A weekend in NYC

Last week was too stressful - although by Friday afternoon I had put together the pieces of the puzzle and it all makes sense (I'd tell you more about it, potentially I've stumbled upon a really cool little "cellular circuit", but I'd rather publish it first. Mother Nature has so many neat tricks up it's sleeve.) To relieve that stress, we took off on the Chinatown bus (actually we took the "Boston Deluxe" which travels between the Prudential and 86th street on the Upper East Side.

Highlights of this trip:

- Santa Con (i.e. a thousand drunk Santas running around central park). One of the best props was a shopping cart that was transformed into an S&M reindeer (see pick below) that dispensed candies to anyone willing to reach up it's ass and grab them. Pic from Claudi's blog.

- Spending Saturday night in the Lower East Side. This is probably my favorite neighborhood. I always feel as if it lies on the metaphysical edge of civilization. We spent most of it at Tonic - a great space for blow-your-brains-out music. We saw Amir ziV's DROID (a fusion-electro-jazz outfit, think Bitches Brew + techno) followed by Costanza (Italian solo artist ... her music is close enough to Trip-hop - think of the voice of Mazzy Star + Tricky). Sadly, the old Lower East Side with its coat outlets, small shops, seedy bars, great restaurants and that underground feel is disappearing. In fact, a good section of Orchard street was recently torn down waiting to be replaced with brand new apartment complexes. That's NYC for you, always cannibalizing itself.

- Lunch at the Eatery - a great unexpected find in Hell's kitchen, they had an excellent cauliflower curry soup.

- Strolling down the newly renovated Hudson shoreline. The greatest part is that much of the twisted metallic relics of the old piers are still there - a beautiful site.

Oh well, back to the bench ...