A breakfast of champions

Stuff your bacon sandwiches. When truly hungover, the hamburger is king. 

Films on the Green Festival

Films on the Green Festival shows movies every Friday night outdoors in the village. I wandered into this one without really knowing what was going on. As it was in French it took me a while to work out what the hell was going on. This is a damned good way to spend a lazy friday evening before meeting people for drinks.

Chelsea Market sign

Love this sign

Favourite sitting man of the week

You've had a hard day picking up rubbish, hauling a giant wheely bin around with you, god damn it, you deserve a break. Your legs are killing you and you need to sit down, but where to sit?

The chalk or the moustache

I spent a while looking at this chalk drawing on a sidewalk. I still can't figure out whether someone saw a fake moustache on the pavement and drew a face around it. Or whether some wag stuck a fake moustache onto a chalk drawing.

The figure appears to be female, so the moustache seems like a later addition, but who knows, maybe the mouth was drawn on after the moustache. I really shouldn't let this stuff bother me.

Hudson Hotel

I recently met a friend on the rooftop bar of the Hudson Hotel in midtown Manhattan. This is a cramped and overpriced bar that totally gets away with it because the views are fucking spectacular.

Question of the day. In this photo am I looking uptown or downtown?

Smarten up

One of the biggest differences between working in the UK and the US is how smart you need to be when you see clients. On the left, you see me as I'd like to be dressed. The other pictures are me wearing my only two ties. This is getting a little embarrassing, I need to buy more ties. I have clothing I normally only ever dig out for wedding and funerals, which is now my meeting attire. 

I don't know why I look so suspicious on the right. I don't really like having my photo taken so maybe I was trying to surprise myself.

Little Lebowski

Down in Greenwich Village resides Little Lebowski. If you need a rug that really ties the room together, the latest Autobahn album or a toe, this is the place to be.

His fathers eyes

I found this van, trawling for business near Atlantic station both disturbing and depressing.

Although it does amusingly look like they are kidnapping giant babies.

I can't decide whether this tagline is genius or hideous. 

Cat sandwich

As you all know, the sandwich may have been christened in England (I refuse to say invented, the chances that no one placed their lunch between two slices of bread before the Earl of Sandwich is rather unlikely to say the least), but it's spiritual home has to be New York. As those of you who know me (i.e. all of you) will know, I'm slightly obsessed by sandwiches. I thank my dad for that one. As such, this Englishman in New York is as happy as a pig in shit when it comes to lunchtime.

The local deli near work (a Sunac if you're interested) has a full gamut of breads and fillings, hot and cold. After six months of experimentation I believe I've perfected my order.

I give you: The CAT

The ingredients in order of importance:

1 x grilled chicken breast (still hot)
1/4 Avocado
1/2 Tomato
Large soft white roll
A generous about of mayonnaise
A small squirt of hot sauce
Lettuce (I'm not fooling anyone with this pretence to healthy eating)

Why the cat? Like the BLT, this is Chicken, Avocado and Tomato.

The only thing that would improve this is bacon, because, well, bacon improves everything. I have to have some limits though. So please, my readers, go forth, order your cat sandwiches.
Tell them James sent you. This will confuse them.

For more tasty sandwich facts, pop on over to:

http://www.foodtimeline.org/foodsandwiches.html

Greenwood Cemetery

According to my father, back in the day, Greenwood Cemetery was quite the tourist destination. People would come from miles around to wander through its perfectly sculpted meadows and gander at it's vast array of over the top gravestones and tombs. Well, that day was probably before video games, tv, electricity, etc, because when I went it was as silent as a... well, a tomb, I guess...

It's in Brooklyn, just below Prospect Park...


View Larger Map

As the reviews testify (and seriously, who is posting reviews of a graveyard?!) It is beautiful though, rolling hills and great views over Manhattan. Even the entrance gate is spectacular, if rather foreboding.

I found a rosary! No, really, I found it, I didn't steal it. It was on the road. I thought it might be good luck to keep it. Hmm... come to think of it, I can't remember where I put it.
Ahh fuck, I lost a rosary.

Let's play guess the creature. I'm going for cat. Very Egyptian. Could be a dog though. Whatever it is, it's clearly in need of a good meal. And a head.

I went on the day the Rapture was meant to be taking place (do you capitalise rapture? I guess it's an event, like Christmas or Champions League Final Day, so you must do), which could have been a serious mistake if the Rapture had taken the form of a zombie uprising.

However, I did see this sign of the way home that made me chuckle.

This is a hell of a good way to sell Cheeseburgers (hey, if I can capitalise Rapture, I sure as hell can capitalise Cheeseburgers).

Union Square bands

Union Square, my regular work stop, is a music mecca (that's the location, not the robot). The bands who play in the main underground area are by and large terrible. As were these guys. But good luck to them I guess, after all:

If you can make it there. 
You can make it anywhere. 
It's up to you, 
New York, New York 

Lego Castles

This is a very late post, but I attended a strange lego festival a few weeks ago. It was just outside of New York in a small town with the lovely name of Tarrytown. Shown on the map below.


