just a few pictures from my first days in New York. Lots of excellent food and even better graffiti.
I know I've gotten a lot older since the last time I was living in New York. You know how I know? Let me tell you: everyone around me is twenty ("why are we at THIS bar?"), they're totally too loud ("can't we go to a more civilized bar?"), they're wearing all the stupid neon stuff I did when I was twelve (the tattoo on her leg totes clashed with the green on her skirt, can we go to the next bar?") and there are bike lanes everywhere ("please don't hit me when I walk right out in front of you without looking when I'm leaving the bar"). When did this happen? When did I actually pay good money for CROCS and am I in the early stages of dementia since when I bought this footwear abomination I was stupid enough to get a pedicure first? My feet are already totally ruined from trying the crocs on and from walking about 100 miles in flip flops over the last few days while I gathered up my new gear (a gorgeous santoku knife, among other things) for my stage. I'm kind of a moron. As Arash commented on one of my Facebook status updates, "what kind of person gets a pedicure before the do slave labor in a kitchen?" Me, that's who. And I don't even get to enjoy it for ten minutes before I screw it up.
But today is special because today is day one of my stage at an amazing restaurant in the West Village. The Magical Kim Merlin invited me to breakfast as a sendoff into this adventure this morning, and, true to her awesome form, we wound up at Balthazar, which in my 32 years of coming to and living in New York, I had never been to. It was decadent, to say the very least. I loved both the eggs en cocotte (the ten minutes of bake time is totally worth it) and the eggs benedict and I'm now the proud owner of a gigantic basket of pastries that I carried eighteen blocks home in the rain, clutched desperately to my chest so they wouldn't get soggy.
There was even a few rolls of thunder as I was trudging up 1st Avenue, and instead of feeling angry about getting caught in the deluge, I was thrilled. It's been months and months of sunshine back in LA and this was the perfect cleansing. I wished my parched bamboo back home could have had such a treat.
I'm typing to you large and in charge from business class on my flight to JFK. Yes, it would seem that my August Humble-Pie-a-polooza is off to a pretty great beginning. I mean there's pomegranate hand soap in the lavatory, for shizsakes. That alone was worth waking up at 4.30am and having the Supershuttle driver text while he drove the entire expanse to LAX with the A/C off. Though it was kind of like a little eastern european adventure all its own, with his smoking outside the van, crappy attitude and the general pre-dawn steam bath ambiance.
If I had thought, even for a second, that the slightest hint of a possibility of an upgrade existed for me, I may have passed on the $15 La Brea Bakery panini I bought right before I got to the gate. But as it is, I've had two fat breakfasts and a bloody mary (two turntables and a microphone!) before 10am and there's wifi and a footrest and a tablecloth and I must look like the biggest rube ever to fly taking pictures and grinning ear-to-ear like I just won the flipping lottery. It's like I've never even seen a plane before. It's no surprise that the guy next to me gave me the side eye an hour ago and is pretending not to speak English.
I was sitting in my coach seat when the flight attendant came to my seat, and, addressing me using the very proper sounding "Ms. McClure" (is my stepmother in the row behind me?), told me that I had been given a seat up front. It must be a good omen for what I'm sure is going to be an anxious few weeks for me, right? But here's the thing, I can't help but remember the other times I've been unexpectedly upgraded on my out-bound flights and how those trips kind of blew up in my face.
