summer days in new york city

a summer thunderstorm is moving through the valley out my window and streaks of lightning are flashing in the sky. it is a perfect evening. the kind when neighbors sit out on their porches and comment on the weather and the kids ride around on their bikes. we are to the slow crawl here at the end of july. the heat is beginning to break a bit, thank goodness as anything near 100 degrees has me wilting. i have been wanting to post about our week in new york but i am just relishing these last few days of summer. once august hits we are gearing up to go back to school and i am getting things ready for my classes.
so this week i spent a whole day reading a book, went biking up the canyon, stopped at the corn stand, did things that i love to do in the summer without a schedule.


we didn't take enough pictures on our trip to new york of course! this time because i didn't want to look like a dopey tourist or i didn't want to drag my big camera with all the walking we did. this is the view outside our hotel window. looked like gotham city. in fact we tried to go see the new batman movie on opening night but it was all sold out. as it turned out one of the places i wanted to go manhattan costume supply was right across the street. everything a person would need to be a costumer on a movie set. one aisle had 15 different kinds of fake blood, non-drying, drying, light, medium, dark, it was crazy.



central park was beautiful, one of the places marina wanted to see. we asked a lady to take our photo and she didn't speak any english, but the photo turned out to be our best one together. thank you nice lady. . .
one of my favorite stores of course was tinsel trading. they were moving to a new store so i think i caught them not on their best day but i loved digging through the cardboard boxes they brought up from the basement that were filled with old button cards with all the paper turning to dust. the wall of flowers took my breath away. imagine me digging through all the lovely boxes of vintage flowers.




china town was amazing! we went to pearl paint a five story art supply store that had everything i could ever imagine. a whole floor of paper, a whole floor of paint, an aisle of masking tapes. it was fantastic. we both spent hours looking at every thing. lunch was at the excellent dumpling house. noone spoke english, we just pointed to the pictures on the menu. the food was the best chinese i have ever had. wish that place was close by :)




on the streets there were vendors selling fruits we had never seen before. i stopped and tried everything. at the open air fish market however i did not. a big plastic tub of octopus basking in the heat. the smell was suffocating. the markets were so fun to walk through, we picked out a whole sack of chinese candy to bring home for the family to try. the packaging was too adorable to resist.




we went to lots of museums to take in all the underground art we could find. the museum of modern art had a big salvador dali exhibit going on, what a weird guy. his photo was fantastic though. the museum docent said there is a book just on salvador dali's mustache.
this was my favorite exhibit. a room full of light fixtures that had been dipped in the dead sea until they formed salt crystals. they had them hanging in front of a big screen where a silent film was running of a woman swimming with 100 watermelons strung together making weird formations.


in soho we found the coolest small galleries. we saw an original character sketch by tim burton of the corpse bride he had done on the cardboard inside of a cereal box along with the designs for the original disney sleeping beauty, signed dr suess originals and an original pencil sketch of winnie the pooh. the energy in these works was unmistakable!
i bought this piece from an artist the had a table on the street during the saturday art fair. her name is Vartouhi Pinkston. the etching is so tiny and hand watercolored. marina bought several pieces as well. magic. . .



mood fabrics was another three story wonder. i didn't know where to even begin. here are two photos from the bottom floor of upholstery fabrics. it was so fun to see pages from fashion magazines with top designer fashions on the walls with swatches of the original fabrics stapled to the paper. oh to have this magical store at my backdoor when i needed it.


just before we left town we stopped at dylan's candy bar. three stories of candy. the stairs were poured resin with candy set in. each landing had a saying spelled out in candy. 'stairway to candy heaven' and 'may each step you take be sweet'.
a wonderland, you can find everything there imaginable. old fashioned candies from your childhood. i brought home some ultimate sour war head drops. sorry, they are long gone. . . .