Archives for October 2008

How about we talk about something safe like a hotel review?  I don’t want to make this drawn out but I do have to say I had high hopes for the Paramount.  It was supposed to be mod, unique and fun.  And yes, the lobby and little bar were very cool and the room looked pretty cool, but I have to give the room a thumbs down.

The room was small.  Which I KNOW is normal for NY but I stayed at the Marriott right beside the Paramount when I went to New York in 2001 and there was no comparison even though the price difference wasn’t that big.

The bathroom made weird noises and smelled of sewer at times.  Not a stinky bathroom but actual sewer.  There was no countertop space even though the sink WAS cool.  The shower felt dirty and the shower curtain was flimsy and stuck to you while you showered.

The beds were on the floor.  I’m all for a platform bed but this was just a mattress and boxspring on the floor and we felt like we were camping.  What’s worse is the beds SQUEAKED when you moved on them.  AND they were very worn and we sank to the middle.  It did have a nice down comforter and pillows going for it though.

The floor carpet also just looked and felt dirty.  We were scared to touch anything that had fallen on it.  But I guess that’s standard for any hotel room.

I don’t know, I guess some of it was par for the course in New York but I do know I had a much better experience at The Marriott last time AND I can plan to save up my Marriott gift cards for next time to cushion the difference.

I hope I don’t get into trouble on this post.  I’m going to try to be discreet and if I’m being dumb and ignorant in any way, forgive me.  I didn’t ask many questions and had no idea this was around.  I just followed.  If it’s well known and public and I’m being TOO discreet, well, I apologize for that too.

We went to the part of New York where a lot of Asian people are and the streets are packed and very busy.  Catch my drift yet?  Women and men would come up to you and ask you if you want Coach, Prada?  If you didn’t walk away, you barely needed to nod your head in assent they said “Follow me” and off you were following them quickly to who knows where.  Sometimes you’d follow them to the store directly behind you and in some cases we had to walk a block or two. Here is a covert picture we took being led to such a place.

We’d be ushered the store, walk toward what looked like a normal wall and then see that there would be a secret door.  It would open up, usually revealing stairs.  Some went up and some went down.  Either way, they were usually steep.  Those led to a landing where we were then sometimes taken to another room which was locked.  The rooms were usually about 10×15 or so, sometimes much smaller and stacked with Gucci, Coach, Prada, Duney and Burke and Dolce and Gabana purses, sunglasses, wallets and sometimes scarves.  The door was locked behind us and one worker would stay in there with us to make deals with.

Dani was tasked by a friend at home to buy four purses and of course we couldn’t left out.  After at least five stores and way too many stairs, we left the town of Asian people with I think 6 bags and 2 pairs of sunglasses.

But lo and behold Dani pulls out her list from her friend and she was supposed to get two BLACK Coaches not two BROWN Coaches.

So Dani says she has some money left over and there are usually guys near Times Square with bags of them and she’ll just get them later.  So we were out late Sunday night and went and got some cheesecake.  Heather and I are in front of Dani walking out of the store and all the sudden Dani screams something and pushes past us.  We didn’t see a thing but a guy is out on the street with bags.  Woah.  She must have smelled them coming.  But they only have one black one.  But then another guy walks up and talks to him with another bag but walks away.  Dani finds out it’s the guy’s brother and Dani takes off after him.  We follow him half a block and he turns around.  So we turn around.  We started joking, “Coach?! Prada?!  Follow me!”  The guy finally saw our interest and stopped and got the bag she wanted.  Here may or may not be our loot.

There are two things I had recommended by EDW that must be passed on.

Angelo and Maxie’s Filet Oscar.  Let’s note first that Heather actually got a steak salad…so proud!  But the steak.  And the crab on top.  And the hollandaise on top.  Oh my word.  Honestly, if you looked “savory” up in the dictionary, a picture of my plate must be in there.  It was like melt in your mouth goodness.  On my last bite, I LITERALLY closed my eyes and held my hands out as if I was meditating.  I wanted to remember that taste THAT much.  DO NOT PASS GO until you get this.

