Fleet Street

Spotted: Sweeney Todd's house.  Apparently he lives around Union Square.

 DOESN'T THE ROOF LOOK SO SWEENEY TODD?

Can't you just picture Johnny Depp looking out those windows while sitting in his creepy demon barber of Fleet Street chair?

-Lida

DREAM COME TRUE

Okay okay okay okay okay.

ASDIUAWEJNFALSDJFALKWENASD.

Woah.

I'm gonna continue the Easter weekend posts, but first I have to make a public service announcement.  Well, it's not actually a PSA.  It's jut super exciting.

On Monday evening, I worked as a red carpet escort at the Film Society of Lincoln Center's Gala Tribute to Sidney Poitier.  I didn't get paid, but I got to wear a pretty dress and escort celebrities and their significant others down the red carpet.

And on Monday evening, my childhood dream came true.

I met, and escorted, and had a conversation with JAMES EARL JONES.

Guys, this is huge.  Star Wars defined my childhood.  I had a Yoda cake for my 3rd birthday.  My dog's named Chewbacca.  Han Solo was my first true love.  I built my own Millennium Falcon.  I had little toy figurines of Death Troopers.  I'm pretty sure I was convinced I was Princess Leia (Leia sounds enough like Lida).

So I was waiting by the red carpet, and it was my turn to escort.  I didn't know who I was going to get.  A black Escalade pulled up, and out steps Mr. Voice of Darth Vader himself.  And I introduced myself and told him I was going to be escorting him and his wife, Cecilia (who is so sweet).  Then, in case I wasn't in heaven enough just shaking his hand, he acknowledged my existence, and said "Thank you, Lida[!]  It's great to meet you[!]"  (Exclamation points are mine).  And to top it all off, the AP got a photo of us together.  Not together together.  But in the same photo.  It captures the moment right before I turned around and saw that I would be escorting the man, the myth, the legend.

I literally died and went to heaven.

I also escorted Mary Louise Parker (of Weeds fame.  Not a nice lady.  Not nice at all) and Regis Philbin (who is just the coolest old guy ever).  Also at the event, Quentin Tarantino (!!!!), Quincy Jones (who is so badass), MORGAN FREEMAN, Sir Ben Kingsley (who wore a pimpin' purple tie), Jim Belushi, and, of course, Sidney Poitier.

We got to take individual photos against the cool celeb background.  So official. 

My friend Kylie (in the blue dress) got to escort Quentin Tarantino.  I was super jealous.

ADIUFHWELKNJASDOJFJKWMNASKDJKLASDNFALKEWJNFLADSF.  It was seriously one of the most random-yet-cool things I've ever done.

So, hope you enjoyed that fun fact.

-Lida

The Empress Eugenie Pheasant Shooting At Compiegne (And Maybe Buying A $5,000 Bottle of Scotch)

These next couple of postings are all connected, in that they all happened the same weekend, but I'm separating them into smaller chunks, thus making them easier to write (no one likes writing a mega-post...).

Last weekend my family came up to New York to 1) see me perform in my show, and 2) celebrate Easter with me.  My dad came up a day early, and so I decided to do the unthinkable: I let him choose the day's itinerary.  Honestly, I love my dad.  He's a cool cat.  But his idea of fun day excursions and my idea of fun day excursions don't exactly match up.  Por ejemplo:  Randy likes visiting war/military museums, perusing liquor stores, watching the Discovery and History Channels, and being outdoors.  Granted, I like doing those things too, but I wasn't too keen on spending my Friday afternoon aboard the USS Intrepid.  And it was raining that day, so a leisurely stroll through Central Park was out of the question.

Apparently my dad had been doing some research, because when I told him he had full reigns of the day, he started rattling off a mental list.  And at the top of that list was a place called Astor Wines & Spirits.

Not surprised.

So we shlepped down to the East Village (where my dad did many a double take at the questionable outfits of the NYU kids...), and were greeted by this:

And then we walked in the doors, and saw this:

This picture doesn't do it justice.  In case you can't tell, behind the bar in the upper left corner the store EXTENDS, both back further AND sideways.  And to the right of the "Great Wines Under $10" sign is EVEN MORE WINE.

I AM MY FATHER'S DAUGHTER, MEANING I HAVE BEEN TO MY FARE SHARE OF LIQUOR STORES.  BUT I HAVE LITERALLY NEVER SEEN SO MUCH ALCOHOL IN MY LIFE.  Sweet Jesus there was a lot.

Oh, they even have a wall of absinthe.  Watch that link and tell me absinthe isn't terror-inducing.

