Writing in Strange Places Returns!

I spent last weekend traveling to Bellingham and Ruby Beach, and I must say that it was quite refreshing. I got to see places that I hadn't ever been to and sample food and experiences that were interesting and new (Ladyfest, Bellingham farmer's market, a beach in the late afternoon...). So, I decided to write in these places and keep up my Writing in Strange Places review - it was currently on hiatus for the summer and had been replaced solely by movie reviews. I hope you enjoy!

Ruby Beach
This is a non-traditional review, as it breaks the mold of sitting in restaurants and cafes and rating them, but I feel like this can also be applicable. Ruby Beach was a gorgeous location, if a little cold when we were there, on the Washington coast. If you have the chance to drive out to the Olympic National Park and you have an adventuring spirit, you definitely want to make the pilgrimage. I did not actually write while at the beach - I was too busy taking pictures of the crashing ocean, the beautiful myriad of rocks, and the treeline that surrounded us - but I was inspired to write a poem about it when we returned from the trip. I really think that you could sit on the fallen trees near the river and write for hours until the light went out of the sky or rain started to come down. The place was rugged and romantic and seemed farther away from civilization than it really was (the location was actually 20 miles away from Forks, of Twilight fame). The location provokes me to write poetry, which I rarely do these days, and I think that it was a legitimately wild experience to see all of those beautiful landscapes come together on this beach.

Pepper Sisters
This place was an excellent example of southwestern cooking. It did not claim to be a tex-mex place and thus the quality was much better than the run of the mill pseudo-Mexican food place. The food was spicy and the staff was kind, if a little inattentive, which made for a combination of enjoyment and clambering for water. Everything was fresh and, since they only open for dinner hours, we came right when the food was hot. The ambiance of the place was also nice; it was colorful and had a charming feel. I think that I would like to come back and spend more time just lounging and drinking drinks there.
For writers, I think that this place would be a great place to go if you had a little bit of extra cash and were either in Bellingham for a reason or live there already. I felt very relaxed as I was writing there and was not deterred in the least by any of the staff or my dining partners. I also felt that, due to the fact that it was not exceedingly full, no one would push me out the door too fast if I wanted to stay a little later.

Shrimp Shack
This place had a funky and fun appearance that, unfortunately, gave me false expectations of how the food would turn out. In the end, the food was average and sparing - unlike Ivars, they served a paltry amount of clam strips with an overwhelming amount of fries (and at a high price to boot!). I at least enjoyed the tables and their funny ketchup bottle holders - as pictured above - but I felt like the place was inattentive and just there to provide a bit of sustenance before pushing you out the door. I was writing away and that felt fine, but I don't think I would hang around there on a busy day (we were there on a Saturday evening and there were few people there). You pay at the counter and are generally treated with little interest, so I guess if you are ok with sitting in that kind of restaurant, then you would feel ok writing in this place.

The last place that I would have reviewed would the Anker cafe, but unfortunately we went for the open mic on it's last day in existance! It was a really great cafe and there was a lot of great art on the walls, but I guess since it is no longer around, that information is moot...

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Three Writer-ly Hangouts and a Treat

This weekend, I was lucky enough to hang around at three downtown locations, all of which were very different and had their own special flair. Oh, and don't worry! I will be posting one of my much-anticipated writing experiments sometime soon (maybe even at the end of this post).

Friday, I had an undeniable urge for shrimp. Unfortunately, all the uptown restaurants were too upscale for my student wages, so my friend and I ventured downtown, picked up two more friends, and headed over to City Crab. Their atmosphere was lively; the greeters joked with us and everyone was chatting in the low light. We mounted some stairs and headed towards a long table, where we took a photograph of our thumbs* (seems to be something of a theme by now, isn't it?) and ordered some food.
I overall believe that this restaurant is a great place to gather snippets of conversation, but the rooms are loud and crowded at dinnertime, so as a writer who wants to sit in the same place for a while, you may not want to set yourself up there. On my own part, I ordered something I couldn't actually eat (buffalo shrimp, way too spicy) and had to send it back - they were nice enough about that, but the waiter seemed tense throughout our meal. That may have just been a personal experience, however.