View Larger Map

(don't you just love google maps?)

It was set in a castle that is such a good resemblance to a lego castle, a committed user of Danish brickware once created a lego version and presented it to the castle.

To commemorate the building of such a house a yearly lego festival was initiated.

Above is the real one, not the lego one.

It was mainly full of kids creations, but there were a few interesting bits and pieces in there. In particular I liked the portraits made from a version of Lego pointillism.

Strange place, quite a long way away, fairly expensive to get to (train and taxi) and get back from, but certainly an interesting New York experience. More photos below:

UK again

Recently I went back home to the UK for a week. It isn't really a new york thing so I'm not going to create a whole bunch of posts about it. I've decided to keep this blog purely about New York so I've taken down this post for now. I'll have some new New York posts here soon instead

No guns

You'd imagine that a no handguns sign would be superfluous in a bank. You'd imagine wrong.

Jesus walks

Would you trust the Jesus with your dog? If so, you have his contact details below.

Hot tamales

One more food we don't get in the UK. The Tamale.

Tamales are a mixture of meat and rice, steamed inside a corn husk. When did you last see any corn husks in Tescos? 

They're not bad, and as they're steamed you can fool yourself into thinking they're healthy. Or at least you can try.

Pulled pork tamale below

No Loitering

I'd like to think that some secret society has made it their aim to have someone loitering under this sign 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, on an hourly rotation.

Worst ad I've yet to see

Would you trust these guys?

I hope that strapline isn't the awful innuendo I think it is

Springtime for New Yorkers

Williams-Sonoma Eggs

Williams-Sonoma is a high end cooking equipment store in Manhattan. Actually, there are a bunch of them but I've been to one branch.

What's cool about them is that they happen to put on free cooking classes on certain days. Lets face it, NY is not big on free stuff, so I decided to take them up on the offer.

The next one was an eggs class (Eggs: Savoury and Sweet), which sounded pretty good in principle.

The problem was that while the guy taking the course was charming and a bit like an old(er) Woody Allen, he was trying to sell us their products at such a rate that it seriously got in the way of the recipes. Do you really need a jar of dried lemon rind? What's wrong with the fresh stuff anyway?

Brooklyn poster

 Nice typographic map of Brooklyn I saw recently

I'm up in the top left corner where it gets all squishy and tight. To be honest, this map makes me want to explore a lot more. Other than Coney Island, I've yet to go on an excursion to the south of my borough.

Rat Bastard!

The builders unions of NY city don't take kindly to anyone operating without going through them. In fact they inflate giant rats where ever a non-union construction job is taking place. Like this fellow:

Asbestos Kills

Spotted on the street by a building site.

Hollywood Smiles

I thought it would be practical to find a dentist whilst I'm stateside. I went for the first interesting one I could find. In retrospect this may have been a mistake.

Somehow I think I ended up at VIP Smiles, which turned out to be a surreal place, aimed mainly at black celebrities. The walls were covered in signed headshots and you could watch your choice of films while having your teeth worked on. Not sure I'm going back, it was more of a freaky experience than someone I'd trust with my knashers.

Not sure who these people are

Ahh... Common, I recognise him!

The big book of the DVDs you can watch while having your fillings done

Her card. I think this was first sign when I walked in that this was a bad idea and not really the place for me. She has sparky gloss over her heavily retouched photo.

For the record she looked nothing like this, I'm guessing that photo was at least 10 years old.

Breuckelen Gin

While in the States, embrace the local produce.

The Garden State of New Jersey is so called for a very good reason. Come tomato season the place is awash with the most bountiful of fruits.

While I'm not sure what this has to do with the Breuckelen Distillery, their local Gin (based on the original Dutch name for Brooklyn) makes some cracking gin.

Nice bottle too, although the wax cap was unnecessarily difficult to remove with the dental floss they'd shoved in there.

Shameless copy #04

Culinary worlds collide. I sincerely hope he gets his own pudding loving sidekick. I'm not sure that Janet Street Porter will quite fit the bill this time Gordon.

Am I the only person who hopes the pie is being thrown at his head? If only to wipe that smug smile off his face.

Most of you won't care about this, but the typography in the top right corner is a car crash. The line is shit too. Moan over. My next post will be happier :)

Land Rover photoshoot

Ever wondered how they make cars look so shiny and cool in magazines?

Hanging a giant glowing moon over the car doesn't hurt. It bounced up and down over the car while the photographer blazed away. 

As this was in Time's Square and open to the public car was surrounded by (very) small signs pointing out that anyone who wanders into the shot gives up all rights to the use of their image in the advert.

Big Gay Ice cream Truck

The only thing better than taking a photo of the awesomely named Big Gay Ice cream Truck, is taking a photo of someone else taking a photo of their ice cream in front of the awesomely named Big Gay Ice cream Truck.

Street Plans

I've been trying to think of some witty comment to go with this image, around planning a war,  but nothing comes to mind. Can anyone help me?

I'll probably use this photo for future presentations about New York. It couldn't really be anywhere else.