JuliaEmily

Run chicken run

One door down from our place there’s a live chicken shop - we live in a Puerto Rican neighbourhood where quite a few people have a preference for fresh chicken that they can see killed in front of them.

So on Tuesday and Friday mornings if the windows are open I hear the trucks unloading their cargos of protesting chucks and for 20 minutes I share their early morning fear and anxiety.

A moment ago returning from the lavanderia I saw a stringy specimen making a break for it, it ran out the door, skittish of people and cars and weaved it’s way down the street unsure of it’s next move. Before it got far the neighbourhood boys were chasing it down the street as I stood rooting for the fowl. Sadly his mad dash into a nearby restaurant ended his bid for freedom and I’m sure he’ll be eaten by bed time…

Time to get cozy

I love the summer as much as anyone else, it’s great to feel the sun on your skin, to drag the summer frocks out of their moth balls, and flaunt a little flesh. But somehow after a whole summer of it (or often for me 3 summers in a row) I am just over it and dying to don the layers.

That first breath of Autumn that is gusting across Brooklyn as we speak hints that it’s time to get rummaging through the woolies and getting cozy.

While summer clothes rely on what’s going on underneath them (not so hidden) for their charms, come autumn the clothes themselves are ready to steal the limelight.

The colder it is the more leeway you have to manipulate how your figure appears to the outside world. Sharp tailoring and luxurious knitwear add structure without requiring perfection.

I’m pretty old school in my autumn taste, classics in natural fibers combined with touches of deliciously bright primaries for warmth. Pictured are some of my favorite pieces on etsy for fall, click on each image to go to the listing.

The English invasion of New York

So the Brits have arrived in New York, it turns out I am not the only one, seems like I hear more English accents here most days than I would in certain areas of London. A few weeks ago I was sat in a neighbourhood restaurant in South Williamsburg, a gorgeous, but discreetly tucked away little joint called Moto, located in a wedge shaped building tucked away under the JMZ lines on Broadway. Sat on one side of the narrow dining room enjoying rosemary encrusted ribs with my man, I pricked up my ears only to discover that the entire of my side of the restaurant was from various parts of the UK. Now I am not talking about a party of invaders here, but 3 seperate tables of diners all hailing from Blighty and living locally.

My new job at Providence Day Spa in Boerum Hill also makes me feel at home with two English colleagues and the Victory cafe around the corner selling classic English mustard, marmite, hobnobs and hula hoops. Now I hear not only that, but there’s a British run fish and chip shop just 4 blocks away, that serves the classics and the more obscure deep fried mars bars a la Glaswegian establishments.

An old friend I met in Prague, who goes by DJ Shimmy over here runs music nights both in Brooklyn and Manhattan that often bring a taste of some of Britain’s more obscure mod sounds. There’s even a club in SoHo, Sway, which offers a Morrissey/Smiths night every Sunday should I ever feel like a good cry. With this kind of Anglophilia going on in the city how could a girl ever get home sick?

Across state lines....

I finally feel like we have actually moved to New York. Yes we’ve been here for 6 weeks already, but staying first with friends and then living in our strangely empty apartment didn’t feel very permanent. This weekend however we finally made the trip down south to pick up Andrew’s furniture (and my sewing machine yeah!!)

Let me tell you it was quite a trek, 18 hours over night on a greyhound to get down to Greenville, with the usual suspects, the ex-army guy bragging about his guns, the musician on the way to a concert in Charlotte singing gently to himself behind us the whole (actually this was kind of an unusual treat) the moms with new babies screaming while they gossiped with their new friends, the old ladies so large that they filled most of the neighbouring seat and had to be winched out at rest stops by chivalrous young men. the countryside wedding in the beautiful hills around Seneca, South Carolina made the journey worth while, as did my first meeting with my year old nephew Paul.

The wedding offered me another thrilling glimpse of the old south as the 6 groomsmen posed on hay bales for photographs and adjusted one anothers’ ‘buttonieres’ and aging southern belles drawled ‘oh daahrlin’ I just lurve your accent!’ and clutched me to their bosoms. The jazz quartet a la 1930’s Charleston was a joy and with the southern cuisine beautifully prepared by chef Laurence Mitchell, who had also trekked down from New York, to enjoy it was easier to ignore the conservative menfolk griping about ‘#$%&! Obama’ and his health care reforms.

Sadly our overnight stay with my charming in laws was mared by the need to pack up the moving van, the dust kicked up aggravating my allergies and fraying my temper. We of course spent the first few hours of the drive slowly remembering all the things we’d failed to load up, but were soon distracted by the local radio stations we flicked through constantly and diverse place names on the signs along the way.

We passed Winston-Salem, famous for it’s cigarettes and it’s witch hunts, another Greenville, a second Salem and another Charleston. The highway took us through North Carolina, and into beautiful Virginia, who signs exclaiming ‘Buckle Up Virginia’ made me giggle every few miles, imagining a local farmer talking to his red faced and jolly wife, named of course Virginia. We passed a town called Scotland just after a town called Dublin, then Bethlehem, Strasborg and Christiansburg…

We broke our drive in West Virginia in a mangey motel run by Hindus proclaiming Jesus’ love for us on their signs (over-compensation?). The breakfast in Maryland, a smooth run though Pennysylvania and New Jersey before finally pulling into Brooklyn.

