Valentine's in New York

My old Chicago friend Michelle and I spent Valentine's weekend together in New York. It turns out to be the perfect place to spend that particular holiday, because if you don't look very hard you can forget that it's Valentine's Day altogether. Not that I have any beef with the Day, it was just neat coming across stuff like these Monday-morning remnants of some red-heart-and-champagne-event the prior evening while strolling back from yummy pestoey eggs + American cheese on a croissant at Penelope.

Among other fun things we did that I can recommend was Bagels + Klezmer at City Winery on Sunday morning, with the all-gal Isle of Klezbos. A diverse crowd, from the ubiquitous New York hipsters to some folks who clearly grew up on Klezmer closer to its roots, gathered for lox and music in the very interesting City Winery. According to Eve Sicular, the bandleader, the space used to be the pressroom for El Diario. Now it's a spiffy music venue where they make and serve their own wine (easier to mourn the decline of print journalism when you have zinfandel).

Fortified body and soul, we decided to take advantage of the pleasant sunny day and walk across the Brooklyn Bridge, for an up close view of the bridge itself and a neat perspective on Manhattan.

Saturday we spent just poking around, admiring the extravagance of the New York Public Library, riding around snowy Central Park in the back of the pedicab piloted by the charming Neil, "the only Paddy pedicab driver in Central Park," whose spiel was guaranteed to be at least 50 percent true, and eating hearty Korean food.


Happy belated Valentine's Day, all!