"Is that guy your boyfriend? Because if you're living here I don't want any couply stuff"

I got home at an acceptable hour this evening to find my bed had tripled in size. My 'bed' being a futon mattress, this upwards expansion signalled that although I might sleep comfortably this evening, it was going to be as means of a swansong in my current steal of a gorgeous, taxidermy-filled Williamsburg flat. Believe it or not (easily unbelieved, due to the poor blogging show), tomorrow will mark four weeks of having lived in New York. Four weeks also being the length of my current dream sublet.

Last weekend was a horrific blur of relentless flat-hunting. Like most things in New York, once you've done it here, it will seem an absolute breeze in most other English-speaking western countries. If I thought most aspects of my young adult life have been fraught with competition: surviving the UCAS lottery, battling it out for work experience and competition places, finding even summer jobs, let alone the graduate malarkey in the laughably competitive world of journalism - renting a nice, inexpensive apartment outside of a ghetto in New York is way up there.

It works like this: the weekend before you become homeless, you search frantically on a website called The Craigslist. Known for being riddled with scammers and people who will spam you forever more (my old email account answers only to people who say I've won a lottery or that I need to help them), The Craigslist is also the most effective means of finding accommodation in this insane city. So, up at 9am to check the darned thing, scouting for listings that are spelt correctly, aren't in BedStuy and are within my price range. Cue string of slightly desperate emails emphasising the fact that 'I'm a British intern at Nylon magazine, freshly graduated from university and a respectful, clean, laid-back and fun roommate'. Cue a handful of phone calls, followed by hurried appointments being made in moleskines. At 85% of the doors I turned up at, both myself and the renter had trusty moleskines in hand. The shame. Arguably, most of these places were in Williamsburg or Clinton Hill, but there's nothing like living up to a cliche.

So, on a totally beautiful freakishly hot weekend, when essentially all the trains that service Brooklyn were out of service, I entered strangers' (of varying weirdness, the title is a real-life quote from one of them) and nosed around making unnecessarily polite musing noises whilst thinking where the nearest exit was. Of course, I ended up taking the place I had first looked at. Because the extra sting in the tail of NY apartment hunting is that it is essentially a personality contest. One reasonably priced room in the heart of 'touristy Williamsburg' as New Yorker friend calls it, (rather than the Hispanic grubby outskirts) gained fifty responses within hours of the craigslist post. I had made the lucky first six to view it. If they like you, they call you. It's not even the case that if you like an apartment you can say 'yes please, here is my money'. It's like apartment speed-dating, except you're about a four on the hot scale and the person you're trying to pull is a ten. I was lucky -  all it took for me to find a match in a swish Bushwick penthouse was a weekend - albeit a hungover, sleep-deprived, sweaty weekend. On the plus side, I know a lot more about Brooklyn's geography now, having walked a cumulative 25 miles.

I also know a fair bit more about the Lower East Side's weekend nightlife, after a nocturnal two-on-a-bike jaunt around it last Saturday. The bike was called The Love Tycoon and belonged to fellow Nylon intern Caitlin Smith. To ease the pain of her fleeing New York on a rainy day to the bohemian lure of her native San Francisco, I've been taking the new-in-town graphic design zine intern Holly Black out to a series of  Williamsburg date places we didn't realise were quite so candlelit upon entering. As a result, we had to head to the grime of Monster Island to watch Kevin Morby play and for me to pretend to be a Nylon TV camerawoman, and renowned dive bar Levees for $10 pitchers - just to set the tone back comfortably. 

This week's discoveries include:
- SoHo's answer to Ben's Cookies in the form of Vesuvio Bakery. I fear now I've discovered their cookies, I won't be able to stop.
- That tbs is on channel 8 at breakfast time, which means SAVED BY THE BELL. The original crowd. ON TV. It's like I'm eight again, except now I can really appreciate the retro fashion and poor script-writing to the best level. From tomorrow I'm not going to live anywhere with a TV, but it was sweet while it lasted.
- That ridiculously posh SoHo deli Dean & Deluca may play classical music and force their staff to wear chef hats, but will serve up a mighty fine bagel a lot cheaper than any bagel cart in town.
- That you can buy blankets with faces of varying North American animals on (wolf, bear, lion - not strictly from America -stag) in K Mart for under $20.    

