Good morning, sunshine

Oh hi, I didn't see you there. I guess we have a lot to catch up on...

Shuffle all songs

When the clock ticked over midnight on Saturday night, I realised I’d been here in New York for a month. Somehow in that time I had been too full of everything else – tacos, adventures, beer, music, sunshine, love, gelati, excitement, biking, culture – to write anything down or to listen to my ipod. On Saturday night, after a few drinks with friends old and new, I did both. This is what I scrawled joyfully on the train back to my boyfriend’s place.

I’ve been so loved up since arrival I had to walk the streets alone – the chapels oozing stained glass light, the LES scenesters hanging out of dive bar windows, the cigarettes stubbed in 4^th street gutters – to feel the hunger, the need to write. And this is why I came to this city. To race to unknown subway stops, giving tourists directions I’m 79% certain of. To sit next to a dude passionately air-drumming along to his ipod in a newsboy cap on the F train at one in the morning. To feel so far from home I’m somehow at home. When each day brings so much unexpectedness, the only suitable soundtrack is to ‘shuffle all songs’. The downtown streets of Manhattan are bleeding rainbow flags and there is so much love in the air – with the gay marriage bill passed last night and the rest of Pride weekend to play out... It was so lovely to see the streets erupt with trashy disco music and gorgeous men holding each other up in their elation down Christopher Street. “Now we can be just as miserable as you straight couples!”, rejoiced one couple. “Goin to the chapel and we’re, gonna get ma-a-arried,” sang another celebrating dyke duo. And, as is the nature of this ever-changing, ever-transient city, I felt like I’d contributed to this landmark leap forward somehow, just by being here.

It's time we Met

The antidote to Tuesday blues, and indeed a shamefully extended blog inspiration hiatus? A night of great art and fascinating insights to how it's curated. Brisbane's Gallery Of Modern Art tonight hosted a talk by Gary Tinterow, a curator with 25 years' experience at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Now the Met, if you haven't been there, is like heaven on earth. Perched in Central Park, with an impressive facade onto Fifth Avenue, it houses acres of amazing art and artefacts from throughout history. I would happily part with my left pinkie to spend a night locked in the Met. I'd walk around in a suit of armour (til it got too heavy, then I'd switch it out for something from the Costume Institute), play the old musical instruments, have a nap spooning a Rodin sculpture and basically just stare at my favourite paintings til I grew cross-eyed. Watching the sun rise over the Temple of Dendur would have to be pretty spectacular, too.

Tinterow's talk was a meandering stroll through the history of the museum, framed through the evolution of the collection he creates - modern and contemporary art - from 1870 to the present day. As well as being a delicious overview of the art of the past couple hundred years, this was a fascinating insight into how a great museum collection is acquired. And it was peppered with the kind of anecdotes only an experienced curator can collect.

Like the last words of H.O. Havemeyer. He and his second wife Louisine were filthy rich and avid collectors. (There's a fabulous article about her here from TIME Magazine in 1930) Louisine had a fortunate penchant for French art far advanced to what the Met was showing in the 1920s. Courbet, Manet, Degas and Renoir were among her favourites, and the collection at their amazing house on 66th Street (interiors all designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany, swoon) had a big impact on the tastes of well-to-do New Yorkers. They tried in vain to lead a friend of theirs, Bingham, into amassing his own collection, starting him off by letting him buy some of the works they coveted - like Degas' famous "The Dance Class". Bingham never did collect with the Havemeyers' enthusiasm, much to their chagrin, and on old Havemeyer's deathbed his last command was to "try to get Bingham's Degas".

When you see grand-sounding names plastered over a wing of a museum you don't tend to think much about these benefactors. How they came to amass such crazy wealth that they could acquire a breath-taking art collection and then leave it to a museum. How curators at that museum might have cultivated those benefactors, perhaps in a decades-long flirtation, a delicate seduction.

There was an eccentric Ms Milton de Groot, who brought with her from Holland an impressive collection. She always intended to leave it to the Met, but until she died she kept it in her modest apartment, where all the museum's curators at some point were forced to take tea.

