con unit plunging hundreds of feet to the ground below.

While this is a frightening prospect, a far more common threat is air conditioner rain. The compressors in the old units tend to create condensation that rains down on the poor souls below. As it's often mixed with compressed gas you really don't want to drink this rain.

So, to summarise. For many reasons, avoid walking under the air conditioners.

Client offices

Interbrand has big clients. They are the only people who can afford us. Big clients come in big buildings in big areas.

This means you get some spectacular views from their offices. 

I'm afraid I can't reveal the client this photo is taken from, it's a large financial company and this is the view from the 55th floor of their offices in the financial district.

The view below is of Governors Island, a tiny island between Manhattan and Brooklyn where gigs and events are staged. It also has a nice little crazy golf course!

Kayaking on the Hudson

In an attempt to try and be healthier and meet more strangers in NY I joined a club that kayaks on the Hudson river. It's a pretty spectacular experience, and amazingly completely free! The club owns all the kayaks and the space, and people volunteer to look after you once you're out there.

A view of Jersey city from the harbour side.

NYC and volunteers

The crazy looking building below pumps air into the Holland Tunnel, but it looks like it should be a vampire fortress or something. It's also probably the best place to be in the event of a zombie uprising.

For anyone coming to NY I couldn't recommend kayaking more highly, damned good for you and just the most spectacular place you could possibly go on the water.

(i haven't written a post for a while and I'll get more eloquent as I write more of these things.

Hello again

Wow, it's been so long since I last posted that the entire blogger interface has changed and gone all Google 2.0.

Sorry for the delay, it wasn't because I'm not having fun in NY anymore, or because I was bored of blogging. I've just been doing a large amount of stuff, so fitting the blogging in has become tricky.

I swear to update this blog on a far more regular basis from now on (although my mum is here in a weeks time so that will probably curtail blogging for a while)

During the next week I need to a) save money, and b) catch up with what I've been doing in the last few months. So you'll probably see a flurry of postings coming up. Hopefully...

I'm glad to be back!

Trapeze school

Outdoor trapeze school anyone?

I should probably also point out that this is 10 stories up on a pier overlooking the Hudson.

Smurf Detour

This is going to be a terrible film. Does anyone really want to see a CGI smurf film set in New York?

This piece of flyposting almost makes it worth while, although I question the use of 'smurf' as a verb. And if smurf is to be added to the cannon of verbs, I'm sure there are far better meanings than walk.

Any ideas?

Subway art

In the trendier (read: more pretentious) parts of Brooklyn (read: Williamsburg) poster hacking has become quite the trend.

People cut or peel away layers of posters to create collages like the one below.

Then someone draws penises on them.

Clam Broth House

Clam broth?! A handful of clams boiled until the water tastes kinda clamy. Not my cup of tea, and I'm guessing that recently it's lost out to it's trendier Belgian brother, moules mariniere. However, someone must like it, as while this place looks unsurprisingly closed, however it's still alive and kicking in Hoboken.

http://www.originalclambrothhouse.com/

Disappointingly they no longer serve any clam broth, it's pizza and fish and chips, none of which will be as cool as the sign.

Dark Skies

Red shoes and reflections. Nothing deep and clever here. Just something pretty.

4th of July

Ok, so this post is a little late. Every year New York puts on a firework display on the river (recently the Hudson, previously the East river). Apparently the best views are to be had from Hoboken, so Katy and I went over to watch it.

It was a spectacularly beautiful day again. On that note, I'm loving having a real summer where it's hot everyday, the hot-cold-hot-cold British summer is terrible by comparison. Whenever I leave New York that's probably the part I'll miss the most.

Huge, and they went on for ages. Five boats on the Hudson unleashed a simultaneous blitz of fire for 15 minutes. This was by far the largest and most spectacular show I've ever seen.



If you want to see it in future from where I stood I'd recommend going here:


View Larger Map

Galifianakis

Our creative director of motion work shown on the screen. Zach Galifianakis in the room.

Yankees

Sometimes I hate AT&T. Like most of the time when they are charging me $120 a month for my phone contract and dropping all my calls.

In this occasion they totally redeemed themselves. For our sins, they are on of our largest clients, which means we occasionally get tickets to baseball games (they have corporate seats).

I was fortunate enough to get hold of one of these prized tickets and went along with a couple of guys from work. Krista and Dominik (below). Unfortunately as Dom is German and Krista has no interest in baseball, none of us really knew what was going on. I'm not sure that's the point though. Baseball seems to be about sitting around chatting for 4 hours, whilst drinking overpriced beers and eating over-salted hot dogs.

Dom, attempting to blend in.

We had amazing seats, maybe 20 rows back

Close enough for the necessity of this sign anyway



Not cheap though...

Neither was the beer. $12 for a Budweiser is daylight robbery.

Half-way through, everyone stands and sings the national anthem. I did the Eddie Izzard method and just confirmed and denied things.

Coordination

To match your nails to your iPhone case is impressive.
To match a houndstooth pattern is downright gobsmacking.

Dumb.Poor

James sold peoples pets

Saw these on the wall of a bar. Definitely the best art I've seen in a bar in ages. Normally it's dreary black and white photos of cities, or terrible modern/post modern art.

They also get better the more drunk you become.

The Frying Pan

One more in a series of my favourite bars in New York. This time, The Frying Pan.

This bar is made of a series of boats and jetties in the hudson river. It's pretty much always crowded, but it's a fun place to sink a few (ho ho), and the food is surprisingly good (if you're happy with burgers, but then, who isn't?!)

Get here around 7ish, to toast the sun going down, or just to stick your finger up your nose.

Gay Pride

Gay Pride was pretty damned serious this year. In addition to the normal reasons for celebrating, it also coincided with New York state legalising gay marriage!

In honour of this historic occasion the Empire State building was lit up like a rainbow at the top.

Unfortunately this photo doesn't really do it justice, however the view from the Mé bar in Korea-town where it was taken from is spectacular. If you can find the bar, this is the place to bring tourists.

Stop. Coffee time.

Interbrand coffee is god damned disgusting. We have 135 varieties on tap, each worse than the next.

The upshot of this is that I've ended up bringing my cafetiere (french press in America) into the studio to brew up my own superior caffeine hit.

Unfortunately as I don't want to cart it back and forth from work everyday, I'm not french press-less at home.

Desperate times call for desperate measures, and I've had to come up with alternative coffee making methods.

Below is my favoured new way. A couple of pieces of kitchen roll rolled into a cone, and stuffed into a cup. Add coffee, add water, wait for 4 minutes, remove coffee and kitchen roll. which won't fall apart. (I don't advise trying the same with toilet roll, you'll be in a world of trouble).

This actually gives a damned good cup of coffee, it's just pretty wasteful if you're making more than one cup. But for those coffee lovers who find themselves on holiday without their french press, I hope this advise comes in useful!

Vinyl posters

We managed to come across an old roll of printable vinyl while we were cleaning out the paper cupboard. What better excuse to create a series of transparent posters to hang in the studio?

I went for a big colour wheel, trying to take advantage of the properties of vinyl.

As you can see below, I was quite smug about this...

Fun, but not as good as Meg's underwear series...