One more thing I have to note.  That stuff in the middle? It’s my “side”.  I ordered onion strings thinking it would a few on the “side” of my plate.  No!  It’s like an appetizer.  Also note the HUGE “side” of potatoes beside that.  All three of us dipped in those.  They were DELISH as well.

And just one more thing.  It’s a very nice restaurant but even better?  They played Pink and Usher instead of elevator music.  Great atmosphere.

The price?  $111 for everything you see on the table.  No drinks.  Just water.  Yes, it’s a splurge dinner.

Junior’s. Cheesecake.  DO NOT PASS GO.  In fact, go order it online.

Wow, who knew I could get so many blog posts out of 48 hours in New York.  I mean, really.  But I just have to tell you about our Sephora trip.  First off, Jillian (who is also amazing and talented) used this AMAZING eye liner.  It looked great, felt great and even better STAYED IN PLACE for hours!  We were asking her throughout the makeup session who made what as I know she must have used 15 different products on my face.  But we could not remember who made the eyeliner as we stood in Sephora in Times Square.  We looked around and nothing.  All we know is it was a short, fat hot pink pencil.

We asked the lady and she literally laughed at us but went off and asked this guy that was working.  He said, “Oh, that’s BADgal.  It’s at the front of the store.”  WOW.  Dani, who being much more familiar with Sephora than my Sephora-virgin self, took me straight to the display and found it.  Ta-da.

But, wait, it gets better.  We really wanted this glitter stuff that was on my eye but were clueless.  So we walk back over to him to test him.  I close my eye and say, I need to know where to get this stuff.  He stares at it and says, “Try Make Up For Ever”  And sure enough, there were lots of little pots of glitter right on the bottom row.  We weren’t convinced it was exactly the right thing so I didn’t get any and I actually need to check with Jillian to see if that’s what it was.  But, by golly, that guy was IMPRESSIVE.

*Now patiently waiting for free product offer for the post.*

*Please*

*$20 for eyeliner is a bit rich for my taste*

And by menses, I do mean multiple men.  We were utterly amazed at the difference between men in New York and men in the South.  No wonder some people complain when they come South.   We determined in the South, there are really only a few types of (casual) dressers.

• The jeans and tennis shoes guy
• The shorts and flip flops guy
• A mix of the above.  Like, some guy will wear shorts and tennis shoes or jeans and flip flops
• The Wranglers and boots guy
• The 3X shirt and 5 sizes too big low-slung jeans and tennis shoes guy

That about covers it all.  Scott is a tennis shoes guy with jeans in the winter and shorts in the summer.  I would venture to guess Dani would say her husband is a tennis shoes and shorts guy all year round.  The rednecks true Southern men wear Wranglers and boots (don’t get me wrong on the redneck comment….just go look at Ree’s husband in some Wranglers..there is NO complaining here).

But in New York?  You know what we saw?  A tourist OR a hot local man.  And said hot man was wearing:

• Designer jeans that fit very nicely
• A shirt. Usually a printed tee.  Maybe a tight sweater.
• Or, if we were lucky, he had a suit on but hey, it was the weekend.
• Sometimes a short, well-fit black leather jacket
• Nice shoes..either box-toe dress shoes or cute oxford tennis shoes.
• If it was a bit chilly, a nice scarf
• And usually, the really hot ones had shaved their heads
• And usually they were of some descent that made them tan.  Couldn’t figure out WHAT they were.  Arabic? Mexican? Italian?

And this was the NORM.  Every corner we were going WOW, he was hot, wow, he was hot.  In fact, Heather started snapping undercover photos on her iPhone of the guys.  And if she didn’t have the right angle?  She passed her phone to me so *I* could snap the photo.  It became almost a game and let me tell you, it was a fun one.