From Fields to Field Day and Beyond (Retro).

Having just turned off Channel Five's Don't Stop Believing out of outrage that Essex's 'Original Talent' show choir - fine masters of both Gaga-inspired dancing and a Billy Jean meets Gnarls Barkley's 'Crazy' - was cruelly voted out in place of 'Swish' - teenage Robbie Williams' cheesemongering fankids - I decided that I'd put an end to a week-long Bowlface abstinence. It's what Sunday nights were made for. Or rather, the first of seven nights of roaming around in a parent-free house. Announcing a free house on the internet may in some cases cause myspace parties with thousands of teens high on Coca-Cola and the placebo-effects of WKDs. However, I celebrated freedom by eating a dinner comprising of a bit of pork pie, peanut butter on toast, cherry tomatoes and a microwaved doughnut; a myspace party would suck in comparison. Just in case, though, I've removed the 'location' tab from the bottom of the last few posts.

Over the weekend I left the fields of the Shire for the 'fields' of London's Victoria Park in a pseudo-village attempt of a 'chin-scratching music' festival that was Field Day. They won some 'Village Mentality' points with the pig roast and the sack races. However, had they hired in some inter-related country types (to preach sayings like "it's no use planting a cooked potato", rather than having them printed on sacks and hung up) I could almost have been in my native Shire given the high-middle-class level of expensive but scruffily dressed, fake mockney posh kids kicking about. Amongst the stripy shirts (which I too was slightly shamefully clad in) and overpriced cans of Stella I enjoyed a healthy amount of inte-lectro beats and euphoric sounds from the likes of Gold Panda, Pantha Du Prince, Hudson Mohawke and Moderat, amongst others on far too many stages for a festival of just over ten hours in length.

We hadn't had enough artful hair do's and ironic-dressing on Saturday, so we headed to Brick Lane today for the mega Sunday market and a cheap brunch. Where, amongst all the various unwanted crap being sold on the pavement - my favourite sight being a slogan T-shirt saying 'OH MY GOD, I'M SO RETRO' - I found a tote bag that could well provide me with more happiness than most things. That's because it falsely labels me as a member of the fictitious Hackney Guild of Taxidermists. Because it is technically an imaginary guild the fact I don't practice taxidermy in Hackney is irrelevant. I'm a massive stuffed-animal fan, and my Oxford Literary Festival 2008 freebie tote is being retired to occasional use due to getting tragically threadbare. You too can celebrate a love of canvas and double-headed swans here.

And now back to the Shire, which is free of continental dance music producers and more than twelve people within the age group of 18-24. Despite leaving an extensive note, the absence of parents probably means that there's going to be little to 'make blogs' about, as Daddy B would say. To compensate for this emotional whirlwind, I end on my favourite Shire-ism of the last week:

Daddy B on witnessing a police car siren past the house: 'alright, we're not in New York'.      

deja vu deja vu

Despite being occupied with new activities daily, namely, dealing with the ever threatening prospect of leaving my beloved Newcastle, the deja vu blog post theme continues. Indeed, the theme is one of such recurring frequency that perhaps I am having deja vu about deja vu in a never-ending cycle... Enough of the metaphysics. This deja vu issues from one Jesmond takeaway pizzeria and yet another comparison to a bizarre early 90s film character. Sounds familiar, non?

Sociology Flatmate and I have developed a tradition over the last three years in which we call each other during our journeys back to the house for various reasons:
a) establishing if the other is in the house
b) discussing the purchasing of food
c) providing necessary chat during walking.
Thus, I should not have been surprised to find myself sitting alone in Mistletoe Pizzeria a good four hours before they expect any of the usual drunken clientele (approx. 18.30 hours) as a phone call of the aforementioned description revealed Sociology Flatmate's pitifully desperate need for pizza. I couldn't go home to such a sad, cheese and dough-deprived, face.

