may
i like may. it's when spring breaks into summer. there're showers and sudden cold spells, and not the best time to travel, but what the heck.
spent a weekend in chicago. it's not organic and crazy like new york, but it's definitely an urban planner's dream - the first city of architecture. mies van der rohe, frank lloyd wright, bertrand goldberg (highly under-rated) et al. did the architectural association tour - my third time i think, and tried a couple of wonderful restaurants - my favourite was Spring, which is housed in an old turkish bath, and served french-asian fusion. oh there's also a new frank gehry (yawn) amphitheatre in millenium park - but what i really liked was anish kapoor's cloud gate.
back in the city, there were the ICFF design open-houses. the stella mccartney party for established & sons was fun. i really heart the zaha hadid table in black. btw she has a new show at the guggenheim of her drawings and models - apparently her first retrospective in the US, even though she does not have any buildings in new york. feeling heady after too much bubbly, we slunk over to the hot-dog stand where the tall, black model-waiter was dishing out hot doggies - i asked for one with everything on it - took a bite and thought it tasted strange. i leaned over and asked whether this was beef or chicken. he leaned over, stared, and pronounced: stella doesn't do meat. oh ok. whatever. so i got conned into eating a tofu-dog. we made for the next party.
took a road trip to cape cod over the memorial day weekend. took the legendary fung wah bus from canal street, new york city to boston, then took the high-speed ferry to provincetown. saw the hilarious hedda lettuce in a stand-up drag show, walked across sand dunes and shot lighthouses, saw enough lesbians to last me a lifetime (!). apparently p-town is predominantly lesbian from memorial day till the fourth of july. it was beautiful and idyllic weekend and we managed to catch something that resembled a tan too.
had a mid-week night-out and had dinner with rc at buddha-bar, an outpost of the parisian institution, in the meatpacking. i loved the dark, cavernous interior (yes, gargantuan restaurants are in vogue) by didi pei, which featured an imposing sitting black buddha in the main room, and swimming jellyfishes that darted about in blue tanks behind the sushi bar. food was great too.
it's been pouring this weekend otherwise i wouldn't have stopped to blog. hee.