Updates Here. So, I'm turning 30 this year. I want to do something cool for my birthday with lots of friends, but not too outrageously expensive. Since my birthday is October 22nd, I'm still in the initial planning stages, but I'd welcome thoughts and opinions. I'm debating between the…
Originally posted Tuesday, October 5, 2010 (2 years ago)
I'm taking Megabus to DC the week after you. Here's a tip that may not be valuable at this late date, but anyway - check inbound and outbound on both routes. I could've gotten a cheaper outbound on Megabus and a cheaper return on Bolt. I wasn't thinking straight, though, so I went with the cheaper RT fare which was Megabus. I didn't twig till later.
Originally posted Wednesday, October 6, 2010 (2 years ago)
Updates!
I am taking the bus to NYC on Thursday the 14th, and will arrive (according to the timetable, at least), at 7pm at 33rd and 7th by Sbarro. I would be thrilled to have someone (or someones) that wanted to meet me, accompany me to dinner, and then to Fram. I will then be spending Thursday night at George's. (Correct?)
Friday afternoon, photoshoot with Swank? Hanging out with TM? A combination of both? I'm pretty much free except for needing to check into the hotel at some point, (Courtyard Marriott @ Fifth Avenue 3 East 40th Street), and needing to meet up with Robert when his bus/train gets into town. You guys, get with me to hash out the details.
Friday night, Dances of Vice? Will people go to that? I figured, I'll already be all dolled up from the photoshoot. Do I need to worry about dressing in period/theme, or will general fancy-ness suffice? (Obviously, I have no problem with The Fancy.) Can someone suggest a restaurant for my birthday dinner? Something easy to get to, worthy of the occasion, but not crazy expensive?
Saturday afternoon, Chinatown food tour/photostroll! (Other parties have agreed to forgo football just this once. Thankfully, it's not a major game.) TM, can you suggest a specific time/place to meet so people can find us? (I'll also distribute cell #'s just in case.)
I'm thinking the food tour will also suffice for dinner? It seems like leaving saturday early evening open for flexibility is a good idea at this point. However, I'm clueless as to what to do Saturday night. I'm ambivalent on the issue of the activity being dance-related or not. Will people be at JJS or NYSDS, or should we do something else entirely, like bar hopping, or bowling? Maybe one, then the other? Advise me, oh wise Yehoodi-em.
Sunday, leaving on the 2:30p bus. Brunch? Something near-ish the Marriott and the busstop? Again, suggestions?
Forgive all the questions. As I've said before, the point of this trip is more about hanging out with friends than even necessarily dancing or sightseeing. I know that not everyone is going to be up for everything, but I'd rather hedge my bets if possible. Plus, I just don't know NYC well enough to figure this out myself. Thanks for indulging me. I'll try to pin things down ASAP, and post a final itinerary so people can choose to join or not as they see fit.
Originally posted Thursday, October 7, 2010 (2 years ago)
Edited on Thursday, October 7, 2010 12:31 am (2 years ago)
Ben is taking Friday off and really wanted to try and get lunch in Midtown East at Sakagura. It's not super cheap, he says about $20 for lunch, but apparently you get a lot of very good stuff for $20. They're a soba specialty place, and he says the rice bowl + noodle bowl sets are sick good. You're welcome to join us if you'd like before you do your photoshoot with Swanky. (Sakagura is right near your hotel; it's on 43rd and 3rd.) And anyone else too - speak up!
I'm probably not hitting up DoV, but if you want to suggest a general price per head and neighbourhood, I can suggest stuff?
For Saturday, I would recommend that the Chinatown eats + photostroll substitute for LUNCH. It's entirely possible that you will not need to eat dinner as well, but timing wise I'd say we meet between noon and 1 and probably walk around for an hour or two, then stop at a sit-down place to finish filling up for lunch if necessary. That should take us till 3ish or 4. Then the group can disperse to do whatever (get backrubs in Chinatown, shop in Soho, leave the nabe altogether, take the afternoon nap of the well-fed) before meeting up again in the evening.