Anyway, the reason we came to this store was because (and Papi, excuse the butchering of this story... I wasn't really paying attention to the nitty gritty details) they carried some fancy shmancy kind of scotch.  Or whiskey.  I don't remember.  So we make our way to the back of the store, where we find an entire wall of scotch.  And whiskey.  And whiskey that is spelled in a different way.  And scotches locked in a glass cabinet.

And using my super detective sleuthing skills, I located this $5,499.99 bottle of scotch whiskey (is it scotch or is it whiskey?  The world will never know...).

Needless to say, we didn't purchase this bottle.  I can't even see my dad, the scotch (whiskey) enthusiast that he is, dropping a casual five thousand on 750mL of liquid.  But we did spend a good thirty minutes browsing and comparing extravagant prices and giggling at weird Northern European village names (that was mostly just me).

After purchasing a reasonably priced bottle of something reasonably good (not that I would know what constitutes good scotch and what doesn't), we left, and started wandering through the East Village.  OMG, Randy was so trendy.  I'm slowly converting him into a New Yorker.  Hehehehehe.

We then discovered a little place called Pageant Print Shop (69 E. 4th Street).  It's like yea big, but jam packed with all kinds of random maps and prints and magazine cutouts and cool pictures.  I found a really cool print of kozaks on the steppes of Ukraine (what's up, Motherland?!), and my dad found some great old maps of the Chesapeake.  My ADD photo dream come true.  And, surprisingly for NYC, everything was decently priced.  I got a pretty big picture of some classy lady in a big hoop skirt, surrounded by military men, shooting a rifle.  I thought it was a pretty accurate portrait of what my life would have looked like in the early 1800s.  And, it was only $8.  I win.

The storefront, and my very own Pageant Print Shop purchase!

All in all, a pretty exciting and eclectic father-daughter adventure.  WHO'DA THUNK THAT RANDY WOULD HAVE BEEN UP FOR A JAUNT AROUND THE EAST VILLAGE, LAND OF QUINTESSENTIAL NEW YORK HIPSTERS?  But he did.  It happened.  And I'm quite proud of him.

-Lida

The Jalopy

In Red Hook, Brooklyn, there is a tiny theatre on the corner of a street, wedged between the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and the Battery Tunnel Toll Road.  It's called the Jalopy Theatre and School of Music, and it's absolutely one of a kind.

Getting there is an adventure.  You take the F train to Carroll Street, then it's a good twenty minute walk there.  Oh yeah, you walk OVER the Expressway.  The view of cars flying beneath you wouldn't be half bad if the bridge weren't ominously shaking the entire time.  So, yeah... that was fun.

The view from the middle of the bridge... the most unintentionally frightening experience ever.

So somehow, despite believing we were lost the whole time, we get to the Jalopy.  Well, we almost walk past it.  There is no crowd gathered outside, the street is unassuming, and the door looks like a something that'd be the entrance to a cafe.  Not a good sign, considering it's a concert venue.  I dragged my friends to the Jalopy to see Pokey LaFarge, one of my favorite musicians.  I was initially super skeptical -- Pokey is Americana music, a throwback to ragtime and western swing and blues and jazz, and that's not a style that can be performed in any old venue.  Americana music is personal: everyone's involved.  And most venues I had been to in New York and Brooklyn were large and very impersonal.  I had never been to the Jalopy, and I was terrified that the music and the venue wouldn't mesh.  But we walk inside anyway, and this is what we see:

The Jalopy is part theatre, part music school, part musical instrument shop, part bar.  Countless guitars and banjos and mandolins and ukeleles lined the walls.  A small, one-room venue, we were three of maybe six girls there (not including the bartender), and the youngest attendees by far.  The old man sitting at the bar asked us if we liked the Avett Brothers.  We said we did.  He said their father was performing the following week.  Kind of badass.

Behind the music shop area was the actual stage.  There were church pews instead of individual seats, two columns of about six rows.  The stage, only about three feet off the ground, held an old upright piano and was framed by an old velvet curtain, which was framed by glowing red lights.  There was a creepy bust of an old Roman man.  On the walls were court-style sketches of past performances.  It was kind of like walking to a Baz Luhrmann film, and I mean that in the best sense.  And once Pokey started playing, the venue fit the music perfectly.

Washboard, anyone?

Pokey was sick that night, so between songs he alternated taking swigs of water, tea, and, of course, whiskey, the age-old American cure for lost voices.  He even has a song written about it.

Spotted: onstage bottle chugging.

