I like free stuff, whether it be samples, tastings, or screenings. Of course art exhibits are included as well, and I visited two yesterday.

The first, the Light and Speed Exhibit at the 460 Degrees Gallery on the corner of 40th and 5th (you know, where that Pier 1 used to be), I stumbled upon by chance on my way to my real destination.
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I’ll follow Dhaval into the bathroom and just mention that besides the fabulous dinner and lemon-lime mojito that I had at Peep, 177 Prince St, in SoHo, I also enjoyed the bathroom very much. It’s up there in my favorite bathrooms of all time.

It was like being a perverted Roman emperor.

Me and my two friends were sitting right outside the bathroom and were being complete asses, making faces at the mirrored wall after people went in and pretending to take photos. I blame the mojito.

But then I was imagining the possible future death of civilization and how unlikely it is that in my lifetime I will remain so lucky as to live in such luxury as I do, and in the horrible post-apocalyptic future where we all have to dress in rags and eat rats and live underground to avoid the bionic alien invaders, I’ll look back at this moment and sigh with gratitude that I savored this particular moment in a warm restaurant echoing with reflections, music, laughter, friendship, as I devoured fancy tom yum and spring rolls with plum sauce and giggled at the people in the bathroom. My friend “qp” remarked the best, or worst, part about the bathroom was realizing that behind you, there was another mirror, and wondering who was looking through its one-way glass.

In the last few days I’ve been poeting out. I went to Poets House, and Butler Library at Columbia, and a zillion bookstores, and found poetry in bathrooms and books laid out on the sidewalk; to Labyrinth Books for a reading from Literature from the Axis of Evil by Words Without Borders; and tonight I went to the Bowery Poetry Club for Urban Erotika, a monthly reading MCed by Mo Beasley.

My favorite performers tonight were Purple Haze and Stef, improvising during the “seduction” phase of the Urban Erotika Four Movements. Then the Universes, who you can catch tomorrow at Henry Street Settlement. (There will be an open mic and food for a late brunch.) And last but not least my 3rd favorite was in the “Raw” movement of the evening – Cake Cash. Her Raw was amazing, witty, and dirty-hot. Somehow, I can’t find her myspace, but I know she’s got one because Mo mentioned it.

It was a fabulous poetic pilgrimage for me. Now if I can get to the Nuyorican Cafe in the next few days, life will be great…

I note that poetry is expensive in New York. 7 bucks for Poetry House. Labyrinth was free, luckily. And the Bowery Poetry Club quite expensive at $20! Yikes.

As you can see from the photo, even in the bathroom at the BPC, I found poetry – this one is by Pedro Pietri.

I read this article about Chef Gordon Ramsay’s new restaurant and how the loo in the place was comparable in style to the kitchen. Apparently the dude who designed it, David Collins, is known for his nice bathrooms.

If you’ve seen any of my work, which most of you have not, I have a slight obsession with toilets in my films. I find them to be relaxing places where people can be themselves. I love shooting inside bathrooms too, they’re just so dynamic and people become completely free (at least I think so) inside of them.

But I started thinking of the best bathrooms I’ve been to in the city. By far the best bathroom I have been to was at the Plaza hotel. But then there’s Pukk on the L.E.S. which also has a nice bathroom.
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- The #1 subway line is pretty and cute with art on some theme in every station and mosaic tile borders near the ceilings. Enjoy!

- The F line is skanky. In fact, the 57th St. F stop is the roachiest, moldiest, most pee-smelling place ever.

- There is a Duane Reade pharmacy every 5 seconds in any direction. In fact if you put together all the Duane Reade pharmacies in New York City with all the Starbucks in San Francisco then you would have a mediocrely caffeinated drugstore the size of a small nation. I am trying to imagine Mr. Duane Reade and failing. He turns out in my imagination like a hideous mixture of the Coca-Cola Santa Claus in a pharmacist outfit, Doc Holliday, and a Horatio Alger story hero, a hero with a pharmacy with a good heart who then somehow accidentally became a franchise tycoon, perhaps after his death. I’m afraid to look up the real person for fear of being disappointed.

- There is construction going on everywhere, at all times of night or day.

- New York people seem aloof at first. They warm up after a while and then seem like human beings.

- The New York people who aren’t aloof at first are either crazy or from out of town.

- If you are lost and ask directions, the other person will very likely also be lost, because they’re talking to you on the street and so are not aloof, and so they are either crazy or from out of town; thus, lost.