A sadder story was that of Scofield Thayer, who I visualise as quite the young dandy in the early 1920s when he ran a literary magazine called The Dial, which published the likes of TS Eliot, Ezra Pound, and Thayer's pal from Harvard ee cummings. Thayer took off for Europe where he collected artworks to use as illustrations in the magazine. He suffered from what Tinterow described as "sexual anxieties" and ended up on the couch of none other than Dr Freud - who encouraged him to collect the erotic works of Klimt and Schiele. Thayer lost his mind and was institutionalised in the mid/late 1920s; his collection came to the Met, but only after his death in the 80s.

There were a few decades of lean years for bequests, until the Annenbergs donated their collection in the 90s. Publishing magnate Walter Annenberg had been Nixon's ambassador in London and to the Brits' delight had redecorated the embassy with his epic collection of French impressionists and post-impressionists. When the Annenbergs returned to the US they had a bunch of museums contest for the right to collection - Tinterow described it as being like a reality TV show competition. Naturally the Met won, and the Annenbergs even helped the museum acquire works above and beyond their collection. Including Van Gogh's "Wheat Field With Cypresses", likely his first painting after being allowed to leave the asylum (after the whole ear thing). Tinterow said when they unwrapped the painting at the Met it was so fresh they found traces of pollen on the surface.

Such is the work of the curators of these great museums - stitching together the grand collections of rich benefactors with smaller donations from individuals, working out the narrative of the overall collection, identifying the gaps and then making acquisitions to fill those gaps.

Making these acquisitions highlights the conflict curators face - pulled in one direction by advanced collectors wanted them to push the boundaries, pulled back by often conservative boards of trustees. Tinterow related how the museum purchased Jasper Johns' amazing "White Flag" for an even more amazing price in the tens of millions of dollars. Decades earlier the same painting had been on loan display, in the 1960s, and was offered to the museum for $15,000 but the trustees declined. "We're at the mercy", Tinterow put it, "of the vagaries of taste and the market".

As well as exhorbitant purchases there are other options for acquiring works. Sometimes a private collector will offer to purchase a piece in shares with the museum and they take turns hanging it - two years in my house, two years in your museum, etc. In recent years Tinterow says the museum has done a number of retrospective exhibitions of ageing but still living modern artists, which often end in acquisitions. "And when we can't acquire a work, we'll borrow it," Tinterow says, citing Damien Hirst's shark floating in formaldehyde, "The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living", on loan from the Connecticut billionaire who bought it from Charles Saatchi for $8million.

As Tinterow moved into the most recent acquisitions, the idea of participatory art became more common - works that come alive or mean something only when the audience interacts with them. The works currently on show at GOMA are an excellent illustration of this idea, and Tinterow says it's also a parable for the Met itself. Whether on the grand scale of donating a collection, or the simple act of visiting and marvelling: it is communities and people who love art who bring these institutions to life.

Big love, little love

You know what else rolled around again blindingly fast? Valentine's Day. I want to rail against it, but that just seems kinda lazy. (Which isn't to say I haven't whinged about Valentine's Day for most of my life).

I'm still really proud of the post I wrote for Valentine's Day last year. And I still think that the best antidote to the consumerist bullshit of this hackneyed Hallmark holiday is to think about the people and things, both grand and simple, that you love. Even if it's not a reciprocal relationship - like the way I feel right now about my bike Baby Blue parked here bathed in sunshine in my new room, like a work of art - just the act of loving can be energising, inspiring, and grounding all at once.

I feel so loved right now. Considering my current state could be generously termed "bohemian" - or more dramatically, "destitute" - it's purely through the kindness of my amazing family and friends that I'm now sitting at the biggest desk I've ever had, job-searching in between long swims and bike rides and yoga with my sister, and day-dreaming about getting back to New York.

And then that city's a whole other love affair in itself. It's frustrating that that big love feels so far away, and for so trivial a reason as money. But just knowing that it's there waiting, and how good it will feel to be back there, will be enough to make the days fly by. That, and all the little everyday love moments: laughs with old friends, tumbleturns, cooking in other peoples' kitchens, baby giggles, backyard cricket, swapping well-loved books, frangipani on the summer air, the crackle of vinyl, cat stretches, and coasting down hills on a baby blue bike with spokey dokes. Each day its own little love letter.

