summer lovin

Happy first day of summer!!

While it has certainly been warm enough already to qualify as summer, today is officially the first day. To celebrate the longest day of the year, I have a pretty long mix prepared for you all. I'm excited for some of the trips and things that I know will be summer highlights already:

• Newport Folk Festival
• the final installment of the Harry Potter movie franchise
• the first wedding I'm going to of a friend/peer (rather than a family member, etc).
• plus, visitors & housewarming parties & whatever free outdoor shows still exist in New York!

[image found via the Glamourai]

so fresh and so clean

For over a month it has felt like I've been in a state of perpetual motion. Starting with a new company, looking for apartments/signing/moving/unpacking, and now I am finally starting to settle in. There is still a lot to be done with the apartment, but most things are out of boxes and have a home. Until I manage to get a new couch and frame some of this art, things are more or less how they'll be for good. Thank goodness, because during that stretch of time I had more-or-less sequestered myself into a life of packing and unpacking and trips to Ikea/The Container Store/Bed Bath and Beyond. Now that things are less hectic, I'm getting back into the swing of things, including working on a summer mix.

Over the weekend I (finally!) saw some of my friends and two movies (and, of course, The Dodos concert). I saw Bill Cunningham at IFC (smallest theater I've ever seen!) which was amazing. The man is an icon and so endearing. I also saw Bridesmaids which really was just as funny as everyone told me it would be. I was nervous to see something with so much hype, but all of those ladies knocked it out of the park (and Jon Hamm, who had such a ridiculous character...). We also went to the new-ish home of the Brooklyn Flea in Williamsburg, which was a little surreal. The entrance is near one of those newer waterfront condos, and it really looked like an architectural mockup of the "outdoor space" with people lounging in the grass, sitting on benches, with dogs and children interspersed. I picked up a bottle of ginger syrup for Morris Kitchen (insanely delicious), and an old 7Up crate that I'm now using as a spice rack:

As a visual reference, this post is being written from this corner of my living room where I've set up camp. Here's a before and after:

 (as you can see, I really need a real couch...I ditched the futon frame during the move, so now I just have the mattress which is looking pretty sad these days).

what I want, what I need

Gauntlet Hair:

The Dodos:

After what feels like a long hiatus, I went to see a show on Friday night. We went to see The Dodos play at Music Hall of Williamsburg, and despite not getting there terribly early, I found myself breezing right up to the stage. Front row!

Gauntlet Hair opened, and while their name is a little silly, their sound was really good and the crowd seemed really into them (we were, too). When the Dodos took the stage, it was just as fantastic as I thought they would be. It was difficult to hear the vocals, probably due to being so close to the stage/the drums, but overall the experience being so close was amazing. The guy behind us realllly wanted them to play Jodi, and he finally got his wish during the encore. I hoped they might play Fables (which is my ringback tone!), but they left that one out. C'est la vie. I love all of their songs, so there was no wrong turn in my book.



Summer is more or less here now, though the weather is still pretty spastic, and the various concert series have kicked off around the city. It seems like the pickings for free shows are sparser than in years past, but I'm still excited for my favorite musical time of year in NYC.

this charming man

Sometimes it feels like most of what I do in New York is go to concerts or "hang out." Not that there's anything wrong with those things (clearly I love concerts...and my friends), but there are so many other things to do in this city. As the weather warms up, I've started coming out of my winter hibernation and have gone to some great things:

Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty
I can honestly say that I don't think I have ever been as captivated by a single museum exhibit as I was by the Alexander McQueen retrospective currently at the Met. It was ridiculously crowded when I went (on a Friday evening - bad plan), so I want/need to go back for a second look. As amazing as a McQueen garment looks in photographs, it is nothing compared to standing inches away from it, trying to dissect its construction and imagining the agonizing hours spent making everything look like artful perfection. The exhibit itself draws in even the casual admirer by creating atmospheres reflecting the dark moods that underlaid much of McQueen's work. It was a little eery, a little unsettling, but not in a bad way (at least not for me). Some of my favorite displays showed various garments/looks alongside how they were originally presented - the life-size chess game (actually inspired by wizard chess in HP!), the dress (below) that spun as robots sprayed it with dyes, etc. If you click through the link above, there's a video in which the curator of the exhibit goes through the rooms one by one. Definitely worthwhile, especially if you won't be able to see the exhibition in person. If you're in NY though - go visit in person!

