I’ve been doing lots of fun activities recently here in NYC…

Last Tuesday (24th May), I had dinner with my pal Zoë Keating at Apartment 138, a new-ish bar/restaurant on Smith Street that I can highly recommend for top grub and a mellow atmosphere, then the following day (Wed 25th) I had dinner with Peter B.(visiting from Chicago, and coincidentally staying at a B&B two doors from me!) and Kelly R. at Al di La in Park Slope (which was also great), before seeing Zoë playing with Rasputina at Southpaw, in an end-of-tour gig that was, for me at least, their best and most powerful performance to date.

On Thursday, I rented a Zipcar for an hour to take Jonas’ deck and mixer back to his place in the city, and then brought him back to Brooklyn for fish and chips at Apartment 138 and a “Crap-A-Copia” at Floyd; a Crap-A-Copia is a selection of six cans of crap beer from Milwaukee, such as Schlitz and PBR. The hangover the next day was pretty crap too.

On Friday I had dinner with Jamie at Faan (always reliable for asian fusion food) before a few beers at the Brooklyn Inn and pool at the Brooklyn Social.

On Saturday I went to see the Basquiat exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum with R., which was very good, plus I was able to get us both in for free with my ICOM card. After the museum we went to a fun wine tasting class about “The 8 Noble Grapes” hosted by the owner of the Smith & Vine wine shop, before getting drenched in a torrential summer storm. Sunday was a beautiful sunny day too, so R. and I had a lazy day lying out in the sun in Prospect Park before a late supper at Pacifico.

On the holiday Monday (Memorial Day) I did some shopping and worked out before heading over to Scyld & Helen’s to play with a very lively Oscar and have some dinner, and then yesterday I took the day off work to see England beat Colombia 3-2 in a friendly international match at the Giant’s Stadium, courtesy of R. (who got the tickets) and Scyld (who got us seats on his football team’s minibus).

What a fun week!