Rather too much fun

Today I am not well. Unfortunately this is because I have a hangover, so I deserve no sympathy, flowers or chicken soup. This is what happens when one doesn’t drink for two months: two Tsing Tao & a couple of cocktails over the course an evening and I am royally plastered.

I am writing this from my bed, as prone as one can be & still type. John Humphries is burbling away on the Today programme in the background (you can take the girl out of England…), there is a cup of steaming Earl Grey and I am about to heat up last night’s Chinese doggy bag.

The cause of my ills is threefold. Pretty Miss J was celebrating her birthday (again) at Tapeo 29, a great tapas bar on the Lower East Side, where I had just time for a large glass of a very good Tempranillo before marching through the LES, & down the Bowery to Chinatown for supper with lovely Lola.

The dressing up fairy had dictated that I wore my black washed silk Geren Ford mini dress with high heeled black patent & leather ankle boots which ensured good calf muscle exercise but very sore feet by the time I arrived to find poor L, my flatmate, sitting disconsolate and alone in HSF, the restaurant we were supposed to be eating in. We hopped it sharpish - way too odd being the only customers in a brightly lit dining hall, and went round the corner for Shanghainese dumplings and scallion pancakes instead.

After those we ordered so much food for the five of us that it barely fitted on the Lazy Susan, (squeaky fresh bok choy with lots of garlic, crispy duck, spring rolls, tofu and black mushrooms, sesame beef and more, more) so we turned up at Death & Co in the East Village, my favourite bar in Manhattan, with a rather large placcy bag of leftovers. Glamorous, me.

They make serious, serious cocktails here. No vodka on the premises. Ice in huge lumps hacked off with an ice pick so your drink stays properly cold and not too diluted. No carbonated muck. Just very strong, very good, slipping under the table cocktails. I recommend the Fresa Brava: jalapeno-infused Herradura Silver tequila, yellow Chartreuse, lemon juice, strawberry. It kicks like a mule.

I think I might have a little sleep now.

NYFW parties

So having slept all afternoon like a hibernating dormouse in a nest of cashmere shawls on my bed, I spent a glorious hour dancing between the bedroom & bathroom having an almighty primping session, the likes of which I haven’t indulged in since my birthday at the beginning of December. I'm not really engaging with NYFW, as I'm still not wholly well, & fashion weeks are a recipe for illness (you are continually hungry, tired & sore of foot)so only going to events where I personally know the PR, or designers.

I wore this dress with my black suede and patent ankle boots, and 120 denier black Wolfords. And felt mighty glad of it when I arrived at Aziz, a Moroccan lounge in Midtown, for the Nanette Lepore after-show party. I always forget how badly the majority of fashion people dress, especially in New York. Waaaay too many sequins for my liking and everyone in dull colours. I may have looked like a rainbow threw up on my dress, but at least I was making a nod to current trends. I’m so used to London where people really do follow fashion in a quirky & individual way that it’s easy to forget that it just doesn’t filter down so quickly in America.

Fashion week parties like this are always fun. They aren’t full of celebs and models; they’re more of a way to reward the hard working teams who put the shows together, so they are always most amusing with lots of hair letting down. We drank delicious Belvedere white cosmos and did some dancing. The party ended at midnight (as fashion parties always do – the venue is happy to host parties in the 8pm-12am period, but then they kick everyone out for the paying customers).

I actually sloped off earlier to head downtown to what is supposedly Manhattan’s most luxurious, newest and hottest lounge/club/whatever, 1OAK (stands for One of a Kind). (More of this later.)

The wonderful English men’s shoemaker Oliver Sweeney is intent on taking America (and rightly so), and to that end was throwing an exclusive Fashion Week cocktail party there (until midnight!) along with a young English bespoke tailor.

Who just about nixed his chances of being included in the feature I am writing on English tailors in America for a Very Large newspaper with his stunningly rude behaviour last night. The truly lovely Oliver Sweeney PR took me over to meet him, and we talked about his business and Savile Row. Then the owner of 1OAK came over with some badly dressed, but important guy, introduced him, ignoring me (even though we had already met), and then the three men drew together, with the tailor literally turning his back on me: he & I had been mid conversation and I was just frozen out, & left standing there outside their circle like a muppet. I waited a few minutes to see if he was going to turn back to sign off our conversation, but no.