Question re Chinatown -- you've already been to Ctown with us once before Toni, so I just need to check: what do you want to eat/see/do? Do you want to revisit some of the same stuff we hit before, or do stuff that's completely new? I'm going to free-association list some of the stuff that's always popular with Chinatown visitors, and you put checks next to anything that sounds like you might be interested?
Soy custard dessert (I will get some even if no one else does, because this stuff is my lifeblood)
Turnip cake of yums (this was an unexpected hit the last time!)
5 for $1 dumplings
Beef pancakes
Soy milk
Chinese buns, baked and/or steamed, and random Asian cakes
Egg custard tarts
Handpulled noodles (I think we did this last time)
Pho
Bubble tea
Creme-filled non-log hotcakes
Cheong fun rice crepes (there is supposed to be a guy on Hester Street that we can go hunt down; never found him yet)
Western Chinese food (from Xi'an) - think lamb burgers
Banh mis (vietnamese sandwiches)
Chinatown Ice Cream factory (not the world's best ice cream, but some interesting Asian flavors like red bean and lychee. if it's not freezing & you want Good ice cream, we can walk to the LES for gelato.)
Asian grilled beef jerky
Bulk snacks like dried fish, salted plums, etc etc etc
I think mooncake season might be over by next week, which is a shame.
For sit-down eats to finish with:
Dim sum (NY's is only ok, not as good as SF's, might be better than DC's; might be impossible to get a table)
Malaysian/Singaporean food
Vietnamese food (always a decent standby)
Congee (I had some yesterday, so good in this weather - if you have no preference, I might see if we can't somehow end up here)
Soup dumplings
Claypot rice
Randomly: There is a store/sandwich shop called Sau Voi, which Ben and I always postfix with "the home of sweet romance". ;-) We could arrange to pass it. ;-)
(Finally? This new text editor is the most retarded thing in EVER. Who decided that when I made a list, I clearly meant that I wanted a paragraph of unbroken text? Sheesh.)
Originally posted Thursday, October 7, 2010 (2 years ago)
Edited on Thursday, October 7, 2010 9:13 am (2 years ago)
Mich, I enjoyed everything we did on the last food tour, but would be open to new stuff as well. To be honest, I'm planning so many different pieces this weekend, that I'd be thrilled to just show up and have you take over. It all sounds good to me. :-) Meeting around noon sounds good to me. Maybe we can pick a place near a subway stop where we can plan to start by hanging out from noon-12:30? Give people some wiggle time for meeting up with us? Pick someplace, and I'll try to get the word out.
(That said, while it was hilarious I might skip the hunt for rugelach.)
Originally posted Thursday, October 7, 2010 (2 years ago)
Edited on Thursday, October 7, 2010 2:30 pm (2 years ago)
Updates!
See you at Fram.
See you at George's (if he keeps his blinds open). We're his
neighborsdacross the street.
Friday night, Dances of Vice? I see no dancers going on FB. The venue
(China1 Antique) is small with no dancefloor. If you wanna dance, there is
Gypsy Jazz Carazan (Django music) at Paddy Reilly's (6 FB dancers),
then Blues Village dance at Dance Times Sq (30 FB dancers)
Sat night dances are JJS (usually start late)or NYSDS (starts early)
Sunday brunch. Hudson Place (3rd ave and 36th street near George's)
fabulous homemade hot cornbread ont he brunch menu.
Originally posted Thursday, October 7, 2010 (2 years ago)
Yeah that's the thing though -- I'm happy to "take over" but it's nice to get a little guidance, otherwise you guys are just going to follow Ben and me around while we pick up groceries for the week. Which actually might be nice for those of you who want to pick up cheap groceries. :-) But we don't usually go out of our way to eat a lot of this stuff in a regular week, especially not all at once, so saying "Hmm, turnip cakes and bubble tea sound fun, I think I might like that" gives me a place to start making some very sketchy plans from! :) And of course we'll just fill in the shading as we go along.
In the absence of anything else...
