Brooklyn and Williamsburg

So after my week in the towering, bustling streets of Manhattan, I retreated to the calmer and generally cooler Brooklyn area across the East River. I kept hearing Williamsburg was the hippest area to be and with my awesome hostel only a couple of stops down the L line it was easy to get to and really nice area to wander around.



My hostel istelf had a fantastic 24-hour natural food store right round the corner as well as a funky little cafe and on arriving I met a cool guy called Chris who happened to play in an interestingly named band from San Antonio. Apparantly they're a bit of a Glassjaw/At The Drive In type deal but I havn't really had chance to listen to them yet so don't consider that link the stamp of my approval!

Monday evening I met up with my sister and her boyfriend who are travelling around the US after their exchange year in Canada. We went to a cool little basement Jazz bar called 55 Bar where a rather swift guitarist named Mike Stern led his equally skilled drummer and bassist through two storming sets of seemingly improvised jazz-rock-fusion. It was nothng less than seriously impressive and the bar had a great atmosphere, anyone who goes to New York should go!


Tuesday and my friends from Texas (who I'm going to be staying with) were in town for a couple of days too, so we all met up in the East Village and after drinks and laughs and dinner and more drinks and more laughs we somehow met a couple of hilarious English female football fans who insisted on embarrassing their nation with their tunless warbling at every opportunity. Sometimes there's not much worse than two pissed-up women screeching football chants! And then her husband, who was American, nonchalantly got out his wallet and SET IT ON FIRE in front of us! As we all stared, mouths agape, he just closed it again calmly as if nothing had happened. Everyone was like, WHAT THE?!?!

The next day I spent soaking up hipster-central Williamsburg, in particular the delights of Bedford Avenue which is dripping with funky places to go. I found an amazing vegan restaurant, a super-cool bookshop, a rather well-stocked record store and the best vintage clothes shop in the city.

I also stumbled across a tiny Paraguayan cafe that did the best Yerba Mate I have ever tried and had a mini-exhibition on the walls by an artist who's work grabbed me as as soon as I walked in the door to the extent that I couldn't even speak to the guy behind the counter for a few moments, utterly mesmerisised by his art. Cacho Falcon is his name and his website is rather funky but music on websites = cheese