I was so angry that I left the party. I had trekked down to Meatpacking from Midtown for his American launch and, frankly, journalist or no, expect some politesse. Not impressed sir. You’d better learn some manners if you want to grow your business.

My quintessential Manhattan in 2007

Bicycling around Central Park with the barrister. Staying at M's glorious apt in the West Village and waking up to find it had snowed overnight. Top of the Rock with Liz. Finding the perfect skirt for $2 in the East Village Flea Market. Being placed front row at several fashion shows: unexpected but always pleasing. Freewheeling down Broadway on my bike. CSS at Irving Plaza with Laura. Riding the rollercoaster at Coney Island. Managing to make cupcakes in my toaster oven. Sunbathing by the pool on the roof of Soho House. Casa Mono with Henry. Hotel room hanging with Garbage. Dressing up as a Deadly Sin for Hallowe'en. Brunch at The Carlyle with my parents. Making out with a preppie banker. Oxenberg cash-llama scarves. Sunday lunch with Barry Humphries & Angelica Huston on Ed's penthouse roof terrace. Suppers of raspberry martinis and French fries with BA. Dachshunds everywhere. Always having painted nails. Birthday supper at Morandi. Brooklyn Botanic Garden with Muv & sis. Strand Books. Wine & therapy with Mich. Eating hot dogs at Crif Dogs in the East Village. Kaiser Chiefs at Hammerstein Ballroom. Picnic-ing in Union Square with Clare. Guacamole. The Waverly Inn with CA. Dropping $600 on frocks on my birthday in the sale at Miguelina on Bleecker. Dating a boy in Brooklyn. Swimming in an open-air pool on a pontoon in the East River. Looking like high class call girls at the Four Seasons with JD. Riding a police horse in Central Park. The Whistlers at The Frick. Dancing to The Cure at Beatrice Inn.

Christmas partying in NYC & Why we love the Beatrice Inn

gI sometimes wonder if I will ever attain proper grown-up status. Most of my friends in London are married, sprogged up and have vaguely sensible jobs. Me, I'm still behaving as I did in my twenties, and see no agenda for change in the near future.

Last night we had our Big Christmas Night Out. The four of us dressed up (frocking around the Christmas tree as BA put it), feeling all Manhattan sparkly & glam. The English contingent (BA, M & me) have a collective obsession with guacamole, which means that we tend to always eat Mexican food when we go out. (We eat Indian instead of Mexican in the UK: there is one national chain of terrible Mexican resturants - Chiquitos - and that's pretty much it.)

We love Rosa Mexicano because they wheel over a huge guac trolley to your table and make it fresh in a huge pestle & mortar in front of your very eyes. Dos Caminos have a guac station and La Palapa do a pretty good version too, & that's where we went last night. They also do pomegranate and blood orange margaritas. In fact the margaritas are so good that we were singing Christmas carols by the end of the meal last night.

We had lots of parties to go to after supper, but ended up hailing a white stretch limo (I know, I know, but ridiculous fun, & five don't fit in a cab here) to the Crash Mansion on The Bowery to see my great friend Julian (known as Shah), in town briefly to play a gig with hotly-tipped LA band Piel.

Unfortunately they weren't on 'till 1am, so we contented ourselves with a lot of dancing to the bands on beforehand. We were definitely the most over-dressed women in the room - and the only ones on the dance floor for most of the time - but hey, we like making a spectacle of ourselves occasionally.

And then we high tailed it to Beatrice again for more shenanigans. I woke up this morning with The Cure's Boys Don't Cry in my head and remembered doing rather a lot of air punching on the dance floor. Which probably isn't an enormously good idea in a very short mini tunic.

A Manhattan birthday

If I had to plan my perfect birthday party, then Thursday would probably have been it. I’ve never, ever been a fan of the restaurant/dancing model in London. It’s expensive: at least £150/$300 by the time you’ve paid for dinner, drinks & taxis, and the scene is so fragmented that any feeling of an intimate evening slides away, especially once you’ve had to engage with travelling half way across the city to get from a good restaurant to a half way decent club, one that isn't filled with drunk Royals, trustafarians, City boys, vomiting teens or sleezebag men.

