HELLLLOOOOOOOOOO

So three people have asked me now what happened to this blog, and the truth is that I got busy and started to feel like my life in NY is not particularly exciting. Also I got backlogged with some photos and never got around to it. Without further ado, here are pics from my trips to Maine over the summer.










That one's MINE!

So Long

It has been forever since I've taken to updating this blog, which I promise to do soon with some photos of my recent trip to Brooksville, Maine for the fourth of July.

In the meantime, I've done some really fabulous things culturally, which I wanted to share. In March (I think), I had the opportunity to see In the Heights with Ellie and her parents, which was fabulous. We had no idea what to expect and it was a really great Broadway show, drawing on all sorts of Latin music forms to deliver a really unique, fun theatre experience. I also got to see Le Fille de Regiment at Brooklyn Academy of Music telecast live from the Met, preceded by a great lecture on Donizetti. I also saw an abbreviated production of Rigoletto at my church, followed by a great lecture by our pastor Tim Keller on whether opera can reveal the meaning of life. When my parents came to town in early May, we saw November, which was a great Broadway production and one of the only non-musicals I've seen on the stage in years. And just this week I saw a great production of Damn Yankees at the NY City Center as part of their Summer Stars program. I've seen a couple great independent movies, Good Dick (also at the Brooklyn Academy of Music), written, produced and starring my friend Yuka's friend Marianna Palka and Full Grown Men, which was co-produced and co-written by an NMH grad (albeit it about ten or fifteen years ahead of me in school). Sadly I haven't made it to a museum in a while, which is a shame because there are some great exhibitions at the Brooklyn Museum of Art (Murakami), the Guggenheim and the MOMA that I've been meaning to check out. I had a great trip home to San Francisco in early June but otherwise have spent my time in New York being relatively quiet and calm, with some fun nights out in Manhattan and Brooklyn. Soon I'll be getting a big photo recap together, but I have been a little overwhelmed and preoccupied with other things in my life. In the meantime though, I've been trying to post a little more frequently on my other blogs, as well as rebuild my website, so keeping everyone up to speed on my personal life hasn't been at the top of my agenda. But! That will soon change. A few visitors are coming to New York in the next couple weeks, so there's likely to be some excitement.

April Weekend #2, part two

So Saturday night in New Orleans, after a day of drinking in the French Quarter, we headed back to Dan's house for a little house warming party. Yogi and Dan bought the house a year before and had done a ton of renovation, and had done a really nice job making the house look beautiful again.


Thus, there was plenty of pre-made booze.


Catherine and Lionel.


Lionel, put to work on the stove, with a guy from Alaska looking over his shoulder.


Catherine and Dan.


Cheers!








Maddie adjusts the music.





Then we went to a couple bars, the second of which was in a huge, beautiful mansion on a broad boulevard.
















I spent about thirty minutes impersonating Scottish accents with this guy, until I was literally ripped away from him by one of the guys. Haha.

The next day we woke up late and headed for brunch.





And then we did a lot of driving around, seeing various parts of New Orleans that had been affected by Hurricane Katrina.


I didn't take a lot of photos but I did take a couple in the Ninth Ward, such as these steps that are all that remain of a house. Many of the houses simply washed away when the levees broke, leaving only foundations that are now surrounded by overgrown grass.






The wall in the distance is the wall of one of the levees.







After doing some touring, we went back to the house to drink some beer and hang out.




Hanging out with boys has its merits.






The guys found this big metal thingie near the levee and took turns smashing things in the backyard with it. Hooray beer!










The last night everyone was pretty tired so we had dinner and did a little more drinking before heading home. This is from before dinner, at the Carousel Bar.

And that was that. Monday morning, Catherine, Lionel and I headed to the airport and flew back to New York. New Orleans was absolutely wonderful -- beautiful, diverse neighbourhoods, warm and friendly people -- and I want to go back!

