14.01.2008

dancing on lafayette

the day started with a delightful walk in crispy sunshine along Grand st. through Chinatown into the Lower East Side. we were headed for the Clinton St. bakery which we had a been to a few days before and it was good.

there was saturday morning bustle in grand st, lots of gorgeous looking green vegetables and fungi and fish.

we got there about 9.20 and clinton st. bakery was not open until 10 and was just about to start taking names on a waiting list. so we went down the road to falai, had baked eggs with tomato, basil and mozzarella and this delicious folded over italian-style pastry with lemon curd inside. oh yeah. good brekky. we did however make a bad coffee-ordering error, COE, because in the end we didn't get espresso coffee we got that fucked water muck they call american coffee, topped up with hot milk. nevertheless. it was good, and I will try to prevent any more COE's.

then i came back to the hotel, finished some work off which lightened my heart (and conscience) considerably and then walked down to the terminal along Church St. which runs parallel to Broadway on the World Trade Centre side. this neighborhood is a bit strange, with lots of federal government buildings, including one which was about 40 stories high and had NO WINDOWS and NO SIGNS and lots of security, touristy kind of shops, some streets of apartments and a few nice cafes and boutiques, but generally it still seems rather dusty and abandoned. i was planning to pop in to Century 21 but had spent too much time dawdling and taking photos and looking. i'm just not a committed shopper.

the shows went very well.

there is a one-legged pigeon (christened gerald by our sound technician, phillip) who apparently has some amazing techniques for coming to land on the slippery floor of the terminal on his one leg. gerald provides welcome relief and entertainment for the crew, especially when his special side-sliding landing technique doesn't quite work and he ends up in an undignified mess on the floor in front of the audience. poor little thing.

we ended up late last night at a bar near us which is run by a lovely man called james. some of the others had gone there a few nights ago and got a little hammered. it is tiny, pretty much just the bar running the length of the room and one row of seats. everyone chats to each other. it is really really nice.

did some drinking, did some shots, did some talking, did some dancing, lots of laughing. lovely lovely lovely.