Pokey's set was cut short, because of his voice, so to make up for it he and his band stuck around for a while afterwards, talking to people and selling merchandise.  We shamelessly introduced ourselves to him and the band, and chatted for a bit.  They are inarguably the band with the most interesting facial hair.

Hands down, one of the coolest nights I've had in this city so far.  I've never been to a place remotely like it, nor heard music in such an intimate setting.  And it's so reassuring, knowing places like the Jalopy exist, giving a performance venue to musical artists whose genres seem outdated or just plain weird.

I'll be making that walk over the Expressway bridge many, many more times, I hope.

-Lida

**ALL PHOTOS WERE TAKEN BY OUR ONE AND ONLY CHELSEA

Sandman, and a Celeb Sighting!

Setting: Union Square (again).  Weekend.  Mid afternoon.

Lida walks through Union Square.  She sees a crowd of people gathered together, murmuring to themselves, and pointing to something on the ground in front of them.  She dramatically bursts through the crowd, and sees this:

Some street artist was making a sand mural on the ground.  I thought it was really pretty, so I took a picture of the final product, too.

Then, as I was standing in line to use the BofA ATMs, I noticed there was a celebrity standing right in front of me.  That's right, people, CHARLIE (KELLY) DAY, OF IT'S ALWAYS SUNNY IN PHILADELPHIA, WAS STANDING IN FRONT OF ME IN THE ATM LINE.  I almost died on the spot.  Best moment of my life.

He looked like this, except slightly more homeless.  

He is also roughly my height, meaning he's about 5' 7".

SO EXCITING.  Y'all are jealous.

-Lida

Olde Good Things

BECAUSE OF THE BEAUTIFUL WEATHER, my friend Katya and I decided to stroll through Union Square yesterday.  There was nothing eventful going on, until I turned the corner and saw this facing me:

That is a giant wooden lion.  Sitting on the back of a truck.

Then I saw that the truck was filled with the COOLEST JUNK IMAGINABLE.  From this picture alone, I see a lion statue, a carousel horse, a pink elephant (which is very clearly a Heffalump, meaning all those childhood Winnie the Pooh nightmares flooded my mind and I had a mild panic attack), a church pew, a red kangaroo (??), a green light fixture, and some tin tiles.

So, obviously, I stalked the website.  Olde Good Things literally has everything.  You want a "George III carved sideboard?"  Well, boom: they have it.  You want a "Pair of Lifesize Dolphin Fountain Statues?"  Get at me, son.  You want Cogsworth and Lumiere?  OF COURSE THEY HAVE IT, SILLY!

My personal favorite is the "Americana Bench from an Amusement Park."  It's what I imagine would be in the amusement park horror movie of my dreams.

Of course, to shop at Olde Good Things, you need to be willing to drop some big cash to actually walk away with said Dolphin Fountain Statues.  By big cash I mean almost $10,000.

But hey, who knows.  Maybe eventually I'll be sitting on a clown bench, keeping time with my favorite Beauty and the Beast characters, eating my dinner off of a table named George III.  Dream big.

-Lida

Whoops

Hello.

Please welcome us back.

To be honest, it's been MAD cold in the City lately, and the last thing we've wanted to do was go out and explore.  Hence the lack of new posts.

BUT SPRING IS HERE, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN.  And that means Strug is back in action.

Recent updates:
- We joined a sorority.
- Chelsea is dancing a lot.
- Lida is in a show.
- Mostly we joined a sorority.

Anyway, sorry for the delay.

Mucho love,
Chelsea and Lida

How Anthro

On Saturday, Chelsea, Mabes, and I decided to brave the cold and head down to Williamsburg (hello, trendy people in trendy glasses) for some concert.

Actually, the main band was Minks.  They were eh.  Their backup singer girl was clearly trying to channel the anorexic, dressed in all black, stringy hair model look, but it came across as more zombie demonoid.  Not the point, though.

THE POINT IS that the concert was at a place called Glasslands.  If you click on their link, you can see that in the top left photo there is this weird, pinkish, crinkly cloud thing that is covering the back of the stage.  Or you can look at the photo I took:

In my photo it looks more like lava, or magma, or whatever.

THE POINT IS it looked suspiciously like an Anthropologie display.

Example 1:

Example 2:

Example 3:

Example 4:

DO Y'ALL SEE WHAT WE'RE SAYING?  ISN'T THE SIMILARITY SUPER OBVIOUS?

Maybe Anthropologie is Williamsburg-type trendy after all...

-Lida and Chelsea

P.S. The coolest part of the venue was the teddy bear head mounted on the wall.  That was a little more Urban Outfitters and less Anthropologie.