Why don't we meet at Egg Custard King on 271 Grand, a block away from the Grand St B/D subway station (you can see it when you get out). I didn't remember there being seating, but Yelp pics show a couple of tables and chairs, so we'll try and score a couple. If not, we'll just hang on the corner and eat/drink our pastries and milk coffee.
From there, I'm thinking
- Prosperity Dumpling down the street
- Let's go chase the cheong fun cart instead of rugelach this time (hopefully it will be somewhat less hilarious) -- and if we can't find him, we can get fresh cheong fun from a cafe instead on Allen St
- Generically heading west towards Mott St for turnip cake and soy custard; bubble tea is in the area too
- Chinese bakeries somewhere along the way (I'll pick out a couple)
- Generically wending north to end at Congee Bowery on 207 Bowery (which I think is closer than the one on Allen St, although we could end up there instead.) -- have you ever had preserved century egg porridge? It's sick good. But everything else there is good too.
I think that's a good skeleton plan... is anyone else joining Toni and us? Happy to amend this to accommodate.
On Saturday, October 16, we’re teaming up with the Hester Street Fair, plunking some of our favorite food vendors alongside some of theirs, and bringing you a cornucopia of street eats. Patacon Pisao will motor down from Inwood to bring you Venezuelan plantain sandwiches, and Gloria’s In & Out is coming in from Crown Heights to warm your hands with piping-hot West Indian doubles. Try the new trucks you've heard so much about (Kelvin Slushy and Mexicue), and decide which lobster roll you dig better (Luke’s or Ditch Plains). There’ll be tacos from Cascabel; barbecue from Char No. 4, Malbon Bros, and Georgia’s Eastside; sandwiches from Cheeky, Mile End, An Choi; balkan burgers from Employees Only; baked goods from Grandaisy, Hot Blondies, Pies-N-Thighs, and Pain D’Avignon; and coffee from Kickstand to wash it all down. Check out the forty vendors below. Entry is free— just join us at the intersection of Hester and Essex anytime between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m., rain or shine, and bring your appetite.
Hester and Essex is legit two blocks away from the Egg Custard King we were going to be meeting at.
I say we do THIS instead, and then Chinatown after if anyone's still hungry. Yes/yes?
Originally posted Saturday, October 16, 2010 (2 years ago)
Edited on Saturday, October 16, 2010 9:01 am (2 years ago)
For anyone planning on joining us for Grubs/Food tour tomorrow, we are NOW meeting at 1pm.
FYI.
Edited to change a crucial 'T' to a 'W'.
Also...
"Hey Toni, if it's just going to be us and there's no longer a plan to "wait around while people show up", I say we just meet at the fair itself.
The Grub St festival is on the corner of Hester & Essex, so the most convenient train station fo...r you would be East Broadway, on the F. You'd walk to the 42nd St Bryant Park station on 6th Avenue, and take the downtown F train, on the orange line. East Broadway is the last stop before Brooklyn. Give me a call in the morning if you look at the map and you can't find it -- I'll be awake starting at 10am.
So get out of the station at East Broadway and head north to the park to start casing out the offerings when you get there, and we'll call/text to find each other."
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Help me make final plans for my 30th birthday in NYC!
Updates Here. So, I'm turning 30 this year. I want to do something cool for my birthday with lots of friends, but not too outrageously expensive. Since my birthday is October 22nd, I'm still in the initial planning stages, but I'd welcome thoughts and opinions. I'm debating between the…
Page(s): < Previous 1 2 ... (42 items total)
I'm taking Megabus to DC the week after you. Here's a tip that may not be valuable at this late date, but anyway - check inbound and outbound on both routes. I could've gotten a cheaper outbound on Megabus and a cheaper return on Bolt. I wasn't thinking straight, though, so I went with the cheaper RT fare which was Megabus. I didn't twig till later.
Dances with Vice at China is dress up and sparse dancing. See you next Thursday
Updates!
