Dim Sum Adventures

So, as you know by now, I live in Chinatown. As you also know by now, I'm in love with it. I feel right at home here because I grew up in Asia. Walking by fruit stands full of mangoes, lychees & rambutans makes my heart flutter. One of the best parts about living in this part of town are all the yummy little places to eat. Some of my favorite spots are a Thai place called Pongsri, The Chinatown Ice Cream Factory & Nom Wah Tea Parlor. 

My first trip to Nom Wah was a very drunk one but I've been daydreaming about their huge steamed pork buns. I started thinking about them so much on Friday night that actually found myself looking up their menu at 2 am (gross, I know), so something obviously needed to be done. I texted Kali & Emily, asked them if they wanted to go for dim sum & quickly found out that neither of them had ever had it before. One of my secret pleasures in life is introducing people to things they've never had or done before.

They met me on Canal St. on Saturday afternoon & we walked to Nom Wah, which was the perfect opportunity to take photos of everything. There's always so much going on around here. I'm so used to taking street style photos so it's always fun for me to play with other subjects.

None of us had eaten anything all day, so we were literal savages by the time we got there. I was honestly tempted to order one of everything off the menu. We ate dumplings, buns, rice & spring rolls. We also doused everything in 10 lbs of soy sauce. It was truly magical. 

After our late lunch, we walked our little food babies to South Street Seaport to catch Mac Demarco at the 4 Knots Music Festival. He was lovely. The stage was right by the water with a perfect view of the Brooklyn Bridge. Sometimes I just look around & I'm like holy shit, I can't believe that I get to do all of this right now. It's honestly been such an amazing summer in more ways than I can even write about.

After the show, we sat on some steps & people watched. We made the mistake of sitting directly across from a candy store called IT'SUGAR. It was three girls against a candy store & the candy store obviously won. I don't even like candy that much, but I walked out looking like I robbed a neighborhood on Halloween. You win again, peer pressure.

Love,

A

*ps: Isn't Vanella's such a silly name for a funeral home....no...just us...?

That One Time I Randomly Went To Chicago

This time last week, I was in Chicago. It was honestly one of the best weekends that I've had in a while & I barely have any photographic evidence. I think that it's important to leave the camera at home & just focus on living sometimes. We're all so consumed by technology that there's an underlying fear that if we don't document whatever we're doing, it didn't really happen.

That weekend was just what I needed though. I've gotten into such a routine in New York. Sometimes you just need to do something out of the ordinary. Do you know how random my plan was? I was invited to Chicago so I just said yes & booked a ticket & showed up. That's it. As much as I want to pretend that this is a common occurrence in my life, it's not. I can be really hesitant and tend to over think everything because I'm a natural planner with a side of pessimist. But this time I didn't think too much, I just did it. 

To be honest, it was hard to want to take my camera out with me because Mario kept calling me Peter Parker from "Spider-Man". But while we were out on a walk, I managed to snap some shots of my favorite buildings & houses. I couldn't stop saying how cute everything was because it was so different from New York. The street that we were shopping on reminded me of Main Street at Disney & everything had such a vintage feel.

Even though I'm still bitter that we didn't make it to the bean, I got to do a lot of stuff. I finally ate deep dish pizza, got Mario to go into an Urban Outfitters AND buy something, took the train to Elmhurst, went with the Orwells to Milwaukee for Summerfest, watched the original "Texas Chainsaw Massacre", rode bikes to a liquor store and a lot of other random stuff. 

Next time life throws random adventures at you, do it. I'm glad that I did.

Love,

A