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:


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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...

Not French cookery

I'm soon to visit France and was trying to make my cooking more french to get into the spirit. I've been told I put too much into my food, it's all about simple ingredients, cooked well.

Below is my attempt to be simple: 

Parmasan and pesto stuffed chicken thighs, wrapped in ham, served on grilled aubergines, mushrooms and onions. Oh yeah, and a tomato salad.

As you can tell, I failed miserably at simple cooking. It turned out to just be fairly busy italian cooking instead. 

I think the french version would have been a piece of chicken, served with a very large piece of butter.

In my defence, this was delicious!

Mannequin

Nothing big or clever about this, I just like finding mannequins outside of shops. It's like something from an episode of Dr. Who

FriendsWithYou

The new section of the HighLine was recently completed, taking it right up to 30th street. It's a beautiful walk through Chelsea and soon I'll have to give it it's own posting, but unfortunately I don't have any good shots of it yet (when I went it was so crowded it was impossible to stop and take photos)

However, what I did both photograph, and love was the exhibition put on at the end of the Highline just underneath it at 11th and 30th.

FriendsWithYou are a toy making collective set up by a couple of American wanting to look Japanese.

AOL gave them the resources to build there very own Mario Kingdom of inflatable mushrooms and giant tethered balloons.

I can't imagine what it would be like on drugs, but even in my lucid state I was pretty blown away by the place.

I even bought the t-shirt. Thankfully free of AOL branding on the front :)

Flavaboom

When the heat hits, as it does unrelentingly in New York in the summer, the people turn to ice cream as their saviour. Well, that's not quite true. In health conscious New York, people turn to ice creams supposedly healthier brother, frozen yogurt for relief.

Flavaboom is one of a number of over-priced, flashy frozen yoghurt dispenseries populating Manhattan.

As you can see below, it's slick in pink and purple below. You go to the back wall, grab a cup, push a button and choose you flavours.



For those feeling fruity, there is a wide range of sweets, chocolates and fresh fruit to add to your frozen beverage.




Although, because I'm secretly a 4 year old boy masquerading in a 28 year olds body, I went for hundreds and thousands, and mini-MnM's. Mmm....