Wait, I buy a beer and you give me a free pizza?

So the cuz and CM were over and we happened upon a bar in the East Village that gives you a free pizza for lunch with every beer purchase. Safe to say we ate very well and walked out of there a tad intoxicated...

Celeb Spot #2

Well this one was a cracker. Walking along Bleecker (a block away from the apartment we just signed a lease to) I noticed a familiar looking face walking towards us. The girl inattentive as ever received a quick squeeze around her hand – our signal to stop the jabbering and pay attention.

As the familiar face walked past us I could feel the excitement emanating from the girl. She began to tremble and was utterly speechless. Low and behold Sarah Jessica Parker had just done a walk by, one block from our new apartment. The girl spun around to survey the outfit, which she could recite with precision on request from everyone who has asked her since (as opposed to the guys question for me: “hot?” - “Yeah you’d go there.”)

I think this is number one for the girl and apart from a George Michael sighting probably won’t be topped for the next little while.

The One with a New Home

Now it is official - we are residents of NYC. We have a fabulous apartment on the corner of Christopher and Bleecker streets. Our doormen are pretty cool and the view is fantastic - check out the photo!

Ben Stiller: Not just funny in movies

The girl grabbed us tickets to a show she thought I might like starring Ben Stiller. He has pretty much been in every single decent comedy for the past decade and a half so we were quite interested to see how his acting translated onto the stage. The play was entitled “House of the blue leaves” and also starred Edie Falco (mother in the Sopranos who I disliked for that very reason).

As it turned out the play was a tongue in cheek comedy where Ben Stiller portrayed the main character quite well. My biggest surprise however was Edie Falco who played some deranged wife, on the edge of insanity, rather convincingly.
We realised one of the perks of living in NYC was the two block walk to the theatre. Dinner was at a steakhouse on the way home so our total journey time for the evening was around 5 minutes.

Need a place to live? Stalk buildings...

The real estate market in NYC is cutthroat. Most places that are for rent require you to have a broker who takes a 1-2 month "commission" for finding you a place to live. We used a couple of brokers while we were here but it became pretty apparent that these brokers do not have access to all the available apartments. In order to put in an application form you have to pay a fee. Essentially you are down at least 10 grand just to rent an apartment.

We were getting a little frustrated from the lack of understanding of what we wanted from our brokers. Walking through the village one morning, we stumbled across a street fair. Thinking it was a very cool area, the girl decided to take matters into her own hands and cold call on an apartment block. Inside she approached the doorman. Surprisingly to me the guy was rather helpful and told us his place was full of condos (no rentals) but directed us to a couple of others that rented along the street.

Trudging into the second one we were told there was one available and the doorman happily gave us the key to head up and inspect it. We walked in and found a great view. The flat itself is a little cosy but perfect for the 2 of us. We got the details of the real estate and put in an offer the following week. Having found it ourselves we happily saved paying the brokers fee.

This proved how sometimes it pays to be a crazy stalker chick to save a couple of bucks...

Characters - where everybody knows your name?

Growing up as the generation of television kids it is a fair assessment I had a well earned butt groove wedged into the couch in front of the television. Featuring regularly throughout the entertainment was the US sitcoms. One of the regular locations would be a bar (where everyone knows your name). So it may come to you as no surprise that within our first week of being in NYC we have one such bar – Characters. Characters is an Irish bar, open until 4am every night, that serves rather delicious pub grub, talented bartenders and helpful waitresses. And to not keep you in suspense, yes they know our names.

I think it was the second time we went in there when they welcomed us as one of their own. They know what we drink and are ever so quick on the refill. Not to mention the free rounds that get included. Our favourite bar tender is called Sean. He is very Irish and looks after us very well. In fact the girl thinks I have a man-crush on him (whatever that means). But you’ve got to have respect for a guy who pours your drinks, throws in the occasional freebie and can slyly liquor up your girl....