Here it’s a completely different story. Manhattan is so tiny that you can walk from place to place, at worst hop in a $10 cab for a fifteen minute journey. Venues have a better mix of customers, as it’s cheaper to eat out, so good, stylish restaurants don't have that curiously London clientele: Russians, hedge funders and your parents' contemporaries. Frankly, Manhattan is just more fun, younger, hipper & cheaper(so long as you avoid the weekends).

I postponed my partying as L flew in from London the day after my birthday and I wanted to celebrate with her. So I invited fifteen friends to Soho House in Meatpacking on Thursday for pre-supper drinks from 7-9pm. L & I managed to arrive on time, & bagged the three over-sized squishy velvet sofas under the Ron Arad anglepoise installation in the middle of the Drawing Room, ordered Champagne for all, and hoped people would turn up. (Hipsters may raise a sardonic eyebrow at SH, but hell, there's plenty of room, the drinks are good, and you don't HAVE to talk to the i-bankers.)

And, thank goodness, everyone came. The boys looked a little over-whelmed at the sheer volume of ravishing females in stunning frocks. Then again, not unexpected as it was a fashion heavy gathering, including the beautiful designer Francoise Olivas (check out her wonderful collection here), and the girls behind Heidi Klein, in town to meet editors.

Seven bottles later, I staggered off with five girlfriends to Morandi in the West Village for supper at 10pm. Part of the usually dismal McNally stable (Pastis, Balthazar), the food here is actually good, and the wine list better than. There was a snapper in from New York Mag who cldn't keep his lenses away from the girls all through the meal.

We ate bruschetta with super fresh mozzarella di bufala, & a dish of fried olives. Nearly everybody had the special: a chicken liver risotto and I had a double order of the appetizer special: artichokes, peppers, more of that creamy mozzarella, tomatoes. Simple food, perfectly done, washed down with quite a lot of a very good Dolcetta d'Alba.

Half way through my gorgeous friend Christina arrived with a stupendous present for me: a wonderful, light as a feather, cream cash-llama scarf from her latest Oxenberg collection.

After blowing out the birthday candle on my chocolate hazelnut torta (thank you girls) we bundled up (did I mention it was snowing?) and walked through the narrow, tree-lined streets of the Victorian West Village to the Beatrice Inn for very naughty shenanigans.

Hidden away between some brownstones, at the top of the metal stairway to the basement entrance, the bouncers gave us the usual Beatrice line, “Whose party are you here for?”. The only obvious answer was, ‘mine’. After a beat they waved the five of us downstairs, where we found a large china greyhound to stash the coats & presents behind.

Beatrice, owned by Chloe Sevigny’s brother Paul, is a down & dirty dive bar & club with just two rooms filled with furniture & pictures seemingly scavenged from a carboot sale by a blind man, a tiny bar, and a pocket handkerchief dance floor & DJ booth in a grubby back room.

The hangers out are models, rockers, actors, film makers, hedge funders pretending to be rockers, and generally creative people pretending they aren’t enormously successful. There’s just one loo (with a useful-looking wooden table in the corner), everyone smokes like chimneys, and the music is a just-up-my-street mix of Pulp, The Clash, classics like Spirit in the Sky, and the dance music we jumped around to in the early 90s.

After flirting, smoking, drinking and a lot of dancing (flailing?), we tumbled out into the cold at 4.30am when the place closed. M was wobbling like a new-born foal on her super high heels so we found a nice boy to prop her up and we all walked back through the narrow streets to Perry to see her safely home.

In between dropping M & then CA off on W10th, I managed to get thoroughly kissed on a street corner by J, a very tipsy boy we had met earlier in Beatrice, who insisted on walking L & I back to the East Village. It’s always good to have a sherpa to carry one’s birthday presents, even if one does shut the door in his face on arrival with no, um, tip. (He so knew that was going to happen).

And oh dear, the hangovers the next day. (Lola, darling, however did you manage to get to work?)

I wore: the shortest ever black washed silk V neck, cropped sleeve tunic, with black matt 80 denier opaque Wolfords & my vertiginous black patent dominatrix Pierre Hardy platforms heels (so comfy I danced for three hours and then walked home in them), and a huge Giles gold studded black plastic bracelet. Bright pink lipstick and lots of messy blonde hair.