Hope you found lots to love this Valentine's Day - and every day.

The rainbow connection

Wanna know something embarrassing? For the longest time, I thought the Chrysler Building was the Empire State Building. Sure, the actual ESB is more imposing, but the Chrysler is so much prettier. I still don't understand all the fuss over the ESB, so I'm going to pay it a visit in the interest of further research. But last night, driving back to Brooklyn we copped an amazing view of it lit up in rainbow colours, and I have to admit it was pretty spectacular.

The building's website usually has details decoding what the ever-changing colour scheme stands for, but all it says about the rainbow effect is "private lighting". According to speculation, the rainbow could be a tribute to anything from Transgender Day of Rememberance to the Grateful Dead reunion shows happening at Madison Square Garden...

Going Dutch

As part of my Best Birthday Ever (TM) celebrations, I had a lovely time on the Tour & Taste ride which started at Rolling Orange bike store in Brooklyn's Cobble Hill. Best of all, I was lucky enough that Christine from Rolling Orange let me borrow one of her gorgeous Dutch-style bikes to ride for the day, the arrestingly magenta De Fietsfabriek OMA.

It was the first time I'd actually ridden one of these heavyweight bikes, designed to keep the rider sitting upright and also equipped to carry heavy loads on front and back racks. The front rack and basket are attached to the body frame rather than the handlebars and front wheel, so it took a little while to get used to not seeing the basket move when I steered around a corner. But in that mjestic saddle I suddenly understood how all those European riders stay so chic while cycling. The OMA was a dream to ride - posh and ponderous in the best way, prompting posture my mother would be proud of, so weighty and steady I felt really safe on the road. The Rolls Royce of bicycles.

I spent much of the tour seriously considering committing a grand theft velo... Only when we'd ridden all the way back to Brooklyn could I bring myself to ask Christine how much she cost. At $1500 the OMA is an investment, but I daresay you would not regret it. Unless you had to carry her up and down stairs... Personally though, if I were in a position to make a purchase from Rolling Orange, I really love the pared-back classic style of the "Old Dutch" step-through from Batavus.

The Rolling Orange call to arms, emblazoned on the store's wall, is reminiscent of the Cycle Chic manifesto:

the slow revolution
welcome to a different way.
a different way to bike.
a different way to move.
a different way to live.
ask yourself a simple question.
if you love life, why rush it?
fast has no time for charm.
no time for chance.
no time for wonder.
there are no details in fast.
slow is seeing, feeling, loving the life you move through.
fast is a schedule. slow is freedom.
fast fades. slow lasts.
fast rushes life. slow enjoys it.
it's simple, really.
if you love life, you deserve a different way.
a better way.
a slower way.

It's a beautiful store, sun-lit and laid out so that the gorgeous bikes appear almost like artworks in a gallery. Bikes hang from the walls, are suspended from the ceiling; even the accessories are cheeky and chic, from baskets and colourful panniers to these Yakkay helmet hats:

The bikes may be beautiful, but their design is functional and intelligent as well. The Dutch influence, where bikes are a part of everyday life, is particularly clear in the storage options - racks, baskets and trays for carrying groceries or even children or pets. Rolling Orange is well worth a visit if you're in the neighbourhood (269 Baltic St, Brooklyn). Join the Facebook group to keep up with the many wonderful events they're involved in too - coming up on November 20 the Dutch Days bike tour will incorporate New York's early Dutch history into a laidback Saturday ride...

Tour & taste

The Tour & Taste bikeride started in Cobble Hill at Rolling Orange. The gods of New York smiled on us with a gorgeous sunny Saturday, and we pedalled Brooklyn's well-appointed bike-paths and over the Brooklyn Bridge. We were a motley group - stylish Dutch bikers alongside beat-up mountain bikes and hybrids, young and old; one couple had even come from San Francisco.

Once the Brooklyn Bridge spat us out in Manhattan, we wove west through Chinatown to take the Westside Greenway bikepath up the western edge of the island. If you're looking for a scenic bike-trail in New York this is a great place to start - dedicated cycle path, lots of space and great views out to the Hudson and beyond. Then we were eastward bound once more, headed for the Union Square Farmers Market.