April Weekend #2

Well the good news is, I am back. My precious laptop of 3.5 years died in mid-April, thus the delay in posting anything for a while. Thankfully, I have a brand new macbook to enjoy, meaning that blogging can resume. I'll pause while the entire online world takes a moment and catches its collective breath.

All right.

So the second weekend in April I took a fabulous weekend away and visited New Orleans. Catherine, her French friend Lionel, and I headed down Friday after work (after annoying delay, whatevskies Continental). The flight from Newark to New Orleans has a 5% on time rate -- awesome.

Anyway, we got in super late and Yogi came to pick me up at Catherine's hotel and we headed out with a crew for drinks. A late night, ending with a bite to eat in this funky diner nearby.


I had just met Dan and was already being smothered in kisses. Ha, ha. Actually Yogi masterminded the whole set-up of the shot.


Then silliness ensued.


Yogi and Gabe check out ... Yogi.


And then Gabe. A clear winner was decided?


You be the judge.


We all went back to Yogi, Dan and Maddie's house. I fell asleep on the futon in the office, with the shadows of trees bouncing off the wall and the smell of fruity trees wafting inside. Ah, bliss. I am so easy to please.


Dan, snoozing in the living room.

Yogi, Maddie, Gabe, Nick and I headed for the French Quarter -- the French Quarter Festival was happening, we learned, so we went to check it out.









































































We ended up at a cool bar tucked away on a side street just on the edges of the French Quarter that had a pirate theme.






Everyone had absinthe (but me, I opted for a mojito).












Catherine's French friend found a fellow Frenchie to converse with, and Catherine and I observed that his ladyfriend's expression looked like something straight out of a Henri Toulouse Latrec painting. Agreed!?

Then we all headed back to Dan's for a housewarming party. I'll post in a separate posting so this entry doesn't take a million years to load.

Where does the time go!?

I have weekends from April to update, and it's mid-May. Craziness!

I just learned two awesome writers from ad school, Dan and Cindy, both have blogs reporting on their ad lives abroad (in Hamburg and Dubai respectively). So I'm adding them to the list on the left. Yay!

April Weekend #2 to come soon ... stay tuned.

April Weekend #1

The weekend after I got back from SF was filled with a lot of fun. I was taken to dinner at an upscale vegetarian restaurant on the Upper East Side, Candle Café, which turned out to be much better than I had expected (being such a diehard meat eater), followed by going to Sasha & Digweed at Webster Hall.



The real excitement, though was the next day, when Yuka arrived in town from Boston where she has been working on a movie set.

She met me at a diner near my house, then we took off for some shopping at Marc Jacobs, then caught the exhibition of photographer Gregory Crewdson, perhaps my favourite contemporary conceptual photographer, at a gallery in Chelsea. We headed home and readied ourselves for dinner at The E.U., a gastropub in the East Village that was simply divine.


Yuka, enjoying her meal.


Me, enjoying my meal.


This is my main course -- a soft-shell crab ever-so-lightly fried with an egg-and-avocado topping and rested on a tomato remoulade, all gently set on brioche. Writing about it is making my mouth water.

We went to Café Charbon in the Lower East Side, then got a text from Rachel about a house party in Bushwick, so we hopped on the L.

While waiting for the train, we spotted this interesting subway poster art, made from removing parts of ads and pasting them on to other ads nearby.




The artist, posing with his work.

After a posse had gathered at Rachel's, we headed for the loft party but sadly it had already ended. Whatevs, we jumped in a cab and went to HUGS in Williamsburg for '90s night.










What are these guys doing in the background?

Yuka left the next night and things were fairly mellow til the following weekend when I ventured down to New Orleans. Photos to come!

