Because I’m always haunting the blogs of New Yorkers, I had a list of places I wanted to visit when Joe and I met friends in the city this weekend. I even made a Google map for the day, out of paranoia that we would unknowingly wander right past the best places (which can happen so easily).
After getting off the Boltbus, we headed straight for ice cream. Coolhaus, the LA-based, architecture-themed ice cream truck, was waiting in a prime location. Because Joe went to school for architecture, I spent four years trying to learn all the names, and Coolhaus’s cheesy architecture jokes were a delightful payoff. For your “one story” sandwich you pick from flavors like peach bellini, Guinness chocolate chip, and Nutella almond chocolate (my choice), then you get to pick the cookie from options like red velvet, maple waffle, and peanut butter (my choice). The sandwiches started melting immediately and we had to eat them as quickly and enthusiastically as possible.
Next: I’ve posted here before about the lovely webstore Chance, and they have a pop-up store for the summer! It’s lovely inside, of course, just look at this seashell collection in the window. For visitors, they have handmade packets filled with a saltwater taffy and a cheerful fortune, all wrapped up in a graphpaper packet stamped with a vintage stamp. Wow.
After that, I was getting hungry , so we stopped in at Tacombi, an old garage painted to transport you to Mexico, selling tacos of all sorts. It was cool and breezy inside and I loved their interior painting. Beautiful details were everywhere, and my breakfast taco (egg, avocado, chorizo, hot sauce, $4) was delicious.
Next we headed to Saturdays Surf NYC to see the surfboards, with fingers crossed that their back deck wouldn’t be too crowded.
It wasn’t! I think that back deck was my highlight of the day. It was shaded. They had a sign up asking people to talk quietly which worked and made it possible to sit close to strangers and still have intimate conversations. We each got delicious iced lattes from their espresso bar inside (ice itself would have been delicious at that point). And the other customers milling around were talking about surfing, which was so fun to think about on this 85 degree city-day. We liked it so much, we bought a t-shirt.
We also swung into Uniqlo, home of multi-colored Japanese basics, Muji, the neutral of all neutralshops, Partners & Spade (closed for the holiday, of course), Future Perfect, and Opening Ceremony. If we’d had just a little more time, we definitely would have headed to McNally Jackson bookstore and KIOSK.
If you’re headed to the city soon I recommend all these places! (you could even use my map) If you’re nine months pregnant like me, I recommend taking snack breaks at least every 1.5 hours!
Joe resting in Central Park.