These markets are apparently some of the best in the world, and lots of New York's top chefs source their produce here. And it's not just fruit and veg - there are meats, poultry, game, honey, flowers, cheeses, pastries, breads, wines, seafood... anything delicious you can think of, and then a bunch of things you wouldn't believe exist. Cotton candy spun from maple syrup. Wild ginseng from upstate New York so rare they keep it in a locked box and sell it for $500 a pound.

We got a special tour from Vandaag chef Phillip Kirschen-Clark, who guided us through his favourite producers and the seasonal ingredients he would later be serving up for our three-course lunch. This is a bloke who clearly loves his job, and loves the challenge of interpreting produce into unconventional meals. He hammed up his banter with the various stall-holders, begging one to find him some reindeer meat. "The closest I can get is elk, but I want reindeer!" he enthused, perhaps already planning a macabre Christmas menu.

Did I mention it was a stunning day? God I love this city. The restaurant itself is on 2nd Ave in the Lower East Side. We parked out flotilla of bikes on the footpath outside and luxuriated in the sundrenched interior, designed with clean modern lines by architect Eric Mailaender.

Vandaag is Dutch for "today". The cuisine is an odd marriage of Dutch and Danish influences, both countries which share a similar climate to New York and therefore seasonal produce is in sync. They even had a bike as part of the decor! Loaded up with squash that would later become part of a weirdly delicious hot cider cocktail.

The restauranteur talked us through the menu as we nibbled on a range of breads, dips and sausage. We made our selections from the set menu - a kale salad studded with green strawberries, squash served both pickled and battered; gravlax, duck confit or dandelion smorrebrod for mains.

One of my favourite parts were these pickle pots, which included pickled pears and radishes as well as the standard gherkins. So delicious.

I got so caught up in the food and conversation I forgot to take photos of the starters and mains! But I did capture the amazing dessert; a wafer-thin waffle sandwich filled with a concoction of salted molasses and chickory. There are no words.

It was one of those languid, drawn-out lunches you relish for half the afternoon, but the food was light enough that the bike-ride back to Brooklyn wasn't impossible. I cannot deny, however, that a well-earned post-prandial disco nap was taken once the bikes were returned to Rolling Orange.

Seriously. Best birthday ever.

This is my church

These clear, crisp mornings, fall chilling into winter, the sky so blue it’s painful. Coffee steaming in hand. Fingers jammed in coat pockets. The light is strong and golden and strains through red and orange leaves like so much stained glass; trees reach to each other from opposite sides of the street and I don’t feel like such an atheist. Forget the Sistine Chapel. This is my cathedral. This is what I believe in.

A million little pieces

One of the (many) tiny, unexpected pleasures of New York has been checking out the various mosaic artworks in the city's subway stations. Some are as utilitarian as announcing the station name, but others shatter platform boredom with their cracked colours. Some have been freshly commissioned, others have been preserved from bygone eras. All can be found in a great online directory here. So many I want to go and see now!

These fish were an exciting discovery last night.

And Prince Street's tiny commuters scurrying along the walls were one of my first favourite discoveries. What a clever way to lighten up people's journeys!

"If Paris is France.. Coney Island is the world"

The full quote, pilfered from a faded mural on Coney Island's beachside boardwalk, is:

"If Paris is France, Coney Island, between June and September, is the world."

So said George Tilyou in 1886. Tilyou was a founding father of Coney Island's amusement district, setting up Steeplechase Park as a family attraction full of mechanical rides and sideshow excitements. This was the area's heyday, the turn of the century through to the 1920s, when the area became known as the "nickel empire" and seethed with Sunday crowds of hard-working immigrants on their one day off. It cost a nickel to get there on the subway, a nickel for a dog from Nathan's, a nickel for the rides.

Before Tilyou brought his vision to life the area was originally a resort for the upper class, then a new race track and boxing arenas brought in a broader crowd, and "associated gambling dens, dance halls, and brothels brought a hint of the illicit". All this history hangs heavy in the air at Coney Island; it's not hard to imagine those long-gone days.

Look familiar? Coney Island has a Luna Park too, used as a garish literary motif in Joseph Heller's Catch-22 follow-up, Closing Time. Turns out Heller grew up in Coney Island and his writing often returned to its landmarks of his childhood.