As soon as we hit the airport Monday morning, our luck was out and we were quickly greeted by many jeans/flip-flop guys who in their own right can be cute but nothing like a HOT New York man.  And don’t you even second-guess there will be a shopping trip for Scott coming up!

And just for fun, here are just two of them snapped at the #HBC dinner Saturday night.  The guy sitting down had a multi-color scarf on on his way out.  And wow, the second one is still HOT.  Like, Wentworth Miller HOT.

OK before I write this post you have to know I’m usually GREAT at maps and directions in general.  I’m usually NOT the one to freak out when there is somewhere new to go.  Just a little Google Maps and I’m ready to head out.  In fact, I’m usually the one with the map in hand telling people where to turn.  But something happened this weekend.  I think the subway baffled me to the point I could not think straight.  And also the idea of “ish”.  Like it’s on 47th and 8th – ish.  I knew we’d be close but just one or two blocks away seemed to add another 15 minutes backtracking and getting on course.

Take Dani and I’s trip from the hotel to Junior’s.  It SHOULD have only been a cut-through a parking lot from 46th to 47th and down one building.  But I got confused on my little map I had printed and marked the restaurants we were going to with “R”s.  The green in the picture is what we should have done and the red is what we really did.

Basically what happened is I was headed from the hotel (A) to 51st and 9th (C) where dinner was Saturday night instead of heading towards Junior’s (B).  Whoops.  Should have paid attention to my map a little more.  That one wasn’t so bad.  I WAS going the right way IF we were going to dinner.

Our troubles continued though.  We tried the subway on Saturday but the subway map I had just wasn’t clear enough on where you got on the thing and where the thing stopped.  So while I could tell what line to get on, I wasn’t sure how close it would get us.  I was so scared it would land us in Queens or Brooklyn (and getting us lost and wasting time, I presumed) that we just avoided it altogether.  In fact, we actually bought tickets, walked down into the the place, asked a guy and he was like “why are you here?  you guys aren’t lazy, you could just walk that.”  So out we went, wasting our $2.  We didn’t attempt it the rest of the day.

So Sunday we FINALLY got the hang of it but I had a really bad headache and we needed to carry two bags to the photo shoot so we decided to take a cab.  Door-to-door service right?  The green is what we SHOULD have done on the subway.  The red is our cab ride (straight line) and walk (dotted line ).

I don’t know if that cab ride is exactly right  but it is REALLY close.  What happened is the polish-slavic parade was going down Park (I think) and the guy kept going around the block trying to get through but couldn’t.  He finally dropped us off somewhere around 34th, said we needed to walk a block and pick up another cab, even waiving our $5 tip and apologizing profusely.  But by that time we decided to hike it the rest of the way.  But then I got confused because I thought Park Ave was the same thing as 5th and I didn’t realize 7th and Broadway weren’t the same thing anymore.  Needless to say, we did some backtracking on 28th.

After this, we DID manage to do well on a few trips on the subway. We took the subway back to the hotel from the shoot, made it to China Town and also to dinner near Union Square and then back home.  We were doing SO well and getting things accomplished so much faster.

Until.

The wretched Apple Store trip.  I didn’t know where to get on the subway except for Times Square at 42nd, not realizing I could get on at 49th and taking the subway almost directly to the store so I decided hey, let’s take the fancy little Shuttle to Grand Central Station and head UP Lexington and then just walk a few blocks to Apple.  This is how our trip went.  Green is what we should have done, Red solid line where we took the subway and red dotted line where we walked.

So once again I was confused on this 5th street and Park Ave thing.  The whole “ish” thing came into play again.  We got confused on what direction we were going after getting off the stop at Lexington and 60th causing us to “wiki-wiki-wiki” right in front of some car holding a couple that seemed to be in the throws of a break-up.  Sorry about your break-up AND the disturbance, couple on 60th.  Anyway, it was a DISASTER.  We spent almost THREE HOURS going to and from the Apple Store.

Please, those familiar with New York and its public transportation, don’t laugh too long at us.