Trip Home

Back at the end of March, I took a much-needed trip home to California. My mom picked me up at the airport and we enjoyed our nice Mexican lunch at a nearby restaurant where you can see the planes landing. I pretty much waxed poetic about the aroma and freshness of the air for the next five days. We headed back to Mill Valley where I ran some errands and marvelled at the lack of people, particularly at Northgate Mall, which was quiet and barren of people, even on a Friday afternoon. After dinner with my parents, I headed into San Francisco where I met up with John and Josh at their apartment and we waited for Gwyn and Chuck to arrive from LA.

Then we headed to Matador Bar where an array of other friends were waiting -- kind of incredible, and really touching actually, because people from all areas of my life had come out to meet me. Rob Hanson, Bryan Pon, Dave Downs, Scott, Maya, Peter, Katja, Hendrick, Andrea, Kris, Yogi ... I was so touched that everyone had come out to hang out.








Josh and Gwyn doing a shot of something.


The Hanson That Is the Rob.



















The next day, Gwyn, Chuck, John and I all woke up and headed for brunch in the Castro.


First Gwyn showed off her America's Next Top Model moves in the kitchen ...


... while I admired John's fridge.


John and Chuck, en route to the restaurant, Gwyn lurking in the distance.

After a nice lunch, Gwyn and I headed up to Marin. She hung out with my mom for a bit while I showered, then we did what we do best -- drive around, laugh, talk, etc.


First I took a picture of her in front of the apple tree in my parents' front yard.

We ended up in Tiburon where admired the view and chilled.




Gwyn, talking to Yuka.












Look! I am white as a ghost, straight from NY!





Gwyn headed back into SF to hang out with Chuck and John; I stayed at home and waited for Yogi to come over for dinner with my parents. We dined on delicious grilled salmon with this light cucumber sauce, asparagus, rice salad and pilaf, then Mom pulled out an amazing homemade blueberry pie. She knows the tricks to make me want to visit home more often!!

Yogi and I drove to his place in the city and kicked it for a bit, drinking wine and watching MTV, then headed out to a really lame club in SOMA that was chock full of Burning Man kids (something that makes me never want to go back home); after Dave, his friends, Gwyn, Chuck and John arrived, we headed to another bar nearby and then to The Transfer for Frisco Disco, the funnest dance party I have been to in SF for quite some time.

























The next morning I took the ferry back to Marin and then joined my mom and dad for an early dinner at Absinthe before they went to the symphony. I headed down to Marisa & Dave's in the Outer Mission and hung out for a while. The next day, I saw Natalie for a nice lunch, then went over to an editing studio to say adieu to Yogi. And then that night, after another amazing dinner from the Cocina Mes Padres, I went over to Scott's apartment in the Marina and had a few glasses of wine and finally got a chance to chat up for the first time in years.

Such a nice trip ... wish I could go home all the time! But I came back to New York feeling thoroughly refreshed, rejuvenated and rewarded. Everyone I know in San Francisco just fills me up with so much love and happiness and inspiration, so the little injection of it kept me afloat on quite the buoyant cloud of happiness for the weeks that followed. Yay!

Long Overdue

Yes, people, it's been far too long. I have much to post about –- trips to San Francisco and New Orleans, visits from Yuka, birthday get-togethers and house parties -- but I am going to try to do it in chronological order to give myself just a wee bit of sanity. So let's get cracking.

Back in late February? March? We ventured to Long Island City for a drum & bass party at a cool venue called The Creek and the Cave.

I went over to Rachel's first and we boogied around the apartment getting ready.









Steve and Rachel outside in the freezing cold. Where's your coat, Steve!?

In other news, a few weeks later Vahbiz had birthday drinks at Irish pub Puck Fair in Soho, which was fun as always.


Here I am glamming it up with my favourite Indian/Farsi/Persian of all time.

Let's see ... then a few days later I went to see Shimon for the 10th anniversary of Camo, held at Sin Sin.






That would be Asha, dancing it up to Shimon amidst the balloons bought for the festivities.

Also at some point I bought some roses, which I commemorated by taking photos of.






I'll leave you on that note of loveliness. Photos of my long weekend in San Francisco soon to come!

Besitos x