On Sunday, another gorgeous weekend day, I began traversing downtown on a school scavenger hunt project (looking for Mark Twain in the Big Apple), and then decided to stay because the weather was so nice. I marched into a small smoothie shop called Mom's Cooking. The name is somewhat misleading - I have never seen my mother make mango/peach/pineapple smoothies - but the products were excellent and the woman behind the counter was cheerful and accommodating. Plus, the little shop had a lot of great signs and interesting layout items; I am not an artist, but I bet that you could have just as much fun sketching that store as you would writing in it.
I felt that I could sit there all day, but there is not a lot of seating to stay at. If they were busy, you might have to skedaddle after a short while. The atmosphere was really calming and it is a really cute hangout for a nice day.

Later that same day, a friend of mine met up with me downtown and we comparison shopped for sushi. We finally decided on Iron Sushi, which is a long restaurant with a calm Japanese feel (although I believe that the waiter and cook spoke Chinese to one another; please correct me if you find me wrong). There were not a lot of people there and, while my friend dined on her sushi, we overheard a radical conversation about time travel and monsters from a couple sitting a few tables away.
In short, the atmosphere encourages writing and I believe that you could sit and drink tea for a while in that shop. Though, like any restaurant, at a certain point the owners may want you out, the restaurant was well-lit and had great wallpaper (multicolored and patterned).

Finally, although I did not actually get to write in this place, I want to recommend going to the Cure Thrift Shop. They have really great items and more than a little kitsch. The picture featuring the olden time bicycle is the top floor while the bottom floor has a wealth of clothing options. And all of the money goes to diabetes cure research, so you won't feel guilty about spending some cash there (I did, and I think I will be heading back to donate my winter clothes - give a little, get a little). It is also downtown, but I highly recommend; it is worth the hike if you're from uptown!

*That photograph of us at City Crab will be forthcoming - my camera had died and I have to get this photo from my friend.

This post is growing longer and longer, so I will make my writing a separate post to come later this week! Sorry to disappoint you, people who have read to the bottom of this post already.

A bit of bad news. I have officially quit writing for ScriptFrenzy 2010. I just could not bring myself to write a screenplay; I thought my idea would fit seamlessly into a script format, but alas, the ideas will not jump from my brain onto the page. I feel self-conscious around my characters to the point of awkward silence and listlessness. So, good luck to everyone who is continuing!

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Two Successes and a Flop

I have returned to good health (and to school)! Spring break was mostly spent lying down and spending quality time with books. But the final weekend of spring break, I got out with my friend from Seattle and, while marauding, stopped in at a few interesting places to write. We stumbled upon, unfortunately, my first negative experience with a potential writing location, but I also got to two places that were quite delightful.

The flop, Faminelli's, was a bar downtown that we stopped in at to try and get some quick eats while passing from clothing shop to clothing shop. The rooms were unclean, the food tasted off, we felt ripped off by the high prices for mediocre product. I couldn't pull out my notebook for lack of space and they were generally ignorant of the customer's needs. Alas, I will not return.

Veniero's Cafe (a downtown dessert bar) was the first positive place that we flitted to. They had excellent, excellent desserts and cute little tables surrounded by mirrors. With notebook in hand, I sampled roasted almond gelato at a leisurely Italian pace and, between tastings, scribbled down some words. A great selection and a classy bustling environment really allowed me to ease into a relaxing place where I could write; on a busy day, there may be a little more rush to enjoy and move on, but I could see sitting down there for a few hours just chatting and writing.

