Why I love NYC part 27

So we've had a bit of a random night tonight. Let me run you through it blow by blow.


After some house cleaning we decided to head up for Friday night Ellos. Well that's pretty much what we do every Friday (Ellos not the cleaning). For the less knowledgable Ellos is our local burger joint and is a cross between McDonalds and your local fish and chip type burger. Of all the gin places in this town we always seem to end up there.


We both had a little sweet tooth going on after and went to stop at Maccas for a Sundae but I think we came across the only Maccas store in the entire US of A that did not sell Sundaes. It's almost as bad as the KFC on 14th st which does not sell the chips. We then ventured back home and busted a bottle of Veuve to celebrate a happy friday. Since polishing that off and watching a pretty average movie the sweet tooth came back and this time it had to be dealt with. 


It's at this point that I come to the punchline as to why I love NYC. It's 10pm at night and I want Cheesecake. I'm not talking frozen Sara Lee crap but proper calobusting ole New York Cheese Cake. Oh and did I mentioned I want it delivered. So a quick call to our local diner and I got two slices of delicious cheesecake delivered. 


Pop quiz. How many cities in the world can you order a couple of slices of Cheesecake at 10pm at night and get it delivered?

Taking Bids

Hours spent on this and I cannot even give it away! :-)

Turks and Lomo

As I sit here freezing my backside off thoughts of Turks come floating through my mind. Ahh bring on Jamaica in January.

View from our room

The hotel pool

Oh how I love the turquoise water

My Bond Girl

This is an unauthorized video of my gorgeous girlfriend down in Turks and Caicos. Don't tell her it's here and it will self destruct in 2 minutes.

Our Rather Large Christmas Tree

It's officially a monster. This thing is massive and I was convinced when we opened it we'd have a Griswold experience with a squirrel popping out of it. The thing weighs about 100 pounds but I think it's comes up pretty damn good. Thanks to Tracy again for a very good setup. I've put together a short video of a time lapse of the setup of it.

And now the finished product.....

Turks and Caicos

In an attempt to escape the ever decreasing temperatures of NYC, Tracy and I headed down to the Caribbean to a place called Turks and Caicos. I'd never heard of the place until I came over here but for all you geography nuts it's just below the Bahamas which is just below Florida.



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We'd booked this back in May and were quite excited to be getting away to some warm weather and a decent beach. We were not to be disappointed. 

Turks is an easy 3 hour flight from New York and we stayed at a pretty plush hotel called the Gansevoort which was located on Grace Bay. As soon as we walked in we were greeted by the pool and new we were going to be in for a good time.

I'd love to tell you more about the island but we didn't leave the hotel or beach in front of us for 5 days. It was simply sensational and by far the best beach we have been to so far. The sand was like talcum powder and the water a beautiful aqua blue. 

A typical day involved getting up and going and having breakfast by the beach. We'd then setup on some chairs on the beach and lounge around for a few hours. From there it was back to the pool and on the porch by 5pm for Chardy hour. 

We got back on Tuesday night to sub zero temperatures and pouring rain. It's inspired us to get a few more islands in before we leave this part of the world.

Dasha wanted to come away with us.

The lobby of the hotel

Afternoon pool time

Someone is enjoying the sun

The awful view from our room.

Grace Bay

Grace Bay

Grace Bay

Calm before the storm

This delicious meatfest from a neighboring hotel

Morning coffee and what a view

DashaKino

So here is my first Lomokino mini movie. For those of you who don't know what this is then a little explaining is in order. It's basically a camera which shoots old school movies on 35mm film. You twist a handle and it winds the film on and shoots around 144 frames on a 36 roll of film. This movie was of Dasha playing in Central Park.

Dasha Wannabe

Ok freaky episode number 26,000 on the weekend. I went to Washington Square Park to take Dasha to the dog run and low and behold there was a Dasha version 2.0. Her name was Zoe and they were almost identical. Zoe was six months old and a spitting image of the rat when he was a pup. It's not everyday you see a piebald dacca and I had to be careful I picked up the right one when I left.

