it’s cold enough now that i can see my breath when i go outside and with that, christmas lights have gone up. although, i didn’t expect them to pop up in the LES. not complaining, just surprised.
the lights go all up and down orchard street. nothing feels more like christmas to me than christmas in new york city. even down in the LES i guess.
this is from my window. i laughed when i saw that they actually put the letters LES in the lights. christmas neighborhood pride? :P
so it’s officially out today. 40 bucks for the game. plus $13-$15 per monthly subscription per account. times 10 million players/subscribers and probably some new players. you don’t need to be a financial wizard to know blizzard is going to make a killing! 1-2 billion dollar business over the year. i kind of wish i got into game development over, comics or film. :P
orchard st at 4am... this block is actually pretty clean
so i’ve been living in the LES for about 3 months now and i love it except all the garbage piled up on the sidewalks. and really, i don’t mind the garbage as much as the rats that are rummaging through them. i’ve had quite a few big rats cross my path late at night and i swear they are looking at me with a “wtf are you lookin’ at yo?” look. so i’ve just gotten into the habit of just walking straight down the middle of the street. not the middle of the sidewalk, but down the middle of the asphalt toward oncoming traffic. and i have to admit, when i’m stumbling home, with no little surprises busting out of the shadows across my feet, it’s quite peaceful. no, i’m not afraid of rats, but the ones that aren’t afraid of me certainly give me pause. they should be running AWAY from me, not running AT me. :P
the aftermath of san miguel and chicken adobo @ grill 21
again, i remembered to take pictures too late… :P after devouring my meal at grill 21, on 21st and 1st ave. it’s a tiny little restaurant and being a table of ten people, we took over half the place. even though, i have a lot of filipino friends, this is only my second time eating filipino food and i certainly enjoyed it. it kind of reminded me of my first experiences with thai food, i had no clue what to order. i guess that’s what friends are for, cause it’s gonna take me a while to remember what some of the other dishes are called.
to commemorate the new expansion of world of warcraft:wrath of the lich king, i’m going to post some fantasy/warcraft inspired, stick figure comic strips i did as an experiment last year. :P enjoy.
this was done in adobe illustrator (click to view in full)
people lounge is on allen st, between stanton and rivington. last week, after going to marshall stack on the same street, i went to party there with my buddy juan and some talented new friends and had a great time. it was a mixed crowd, with some small birthday parties going on, dinner down stairs, a dj playing good hip-hop upstairs and a whole lot of dancing going on. tried the food there the other night and hung out with my new friends peggy and ken. the people who work there are super nice. the salt and pepper shrimp appetizers and the short ribs with the meat falling off the bone were delicious! so delicious infact that i forgot to take pictures. my fine blogging skills at work. d’oh. next time.
there was a really good quote i heard while watching a movie. “kill all my demons and my angels might die too.” pretty damn cool. although i found out that it’s actually a paraphrased quote from playwright tennessee williams and the original quote goes “if i got rid of my demons, i’d lose my angels.”
a rapper named kid um cudi i think at santos party house.
my first time at santos party house on lafayette south of canal st.
jon phenom was in town for a few days from cali and hit me up on sunday night to go to santos. jon knew this girl dj that spins there and he had a +1 so i got in for free. there was a performance by a rapper, kid cudi? never heard of him, but he was pretty good. and i got to hear some really good and old hop-hop. biggie, tupac, wu-tang, tribe. made me wanna go dig up my old cds, unfortunately they are all in my storage unit in LA. never got around to ripping them into digital files. boo. i fail. hmm… bit torrent for the win… shhh.
too bad the food wasn’t that good. me and my cousin jae were walking all around soho for something to eat and i had walked by this place many times in the last couple months i’ve been here and it was always crowded. i made the mistake of not looking this place up on yelp before trying it. i guess we were just hungry and tired. big mistake. i will say it wasn’t the worst food, but neither of us really liked what we had and considering that they had a limited menu, you would think everything on it would be great. bleh. bland. and not even health food, so wtf? maybe i would come back to chill and have a couple drinks but never to eat. never again. afterwards i checked yelp to see what they said and most people trashed it, sigh. :P yelp rules.