I think I might stay in Manhattan, after all.

On deadline, but just can’t get my head around my piece. I had a lunch today on the Upper East Side, and another writer there had 1500 words to file for tomorrow morning too, yet she & I were the last to leave, at 5 o’clock, after picking over the bones with our host. Typical journalists.

Really I shouldn’t have gone out at all but when an invitation from my most erudite & charming New York friend appeared in my inbox to “a small lunch I’m having for Barry Humphries & Lizzie Spender on my terrace”, I felt refusal would have been, well, churlish. Fourteen of us (including ravishing Angelica Huston) ate delicious grilled vegetables, German sausages and salad under huge umbrellas in the 95F heat, before convening on the shaded side of the wraparound terrace to eat melon & chocolate cake & to listen to various of the bold-face guests tell anecdotes about other equally bold-face names.

After a week of vacillation and hideous introspection*, this weekend has been so packed with distractions that it’s hard to believe I was debating the wisdom of my flight to America. J’s Baby Shower was charming (certainly not a given when ten women are in the same room), filled with flowers, scrumptious food and genuine goodwill (& very tiny socks). Then to the roof terrace at Soho House to meet BA, & where SE was coincidentally working his way poolside through the Pimms in proper English boy-drinking-fashion. But, best of all, BA turned out to be a proper kindred spirit, a fashion industry girl with beauty, balls & brains who, like me, thinks that a supper of salad, French fries, ketchup & mayo, washed down with three raspberry martinis is a perfectly nutritious and sensible meal.

*I suddenly wondered where the phrase 'hideous introspection' came from. Upon research it appears to be from ‘The Turn of the Screw’

Life goes on...

I’ve been driven out of the apartment by the heat. L continues his air-con experiments driven, I suspect, by his continued auditioning for a new girlfriend. But I don’t like working in an icy chill, so we have brokered an agreement: no air-con in the day unless the temperature tops 40C. (It’s due to be 37C/97F on Monday, so it’s not inconceivable.) So now I’m sitting in the garden of Yaffa Café on St Marks & 1st in the East Village with a Stella and my laptop.

It’s strange having another person living in the apartment. JD and I had our own particular rhythm, and adding a man to the mix, albeit one who is best described as a Labrador puppy, changes the dynamic. Still, his mild OCD makes him great on the clean and tidy front, so I’m sure we’ll get on just fine.

Last night we headed to Lil’Frankies in the East Village, always JD’s favourite, and now mine too. Seven of us dumped the cutlery in favour of fingers to better chew our way through fried courgettes and wheel-sized pizzas, topped with mozzarella di bufala and garlic butter laced mushrooms, washed down by four bottles of Dolcetta d’Alba. I am always happy when I am left in charge of the wine list, so I ordered this delicious red in honour of Miss P, who sells it in copious amounts to Mrs Mad back in England.

I turned down karaoke with the gorgeous T and K (my singing voice makes grown men weep and babies wail), and plumped for pay per view extreme fighting or some such with L & C (who I like more each tme I see him) – it seemed the lesser of the two evils. Fortunately, nowhere was showing the fight (SUCH a shame), so the three of us ended up slumped over the wide wooden bar at the Horseshoe (also known as 7B from its street location), a proper dive in the village, drinking Summer Ale and playing American/English: Compare & Contrast, as all good expats do when hanging out together.


Horsehoe bar pic New York magazine /nymag.com

Dancing, drinking & raining.

The condensed nature of this island, combined with cheap cabs and a 24hr subway system makes an evening with four or five engagements a breeze. In London, where it takes an hour to get anywhere, and a cab costs on average $30 a ride, an evening can feasibly only contain one event, unless one has a very large expense account or bottomless pockets.

Take Friday night: I had my first ever frozen Margarita (delicious) before a private view at Pierogi in Williamsburg, dropped into the US launch of Moleskin’s chic - & useful – City Guides at the Art Director's club (loved Zadie Smith's personalised version), and then lovely L & I went to see Brazilian dance rockers CSS play at the Fillmore @ Irving Plaza. I'm glad we caught them at this tiny 500 person venue: they play Wembley Arena, supporting Gwen Stefani this summer. The set was so frenetic that even the Concession stand girls were dancing on the tables during the encore. We loved them: an energetic, funny, sexy dance rock hybrid with a huge dollop of latin sex.

