Weekend Wrap-Up: Weekend number 5! Now that I am over the hump of being here for my first month I might have to switch up numbering my weekends..but for now the numbers will remain. As usual, New York City had plenty of weekend activities to entertain!
Friday night was girls night out! Thank you AM New York for informing me of yet another party with free drinks (I’m telling you!). We headed to Katwalk to help celebrate their 6th Birthday and take advantage of yet another free opportunity in the city. When a well drink costs on average $7, free sounds pretty fabulous. The venue was pretty cool, dim lighting, VIP upstairs balcony complete with a catwalk. The music was pretty good, and it was absolutely packed. A little too packed for my taste, but stopping by for the last half an hour of the open bar wasn’t too bad.
After Katwalk, we headed to a more low-key bar called Brother Jimmys. Felt a little bit more at home there in the countryish-barn kind of atmosphere. Any place that plays Phoenix and serves drinks in mason jars sounds like a good place to me :) Having about a 6 to 1 ratio of guys to girls doesn’t hurt either. I have to confess I’m not much of a party girl.. all of my Portland friends will tell you I was always the first one that wanted to go home and crawl into bed. As if bars being open until 2 wasn’t late enough.. they are all open until 4 here. So even if you stay out until 2 it’s considered an early night! This has taken a lot of adjusting to my in bed by midnight attitude. I still haven’t seen 4, nor do I strive to but we met some pretty cool people Friday so I’d say it was a good night.
Saturday we were onto adventure to our first flea market in Hell’s Kitchen. I’ve never been to one so it was pretty cool to check it out. Shout-out to my Grandma Osgoodby— you would have LOVED it! So many cool treasures to find! We were good little girls and only window shopped, but if I am in need of a sweet fur jacket or some broaches I know where to head. On the way home we ventured through Union Square again in search of some goodies to decorate our apartment with. Our place is starting to come together pretty well! We’ve bought a couple things here and there when we have a little extra money from our budgets, but starting from nothing takes some time to settle in to.
Saturday evening we decided to stay in the neighborhood and feed into my roommate’s craving of sushi. We headed to Sushi Suki right down the street on York. By this point I was pretty hungry and decided to try one of their combo specials with a California roll, Tuna and Salmon rolls. I figured I like Tuna and Salmon so it couldn’t be a bad choice right? The times I have had sushi I’ve usually been with a sushi enthusiast who either a.) orders for me or b.) we go to a sushi bar with a menu of descriptions. When our food came I had the hard realization of sushi=raw fish as in very raw fresh tuna and salmon. I tried one of each, but decided they were a little bit too raw and fishy for my sushi tastebuds. I realized when I’ve gotten sushi I’ve never really had any of the rolls with mostly raw fish. I’m not one to waste food though, especially when it’s $15 a pop so I came up with the brilliant idea of taking it home with the intention of cooking it. I was sushied out for the night, but still hungry so it was necessary to grab a slice of pizza at the restaurant next store before heading home and hold off on cooking until the next day. Update on the leftover sushi? I decided to use the teriyaki marinade I bought on accident instead of teriyaki sauce (definitely not the same thing I’ll tell you from experience!) to try and cook a delicious tuna and salmon stir-fry kind of dinner. It was okay cooked, but still not great so it was Scooter’s lucky night. At least someone was a happy camper though right!?
Sunday I finally made it out to a church I looked into going to before I moved here. It’s called The Journey Church and it is over on the Upper West Side. They have convenient service times with locations all over New York City which is pretty cool. The message and pastors seemed really great and everyone was very welcoming. It sounds like I started going at a good time too because they just started a new series and are having a welcoming session to new members next weekend. It’s really hard to compare churches after really loving the church I was going to in Portland called Solid Rock. I definitely felt very welcomed though and reflected on a great service which is what it is really about right! They give all of their new members a book called "The Case for Faith" by Lee Strobel too, which I thought was pretty cool. I love reading books on theology or the lack of thereof as well to better understand different perspectives and the meaning of our lives in this crazy world!
After church, I headed back home and onto our next mission of the day- pick up free tv. I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned, but New Yorkers throw away so many perfectly good things! Garbage days are Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays in our neighborhood and the night before all of the garbage bags are piled on the sidewalks. This kind of grossed me out initially, but it’s the only way that really makes sense for this city. Anyways, the evenings before it isn’t uncommon to walk home pass a couple of refrigerators, couches, chairs, barstools, tvs.. just about everything you can imagine! I ended up talking my roommate into grabbing a tv we found on our street about a month ago and up the stairs (thank you nice upstairs neighbor!) only to find out that it indeed was probably actual garbage.
So this weekend, my roommate decided to look for tvs on Craigslist and she found an ad for free tv- I just got a new one, it still works and is yours for free if you come and get it. So she emailed him and sure enough it was still available. Wondering if it was some kind of scam we headed downtown together, pepperspray in our purses just in case! The guy was a med-student at NYU and let us know he was actually not going to be there when we came by and left it with his doorman. This confirmed that we probably weren’t going to get murdered which is always a good thing to know. We picked up the tv that ended up being pretty big! 26” and we’re talking not a flat screen.. so we looked kind of silly carrying it out of the NYU apartments and trying to catch a cab by the hospital. Getting the cab was only the first part of the challenge. Next part? 4 flights of stairs.. We buffed it out though and made it up! It really does work though and we watched our first movie (yes Twilight) on our dvd player this weekend! I should really start writing finding free things in New York because I’m becoming pretty good at it!
The only problem now is that we still have the other broken tv that is ironically the same size, 26”, but twice as heavy. We could bribe the guys upstairs again with cookies to help us get it down, but that would involve having to tell them that the tv they helped us carry ended up being broken.. or option two throw it out the window into the small alley between the buildings. Neither option is looking too good right now.. but I think the second might be entertaining, great blog post video maybe? Haha, until we make a decision it will remain on our floor.
After our tv adventure though it was onto laundry time in our creepy basement. I can’t even tell you how many times I went up and down those flights of stairs today.. I have a feelings my legs and arms are going to be sore tomorrow! Well that is all for my weekend wrap-up this week my west-coasting friends and family!