The telling part of Tilyou's analogy is its timeframe. When I visited the iconic south Brooklyn beach, it was very much an October Monday. The sun still shone and the Wonder Wheel still dissected the skyline, but the atmosphere was overwhelmingly one of melancholy, an abandoned funfair. The decrepit boardwalk creaks with every step, and wayward planks will trip you if you don't watch your feet as you stroll. Looking inland the skyline is composed of gritty brick housing projects behind the abandoned old rides. A string of retirement homes inhale the sea air off the promenade, so you're as likely to pass a wheelchair as a bicycle. Those enjoying Monday's noonday sun were generally of the older persuasion; let down your guard and you'll cop an eyeful of vast expanses of dimpled, undulating white flesh, or, if you're slightly luckier, a leathered mob of weathered regular sunbathers.

I passed many older couples out walking. One woman slowed as she approached me; I steeled for small talk and squinted in the glare, trying to catch her eye beneath a faded visor. But before she reached me she stopped short, spread her feet for steadiness, and leaned over from the hips as if peering through the boardwalk cracks for some lost treasure below. Then she held the bridge of her nose lightly and blew snot onto the ground.

An estimated million people per day visited Coney Island in the 1920s, but the area was ravaged by the Depression and spiralled into decline in the 40s when Luna Park caught fire and was closed. Since then Coney Island has struggled, castigated as an eyesore and constantly threatened with destruction by development proposals. But there have always been those who fought for the area's heritage, and in recent years projects like the Mermaid Parade and the opening of Lola Star's Dreamland Roller Rink in the magnificent old Childs building (now, sadly, shut down again, though you can watch a great video about it here) have rallied a dedicated community hoping for a Coney Island renaissance.

It's a historic little pocket of the world that steals people's hearts. To pinch another quote from that mural:

"All Coney Islanders have sand in their shoes. Once it gets in, it never gets out.

Coney Island may be down at heel but that's not to say it doesn't posess charm and beauty. The beach is no Coogee or Bondi, but you can still imagine it a crowded patchwork of beach towels and umbrellas on searing summer days; a many-sunburned-limbed creature imbibing beer and hotdogs and ice-cream from the parade of storefronts on the boardwalk. Sideshow games like the massive "SHOOT THE FREAK" sign kinda sum up the atmosphere - a jarring jaunt back to a bygone era, before political correctness and hyper-litigiousness. A time of hand-painted signs and coconut-scented suntan oil and strings of coloured light globes. Here's hoping Coney Island gets a second heyday soon.

Mermaid avenue

When researching Coney Island before my visit, there was one vague image that bubbled up from the vault of memory. I recalled a music video Supergrass did a few years ago, around the time of their Road To Rouen album, which featured archival and current footage of women dressed as mermaids and doing beautiful underwater dances.

Now, Coney Island does have an annual Mermaid Parade. Held at the height of summer, a sea of floats, vintage vehicles and costumed acolytes parade from Surf Avenue onto the Boardwalk. Each year there's a celebrity Queen Mermaid and King Neptune - this year Lou Reed was King Neptune!

But this is the video I was thinking of, for the song "Low C", and it's actually from a place in Florida called Weeki Wachee Springs. It's about all you can ask for from a music vid - almost more of a mini documentary, and it's a gorgeous complement to the song:



Amazing, right? Apparently Weeki Wachee spring is so deep no one's ever found the bottom. In the late 1940s an ex-Navy bloke called Newt Perry decided to set up a roadside attraction there off Highway 19, building an underwater theatre into the limestone and recruiting pretty girls to be mermaids, smiling and performing aquatic ballets, breathing oxygen sucked from hidden air hoses.

In those days, cars were few. When the girls heard a car coming, they ran to the road in their bathing suits to beckon drivers into the parking lot, just like sirens of ancient lore lured sailors to their sides. Then they jumped into the spring to perform.

Excuse me, I just need to check out flights to Florida....

