Joe & Deb USA 2014: Day Eleven

We decided to go to the “Friends” 20^th Anniversary café that has been set up here to celebrate the TV series that was a bit of a cult for our generation. We made our way there by subway, and emerged from underground to find a queue winding its way around the block. We were told it would be about a half hour wait, so we decided to put our patient pants on and join the queue. It’s only a temporary site, and how often do we come to NY ? Almost never. We were given a ticket that allowed us entry between 11am and 12pm, and by this time it was 10:30. So we waited. Were treated to a bit of street theatre as some guy driving a mini got into a bout of road rage with a yellow cab driver. Lots of shouting and yelling, photographing licence plates, writing down names and addresses, phoning lawyers to type up the lawsuit. So that passed the time quite nicely and they were true to their word, it was only about a half hour in the queue and we were allowed in. Not exactly what we expected, I was anticipating a mock up of the coffee shop that was used as the set. They had a display of some of the clothes worn, apparently. But they were so non-descript you wouldn’t have been able to recognise any of it. IMHO it would have been better to have particular garments that were part of the story line, or were distinctive enough to be able to place them in a particular episode. Maybe that wasn’t possible, I imagine the clothes and props would have been scattered far and wide by now. But they had the famous couch from the coffee shop there, that you could queue up for (again) and have your photo taken on. Had to be done since as we’d made the effort to wait. They were giving away free coffee and you could by some souvenirs, but that was mostly about it. When we left, the queue had snaked around the entire block !

We spent the next half hour or so with necks craned skywards looking at all the neat buildings in the area (Soho). Lots beautifully decorative buildings, most of which had fire escapes, though the idea of actually using them is pretty terrifying.

We toyed with the idea of visiting the Statue of Liberty today but it was threatening to rain, so we decided to resort to our rainy day plan, which is mooching in the shops. So we went our separate ways, there’s only so much kit and book shopping I can handle, and only so much drooling over fabric that J can cope with. Besides, purchases attract less guilt if the other person isn’t there to witness the plastic melting.

First on my list was mood fabrics. If you have ever watched the reality TV series Project Runway, this is where they go to buy the fabric to make up their designs. Wow ……. three floors of fabrics, in every shade, & type you could think of, and more besides. Laces, braids and trims of every type imaginable. Buttons in every size and colour, I could have just gone crazy. I think if I was a designer, I’d come here just to hang out and be inspired. And the prices are pretty reasonable, I remember being a bit sceptical in the show where they only had $100 to spend (on average) to make a garment that looked really expensive. Having seen what’s in store, that seems less impossible than I originally thought. I was trying to keep in mind that whatever we buy, we must lift into the luggage racks. So I did two slow circuits of each floor earmarking some quite different pieces that I couldn’t possibly live without, and eventually settled on some velvets (really stunning designs), some trim for a piece of fabric I already have, and a couple of cheap mesh knits that had stunning patterns on them. Light light light J I took a few snaps in the store on my phone as I had left my camera behind, but you can’t really capture it all.

And of course I was now in the fashion district, so I wandered past a few more shops, lots selling amazing evening dresses, wholesale rather than retail. Then there was a zip shop, selling every colour, length, type and style you could imagine, plus belt buckles, press-studs, trims ……. and unfortunately lots of signs around the store saying “no photography” but I sneaked one from the street. Then I headed back to the motel to drop my swag of Mood loot, it was getting quiet heavy by this point, which doesn’t bode well for the luggage racks.

After we had lunch and went our separate ways , I ( Joe) trotted off to the USS Intrepid Museum , located at Pier 86 on the waterfront. The Intrepid is a WW2 Aircraft carrier that was commissioned in 1943 and fought in some of the major Pacific campaigns. After WW2 , the carrier was put in reserve then rebuilt to a modern configuration which is how it’s preserved today. It’s now a designated historic landmark.

Getting to the Intrepid was pretty easy and only 20 minutes walk from our Hotel. The ship is very large and on entering you go into the hangar deck. It’s noteworthy that bag and metal screening is also done here, and I set it off with the metal in my boots. However for the benefit of all concerned I didn’t have to take my boots off and do it again!

There’s several aircraft on the flight deck, and they have also added an annex on the stern that houses a space shuttle, the Enterprise, but I elected not to go to that as it was a dearer ticket and I’d been able to get up close to Discovery at Udvar-Hazy.

It was very hot & muggy and the effects were felt as I was wandering the flight deck. They have a good mix of aircraft, mostly carrier or naval related but with one or two exceptions, like the MiG-21 and the SR-71 Blackbird (always an impressive beast up close). I went into the hangar deck for some relief from the conditions and a wander round there. There’s 4 aircraft in the hangar deck as well as several exhibits and models of the carrier. One of the models is built from 250,000 pieces of Lego to a whopping 1/40 scale.

There’s also a Concorde parked on the pier next to the ship, and that too was an impressive aircraft up close.

After that, I wanted to try & get to a military bookshop I’d read about and marked on the map, so it was back into the metro to take the green line east a few stops. Emerging from the subway, it took me a few minutes to get myself oriented, and then about ½ an hour to realise I was still disoriented! However I did happen upon a Barnes & Noble store, which is a mix of Whitcoulls and jb hi-fi, in that they sell books, toys and DVD’s / blu-rays. They had a great range of things, even a few Airfix kits, but I ended up just getting a couple of DVDs and then heading off to try and find this bookstore. I eventually managed to find it, tucked away in a small plaza between Park & Madison Avenues, but after all that effort it wasn’t at all what I had hoped for. Very small and a very specific selection ( in fact about 20% of all the books were devoted to books by , or about , Winston Churchill) , and as I didn’t fancy lugging seven volumes of a set around with me, I mooched out again and decided to walk back to the Apartment.

I headed back down 6^th Ave (also called Avenue of the America’s) and stopped in at the HBO Shop which sells all sorts of stuff (t-shirts, mugs, figures etc) that relate to HBO shows like Game of Thrones, Boardwalk Empire and the like. Picked Deb up a sex and the city tote bag and we’ll go back tomorrow to get a SATC T-shirt for Deb.

I managed to get back to the room just before the weather broke and it hosed down, and fortunately it held off as we went out for dinner. Tonight it was going to a burger place where you can build your own burger, so hurrah! Nothing for me to pick out ( the website is www.thecounterburger.com) - and the food was really nice to boot. We made it back just as the heaven’s opened again and we got drenched in the last few feet to our Hotel.