UPDATE: The bartender has now memorised my offshore schedule so he knows when I should be away and returning. This leads to a few more freebies (of some top shelf scotch) thrown in during the week leading up to departure.

Let’s go Knicks (an analysis of my childhood psyche developing through to an age described only as less of childhood)!

Growing up in my house I was exposed to basketball (mainly through older sibling influence) since my younger years. Not only did we have epic games of 1 on 1, around the world and the trash talking horse, but we also spent an unhealthy amount of time glued to the TV watching the likes of Jordan* and pals blazing a trail though the fastest growing sport for teenage kids in the nineties. Not sure why we got into it though as the parentals appear to be vertically challenged (in spite of my awesome ability to grow into a respectable height) which should have really translated to myself.

We watched over and over many countless hours of electrifying acrobatics. Drawn to the spectacle like a moth to a flame . Usually I was rooting for the underdog team. Not that I wasn’t impressed by the greatness of the champions, it was more the fact I set myself a challenge of rooting for the impossibly inadequate. Whether or not this is a reflection on my own personal life is debatable, although I will leave that up to you to ponder.

If there was ever a team in all sports that I despised it was the New York Knicks. I don’t know why this was. I could always see a team of (mostly) untalented players overachieving at every turn. Observers were always surprised when they fell short at the last hurdle, but at this stage I was astonished they had made it this far. Through the next decade the obsession of dislike had boiled down to a minimum due to the fact that a terrible GM had constructed an awful team that would never be able to overachieve again. You don’t like picking on an enemy when they are down, especially one that had developed into such retarded-ness as this.

In the summer of 2010, the Knicks made some significant moves. Previously creating enough salary cap space to sign some big name players, and following it up with the signing of an actual big name player. A few more additions were added and a strong squad was made. Don’t get me wrong this team would only be challenging for a playoff berth however it would be done with a bunch of lower key members, creating a team that was greater than the sum of its parts. This became a relief to me and to explain the reason I’ll have to step back a few years.

Over a decade ago I was leaving the city I had grown up with (and will probably always call home) to experience the world. The best way to do this was live in different places for a couple of years and enamour myself in the culture. Thus far the journey had taken me through Tasmania, Perth, (a brief stint in Malaysia), London and NYC. In all these places I had decided to adopt the local team to support. Rest assured I will always barrack for my roots but I am a firm believer in supporting the local teams of a newly adopted city (Tasmania Tigers, Western Force, West Coast Eagles, Chelsea). This leads me to my current city and to uphold the principles I vowed to keep a decade ago, my support would now need to lay squarely on the New York Knicks. I have often thought to myself if the childhood Ben could see me now, what would he say? Sellout? Bandwagon? I’m quite sure he would say these and many more. The difference is that I have the last decade of adventures on my side which has refined me into the person I am today. I look forward to future Ben taking the same opportunity for examination on current Ben and surmising his past thoughts for reflection.

*Anyone needing me to explain this Jordan reference in detail should probably invent some form of time travelling device, go back to the nineties, pull their former self brain out of the sand and tell them to pay attention to sports.

Celeb spot #1

Don’t know the dudes name but Mr Big from Sex and the City was outside our apartment today. The girl was flabbergasted (she also saw Ted Danson 2 days ago). He was quite literally casually dressed and probably mistaken for a tourist by the majority of guys (that didn’t have a girl next to them ogling him).

Live from NYC

First of all - many apologies for the time it has taken to update the posts. I have had the stories well and truly hot off the press but had to wait until I had some time to work on the quality banner. Let me know what you think of it anyway. I have decided to stop ripping off the Friends line “the one with the...” in order to get directly to the point (but mainly not to sound too dated). Ironically we are now living on the same block as the friends apartment. Moving forward I’m going to try to demonstrate a more mature and sharpened use of my writing skills. It’s going to be legen......
wait for it.....
dary!

Without further ado here is the release of the build up of posts:

The Last One....

The girl and I have decided to end our time in London and head for the brighter lights of the big apple. Coming soon the Wombles take Manhattan...