Williamsburg it was really nothing

We started Friday with a hearty breakfast in Kellog's Diner. Cara and Sarah will have fond memories of how good this place is. Apparently it doesn't have the greatest reputation with Brooklynites but I think that's because a couple of years ago it was an utter shithole and riddled with rats and botulism and the like then it was shut down and reopened and I'd imagine deep down nobody trusts it. I do though (possibly because I couldn't see into the kitchen) and confidently ordered myself a spinach omelette and some delicious homefries. Set us right up for the day. Lovely stuff. Sated, we hopped on the L train into Manhattan to get on the Staten Island Ferry to have a little look at the Statue of Liberty an' that. It was absolutely freezing on the ferry; the blustery winds had their nasty icy hands all over our faces and were desperate to get to our brains through our ears. Quite nice to see the Manhattan skyline from the other side though.

Word to the wise, there is NOTHING on Staten Island. Nothing at all. To be honest we wandered around the periphery for all of 20 minutes, past some dreadful looking restaurants with massive car parks outside and appalling looking menus. Everything further into town was up some oppressive steep hills so we sacked it off and got back on the ferry. The best bit about SI was all the heavy plant and myriad of lovely red cranes as the ferry left the harbour port dock.

When we got back to Manhattan we had a wander about downtown looking at weird shops that sold cheap shoes and horrible expensive clothes. The area around Lafayette Street is officially Stewart's favourite part of town so in honour of this we had a wander about there and found a sweet little Portugese bar where we had a few happy hour Mojitos. This inspired us to make our own when we got home. Badly. We swung by Dean and DeLuca and got some fresh mint and more limes than could ever be consumed by anybody and made something that was vaguely passable as a drink but would certainly be sent back in a bar.

 

Once we'd finished making a big mess in the kitchen we hit Williamsburg. Big time. On the way to Bedford Avenue (the main street where most of the bars and restaurants are) we stopped in one of the many unfathomably odd little deli/grocery store/place for big groups of middle aged Puerto Rican men to drink beer IN A SHOP instead of going home or to a bar and leer at women in Spanish so that Alex could use the ATM at the back of the shop. We (mainly James) got chatting to a mad drunk man called Carlos Jimenez who was knocking back the beers with his sordid little cronies. This is apparently quite normal in this neighbourhood. Almost every shop that is Hispanic Caribbean, either Puerto Rican or Dominican is full of men drinking beers and having shouty conversations, I wish I could speak Spanish so I could tell what thy are saying but I imagine it would be as uninteresting as any group of drunk old men in any language. I can't work out how they make any money in these shops because they are quite intimidating and their customer service skills are practically non-existent but seeing as there's one on every corner they must be doing all right. I suppose I'm hardly their target demographic anyway. Anyway, James (and before too long Stewart as well) had become embroiled with this Carlos guy who was trying to sell us weed and coke and chat to us and tell us that the other men in the store were scared of 'blancas' and seemed desperate to hang out with us so we listened politely while he explained in great detail about his house in Williamsburg and that his mother had bought  the building in 1976 for $16000 and that is was the greatest town in the world and that he had two sons and that he worked for the MTA buses and had a lifetime Metrocard and all manner of nonsense; there was a lot of embarrassed high fiving in appropriate places.  The other men in the shop wanted us to leave because we are white and they didn't like us (apparently this is a completely acceptable thing to say-maybe because neighbourhoods are so much less diverse and people seem to only live with other people of the same ethnicity, Puerto Rican, Hasidic Jews etc. or maybe because they are all just fucking racist) anyway, we didn't stick around to find out. Our party of four had become a party of five, with Carlos in tow we continued on our way. At this point we were as keen to shake him off as he was to buy us lots of drinks. At the first bar we got to, Alex and I sloped off out the door and down the road while James and Stewart had a shot and then ran away down the road. From our vantage point down the street we weren't sure if they were ditching him or running away in terror. It all ended well, suffice to say none of us can ever walk down Havermeyer Street again just in case.

We went down to Bedford Ave and met some of DD's friends that she was working on a film with and drank what I would swear was listerine and coke and had a disco. More fun than I can be bothered to write about. My nails are getting too long to type without loads of mistakes. More later.

Kisses.