Sunday, September 28, 2008

Hell's Kitchen and Other Stories




Last night I met up with Gabriella - a friend from Pembroke, who is also in New York. What's so hilarious\bizarre about seeing her out here, up to pretty much the same thing as I am (job-hopeful quasi-paid internship, rent free apartment, fresh from university bug eyes) is that at college we were constantly mistaken for one another. It went far beyond a joke: to the point where strangers were arresting me for ten minuet conversations at The Turf about this and that. She explained it was the same with her. Her apartment is in this abandoned Wherehouse in Queens really near the metro stop 40th St and Lowery . By wherehouse, I mean the place has dumper trucks outside and the first two floors are art storage. But on the thired is her apartment: with a giant rooftop that faces out towards Manhatten. Inside the cecilngs are the same as those in school - that's what I mean by wherehouse-y! Well, one thing lead to another and we ended going back to the city and going to the Beatrice Inn. I had no idea about the reputation of the place: but it was certainly a lovely bar with illicit dancing in the back. Only in retrospect do I recall the big fuss of back patting the door guy, and knowing nods. 

Oh and the photographs are of this rather wonderful film still shop, which I discovered on a stroll through Hell's Kitchen earlier that day. The window that wasn't filled with collages of old movie posters and little dolls was stacked with a messy pile of dusty boxes. I don't believe it has been open in a while. But it's right by the Film Centre, which oddly doesn't use it's front entrance anymore. You'd have thought with a foyer as good as theirs that there would have been a movement to keep it as the 'front door'. 

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