20/2/13 – Shopping at the Village

Supreme is a brand that ‘cool’ young people will recognise immediately for its skateboards and associated merchandise. As they only have stores in NYC and Tokyo and as they were releasing their Spring Collection this week, Peter and I (at my nephew Jordan’s request) popped down town to check out the place before the sale began on Thursday. The shop was closed and the windows covered over in brown paper. There was already a long line of people outside the store, all of whom were apparently willing to sleep out all night in the freezing cold just to ensure they got ‘first bite of the cherry’ tomorrow morning. Worse still there barricades strategically placed along the curb that indicated that many more eager shoppers were expected to arrive overnight,  so we were a little concerned over our ability to fulfil the order placed by said nephew tomorrow when the sale began!     

When we left the Supreme store we walked north up Lafayette Ave towards 14th Street in search of a taxi. Instead we found upon a new bar and jazz club called ‘Joe’s Pub’. It is contained within what was once the Astor public library and across the road was the original Astor Mansion – note to self – must bring Hans and Sue here when they arrive next week.

Further up on 8th Avenue we dropped into the downtown Jensen-Lewis furniture shop to see if their stock was any different to the stock that their 56th Street store had carried. The show room as bigger and we found a few other items to our liking. Unfortunately the research into shipping stuff home is not looking good as most companies aren’t interested in consignments under one container in size.

Without knowing what we were walking into we dropped into West Market in the Village to pick up a few supplies before retuning uptown to the flat. This massive gourmet food market was amazing. We entered at the cheese section (that seriously would have had over 500 cheeses on display) and soon made a right hand turn to find shelves of refrigerated food that went all the way to the ceiling. It was quite unnerving to not be able to see over to the next aisle let alone out of a window. We then found ourselves lost in a tinned food maze and we lamented not dropping crumbs from the time of our entry as we were by now well into the bowels of this monster and beginning to fear that we might never find out way out. The inspiration for Lennon and McCartney’s ‘Long and Winding Road’ must have come from here because this experience was surreal. But just as we were about to ask for help to find the way out we came upon the fresh produce section and we could hear horns and see flashing lights indicating that impatient NYC was still out there. But rather than make a dash for the door we were seduced by the shape, presentation and names of exotic fruit and vegetables that we had never seen before. We had to check ourselves several times as we held up objects and tried to pronounce its name as indicated on the information ticket. We considered taking photos of these items but in the end we decided that there was a limit to the extent to which we would/could embarrass ourselves. Luckily we managed to compose ourselves in sufficient time to avoid a visit from the staff, paid the bill and jumped into a taxi bound for more familiar surroundings.