East Village - 10 Oct

Started our New York visit with a huge walk around the East Village and surrounds. We snaked our way down East 11th through to East 4th Streets checking out our neighborhood. We passed Tuck Shop (http://www.tuckshopnyc.com) a far better option if feeling homesick, rather than the usual Outback Joe type stuff you see around the world typically. Whilst we didn't go in there, I'm sure we'll check it out before we leave.

The rest of the Village was quite quiet with nice buildings, tree-lined streets and 4 - 6 storey walk ups with shops, bars, cafes and hair dressers on street level.


New York obviously doesn't rise before 12pm, then again, we did our shopping at Trader Joe's (http://www.traderjoes.com/) because our Brunch place wasn't open yet. It was manic at 9.15am on a Saturday with queues of over 50 people in each of the 'less than 12 items' and 'unlimited items' rows, snaked throughout the tiny store. The locals reckon the queue is worth the savings. Given the referral by our hosts and the fact we were already stuck there, we waited it out.

We then ended up at the New Museum of Contemporary Arts (Hell, yes), you'll see later on the photo! http://www.newmuseum.org/

We saw a South African Jewish photographer's 40-yr anthology of the changing climate in Cape Town and surrounds as well as a fascinating exhibition of posters and newspaper items from Emory Douglas of the Black Panther movement in the 60's and 70's.

The museum also features an amazing 7th floor rooftop terrace with great views of the city skyline and Mark's found his new favourite New York Thing - water tanks on city roofs. You'll see more shortly.




We headed towards SoHo, down Greene St with its cast iron architecture and upmarket furniture stores including Droog with some wild and crazy items. http://www.droog.com/


We then headed home for a well earned rest after walking about 10kms! Mum will be pleased.

At night, we went to the Comedy Cellar (about 15-mins walk) and saw six acts, all of whom had appeared on David Letterman, Dave Chappelle or The Late Show and each had their own Barack Obama Nobel Peace Prize joke to tell. We've never seen any comedy venue with so many rules. It cost $18 each and then we had a compulsory 2 item spend per person but a maximum of 3 alcoholic drinks per person. We also weren't allowed to heckle the acts (as outlined on the table information). Not as good as Melbourne Comedy Festival or Edinburgh Comedy Festival acts, but still had a few good laughs.