Forgive all the questions. As I've said before, the point of this trip is more about hanging out with friends than even necessarily dancing or sightseeing. I know that not everyone is going to be up for everything, but I'd rather hedge my bets if possible. Plus, I just don't know NYC well enough to figure this out myself. Thanks for indulging me. I'll try to pin things down ASAP, and post a final itinerary so people can choose to join or not as they see fit.
Bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica.
Ben is taking Friday off and really wanted to try and get lunch in Midtown East at Sakagura. It's not super cheap, he says about $20 for lunch, but apparently you get a lot of very good stuff for $20. They're a soba specialty place, and he says the rice bowl + noodle bowl sets are sick good. You're welcome to join us if you'd like before you do your photoshoot with Swanky. (Sakagura is right near your hotel; it's on 43rd and 3rd.) And anyone else too - speak up!
I'm probably not hitting up DoV, but if you want to suggest a general price per head and neighbourhood, I can suggest stuff?
For Saturday, I would recommend that the Chinatown eats + photostroll substitute for LUNCH. It's entirely possible that you will not need to eat dinner as well, but timing wise I'd say we meet between noon and 1 and probably walk around for an hour or two, then stop at a sit-down place to finish filling up for lunch if necessary. That should take us till 3ish or 4. Then the group can disperse to do whatever (get backrubs in Chinatown, shop in Soho, leave the nabe altogether, take the afternoon nap of the well-fed) before meeting up again in the evening.
Question re Chinatown -- you've already been to Ctown with us once before Toni, so I just need to check: what do you want to eat/see/do? Do you want to revisit some of the same stuff we hit before, or do stuff that's completely new? I'm going to free-association list some of the stuff that's always popular with Chinatown visitors, and you put checks next to anything that sounds like you might be interested?
Soy custard dessert (I will get some even if no one else does, because this stuff is my lifeblood) Turnip cake of yums (this was an unexpected hit the last time!)
5 for $1 dumplings
Beef pancakes
Soy milk
Chinese buns, baked and/or steamed, and random Asian cakes
Egg custard tarts
Handpulled noodles (I think we did this last time)
Pho
Bubble tea
Creme-filled non-log hotcakes
Cheong fun rice crepes (there is supposed to be a guy on Hester Street that we can go hunt down; never found him yet)
Western Chinese food (from Xi'an) - think lamb burgers
Banh mis (vietnamese sandwiches)
Chinatown Ice Cream factory (not the world's best ice cream, but some interesting Asian flavors like red bean and lychee. if it's not freezing & you want Good ice cream, we can walk to the LES for gelato.)
Asian grilled beef jerky
Bulk snacks like dried fish, salted plums, etc etc etc
I think mooncake season might be over by next week, which is a shame.
For sit-down eats to finish with: Dim sum (NY's is only ok, not as good as SF's, might be better than DC's; might be impossible to get a table)
Malaysian/Singaporean food
Vietnamese food (always a decent standby)
Congee (I had some yesterday, so good in this weather - if you have no preference, I might see if we can't somehow end up here)
Soup dumplings
Claypot rice
Randomly: There is a store/sandwich shop called Sau Voi, which Ben and I always postfix with "the home of sweet romance". ;-) We could arrange to pass it. ;-)
(Finally? This new text editor is the most retarded thing in EVER. Who decided that when I made a list, I clearly meant that I wanted a paragraph of unbroken text? Sheesh.)
Mich, I enjoyed everything we did on the last food tour, but would be open to new stuff as well. To be honest, I'm planning so many different pieces this weekend, that I'd be thrilled to just show up and have you take over. It all sounds good to me. :-) Meeting around noon sounds good to me. Maybe we can pick a place near a subway stop where we can plan to start by hanging out from noon-12:30? Give people some wiggle time for meeting up with us? Pick someplace, and I'll try to get the word out.
(That said, while it was hilarious I might skip the hunt for rugelach.)
Bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica.
Updates!
