Happy Leap Day!

Kind of wish today had just leaped on away (grumble grumble).

I am doing a lot of paid work right now, which is wonderful with its 'shirt on back' and 'roof over head' benefits, but not so great for the social life/husband/writing for fun stuff. Also, it gives me no time with which to buy shirts to clothe my back. Also, today it rained.

I wore a tan and black striped dress that's got a swingy, slightly sixties shape to it, black leggings, tan flat boots, a camel coat, black mohair and possum fur scarf, and accessorised it with a now-kind-of-broken checked umbrella, dark undereye circles, and rain-fluffy hair. I know you're all jealous of my all-weather style.

Spring starts tomorrow - I'm prepared for lots more rain but I am very excited regardless! Here's to the first spring weekend, and until then...

Dining With Friends

Yesterday was Presidents Day, which meant I had a whole day to myself to play with, as H1 had to work. I had a bit of work to get done too, but not enough that I didn't feel a bit joyously overwhelmed when I thought of the 'bonus day' stretching out in front of me, mine for the taking.

I planned it for a couple of weeks, thinking I'd use it to catch up on a bit of writing, check out a new shop I've been meaning to go to for a while, read the bits of old New York Times that are lying around my house, ready for me to have enough time to luxuriate in their Sunday Styles and Week in Review...

What's that they say about plans again?

It started well. Because H1 was going into his studio I also got up at my normal time, enjoyed a slightly-more-leisurely breakfast than usual, then made way to Macy's to purchase socks. Exciting times. Errand 1 accomplished, I dropped the socks into H1 (his studio is very close to Macy's, and the socks were for him - he does not like department stores or buying practical things, and I do not like my favorite person in the world having holey socks) and made my way down to SoHo, with ideas of replicating my successful writing days in London's finest coffee shops in my mind.

This is where the plans started to skew. Starbucks in London are ideal for writing in - spacious, never too crowded, always with comfy seats - but in Manhattan, everyone's a freelancer, or a writer, or a blogger, or an artisanal pickle maker, and this means everyone adopts it as their home office. Despite choosing the one Starbucks I know of that actually looks anything like a London one, I found the crowds, wonky table, and what-is-this-dial-up? Internet connection wasn't really doing it for me. Creativity was not happening. Work was not happening. It was not long until I gave up and went shopping.

I visited a couple of stores in SoHo, including the aforementioned new one (C. Wonder, which has been making headlines for some interesting reasons - after experiencing it I can safely say I'm a friend of Tory's) then started to wander north on Broadway, wondering what to do and realizing I was getting a bit peckish just as I walked past Dean & Deluca.

(Before I go on, I should say - as overpriced, upmarket market/delis go, Dean & Deluca is the best, and I've been to quite a few. I love overpriced, upmarket market/delis.)

I went in and bought a sandwich, something I'd never usually do on my own. Two reasons:

1. Dean & Deluca sandwiches are huge and expensive. Usually I wouldn't spend that much on a takeaway lunch for one, and I certainly wouldn't eat it all by myself - I couldn't.

2. I don't work or live particularly close to any Dean & Delucas. For the sake of my wallet and waist, that's a good thing - for the sake of everything else, not so much.

Once I had my sandwich I hesitated, unsure of where to go to eat it. I hate eating and walking. To me, it looks slobby, and I'm not all that good at multitasking, so it'd definitely look slobby if I were the one doing it. It is, still, the middle of winter though, so sitting outside didn't seem sensible, and besides, if I'm sitting I do need something else going on. I'm not very good at relaxing and just being one with my food.

I was confused, so I did what I often do when I'm confused - I headed towards Bleecker Street, home of Marc Jacobs and Murray's Cheese and Magnolia Bakery. It's like my own personal Tiffany's.

And then, not for the first time that day, fate intervened and I veered right at the last minute, marching up LaGuardia until I hit Washington Square Park. The wind was cold, but I was wearing a coat, and the sun, when it hit you, was warm. I took a seat with my back to the wind and my face turned up to the sun and there I sat for hours, eating my sandwich and watching people and revelling in the thought that winter would soon be done*.

*Post-relaxation update: I'm behind on everything and I've got the sniffles and I owe the gym about ten hours in return for the sandwich. But whatever, right?

Vermont Fashion Week

Here in the city New York Fashion Week has just finished, but I have missed most of it (and by missing it I mean missing watching the shows online - once again my front row invitation got lost in the mail) as I was in Vermont.

Thanks to the wonders of 3G and the constant news cycle I did receive the occasional tweet, but it was hard to connect with next winter's fashion (lots of black, leather, fur, fyi) when I was still mired in the -16°C weather of this one. Yes, -16°C, and that was at base lodge, not even at the top of the mountain. It was well worth it, but I will never be truly happy that snowboarding is, by necessity, a cold weather sport.