This is Mistletoe Pizzeria's quaint letterbox. I wish it would say 'pizza' instead.

Just as I was dealing with a cocktail of emotions - love for Sociology Flatmate; shame from sitting in Mistletoe Pizzeria at 6.30pm and, mostly, a strange absence of drunk Lancastrian men sporting mullets - the pizza proprietor switched on the sound system as a means of customer recognition. With it came a near-spiritual moment. Granted, it's probably got something to do with my current heightened emotional state, but music seems to be, wait for it, 'speaking' to me. I know, but carry on reading.

For example, a woeful departure from dear friends was accompanied by my i-Pod's shuffle choice of Neil Young's 'Don't Cry', only to be followed by Simon and Garfunkel's 'Only Living Boy In New York', my location as of September. Most than anything it probably shows I need to stop raiding my parents' record collection, but I was a tad spooked.

Add to the mix the following announcement from the pizza sound system: 'Welcome. Welcome to the end. Do not be afraid. The world is changing.' Weird, in many a way, but not in the least when this bizarre 'welcoming' broke into Black Eyed Peas' smash dance hit 'Boom Boom Pow'. Sociology Flatmate's adorable Dutch surname has resulted in our calling of her 'Boom' - the pizza sound system, therefore, was serenading her pizza with her own name.

As for the likeness comparison, the deja vu fails a little in that it emerged not from the Mistletoe Pizzeria, but from Jesmond Tesco's Latest Resident Big Issue Seller. In the past he has tried to persuade me to part with my hard-loaned cash with crude statements and catcalls. However, this time L.R.B.I.S posed a question of sorts so I couldn't just leave it at a withering glance.

Caught off guard, probably trying to buy essential Shreddies milk in so as to expose my homewear for as short a time as possible, I was told that I reminded L.R.B.I.S of someone famous, although he couldn't remember who. I did not suggest 'Superman's Girlfriend'. Necessary dairy products purchased, he cornered me on my way out with the opener 'you know Wayne's World'....

Turns out I look like 'Garth's girlfriend', a.k.a Honey Hornee, a.k.a Kim Basinger. She's blond. Despite this, I'm going to relish the retro-film theme to post the best educational/transformation movie montage of all time:

Fathercraft and other creative ventures

Another bleak morning, another Woman's Hour-inspired post title. It was all good - about Victorian and Edwardian fatherhood; which tapped happily into all the notes on Victorian fiction I threw fairly unceremoniously out yesterday afternoon - until yet another episode of the cringe-inspiring drama attempting to portray the domestic life of a gay couple came on. And off with the radio.

Fortunately, there is a video offering from the Creators' Project to fill the gap left by Radio 4 historians. The Creators' Project being pretty much what its name would suggest: a lovely jumbly showcase of envy-inspiring creative types both established and about to conquer the world. It's quite something to be fronted with of a morning. This video shows Mark Ronson being somewhat blase about 'playing in some New York clubs' as a means of starting out and then making some fun beatbox noises about half-way through. From here I'm gunna check out Pheonix, CSS and maybe Nick Zinner as a kind of Goth-Elf desert. Yum.

Whilst I'd like to say that would merely be the start of a thoroughly creative and successful day, I know that all I'm really going to do is sit in an old lady cafe and maybe see some taxidermy. Still, yesterday turned up a few trumps after the somewhat negative morning prediction. For a start, I managed to complete the grudge shoe buying with relative success; after accidentaly throwing the lid of a lipstick somewhere under a pile of croptops in Topshop and getting odd stares from the assistant in Dorothy Perkins when trying to match my acid yellow dress to any of their mainly horrific shoes I got a cracking five inches of heel for £15 in the sale of a department store I'm too ashamed to name.