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In the fall I kicked myself for not going to see Rob Sheffield DJ at the Bell House during the Brooklyn Book Festival (actually I'm still upset about this). Just my luck, though, he was reading again from Talking to Girls About Duran Duran on Monday at BookCourt which is super close to my apartment. He read the chapter (vaguely) about Lita Ford's "Kiss Me Deadly" and then took questions from the audience. He was just as nice and personable in real life as he seems in his writing, and he was one of the friendlier book-signers I've met.
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Last night I went to another book-related event, this time at PowerHouse in DUMBO. Christine joined me to have a drink, listen to some well-chosen music, and browse one of the more interesting bookstores that I know of. The space itself is expansive and multi-level, with rotating art exhibitions, interesting seating areas, and well-curated tables of books. My only complaint being that by the time we went out to get an ice cream sandwich from the CoolHaus truck, they were already closing up for the night. It was semi-tragic in the moment.

All of these adventures have taken place amidst a whirlwind of packing up my apartment to move on Tuesday! And, I'm going up to Ithaca for the weekend, so it's a good thing I'm pretty much down to the essentials that I'll need to dress/eat/sleep for my remaining few days here. It's a bittersweet move - I love this neighborhood, but I think it's time for a change.

the only dude on Earth to date

So, let's play a little catch up here. Last Saturday I went to see the Donald Glover/Childish Gambino (OH WAIT SAME PERSON) show at Music Hall of Williamsburg. I bought one of my friends her ticket as a birthday present, but it was fairly selfish because the show was even more awesome than I anticipated. Aside from the fact that Donald Glover is incredibly funny and charming and witty, and apparently knows how to throw a wicked dance party full of the most random people in NYC, there were video guests in the form of James Murphy and Reggie Watts (and two versions of future-Donald?), as well as surprise(!) videographing being done by his Community co-star Joel McHale.

I had a dream that night that we became friends with Donald Glover and had crazy adventures together. I wish that were true. Instead I will have to suffice with that one time I threw caution to the wind and talked to him at the LCD Soundsystem show.

I have a million favorite lyrics -- most of which combine something pretty crude with something clever -- but I won't detail that all for you. Instead I leave you with a few good shots, and "Freaks and Geeks" as seen from our pretty solid spots in the crowd.

like glue holding each of us together

I have been sucked into a wormhole of design blogs and heart-ing things on Tumblr and Pinterest. It's an endless loop gluing me to the internet. The problem with these kinds of blogs, as opposed to music blogs, is that when you see something you like it is generally much more difficult to acquire it. It fills my head with ideas about large-scale projects and DIYs and redecorating (and just generally lusting after architecturally amazing places that will never be mine). When I find something I like on a music blog, I can download it or re-stream it a million times until I've been satisfied.

The rest of my free time has been spent trolling Craigslist and realty agency websites, toying with the idea of moving. So far all I've learned is that I probably have a good thing going here, even if sometimes it seems like my apartment wants to fall apart at the seams and my buzzer ringing is going to give me a heartattack one day. If I do stay, I have a lot of plans for how to make this space less cluttered. It unfortunately involves buying some new things (shelves, etc) but that's still cheaper than the painstaking process of moving so I guess I'd come out on top.

I'm less than a week away, though, from (hopefully!) buying a new bike. I really hope something catches my eye at the Jumble this weekend - so many of the images that have burned themselves into my brain this past week have been of bikes and cute things related to them:

[images via: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

our spring is sweet not fleeting

Today I've gotten myself a Pinterest account and downloaded the new Fleet Foxes album Helplessness Blues, which in case you haven't heard it, is beautiful and perfect for this lovely spring day. And, it's only $3.99 today, which makes it pretty much impossible to pass up.




















ALSO

You may notice that some tweaks got made to my blog design, namely those links right up under my header! That link to Etsy? totally has stuff in it now Yeah, I know, right?! My favorite toot-my-own-horn piece below:

I took all these pictures last week while I was at home (on pretty much the only really nice weather day!) I made two of these and only listed one - TBD if I want to keep it for myself or list it, too.