Supergrass are one of those bands that never seemed to really get their due. They made some of the most memorable pop tunes of the nineties and naughties - grab a copy of their tenth birthday retrospective, Supergrass Is 10, and you'll be suprised just how many of their songs you know and love. Sure, they kicked off their career with two of the most quintessential songs of the Britpop explosion - "Caught By The Fuzz" and "Alright". But they went on to scale pop highs across a range of genres - glam, funk, fuzzy punk, blue-eyed soul, and more than a few nods to T-Rex and Slade. All illuminated by a sheer enthusiasm that's especially evident in the crowd-singalong joie de vivre of "Pumping on Your Stereo":

Life is a cigarette / You smoke til the end

The split-personality swoon and stomp of "Moving" is probably my favourite, though there's a magnetic melancholy about their 2005 Beatlesesque reinvention on Road To Rouen. There's a world-weariness permeating that album that probably isn't unconnected to the band's personal issues at the time. They released one more album, broke with their label EMI and were supposedly working on a seventh record called Release The Drones when they announced they were calling it a day in April this year. RIP, Supergrass. I'll never forget seeing them play Brisbane's Arena in 2004, one of the best gigs I've ever seen, complete with an encore cover of Neil Young's "The Loner".

The life aquatic

On a whim, decided on a Monday jaunt to Coney Island. The New York Aquarium has been there on the boardwalk since the 1950s but it's all pretty modern, with outdoor enclosures for seals, penguins, otters and walrus as well as all the usual fish, sharks, rays, etc.

There's something otherworldly about aquariums. All these winding dark passages, glowing eerily with blue light from the tanks - these walls of thick glass like windows onto another planet. Jellyfish that seem to glow fluorescently in the dark, anemones like alien life forms.

While the past few days' explorations have been soundtracked by folk music, there's something about aquariums - the artificial light, the jarring strangeness - that calls for electronic music, and the Chemical Brothers' Further worked a treat. "Another World", indeed. One of my favourite memories of San Francisco was these parties they'd have once a month at the natural history museum (which included a planetarium and aquarium), when they'd keep it open late at night, serve cocktails and have DJs. It was nuts.


Here in New York though it was very much a Monday afternoon, and I felt like Gulliver among the swarms of kids on school excursions. I think my favourite part was the walrus feature. They have such funny faces, like whiskery fat old men, and seem to leer at you cheesily. Plus they're absolutely enormous, and yet they flip and slide through the water effortlessly. This one was quite the showman, speeding toward us from the far side of the tank and then somersaulting right down the glass, so the kids could stare into his eyes, squealing all the while...

Mystery rambler

Right next door to the Brooklyn Museum is the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Odd as it seems to have to pay to get in (hey, capitalism!), it's well worth a visit. The gardens are huge and varied, including fountains and lily pools...

... a conservatory that houses palms, aquatic plants, and a BONSAI MUSEUM where some of the teeny trees are nearly a century old...

... plus Japanese style gardens, a herb garden, a veggie patch for local kids to get their hands dirty, a grove of magnolias, and much more. When you first enter from the Eastern Parkway you're met by the Osborne Garden - a beautiful Italian-style lawn edged with wisteria-draped pergolas - which today was being gussied up for a Sunday evening wedding.

The park has a bit of an interesting history which you can read about here, the space was an ash-dump in the 1800s. Things are happening in the gardens all year round, like the "Ghouls and Gourds" festival planned for Halloween in a few weeks. My all-time favourite flowers are peonies, so fingers crossed I'll still be here in May when the collection of tree-peonies donated from Japan are in full bloom.

Another part that must be amazing in full bloom is the Cherry Walk, with stretching rows of different varieties of cherry trees which apparently put on the best cherry blossom display outside of Japan. Next to that, at least the massive collection of roses were out in all their glory.

Then there's this strange sight - a public artwork by Patrick Dougherty. Called "Natural History", it will stand in the gardens for 12 months until August 2011. Dougherty constructed these odd little huts - they're big enough to stand inside and peer out of - from reclaimed non-native tree branches, with the help of volunteers.

It's apparently all about sustainability and nature and the feelings he felt when he spent time in the gardens. But you know what they remind me of? Those crazy woolly monsters in Where The Wild Things Are. I like the quote from Dougherty where he said he wanted the finished work to resemble "lairs; a place for feral children and wayward adults."

