A fashion-buyer/photographer/long-lost-friend and I caught up over brunch on Saturday afternoon in the East Village. (Off-topic: I wish someone could figure out how to export the concept of the all-day breakfast.)

I was lucky enough to be with someone who knew everyone in the neighborhood. Through him, I:

• was introduced to the designs of "the next Marc Jacobs"
• met a wonderful pair of drag queens who also curate a toy collectors' store that is a long-standing neighborhood institution (since 1991!)
• discovered designer-label deals at a consignment store
• became part of digital art, and
• sipped domestic sparkling wine (from New Mexico) at a hipster bar.

All in a weekend's work for an East Village habitue. I wanted to wait and publish this post until I got the photo of us goofing around in the gallery.  

Tree

Wallflower

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New Museum, Lower East Side
A random walk around the Lower East Side started with a visit to the New Museum, which curates experimental art amongst restaurant equipment shops. There were many Huh? moments worthy of contemporary art, even one from the exhibit.

[title of show] is about two nobodies from New York who dream of making it big with a Broadway musical. The musical is about the musical. Geeks will get it when I say it's a meta-show.

The events in the play actually happened, so the play has evolved since it first got into the New York Musical Festival and then staged off-Broadway. Part of the fun is identifying pop culture references, spanning 80s sitcoms (Empty Nest, anyone?) and dream sequence where they fly above Manhattan and yell "Auf Weidersehen!" to Tim Gunn. Reviews here, here and here. You'll get it once you watch the opening scene:  

I love a good reality show, so I'm rooting for these guys. Part of the dream is to guest on Ellen. Rumors have it this may happen. Make it work, boys. Die, vampire, die! Get more reality show goodness with the [title of show] show on YouTube. 

Revellers stumbling up and down Houston would see the white powder floating towards the sidewalk, pause in the factory's lit doorway, then start arguing about what kind of bread was being made. I, on the other hand, after a mellow bottle of Loire Valley cabernet franc from The Bourgeois Pig, was just sturdy enough to take this photo and read the sign on the boxes: fortune cookies from the Good Taste Corporation.

All those scenes in SATC where the girls walk around Manhattan in fabulous Jimmy Choos? Not possible. Not if it involves dipping an open-toed shoe in Times Square.  Not if your tour guide is a New Yorker whose concept of "slow down" is waiting in the street for the lights to change. And not if one likes to pretend they're from Manhattan by ignoring the lights whenever possible.

The Mothership	Home of the Vodka Pizza
Subway	30 Rock!

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The cab dropped me off at John and Gold at 12noon. By 10pm, I had:

• made friends with a doorman
• seen The Pit
• scarfed down two slices of vodka pizza
• walked (more briskly than I'm used to) through Downtown, Midtown and back
• paid homage at the Apple Store mothership
• gotten kicked out of a bar for not having ID
• been let back into said bar by the head bartender (thanks to my host, apparently a man about town with a, erm, memorable face), and
• tasted a cocktail that is the drink to beat in our upcoming New York Cocktail Experiment.

This trip pretty much planned itself. A few minutes sending requests to New Yorker friends yielded pages of very personal advice, usually prefaced with, "I'm going to show you my New York." How can one not be excited about visiting a city that everyone unabashedly appropriates as their own? The result is, I haven't cracked open a guide book yet. I have put a copy of the Time Out New York Shortlist in my carry-on, but that's more for in-flight entertainment and a convenient form factor to reference addresses. I can truly say that this is the first trip I've planned completely on friends' advice, optimally timed Facebook status updates, and the No Reservations New York episode.