Sunday in the city

On Sunday we dressed slightly latin with the intention of dropping by the Puerto Rican parade later in the afternoon and headed to Chelsea looking for a restaurant that was recommended to us by an attendee of Raphael & Shea's Brooklyn rooftop party. All we could remember was it had one name, was near Cafeteria and was in Chelsea. NO LUCK! We ended up eating breakfast at GOOD in the West Village (which was good) and then combing the Chelsea flea market at 39th and 9th! It was just like the good old days! The flea market vendor in this picture said she has my same dress at home - I would have loved to see her in it!
Mia and I were THRILLED to return to the scene of so many crimes...our 22nd street apartment where we lived with Jaki Brown-Karman and so many homeless men she brought in off the street. We had endless fun living in the smallest room ever with a mattress on the floor, slatted swinging saloon doors, bible studies and faux meat. We were shocked to see that beneath our building, where ALL the city's hot dog carts used to be stored, was a cute restaurant called 50 West Cafe! After a stoop photo shoot we headed to Nolita (North of Little Italy) to browse the cutest hippest boutiques and check out Mia's old apartment (which now looked like a crack house)!

Stoop photo shoot

Mia & Sara - heading downtown to Nolita for some shopping
We ended up skipping the Puerto Rican parade with the ponies (I have no idea why since it would have been the funniest outing ever) and meeting Sara's friends Lisa and Rob for beers at Bull McCabe's on St. Mark's - we compared techniques on how we put our bras on, discussed Rob's shopping spree, admired his blue shirt, saw the pools of liquid on the bathroom floor, warned him of the ramifications of applying for that GAP credit card, discussed the best restaurants in town as Rob was for sure a "foodie", constantly repeated Sara's brilliant new and unfortunately unused line - "Funny you should ask...", wondered how the rough biker crowd got permission to BBQ hot dogs in the middle of the bar's deck, showed off our fancy tattoos and then abruptly said our goodbyes as we were late for our 2nd rooftop party - this one was at Reneau's. As we left the dimly lit pub, we collectively pooled our makeup and had an application session using beer advertisement mirrors. As you can imagine, we had been walking the dirty streets non stop since the morning and we looked HOT! Reneau is dating Sara's friend, Marni - he was a sweet Frenchman with an amazing panoramic view of the city. We had delicious hors d'oeuvres and wine and watched the sunset with our new pals.


Per our rooftop pal's suggestion we attempted a sneaky maneuver: There is a divey looking taco stand in Soho that has a hip looking person sitting outside an Employees Only door located inside near the restroom. People in the know go up to the door and ask for admittance - I guess most of the time the hipster guarding the secret spot looks at you like you are crazy and tells you you must be mistaken. We stood around the corner (me on some boxes) for a long time waiting for Sara's friend Liz and concocting our plan. Calm, cool and collected we walked in up to the hipster lady, said something vague and were all of a sudden going through the steel Employees Only door, walking down flights of stairs, through a tunnel, through the kitchen and into a really cool restaurant/ bar called La Esquina. We got in!!! The underground lair was packed so we just grabbed watermelon margaritas and pat each other on the backs at our crafty work! After this excitement we went for dinner at Cafe Habana (our ultimate favorite Cuban joint) - the wait was well over an hour but we had fun standing on the street taking in the scene and chatting.