Yeah that's the thing though -- I'm happy to "take over" but it's nice to get a little guidance, otherwise you guys are just going to follow Ben and me around while we pick up groceries for the week. Which actually might be nice for those of you who want to pick up cheap groceries. :-) But we don't usually go out of our way to eat a lot of this stuff in a regular week, especially not all at once, so saying "Hmm, turnip cakes and bubble tea sound fun, I think I might like that" gives me a place to start making some very sketchy plans from! :) And of course we'll just fill in the shading as we go along.
In the absence of anything else...
Why don't we meet at Egg Custard King on 271 Grand, a block away from the Grand St B/D subway station (you can see it when you get out). I didn't remember there being seating, but Yelp pics show a couple of tables and chairs, so we'll try and score a couple. If not, we'll just hang on the corner and eat/drink our pastries and milk coffee.
http://www.yelp.com/biz_photos/5lFhARV590XCLxCMmZXTFw?select=vp1DsptmN5YhYhC1cHCCoA
From there, I'm thinking
- Prosperity Dumpling down the street
- Let's go chase the cheong fun cart instead of rugelach this time (hopefully it will be somewhat less hilarious) -- and if we can't find him, we can get fresh cheong fun from a cafe instead on Allen St
- Generically heading west towards Mott St for turnip cake and soy custard; bubble tea is in the area too
- Chinese bakeries somewhere along the way (I'll pick out a couple)
- Generically wending north to end at Congee Bowery on 207 Bowery (which I think is closer than the one on Allen St, although we could end up there instead.) -- have you ever had preserved century egg porridge? It's sick good. But everything else there is good too.
I think that's a good skeleton plan... is anyone else joining Toni and us? Happy to amend this to accommodate.
My favorite bubble tea place is on 9th Street and 3rd Ave. Saint's Alp. I could organize something there.
Uhhhhh, so. CHANGE IN PLANS. I just found out about this:
http://newyork.grubstreet.com/2010/10/save_next_saturday_for_the_gru.html
On Saturday, October 16, we’re teaming up with the Hester Street Fair, plunking some of our favorite food vendors alongside some of theirs, and bringing you a cornucopia of street eats. Patacon Pisao will motor down from Inwood to bring you Venezuelan plantain sandwiches, and Gloria’s In & Out is coming in from Crown Heights to warm your hands with piping-hot West Indian doubles. Try the new trucks you've heard so much about (Kelvin Slushy and Mexicue), and decide which lobster roll you dig better (Luke’s or Ditch Plains). There’ll be tacos from Cascabel; barbecue from Char No. 4, Malbon Bros, and Georgia’s Eastside; sandwiches from Cheeky, Mile End, An Choi; balkan burgers from Employees Only; baked goods from Grandaisy, Hot Blondies, Pies-N-Thighs, and Pain D’Avignon; and coffee from Kickstand to wash it all down. Check out the forty vendors below. Entry is free— just join us at the intersection of Hester and Essex anytime between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m., rain or shine, and bring your appetite.
Hester and Essex is legit two blocks away from the Egg Custard King we were going to be meeting at.
I say we do THIS instead, and then Chinatown after if anyone's still hungry. Yes/yes?
Yeah, that sounds cool. Good catch!
Bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica.
The Facebook Event Invite.
Bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica.
For anyone planning on joining us for Grubs/Food tour tomorrow, we are NOW meeting at 1pm.
FYI.
Edited to change a crucial 'T' to a 'W'.
Also...
"Hey Toni, if it's just going to be us and there's no longer a plan to "wait around while people show up", I say we just meet at the fair itself.
The Grub St festival is on the corner of Hester & Essex, so the most convenient train station fo...r you would be East Broadway, on the F. You'd walk to the 42nd St Bryant Park station on 6th Avenue, and take the downtown F train, on the orange line. East Broadway is the last stop before Brooklyn. Give me a call in the morning if you look at the map and you can't find it -- I'll be awake starting at 10am.
So get out of the station at East Broadway and head north to the park to start casing out the offerings when you get there, and we'll call/text to find each other."
Bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica.
Page(s): < Previous 1 2 ... (42 items total)
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