Hanging With Greg In His Hood

Like a whirlwind, we were in and out of the city, managing to spend some quality time with our buddy Greg and attend Jeff Sacktig's surprise 4oth birthday party (the surprise I alluded to in a previous post: SURPRISE!!). So after a nightmarish passing thru the Hollland Tunnel we arrived at Greg's around 9:30 Friday night. We had never been to his place so he gave us the grand tour of his quaint one bedroom apartment in the Village. Minetta Lane, just a block or so from Washington Square Park. He took us out to dinner at the subtly delicious Ditch Plains on Bedford, where Fran had a cheeseburger & I had the salmon, and we shared a bottle of fine merlot. Afterwards we headed out to one of Greg's favorite piano bars, at which he is a regular, called Rita Mae's, where we continued having some wine and listened to some passioned performances by locals and the underexposed wait staff. A incredibly nice night in the underbelly of the city that we won't soon forget. Oddly enough we have not a single photo of the evening, very uncharacteristic of us, but it's almost fitting that the adventure will only live in our minds.

The next day we woke bright & early, around 10:30, grabbed some pizza at John's, arrived just before the lunch rush.


We walked thru Washington Square park, which is being renovated, which made Greg borderline giddy, and met the fattest squirrel in NYC.


We headed uptown some to Union Park where they've been having a Christmas fair for the past few weeks. Greg bought a new hat




& I met a new favorite artist, Jonathan Safir. His photography is just what I've been looking for.


After some deliciously warming and Christmas-themed drinks at Starbucks we headed cross town to the new Apple store in the meat packing district so Greg could pick up a gift for Jeff's party & we could drool over the new iPhones. On our way out I ran into the frontman of one of my favoritest bands, Battles, Tyondai Braxton. He was more than kind, receptive and even posed for a quick photo.


We hurried back towards Greg's place, but took the long route so we could check out some amazing houses on Bedford that I would totally buy if I had the extra 20 mil laying around.



We did some window shopping on Bleeker


and then stopped at Rocco's Pastry Shoppe because Greg was having a sugar fit, but we didn't mind having some hot chocolate & cannolis.




A nice but quick visit. Let's hope there'll be more, soon.