What I was most greatly cheered by, however, was the re-appearance of a busker on Northumberland St who, in my mind, is called Carlos. This bulky Hispanic chap is wooing the eldery of the North East with his leather jacket, slicked back hair and crooned out versions of ballads of the fifties. It seems I spend most of my life walking up and down Northumberland Street so I've become pretty familiar with the effect he has on his audience, positioned outside M&S. You can always expect to see some slightly goofy smiles, invariably accompanied with a foot-tap. Sometimes they hide their love for him behind a grandchild, who is rocking out to 'Hound Dog' when The Big C decides to step it up a little. These children often act as a medium for Carlos-eldery flirtation when he bends down and sings directly into their eyes. An unnecessary translation, you may think, but bearing in mind the threatening look on Carlos's wife's face when she turned up in a matching leather jacket, I'd say she was all too aware of the amorous grannies' advances. Anyway, yesterday it was taken to a whole new level, in which the Grannies had clearly won out: crooning 'I can't help falling in love with you' directly into her eyes, Carlos was a mere metre away from one lucky blue rinse. I've never walked into M&S with such a facial expression.

hey June, hey rain.

Even though I had been part of a collaborative prediction that today would be the worst day of the past two weeks; I hadn't foreseen drizzle. The prediction being based on the fact that I've spent the best part of last week and this weekend at Primavera festival in Barcelona. Primavera being a relatively, but gloriously, unknown event showcasing an impossibly well-curated selection of bands and DJs in a concrete jungle built upon Barcelona's coastline and attended solely by beautiful, civilised and international music geeks. That I didn't fall into this classification, and that we managed to blag a whole weekend ticket with our £15 Pitchfork tickets made my enjoyment even better from the position of festival imposter. There are some live reviews coming up on appropriately niche website This Kind Of Music all in good time...

Anyway, having spent the past couple of days in cold, predominantly wet, Newcastle; surrounded by the overdressed 'festival fashion' tweeny attendees of Evolution Festival, the contrast couldn't be greater. I was, however, still reeling from dancing barefoot to the Pet Shop Boys and their incredible dancers, screaming along to Major Lazer's remix of Say It Ain't So, lying on the beach, invading old man tapas bars and the like. Today I am bitterly aware that Primavera 2011 is a whole 363 days away.

The only thing that can provide solace is a healthy form of autodidacticism or mini-project. The former has become quite a list now, including Daniel Johnston, HTML, David Lynch and Evelyn Waugh. The latter, potentially more exciting, involves one of my favourite underrated British voiceovers: DAVE LAMB. The backstory involving a holiday that could potentially be ruined by a near-fascistic enforcement of Come Dine With Me competition, the challenge being to get a letter from Dave Lamb (Come Dine With Me narrator and general funnyman) to suggest this isn't such a great idea. It's become known, originally, as The Dave Lamb Project, a.k.a DLP.

So far, I've got as far as a twitter account; sadly without the option of direct messaging, and a seriously dodge-looking agency website. I am, however, going to call them. It's the only option for fun on a rainy Tuesday Blues morning.

Yes, yes I am Teri Hatcher.

Sociology Flatmate thinks that he might have got confused because Lois Lane was a journalist.

Students don't relish in Bank Holiday weekends. Especially ones in May. Especially ones that were spent in Berlin this time last year. Sad, slightly bitter evidence that my life is thankfully not Groundhog Day. As a result, I'm sat blogging under a blanket (where did Spring go?) having consumed half a can of sweetcorn to constitute 'tea', rather than attending any of the five events facebook claims I am.

Might also be because I'm a little weary from working the door at a Crystal Antlers gig last night. The air of authority Sociology Flatmate and I must have unwillingly given off can only have come from How to Communicate Effectively. Man, that book is potent. Anyway, after most of the bandmates had incomprehensively nattered to us all night about how 'totally spaced out' and Californian they were, Guinness, other people's incomprehensible accents and 'Harlem douchebags at parties that, like, steal beer tokens and party in their own rooms?!', we finally got round to seeing them and they were grreeaaaattt. And more than a little naked. We disappointed them all by refusing vague 'party' offers, and oh boy am I glad because the walk home via the all-night pizzaria was an encounter with a walking cliche I hope never to forget.