This week, much closer to home, the 107th West Bar and Lounge was our prime location. It is a fairly unmarked restaurant in comparison to the Indian Cafe next door, but the food was a mix of American and Japanese (sushi and fried chicken in the same place? who would have thought!). While waiting for our repast, my friend and I sat on their comfy couch bench seats in the glass atrium and stared at the street bustling along past us. If you're into people watching, this is a prime location. I put down some words on a spare scrap of stationary. No one rushed us, no one knocked our book-worm habits (we had spread out two books and were reading and writing as they fixed the vittles). It felt very relaxing and calm and the food was delicious.

As a side note, I have recently been reading Anna Quindlen's book Thinking Out Loud, which is an anthology of her opinion column. Next time I am going to take a leaf out of Anna Quindlen's book and write out some of the ideas that I've been scribbling while writing in strange places; rather than put them all together as a big thing later on, I figured that I would try writing very short pieces and see how it goes!

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Tales from the Sick Bed

I just found out today that I have been diagnosed with pneumonia. Hooray.
It's both good and bad that it happened during spring break; I get time to rest and don't have to do a bunch of schoolwork. But, at the same time, I can't really go outside that much and so I can't go adventuring as much. And there are less people to take care of me, so I can't even loaf over to the dining hall to get food - I guess this is what it's like to get sick when you're living on your own.

Anyway, I still have a review to put up! Last week, I spent some time downtown and we stopped into a small burger joint called Paul's Hamburgers. It was another one of those quirky places with interesting wall decorations and a don't-mess-with-me attitude. Although I felt that the staff was a little terrifying because they acted terse, they had excellent burgers! I ate the second burger I have ever had in my life there and it was delicious.
I didn't feel that I could sit there for very long to write because the atmosphere was something like a biker stop where you eat on the run, but if I were to go back I would write in the time before they delivered my meal (as I did this time). Throughout the restaurant they had a medley of ironic signs and since the grill was open for the public to see, you could easily write about the thoughts going on in the minds of the workers there. All very intriguing.
I've found a lot of interesting restaurants downtown that provide me with canon fodder for stories, but I wonder what else is in the uptown area. Maybe I should start checking that out.


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CocoaV & Trailer Park Lounge

Again, two reviews for the price of one! Today, I had the distinct pleasure to go to two different locations once more - these two were the complete and total opposite of one another. They were near to the area of 23rd Street (CocoaV was on 21st and 9th Ave, Trailer Park Lounge on 23rd Street and 7th Ave).

CocoaV
This place was bigger than I thought! There was a restaurant in the other half of it, but we went to the charming little chocolate bar that we saw first. When I first gazed at their artisan vegan chocolates, I was titillated by the colored designs on them in fanciful green, purple, yellow, red... all of them were mesmerizing. And when we finally bought some, it was a chocolate experience! Delicate and tasty and every one different - I highly recommend the Vanilla Caramel, that was my favorite. They were definitely expensive, but I believe that was because of the restaurant starting up about three months ago (as I overheard the cashier saying). The register people were charming and we were able to sit there and sip hot chocolate at our leisure.
As a writing location, this place was calm and pleasurable. I felt that we could sit there forever and get drunk on the chocolate fantasy - it had an artsy feel also because of the nice painted chocolates and the sweet atmosphere. Beautiful.

Trailer Park Lounge
In total contrast, the Trailer Park Lounge was a loud, rampant bar/restaurant that had reasonably priced diner food (tater tots!). It was low-lit and had many kitschy items (there was a poodle-shaped blue lamp, many different tin soda advertisements, and a bunch of tiki lights, to name a few). It was definitely a place of inspiration with all the strange things everywhere.
As a writing place, as is most pertinent, it is a great place if you can focus while other people are drinking and talking around you. It is also low lit, but you can definitely see. I found it a charming location, mostly because of the quirky fashion of the place - it was reminiscent of Big Nick's, which is dear to my heart.

Anyway, decadent chocolate or diner fare, these two places are quite amazing.

