Well, it’s been a week of fun filled NYC action. Jordy and I have been going absolutely mental with some shopping, taking full advantage of the shopping delights that NYC has to offer. We are now overloaded with American Apparel, and some cool retro t-shirts/jumpers/jeans from a shop in Williamsburg that is filled with everything that you always wanted to find at Savers, but never could.
We’ve also been hanging with Aussie friends Lou, David, Andrew and Jarrah, for some mid-week drinks and catchups, which has been good fun.
The apartment is in a great spot, really close to everything that we want to be near to… and on a pretty safe street…. i say that because the Hells Angels NYC headquarters in just across the road, so i figure as long as we don’t touch the bikes, we’ll be fine!
We went to see my favourite band of the moment ‘Maps’, who were doing their first ever NYC show on Friday. The support act was one of the worst bands i have ever seen… well… the bad was ok, but the singer and guitarist were sooo bad, it made it really unbearable to watch…. imagine coldplay with a total cheeseball singer who looked like he was meant to be in a high school musical version of guys and dolls, and a guitarist who wore way heavily ’emo’ eye makeup, and was so obsessed with himself that he overplayed everything, and yet was also jumping around inappropriately and playing the wrong notes… so bad.
anyway… i’ve said way too much about them…
Thankfully Maps were totally as amazing as i had hoped they would be… the crowd really got into it, and the band were very understated and grateful.
They pretty much played their entire record, and it was all awesome. harmonies were spot on, and the sound of the band was just ace…. so good.
check them out: www.myspace.com/mapsmusic
we managed to grab three of the band members after the show, and gave them demos. so hopefully they’ll have a listen, and want to play shows with us when they come to Australia….
after that, we wandered the streets, met up with Lou and Jarrah who were watching the grand final at some ‘exclusive’ party full of Aussie celebs like Crissy Amphlette. ha!. we didn’t have tickets, but got Sorbet in Little Italy instead… which was a good way to finish an evening anyway!
So, yes, all this shopping has also involved me dragging Jordy around to as many guitar shops as i could find… in search of the perfect axe.
after much deliberation, soul-searching and financial contemplation, i have bought an amazing 1974 Fender Telecaster Deluxe. It’s had one of the pickups replaced, and a third middle pickup added, but apart from that it’s original, and plays and sounds absolutely amazing. It also has a Fat Strat-type headstock for all the people who know about those 70’s teles. awesome.
I’m not gonna say how much, but let’s just say that it’s a classic… and is worth what i paid.
onto Saturday night, and catching up with Jordy’s mate Jay Bulger… yes, that is his real name…. male model/film script writer/boxing fan/southerner. First we had a drink in a bar called “Johnsons” which is on Rivington in the Lower East Side. a cool, but divey bar… filled with locals who all seemed to know each other, and a man with a dog that looked like it didn’t want to be there.
After a couple of ‘free-poured’ vodkas, we ended up meeting with Jay in an apartment on the west side of Soho that also doubles for a venue for weekly Ping-Pong tournaments…. bizarre… we watched a boxing match where Jay was giving a running commentary in full (and over-the-top put on) sour-thern draawl… about how the white guy should win…. i won’t go into the PC-ness of it all, but considering Jay’s extroverted nature and that we were in his (black) friend Bill’s apartment, lines such as “reload those muskets” and “if he wins, we’re gonna re-draw the line of the south to 14th Street” were both funny, but also a bit wrong.
anyway… onto a random party on a roof-top in the east village, where we got to try out our Australian accents on a few locals, well… i think we have to define “local” here… i’m not sure how many people actually are from New York in New York… i think that most of the population is actually from somewhere else… but anyway… let’s just say we did have a bit of a novelty factor…
Jordy also met up with her mate Tiah who is a famous model, who Louisa tells us dated actor Adam Brody (oc’s Seth Cohen).
It was a completely bizarre experience topped off with the walk home, which involved us coming across a bunch of people outside a nightclub all starring up at a a naked man in his apartment with curtains open and lights on thrusting his pelvis… thankfully we couldn’t see what was happening underneath because of the angle, but the bouncers on the street told us that this was a ‘regular occurrence’ for this guy… and by the number of people watching, and by the occasional smiling glances out the window by the thrusting man, we assume this to be true…. so very strange…
anyway… Jordy and I have laid pretty low today. had a good bite to eat with Lou and David for lunch, a sleep and then some more good thai just up the road. I poked my head into the laptop jam night, but not a whole lot of people there this week. I’ll go back again with laptop in tow, and jam another time.
So on monday, Jordy and I decided that we should probably be tourists a bit, but cheapo tourists… so we did what every other cheapo tourist does, and catches the Stanton Island ferry to Stanton island…. past the statue of Liberty, and with it’s pretty damn impressive views of downtown Manhattan.
So, our gig in Brooklyn was quite successful, we were on quite early, and it was a monday night, which in Australia means ‘put your name down at the bar, and you can play’… but in NYC where the city never sleeps, i hope it holds a little more cred. The Union Hall is a great space, with two indoor Bocce lanes, and a wall full of books, and old pictures that make it seem the Den/Study of an active member of the Freemasons, or some other secret society… open fireplaces, pictures with men in strange red hats, and all that…
check out the website to appreciate it for yourself: http://www.unionhallny.com/
anyway, the band room was downstairs, and despite being on early, we managed to get a fair sized crowd into the room, mainly thanks to our NYC friends, and their friends! but also some extras brought in from the other bands playing.
They also had a mounted projector facing the stage, so we were able to do our whole proper visual show, which was an added bonus… and Jordy got to try out her new designer dress too!
Also, it was great to catch up with Victor, who had been under a general anaesthetic that afternoon, but still managed to have a few drinks… probably not under doctors orders…. and kick on with the rest of us…
We’ve also shot our video clip for Wall Kids with Jarrah and his crew in the back streets of Williamsburg, on a very brisk morning!
Matt Ridgway 
Love WINTERPARK! You guys rock.