Saxon and Parole

I don't normally get inspired to put up posts about the places I've eaten at. Maybe it's because I go out so much but for some reason I felt compelled to put one up for a place I went to on Friday night called Saxon and Parole (S&P). S&P is housed in the same building where Double Crown was located. It's infact owned and run by the same mob. Apparently contemperary Asian must not be quite in vogue and a refit was needed. 


Personally I really liked the food at Double Crown but anyway. Double Crown was famous for a secret door out the back which led to the bar next door and infamous as having the most popular toilets in NYC to get it on. Anyway this is about S&P so enough of the old.


After nearly 2 years I've learnt that to get in at any decent New York resteraunt you've gotta book way in advance so here I was nice and efficicent in booking this place almost a month before. Tracy, Louisa and I headed along and were seated in the upstairs section. I was a little nervous as the place was reviewed in Time Out this week and came out with 3/5 stars. It's definalty one of the more hip places in town at the moment but that's probably because it was new. We were also coming off the back of a fairly high end experience at Eleven Madison Park just two nights before so I was not sure what to expect.


We started with a random selection of Oysters, Ravioli, portobello mushroom mousse and miso glased bone marrow. My personal favorite was the bone marrow and I felt very Flintstone like when a dinosaur like bone came out full of the stuff. The mushroom mousse was also pretty good and went well on some bread.

The Starters

For mains we had short rib, filet mignon and I had a dirty hamburger. I managed to get them to put some egg and beetroot on the burger and it's the closest I've come to getting an Aussie burger in this town. All I needed was some pineapple and I would have been set.

Mains

The food had a real comfort factor without the bread crumbs. Tasty, yes. Interesting twists, yes. Mind blowingly original, hmmmm probably not but it got me writing a blog so something must have been good.

The race horses the place is named after.

The main bar

And While We're on the Topic of Time Lapses.....5Pointz

Last weekend Amanda and I went out to the Graffiti mecca, 5Pointz. Taking some inspiration from the new LomoKino I made a digi time lapse of the visit.

Williamsburg Shoes

So what is with the obsession of throwing shoes over power lines in Brooklyn?

Dasha The Model

I think I put up a post a couple of months ago about Dasha entering celebrity status and becoming a pretentious dog model. Anyway his portfolio has rapidly increased online and also completely randomly in the Gremancy Lomo store. I went in there to pick up a new camera I'd ordered and was looking around and my friend Amanda pointed out the fotoclip display was proudly displaying a photograph of Dasha. What is strange is that I never head into this store as I normally go to the West Village location. Crazy.

Halloween 2011

October has been and gone and this year's Halloween shenanigans was as crazy as ever. Abigdon Square was overtaken with pumpkins and there were all types of people wandering round the neighbourhood in interesting outfits. I cut a few laps with my ring flash and here were some of the results.

Time Lapse

A few years ago Nick showed me this awesome little application which created time lapse movies on your Macbook. The app is called Gawker and I cranked it up a few months ago to capture the hurricane which went through. The video I got ended up being 7 minutes long so I need to figure out how to shorten it before I upload it. Anyway I did take another one during summer which is much shorter and looks pretty cool. Stay tuned for the hurricane.

Dasha from the Inside

We'll you've seen so many photos of him from the outside I thought I'd put some up of him from the inside. 


He's been a little under the weather and so we took him to the vet this morning and it appears there is something lodged in his stomach :-(. We're hoping it will come out naturally over the next few days. Tracy took great delight in allocating the task of stool analysis to me. Joy.


Last year  pet owners spent on average about 600 bucks at the vet. I wish we were part of the average.

Central Park Cops a Hammering

It sounds like it made the news back in Oz but the storm we had on the weekend has caused a bit of a mess in the North East US. It's the fourth time since records were started that it's snowed in Oct in NYC. I went for a wander through Central Park on Sunday and it was thoroughly trashed. The problem was most of the trees have not lost their leaves and so the accumulation of 7cm's of snow on them caused chaos. There were fallen branches and whole trees everywhere. I looked worse then when the hurricane came through in August.


The word on the ground is that the famous fall colors are probably not going to happen to anywhere near the extent they normally do due to the weird weather we've been having this season. Shame.

One of the few trees to change color.