High as a kite from dancing endorphins, we checked out The Park in Chelsea for a piece I’m writing on rooftop bars,(beautiful garden, good drinks, lovely manager) told the not so cute boys hitting on us that we were lesbians, and then finished the night off with way too many Martinis in the Games Room at Soho House. Crawled home by way of Pop Burger.

It is therefore all the more admirable that I managed to haul my sorry ass down to the Bowery Ballroom to see White Rabbits play last night. More of the astonishingly good Rabbits later.

After a week of complaining about the weather, it’s now bucketing down. I have a supper tonight in Nolita with TvB, a French photographer who is in town to shoot for US InStyle. Guess I’ll be taking a cab…

Lordy, better buy some sunscreen & a very large hat

The weather oracle that is the BBC weather page tells me that temperatures will reach 96F/36C on Saturday in Manhattan. Monday is Memorial Day here, one of the very few public holidays in America and the people I know are disappearing out of town for the long weekend or heading out to the Hamptons for the start of the season there. (I'm still in two minds about the whole Hamptons thing. Mostly it makes me feel tired, the thought of all that partying & social climbing. Although some proper country/beach action wouldn't go astray.)

As for me, I'll be in New York, sweltering. However TC & I have a cunning plan for Saturday. And it involves that delicious looking swimming pool & roof deck above. I don't care one little bit if some arbiter has raised an eyebrow to declare Soho House SO over. It has a pool on the roof for chrissakes. And cocktails. And the English papers. What is there not to like about this? (Hopefully most of the members will be in the Hamptons and the rest (the hipsters) will be far too busy cutting off their noses to spite their contorted-with-worry-as-they-work-out-which-new-edgy-place-they-should-be-seen-in faces to hang out there.) Now I just need to work out how to scrub off the freckly remains of my last disastrous spray tan, and find a miracle swimsuit that holds in my Chinese food baby.

A perfect day

Today I shall mostly be eating & sleeping. Since I left for London on the 17th April I haven't had a moment of downtime, bar sitting in Heathrow waiting for my delayed flight. (I don't count flying as downtime, because sitting in goat with my knees around my ears for seven hours is not a relaxing experience, especially when you have a fat man hogging the arm rest, and letting his blubber encroach on my seat.)

J the ebullient actor is staying here in JD's room 'till Monday evening, so I've scrubbed the apt, bought flowers (all the flower stands are full of fresh lilac for $6 a bunch) and generally tried not to scatter my possessions around the place.

H & I had a quintessential NY day yesterday in the 22C sunshine: a stroll through the East Village, brunch & Bloody Marys at Life Café in Alphabet City, a spot of bike shopping in the flea market on East 11th, and then up to the UES for culture. The Cooper Hewitt, again for me, then three hours in the Met, roaming through four millennia. Plus a detour to see the Frank Stella scupltures perched on the Met's Roof Garden. One of my new favourite places: 360 views over Central Park and Manhattan, plus the acme of civilisation - a daytime martini bar. Genius.

Cocktails at The Bowery Hotel (not as hip as it would like to be) and yakitori & Japanese tapas at Village Yokocho on Stuyvesant St in the East Village just about finished me off. Poor H: I was so thoroughly tired by this point that I clung onto his arm for support as he walked me home. Hopefully I will have revived and be able to function by the time we meet for supper at The Lovely Day this evening.

Picture: The view over Central Park from the Metropolitan Museum's Rooftop bar

hmm

It's somewhat late, but I'm far too awake to sleep... We started off at Manitoba's in Alphabet City, a regular dive bar (and our new local, I reckon). About fifteen of us, all photographers as usual. I hadn't realised that L & A's mate Martin was the extraordinarily good Martin Crook, who I worked with a lot in London, but had never actually met.

At about 11pm the call came in from B & Freedom with whom we partied at The Grand a fortnight ago. So, we ended up in a cab burning it up to midtown, tumbling out at the velvet rope, & uttering the magic words: we're on Freedom's list. And zap, we were in. And yet again, centre stage silliness, more bottle service & ludicrous, ludicrous dancing. And some dancing and misbehaviour with B. I do like DJs who play sets that mash up, amongst others, Blur, Gwen Stefani, salsa, mambo, Guns n Roses, techno, house, dancehall & Cyndi Lauper. Most amusing. And more exercise than I've had in weeks.