i was walking west on rivington from the LES and i could see this huge tower of smoke coming from behind buildings up ahead. when i got to spring st. there were all these fire trucks, police, medic units and a large crowd of people who were standing around watching the building burn. i tried to get a better picture of the fire but they wouldn’t let us closer and the trees were in the way. damn trees. i left after the police started shooing people away.
this is what the bottom of the building looked like.
i passed by it again much later that night and the fire was out and the building looked like it had been saved. it looked empty though, so they must not have let anyone back in. i’m sure the inside was a complete mess. the fire was on the top floors so even though the bottom floors weren’t in flames they were certainly damaged by all the water pouring down and through it. it was just kind of eerie that there were dishes and things left deserted on the tables in the restaurant.
so i last night i was walking up orchard to meet up with my friend juan at mashall stack on allen and rivington in the LES and i saw this person laid out on the ground. at first i thought “what the hell? must be some homeless guy drugged out or drunk.” but then i noticed a cane on the ground next to him as i walked by. i kept looking back thinking, this guy is not for real. other people were passing him too. then i noticed how old he was and he started trying to get up with a lot of difficulty. i stopped to see if he needed help. finally i walked back and helped him up, no one else was doing it, he was really pretty fragile and weak. his legs were shaking and i couldn’t believe how hard it was for him to stand up even with my help. after getting up he said something to me in spanish, which i didn’t understand. then we went our separate ways but i still felt like a jerk for hesitating so long to help him. i guess even after eight years away, i’m still a cynical new yorker. hrmm. boo.
apparently they have an ice rink in bryant park during the winter time… they were starting to set it up today. i wonder when they started doing that? i think it may even be free…
i went the mini-market the other night to get some water and a soda. i gave the cashier a ten spot and he took it, glanced at it and then said something to me in chinese. of course i didn’t understand so he said in english that he wanted another bill. i was confused but i simply gave him a twenty i had. when i got home i looked at my ten bill and it looked and felt real to me. could it be fake? so then i googled what the new tens look like and it looked the same, so i was relieved that it wasn’t just my own naivete that got me stuck with this bill. but then i noticed that there is supposed to be a watermark of hamilton that you can only see if you put it up to the light. unfortunately the ten i had didn’t have that mark. damn, i didn’t realize they could make them so realistic. i would never have known if the cashier at the little local market didn’t catch it in a glance. i don’t know how he saw it so easily. he musta had some x-ray vision or something. i guess when you see cash all day long you learn to catch those things quickly. so now i’m going to be paranoid about the cash i recieve, hahah. it’s kind of annoying that so many places in the LES only take cash, otherwise i would just use my debit card and avoid all this petty crap.
so i think fall is officially here in nyc. i’m excited, cause it is my favorite time of the year. the air feels crisp, the garbage bags on the street don’t get cooked and funky under the hot sun. and it still makes me want to go out to buy some composition books and #2 pencils like i did in elemtary school. well i still do but that’s not the point. :P i enjoy that people in the city start dressing up a little more, looking very metropolitan. it’s that in between time when it’s not so hot that you just don’t give a fuck and you’d walk around nekkid if you could, and not so cold that you look like the michelin man.
sorry, michelin man, you’re just not sexy. it will be nice to see the colors of the leaves change. after eight years of no fall weather, it will be a treat.
went to congee bowery on bowery and rivington with my cousin jae. apparently andrew zimmern from that show bizarre foods ate there. i did see some strange things on the menu but not as bizarre as what i saw when i went to beijing. but considering a lot of non-chinese people were there i guess it was pretty out there for the average patron. but most of them seemed as if they were just ordering normal chinese food like sesame chicken, beef and brocolli. i didn’t see anyone ordering shark’s fin soup, bird’s nest soup or chickens served with the head still attached, which are on the menu. :P we got the pig’s stomach with x.o. sauce, crab congee, and minced pork with salted fish. it was pretty good. tasted like chicken. hahah.