So now here we are Brooklynites at last, admittedly writing this still surrounded by boxes, but moved in none the less.

The best of London's Burlesque

Flay and Deville’s Circus of Marvels has taking over Madame Jojo’s in London’s Soho once every 3 months for over a year now and has played each time to a full house. Their delightful mix of naughty caberet is universally appealing, combining comedy, magic, music, escapology with naughtier more risque acts they almost constantly have me in stitches.

Their last spectacular which took us to the end of Brighton Pier for beach inspired summer frolics was the best burlesque night I have ever seen, and trust me I was no Burlie virgin. Flay and Deville compered in their inimitable style, introducing acts like the Great Crapini, possibly the worlds worst magician, Kalki, comedy hula hooper extraordinaire, the incredibly sexy Spencer the Devil with a very revealing portrayal of King Arthur, and Shirley and Shirley’s wonderful wordless comedy skits.

For their next trick they’ll be taking us back to school, on the 7th of September you’d better don your uniforms and get down to Madame Jojo’s for your induction to the classroom of Flay and Deville’s Circus of Marvels featuring:

Madame Galina Prima Ballerina (The Forces’ Sweetheart, in dainty tutu and hairy knees)

The Flirtinis (an enchanting trad-jazz trio with live accompaniment)

Diva Hollywood (international burlesque star and downright saucy Madam)

Fanny Malone (a sexy songstress belting out bawdy music hall classics)

Rollicking Richard Sullivan (a unique yo-yo trickster making his London stage debut!)

…and many, many more.

An eaters manifesto

You’ve got to love manifestos haven’t you - an individual writes a tome instructing the rest of the human race how to live their lives. At the Latitude festival we went to the literary arena to hear Vivienne Westwood (quite the idol of mine) present her manifesto, clearly stating in her own inimitable, faintly doddering, style what is high and low culture and instructing us in taking the high road. I am afriad she rather failed to hold our attention, focused as we were on the fact that she appeared to have spilt numerous glasses down her cream silk dress, which she proudly proclaimed to have worn for 10 years. Even while in so many ways I agreed with her completely, I struggled with the arrogance of the concept of a manifesto.

But of course that is not going to stop me reading them, in fact there is nothing like the word manifesto to arouse my curiosity. So when I spotted An Eater’s Manifesto on a friends bureau I had to start reading. It starts with this simple mission statement ‘Eat food, not too much, mostly plants’. The opening chapter of the book clearly outlines a healthy eating strategy which makes perfect sense, but leaves you wondering why on earth you would need to write an entire book around such a blaringly obvious though wonderfully simple concept.

Simply because there seemed to be nothing more to say I found it impossible not to keep reading. Michael Pollan went to to explain not why this eating plan was prefereable to any other, but how we as a society had travelled so far from this basically obvious premise of eating. How mass production, processing and regulation have lead us into a situation where of the average supermarket’s contents only a fraction is really ‘food’.

He asks us to walk around our supermarkets with an imagined ancestor, our great-grandmothers, or even a caveman, and only to buy foods they recognise as food. I can sign up for this as a concept - although I may need to take someone’s Japanese and German great grandmothers round with me to end up with a diet I am content with.

He goes on to add more rules: Avoid things with unfamiliar ingredients, unpronounceable ingredients, or more than five ingredients, avoid food products that make health claims coz when did you even see a label on a banana claiming to be high in protein low in fat? Don’t eat anything incapable of rotting - all of which sound pretty sensible to me.

That said, the book did grind on me a few times, a little preachy, over simplified and skewed - but then that would seem the way of the manifesto as a medium. He also seemed to have be labouring under the assumption that a majority of Americans strive for a healthy lifestyle, well I would like to break it to him that probably a big chunk of them don’t actually give a damn about what’s healthy. At one point it became clear to me that your average American wasn’t exactly his target audience, when he said that of course not everyone could afford to eat organic and freerange ‘but those of us who can, should’, Ow!

This book is not going to change how I eat, although it nicely affirmed some of my choices, and gave me some interesting arguments against the pre-made meals I have always railed against. So thanks Michael Pollan I shall enjoy my future visits around the supermarket with my phantom entourage of batty old ladies and neandertile men!

Anticipating Latitude

This time tomorrow we should be arriving in Southwold for the Latitude Festival - we’ll be there to perform with the Immaculate Extremists and Noise of Art in the tribute to old horror film vampires on the Sunday night. So I’ve packed our fangs and my vampire gowns, and dusted off Andrew’s tail coat and I think we are ready to bite some necks.

The line up looks pretty amazing - with bands from the Pretenders to the Petshop Boys (has every 80’s band reformed to tour this year??), Spiritulized to St Etienne, Thom Yorke to Nick Cave and tonnes of new talent. But Latitude is much more than a music festival. There is an incredible line up of cabaret, comedy, film and theatre. Add to that a literary arena and salon and a poetry arena, cram all that into the beautiful suroundings of Southwold’s Henley park - well I haven’t been but I’ve seen the pictures from last year and it’s damn picturesque despite the crowds…. It looks good enough that even if I didn’t have free tickets I’d think about buying one despite being a diehard cheapskate.

Surfice to say I’m excited and will be telling you all about it here the minute we get back on Monday. Fingers crossed for good weather - I’m not that keen on good old English mud!