First days in BK

So after the thrilling chaos of East Village, on Friday I moved into a sublet in Brooklyn's Williamsburg for the next three weeks. My sweet new roommate is some kind of musical savant - when I first met her and she said she was learning to play the accordion, I was a little concerned. But the reality of hearing her practice in the next room, accompanied on saw (!) by her friend who's also a painter and web-designer (and great cook), has been that life suddenly feels like a slightly more ghetto version of Amelie. Surrounded by such creative people, it feels like a luxury to stay home and write on a Saturday night rather than brave the bars of the city.

Fairy lights are strung around my open window, the sounds of life and traffic filtering up from Graham Avenue three floors below. The subway that connects us here so easily to Manhattan, the L train, is shut down for maintenance all weekend, so that's been a good incentive to spend more time exploring this new hood.


This morning brought an expedition to the farmers market at McCarren Park, about ten minutes' walk away, after a great coffee from hipster hive Variety. It's weird, great espresso is so taken for granted in Australia that it's kinda funny to see people go ape for it here. Anyway, it's sunbright summery this weekend and the market was even better than expected, bountiful with seasonal produce from the area - apples, sugary plums, bright radishes, jars of honey and bouquets of flowers. I heaved home some huge bunches of beets and monster carrots, which I can't wait to roast, along with organic yoghurt, coriander (we call it cilantro here, posh eh?) and a generous handful of my new discovery, concord grapes. They're round and blue-black like muscats but soft and syrupy sweet inside.

In what can only be a great omen for my new neighbourhood, I actually bumped into someone I know (well, who I've met once) at the market, and later we met up for french toast and bloody marys at Harefield Road, which I suspect could become my local. After that we had coffee and delicious delicacies from Fortunato Brothers, a classic Italian-style pasticceria that serves amazing cannoli, a rainbow of gelato flavours, and is home to a lazy fat cat called Rocky.

Williamsburg is this crazy mix of old Italians and young creatives. A shop over the road which I thought sold funeral ornaments also sells brick-oven-baked bread. The community is reportedly still recovering from the death of an old woman who would get up at 3am every day to make fresh mozzarella and sell it from her doorway. The streets aren't as green as the Village but you just know most the homes have gardens hidden out back. Brick facades laced with fire escapes, bikes everywhere. Expect more details - particularly on food and cocktails! - but I reckon I'm on a winner here.

The high life

It's hard enough to find a room of one's own in New York (as my battles with Craigslist will attest), but the holy grail of real estate here, a privilege rarer than hens' teeth, is a backyard. One potential house-sit in East Village boasted such a rarity, but having to share a bed with two dogs and a cat for a month, and pay $1000 for the privilege, was a trade-off I wasn't prepared to make.

So the flip side of the lack of private gardens, is the abundance of public green spaces. From the massive oasis of Central Park, to tiny pockets hidden on side streets and reclaimed rooftops. Community gardens and churchyards, playgrounds seething with kids and dog parks where the air is rent with shrill barks and steamy with the aroma of poo... Wherever there is space, there's an explosion of greenery.

Case in point - the High Line. The west side of Manhattan was historically a big industrial area, and when trains at street level proved dangerous (10th Ave became known as "Death Avenue"), an elevated train line was erected in the 1930s. Two decades later, the rise of interstate trucking left the line underused, and after a final train pulled "three cartloads of frozen turkeys" in 1980 (seriously, this historical timeline is kinda hilarious) the tracks were demolished. The area was reclaimed as public space and planning for a park began.

The first section of park was opened in mid 2009, with a further section due for completion next year. From Gansvoort Street up to 20th the Highline unfurls above the Meatpacking District and Chelsea Piers. The design is quite witty, incorporating elements of its history - flowers sprout around old tracks, wooden recliner chairs can be rolled along the tracks.

As well as gardens there are bits of artwork scattered throughout, sculptures and performance installations like "A Bell For Every Minute". Artist Steven Vitiello recorded different bells around New York, and the sound installation is synced to a clock decoding whether the bell you just heard denotes that class finished, you're next to be served at the deli or someone just got married.


Back on the cobblestoned ground level there's some fantastic street art throughout the Meatpacking district, which is a curious mix of high end restaurants, designer boutiques, and the eponymous wholesale butchers.