Mr. Stag Night was apparently sober. He was, naturally, in a blonde eighties mullet wig, muttering racist abuse at the pizza chaps and had an air of mild aggression. Halfway through ordering the cheapest pizza on the menu (margherita, 10", £3.80. God bless Newcastle), classic 'ice-breaker' arrived in the form of: 'are you off the tel-leh?' Having not yet achieved that level of fame, I answered no, obviously. He clearly thought I was lying: 'You are. Superman's girlfriend.' Uh-huh. 'What, Lois Lane?', 'Yeah!'. Seeing as I was six when I last remember watching the early 90s Superman series, the chances of me acting as a full grown woman in it is highly unlikely. I asked him if he thought Teri Hatcher would be scrabbling around in her purse for two pound coins in an all-night pizzaria in Newcastle's (arguably more salubrious) student suburb. He replied by asking 'if he looked like Pat Sharp'. When we said yes, asking if he was meant to be him, he said 'no'.

This, however, just encouraged a whole new line of talk. Turned out matey was up from Burnley on a stag weekend. Except that he'd been thrown into a police cell since 11.30 am for 'no reason' - "the police said they'd tell me later, but they didn't". They let him out, but only after giving him a cheese and tomato sandwich. I didn't want to suggest that perhaps he'd found himself passed out in Greggs and hadn't been arrested at all. Apparently, he'd only adopted the wig after being let out of the 'cells'. Then there was another conversation about who's stag night it was, 'James Edwards', obviously (we later found out he went to school with him) and another about how Sociology Flatmate MUST like gravy because she's 'northern'; how I 'sounded like one of his mates [he] met travelling, who was from Sussex, or Essex, or Northampton' and I'm a representative for the whole of the UK south of Burnley, as well as being Teri Hatcher. Wowzers, she's a busy lady.  

GIRLS ARROUD! : The Ladyboys come to Newcastle and I suffer a girlcrisis.

She's every woman, for sure, but is it all in her?

Since I was a teenager I've stared a Ladyboys of Bangkok flyer that's pinned up opposite my bed. Last night I finally satisfied all curiosity and desire and scuttled in, late, and round a lot of tightly packed-in tables full of large Geordie women as the Mile High tour - the latest in the ten year tradition of Ladyboy international performance - was taking off.

Although the tour is loosely based around a different theme each year, in this case, a papier-mache plane nose, I gather the premise of the show remains the same, as does the audience lure: Thai men, dressed as ladies, of questionable genitalia, miming badly to western pop hits in spangly outfits.

Hell yeah. It was like a combination of Strictly Come Dancing, America's Next Top Model and that new reality program on E4 about drag queens. Although welcomed in by what was obviously a man in an air hostess outfit, the first song which clearly marked the Ladyboys out as the mean, lean, all-woman machine they are was "Don'tCha" of Pussycat Doll fame. Never mind my non-existent girlfriend, I wish I was hot like them.

It was confusing beyond belief. Glossy, tumbling locks which were clearly attached at the follicle, judging by the amount of head-flicking, breasts that clearly weren't made out of chicken fillet and in some cases, hips that put mine well to shame.

Just as you were beginning to wonder where they tucked all their manbits, out comes a Kylie tribute in leotards cut so small that it wasn't just a Mollywood that was going on down there -something else must have been waxed off in the process. By the time the Dolly Parton 9-5 strip-tease number, in which suits are whipped off to reveal skimpy bikinis, was through, I was seriously considering abandoning all pretty clothes and make-up. If I have no hope of looking as good as a man in a bikini, what point is there in even trying?

But for every convincing mangina, there were a series of comedy drag acts and woman-to-man activity to confuse you even further. Namely, the "Robert/Roberta" situation in which one person performs a duet in a seriously technical costume, and the Frank Sinatra cover in which an arguably questionable woman turns into a man by the end. Impressive stuff.

However, the perk of the night was the Ladyboy's dedication to their 'ferverent city'. Several incomprehensible Geordie tunes - the aforementioned clan hanging next to us were shouting out the lyrics, I think "lads and lassies" and "brown" was mentioned - and a hell of a lot of stripey shirts later and it was evident that those on stage weren't the weird ones anymore. Maybe I should just go the whole hog - become a man, start drinking Newcastle Brown Ale and learn some local songs, they seemed less confused than I did.