So it's a bit hard for me to post about fashion when I've been sporting clothes of the waterproof, puffy persuasion for the last few days, and have simultaneously missed out on the biggest fashion event of the first half of the year, but nonetheless, I will. The things I do for you all. I refuse to talk about next winter though - I realize this makes me a bit of a hopeless fashion commentator, and grossly behind for next season, already - but really, how is it not depressing for all the attending fashion editors to be focusing on next winter when this one hasn't even ended? There's a whole six months of sunshine and parties that they're ignoring, because what we will be wearing this summer was determined at the end of last summer, and is therefore already old. I'm surprised there hasn't been some sort of mutiny or boycott. Those fashion peeps tend not to be the quietest or most restrained of people.

I will, happily, talk about spring, spring, spring. The very word is music to my ears. I'm not sure if I've made this obvious enough previously, but I'm really not the world's biggest fan of being cold, and once I've got my boarding in for the season I am well and truly ready for winter to be over. So now I'm focusing on my spring wardrobe. Have been for a good couple of months already - since Christmas, in fact. Always good to have a project. I've nearly got it finalized - nothing is bought yet but those existing clothes that require alterations or tailoring to bring them into this season are sorted, and the lists have been made, and the husband's expectations have been smoothed, and the inspiration pages are in the process of being put together.

Inspiration pages? What? Yes, maybe I go too far sometimes (the looks on my colleagues' faces when I asked if they had organized their spring wardrobes yet would certainly indicate so) but it's a thing, and it's a thing that I'm doing. Watch this space*.

*Maybe don't watch this space. Maybe close down this site and check in again in a few days, or hit one of those buttons in the top left hand corner so you get notified about future posts. While I would love to finish this post and start on the next one, I do have paying work that sadly requires my attention.

On the Road

H1 and I are on our way to Vermont, ready for a long weekend of snowboarding. More than ready, in fact. Last year we got in one day, which is not enough. I'm super excited, even though I'm concerned I've forgotten how to do it.

Right now, however, the snow seems like a distant promise, and I feel like I wouldn't even care if it went unfulfilled. I'm in the car next to H1, listening to Mark Ronson, looking at the cars around us on the motorway, their lights glowing in the slowly falling dusk, and I'm completely, totally content - a feeling I don't often have. We just crossed the state line into Vermont, and as if by magic, the side-of-the-road snow made an appearance, a bright star came into view as though it had been switched on, and the trees grew thick and closed in around us. Soon we'll stop in some dreadful roadside diner and eat what I know will be inferior food - but I don't care. So long as H1 was with me, I could do this forever. Road trips are the greatest.

And Then What Happens?

For about as long as I can remember, people have been mourning the 'death of the high street', citing the evils of big Wal-Mart style superstores and, more recently, Amazon, and blaming their presence, buying power and elevated level of convenience for driving out the 'little guys' and hastening our demise by homogeny, often while walking around a superstore pushing a shopping trolley full of more stuff than one family could ever really need.

This has never really worried me.

Possibly you can sense a little sarcasm in the first paragraph and possibly some is meant. However, the second paragraph is straight-up, non-sarky truth, which is surprising, because on the face of it, this is something that should worry me. I'm usually a staunch defender of the little guy, and there's nothing I like more than personalized shopping experiences that make me feel special. Remember, though, that for the last six years, I've been living abroad in cities that are not exactly big box store friendly, and for most of the time before that, I was a kid/teenager who would have shopped anywhere, provided they sold toys/mildly-trashy clothing. There was a time at uni when I shirked the mainstream by going to an independent record store to buy my CDs, but my main feelings about that are that I could have saved $10 a pop by swallowing my pride and paying a visit to The Warehouse (NZ's version of Wal-Mart).

So really, this has never been an issue for me because, without trying to sound elitist, I've been visiting local retailers and overpaying for basic stuff for years (right, D'Agostinos on 3rd Avenue?) For me, it's just the price of convenience. In recent months, however, a couple of things have got me considering what this death may look like.

On the dead high street, you can't buy books. Not quality books, anyway - I'm sure paperback romances are still available in the superstores (and once again, this is not meant to sound as snobbish as it does - trust me, I read some crap sometimes). But if it happens to be two days before Christmas, say, and you suddenly decide you want to buy someone a book, and it's too late to order it from Amazon, and you work in Midtown Manhattan and every second of the next two days is scheduled with five seconds worth of work, where do you go?