Noah’s post a few days ago about traveling and the inadequacies of the terminals at JFK got me thinking. I travel pretty much every week for work, so I have some pretty strong opinions about traveling into and out of NYC and what the best/fastest/least douchey options are. With Thanksgiving coming up later this week, the usual hecticness involved at NYC airports is sure to increase, so I figured I’d post some tips to make travel a little smoother for those of us who are insane enough to travel the week before Thanksgiving (or, in my case, the night before Thanksgiving).

1. Get there early. I know, I know, everyone says this. But if you are traveling at peak times (morning or evening), especially on a holiday weekend when the terminals will be full of infrequent travelers who are not used to all the security measures, security will take a while. So plan to be there 2 hours before your flight departs, 3 if you’re traveling internationally.

2. Check in online. If you have an electronic ticket with most airlines, you can check in online if you know your record locator number or if you bought the tickets under your frequent flyer account. It will save you a bunch of time at the airport because you won’t have to stand in the long check-in lines. If you have a bag to check, you can check it outside with the skycaps at most airlines, which will save you some time, but be aware that many airlines are charging a fee for this service now (usually $2). Some airlines, like JetBlue at JFK, have special lines at the check-in counter to check bags for people who checked in online or at the electronic check-in kiosks, too.
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I don’t really know the NYCMB’s readership that well yet, so bear with me if I fumble this for a few of you. Last night, I went to TechCrunch 8, a party/networking event for the Web 2.0 crowd to see what was on offer. I visited all the booths and grabbed lots of schwag. It rocked. Awesome Web 2.0 stuff! Read on, good people. Lots more behind the jump.
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I’ve noticed beautiful hats for sale while walking around the city, and these especially struck me so I stopped to talk. Xixi, or Xiomara, is here in front of her house selling her handmade merino wool hats and headbands!

It’s her first day out on the street selling them, so I want to give her props for her amazing craftiness and entrepeneurial spirit. She put a headband on me and I have to say it looked pretty cute – for a minute I looked like a super classy purple-mohawked Olivia Newton-John, and my head was warm. I’m going to special order a cotton one from her because I’m allergic to wool!

She’s set up on Prince St, just west of Mott, and if you are interested in a hat you can email Xiomara at xiom58@yahoo.com.

As I roam about New York today I’ve been encountering the imaginary city, places I’ve heard of or read about or that are in songs. Bleeker Street ruined me for hours as I tried to get that Simon and Garfunkel song out of my head. There was another song-moment, Times Square, or Union Square – I can’t remember now (fortunately, because it was a sucky song.) And “The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway”, another one I would kind of rather not had as an earworm. The Plaza Hotel, where Simon, or Sport’s friend Chi-Chi was a busboy, and where Eloise skittered down the halls, is under massive construction, turning into condos; it never occurred to me that it was named after an actual place; Grand Army Plaza, right next to it. Minor ephiphany: there is a Plaza next to the Plaza Hotel…. Lincoln Center. Broadway itself. Central Park. Times Square. The Library and “So You Want to be a Wizard”. All so massively written about and heavily mythologized.

I like that level of there being many imaginary realities possible to imagine over the one I see, of the accessibility of histories and stories. There’s a huge pleasure in recognition; in having several mental overlays for a landscape. And yet I also bristle a bit at the ways that everybody in NYC seems to buy into NYC as the center of the universe, as a central myth of City, a sort of Harrisonesque Viriconium or Zelazny-ish Amber where everything that happens is more significant and has more merit intrinsically than if it had happened somewhere else.

I wonder if, across the world, blogging will add an extra layer of reality to enough different places to dispel a bit of that concentration of power, as we all write about our own geographies and territories and give them importance, laying their stories bare to the world.

20 years ago I was in New York briefly staying with my friend’s parents while we were en route to Ireland to go to the Yeats International Poetry School. I was 18 and very excited about Travelling for the first time. I didn’t have a drivers license and had never been anywhere on my own. Anyway, the point is, the friend I’m staying with now lives in the same apartments that my friend’s parents did, Washington Square Village, an NYU housing complex. This morning I woke up and crawled out the window onto the rainwashed concrete balcony overlooking a little park and some trees, looked across to the building where I had stayed 20 years ago, and started laughing hysterically.

In my memory that was a super fancy tall apartment high rise. It was so intimidating! Going up an elevator to get to your “house”, where the view gave me vertigo. There was a doorman. Unthinkably posh and big-cityish! It loomed. A skyscraper, fancy, sophisticated.

So it’s funny to be there now in the same place, and to see it how I do now, which is that it’s somewhat run down, a regular old apartment building, mostly for student houseing. Really, a little squalid… and only 15 stories.