So, after B asked me out for dinner next week, ("anywhere you like, anywhere, you choose"), I told him that his girl friend K had told us that he was a shocking player. Don't think he was that chuffed. Now I'm intrigued to see if he does call me after all.... I think of it as calling his bluff...

I wore: Was dressed for drinking not dancing. Petrol blue cashmere fitted long line V neck cardigan, brown tweed short shorts, brown 80 den Wolfords, TopShop burgundy patent platform Mary Janes. gols chains.

Calm day

Wrote all afternoon, sorted my wardrobe ( why did I think it necessary to bring 14 pairs of shoes & 8 handbags with me to Manhattan?) and, best of all, initiated the final stages of Mission: M.

JD's boyfriend & I have been plotting the execution of his surprise visit for ten days. I got a grumpy & hungover JD to The Bowery Hotel at 4pm by pretending we were meeting a record label boss who needed a new stylist. Scowling like a cross kitten, she slumped onto a sofa in the lobby, & I promptly disappeared to hide behind a palm tree to call M down from his room. He strolled in, sat opposite her and waited for her to look up. Result: Absolute blank astonshment. Genius. Complete success. I scarpered pdq and left them to it.

JSL came round for Korean & beer at Dok Suni on 1st & 6th. We wandered around the East Village afterwards while he showed me local bars that weren't full of NYU students & Bridge & Tunnel: a hidden basement sake bar near St Marks and Angel's Share on 9th & 3rd, a fabulous and dark one room cocktail bar hidden through an anonymous door. I'm not sure what was more unexpected: walking up a staircase into a recreation of a Japanese street restaurant in an East Village building, or falling like Alice though a door in the restaurant into the bizarre & chic bar. We ended up back at The Bowery drinking bourbon & rum in the (packed) lobby bar. NB. BH is chocka with models and pretty people.

Today I'm off to Union Sq to buy music, Strand for books, and then The Frick for the El Grecos & Whistlers.

I wore: denim mini. black leggings, patent ballerines, DKNY black jacket, TSE cashmere sweater. Big silver hoops. Ponytail.

I am listening to: Kings of Leon

The Four Seasons

It's a whole different world up there in mid-town. JD's boyfriend's best friend F is a banker, in town for some mega mega deal. When the call came in to schlep up 51 blocks for after dinner drinks at The Four Seasons our enthusiasm levels were low. Eventually we dolled up, furs, legs & heels and trotted off to the hotel looking like two Russian call girls on the make. JD did look thoroughly fabulous.

Two English guys looked us up & down as we swept into the bar, and said knowingly, "Park Avenue". Genius. The four superannuated blondes at the bar, who really were on the make, were not best pleased at our arrival. Best line of the evening: Them to me: (after some sniping about my elbows in their space at the crowded bar) Looks like Camilla Parker Bowles Jr has arrived. F to them: Looks like Hillary Rodham Clinton Sr is already at the bar. Most pleased to spot some old school New Yorkers with wind tunnel plastic surgery, helmet hair and couture coming out of Atelier Joel Robuchon (the hotel restaurant).

We relocated to the lobby bar, away from the suits & the filles de joie, to snack on an "artisanal" cheese plate & Kobe hamburgers. Someone please tell them that their Camembert is not a goat cheese and that Kobe beef tastes so much better served hot not stone cold.

Joined by M, an investment guy on the deal. We ended up drinking a vastly overpriced bottle of Oregon Pinot in SoHo. Their expense account. M did flirting & asked me out for dinner tomorrow. Typical. My first date in NYC is with a British banker. (Although not my type, plus JD and his mate are coming along too, so should be fun.) Soho House is booked. (We can be the annoying braying English that AA Gill hates so much).

I wore: My black vintage mini dress again (ok I was hungover - sartorial decisions not high on priority list). Black patent low platform ankle strap stilettos with red soles. Black fur wrap. Black bakelite cuff. All Saints bubble patent bag.

Today I am listening to: 2 Many DJs mix