The answer is you don't. This happened to me, and I just flagged the idea completely and thought of another gift, because the closest bookstore I know of is in the high '50s, and it just wasn't going to be possible to get there. There used to be a Borders right by where I live, but it closed down last year when Borders went under, and, well, that was that. It's empty now. And I have never worried about it before, despite having loved reading since the moment I could, because I have a Kindle and there's Amazon and most of the time these days I don't have time for books anyway - constantly staying on top of the news cycle keeps my eyes occupied enough. But when you need a bookstore, you need a bookstore, and that's hard when there aren't any.

The second incident happened just this morning, as I woke up by checking Twitter from my phone in bed (news cycle, see?) A tweet from Concrete Playground linked to their article about international brands they'd like to see in New Zealand. I clicked through, curious about what they wanted, and read with a growing sense of consternation.

Shake Shack? In-n-Out? Sure, they do good burgers - but I'm pretty sure I miss Burger Fuel more now than I'll miss either of those two if I ever return permanently to NZ. Pinkberry? Okay, it's awesome, but Mint Trumpets are more awesome. H&M? Asos? Huh?

Some of my reaction might be because of where I am right now (mentally and physically). A loyal Kiwi living in New York probably is going to consider the New Zealand foodstuffs she misses vastly superior to those she can get any day (although In-n-Out is still West Coast only - and insider tip, there are a couple of way better inexpensive burger places in the Bay Area). But some of it is completely justified, no matter who you are or where you are. H&M have a massive following for a reason, but hit a certain age and you quickly realize that it's a polyester filled hellhole*. And Asos? Asos don't even have stores - they're online only, and yes, excellent - but online. They're already in New Zealand. Because the internet is global. For that matter, I'm pretty sure you can buy H&M clothes online, and if you can't yet, it can't be far away.

I want Auckland to be different from New York, and I want New York to be different from London, and I want London to be different from Stockholm - and to date, I have mostly got my wish. You can certainly go to bits of each city that, according to the shopfronts, are the same, but you can also easily avoid that. But if we ask for all the things we enjoy about other cities to be available to us every day, we'll stop enjoying them, in other cities and our own. And that's the second factor that will help create our dead high street - even if the shops are there, we won't care, because we can see those shops anywhere, and we can probably get it cheaper online anyway.

All of this should not be read as a rant against globalization, or the internet - I actually think both are good things (very good things, when it comes to such sites as Net-a-Porter). But I think there is an in-between, where online gives us access to the world's best (and H&M if you must) and our high streets give us access to our own best, and I think we need to make a concerted effort to develop and maintain that, all playing our part - even if it means sometimes paying $10 more for a CD DVD book - to prevent the death.

*Full disclosure: All my tights come from H&M, but to be fair, more often than not you want them to be composed of manmade fabric.

Whatever, Whenever, Wherever

In New York, this describes pretty much anything you can think of, but I'm referring specifically to food. Whatever you want, whenever you want it, wherever you may be. Within the city limits, that is, and probably only certain parts of the city limits - I don't fancy your chances of getting Vietnamese at 4am in the suburbs of Staten Island.

But here in Manhattan, the eating world is your oyster! Everywhere delivers. Some of the nicest restaurants in Manhattan deliver. You can get Balthazar delivered. Which is decidedly excellent on nights like these, when exhaustion and apathy set in and the only options that seem to present themselves are not eating, eating cheese on toast, or ordering in. Not eating, or eating cheese on toast, seems a bit rude when you're surrounded by literally thousands of options, so order in we did! Not Balthazar - no. We had something else in mind.

For 20-something New Yorkers, H1 and I don't order in all that often. We go out to eat quite a bit, and we both enjoy cooking, so we do quite a lot of that, but ordering in tends to be a last resort. Not because it's not good - it is - but because it's not as good as eating our own meals or just going out to a restaurant.

Except, that is, when it's Blockheads. Blockheads is a Tex-Mex place with a few locations - one of which is wonderfully close to our place - that mainly does burritos. Super-super-sized burritos. H1 and I order one, and split it in two, and that is plenty of food, and oh, also, also, it is awesomely good food. Fresh and tasty and light and satisfying. Everything that good Tex-Mex should be, but too often isn't.

Blockheads also does good margaritas. They cost $3 each and come in a giant plastic cup. We didn't order a margarita tonight, because it's Thursday (and because we've been working our way through a very nice cabernet sauvignon) but we've had them before, when eating in the restaurant. As I say, they're good, but not quite good enough to make you forget that actually, you are in a place that you are just too old for.

Any place that has super-sized, good, inexpensive food and cheap drinks is going to entice the 'frat boy' segment of the population, and where we live, most of the population is of the frat boy persuasion. It was fun for a while, but everybody's got to grow up sometime - or succumb to their inner lameness (tick and tick!) So tonight, we took advantage of the luxury of delivery, and after pressing a couple of buttons and waiting 20 minutes, we were eating a delicious, luxurious half of a chicken fajita burrito each. And it was fabulous. This city is the best.