You Lose, X-Factor!

Like Fame, but so much cuter.

So, I did a recent interview with amazing pop band of 2009, Passion Pit, and they enlightened me on so much more than what goes down on the tour bus.

There's this children's choir in Staten Island who are totally incredible. And really addictive. (And appear on Passion Pit's latest album, Manners) I've got about a million things to do right now and yet I'm just sat here, listening to the PS22 chorus on YouTube and blogging about them, enraptured. It's crazy.

Basically, they're all about ten, epitomise just how fun it is to be a kid and cover incredibly brilliant songs.

But they're totally loving it. Lady Gaga's 'Just Dance' (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0FPZolbYns&feature=related) is completely eradicated of rubber leotard smut and the fact it's about getting thoroughly inebriated because of the cute dance moves by the two soloists and the slightly chubby kid at the back going mental with pure pleasure.

Then they switch to Bjork, (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKPC-T3jjRg) and are clearly as touched by the music to the extent they're squishing their little faces up with joy. It's so unpretentious, there's no X-Factor snob stories, a few handmade matching tee shirts and I really want to be part of it. Hell, they even made Tori Amos's botoxed face shed tears. Now that's power.

Seriously, PS22 are my new favourite band. Regina Spektor, Beyonce, Coldplay, The Cure, even a Christmas version of Destiny's Child's 'Independent Women' - "Throw those presents at me!" They're the aural equivalent of Prozac.

Procrastination Post

Unlike my last procrastination-related post way back in April, this one has much less self-loathing in it. In fact, my procrastination this morning got me a job. Score!
Since returning to the 'Shire just under a week ago, the disappearance of any necessary chores, to-do lists, social activity, inner-city road systems etc has left me with a state of relaxation which, for a someone with such a short attention span as myself, has left me unbelievably bored.
I'm not easily satisfied with a week of nothing to do unless I'm in a hot/sunny/interesting/beautiful place, and the quiet village of my upbringing does not fit into any of those categories.
As a result, I have undertaken a number of seemingly dull yet wholesome activities such as gaining gym membership, eating brown food, reading foreign novels in cafes (how I got employed this morning), writing stories about my Dad for the local press and going to tabletop sales. I have also made a few Internet discoveries, such as discovering friends' previous modelling careers on youtube, and checking out a band called Discovery.
These people are clearly going to have a load of record sales of the back of the fact that one of them is in Vampire Weekend, which is a shame, as they're really good of their own accord. I give it about six months until you start hearing them in Topshop.

'There's nothing more cringeworthy than seeing white girls try and dance to drum and bass'

Unfortunately, very, very true. And yet, something quite integral to my life.

Having spent the majority of last weekend 'trying' to dance to drum and bass (I thought I'd actually got it nailed until told by a much cooler black man that I was just another middle-class white girl trying to escape my rural, naive upbringing and only making it all the more evident)in a crowd of other trying middle class white kids I had an epiphany that no-one is ever very cool. Ever.

The student population of Newcastle believes it brings cool to the north through a love of unpronounceable DJ's and artists, toting around the latest day-glo headband and talking about drugs a lot. I'm not in denial of it, but merely a sad state of realisation that we're all just pretending.

Even as I gazed over at a public school alumnus, making gun shots in the air with her hands, saucer-pupils not really hidden by her wayfarers, and thought 'I bet her father would have a heart attack if he saw that', my own heart was palpitating at a similar rate out of fear that I probably looked the same.

Something happened last night which really put a level of perspective on the whole white-kid drum-and-bass thing. Sitting on an Ikea fold-down chair, brought out for visitors when the red chenille sofas were occupied, in an immaculately clean student living room, playing a drinking game with my g&t, and surrounded by people singing along to Pendulum, it became very apparent that the answer to the question, 'it's drum and bass! What you gunna do?' was very much enclosing me.

You can take the girl out of the 'Shire, but you can't take the 'Shire out of the girl.