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The Strand & Cafe Khufu

Alright! Well, on a first and unrelated note, I got my ears pierced! I got little steel hoops and am hoping that there are no complications this time (as there have been when I tried to pierce them in the past); we went to New York Adorned, which I find a really comfortable and interesting piercing and tattoo shop downtown. I had to hold on to Nina's hand during the piercing, but it went quick and I realized that it's the same with all needles for me - my anticipation of the pain is worse than the pain itself!

Bonus this week! We got to go to two different places and I had the chance to write in both of them - this time, since I had finished writing my fiction class story, I started in on something pertaining to our surroundings. I started writing about The Strand when I was in it, from the perspective of two different people. Maybe that will pan out, who knows?
Anyway, here are my reviews:
The Strand -
Always a great place to buy books and spend hours in just looking at the stacks and stacks available for purchase. As I walked around with pen in hand, furiously scribbling on every flat surface I could see, I realized that, although it was the perfect place for books, it was not the perfect place for writing.
There were people everywhere, which was to be imagined. They would jostle you, move around you, hit you with their bags, and when you finally got to the lower or upper floors to get some air away from them all, you got lost in the darkest little corridors of the shop. The books were interesting and inspiring nearly every way you turned, but it made me feel self-conscious to be stopping and writing in the middle of what could potentially be a thoroughfare for hungry bibliophiles waiting to get at their blessed pages. I was careful to listen for the creak of shoes on the wooden floors.
My verdict: a place of great inspiration, but not one of great writing.

Cafe Khufu -
Though this is a hookah bar, no one requires you to smoke. And so that's just what I did, sat around with a big group of friends and enjoyed casual banter in the low-lit, loud music corner where the soft couches and warm air preserve you from the winter cold outside. It's an interesting escape downtown and I thought it wouldn't be the best place to write (since it does have such low lights and such loud music), but when I finally sat down and pulled out my pen, I found the words were coming much easier and that I could see by the bare light of the chandelier above us. Plus, the chai is excellent.
Perhaps from the inspiration of the day walking around The Strand and parts of downtown, perhaps from the thrill of the great conversation going on around me, and perhaps because I was feeling relaxed after an adventure-filled day, writing in Cafe Khufu became a luxury. Though it may not be the typical place to sit and write for hours on end, I definitely will return there from time to time.

The pictures this week are 3 from The Strand (yes, there's a skeleton in the medicine section, if you've never seen it) and one from Cafe Khufu (the flash makes everyone's hands look like ghosts...) Enjoy!

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Butler Library (alt. My Life In Pictures)

Although it is sort of a cop-out, this week's location was Butler Library!
I always find that Butler is a really nice place to go do work in because everyone is there for the same thing. Every head is bent over a computer screen or a notebook, the pages are being filled or read through, there is a communal silence that people take on in the library...
So it was really interesting to spend the time working on (at least partially) my story for fiction class. We (meaning Liberty and I) snagged a really great little corner table with an outlet and just fidgeted and worked/wrote in the time. It was very calming, actually.
My only caveat is that the place has no signal to the outside world. So if you're wanting to get a snack or if you want to move locations or if you want to grab a friend, you have to go around the library to get signal or out into the front door. I know that is for a reason (considering that people are studying and you don't want to bother them) but sometimes it gets really frustrating not to be able to text when you want someone to meet you in a certain section. Plus, leaving your things with strangers can be good or bad depending on your choice of person.
Overall, I really liked the academic atmosphere, so I think I would go back when I wanted to seriously focus and not just put some words down on the page.

Also, I need to put up pictures! I've been taking photographs of some things that characterize my life right now, so there are three sample ones (the first one being Butler's main entrance, the second was the Mother Tongue Day celebration in the middle of the night at the U.N. and finally there is a replica of The Thinker in the snow - which I think is my most favorite picture of all)

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The Hungarian Pastry Shop

Today was the big V-day, both Valentine's and Vagina Day (or Single Awareness Day, if you feel so inclined) A time of "love" and expensive gifts - as I heard someone behind me remark, it never lives up to the classic expectation.
But, although this day should perhaps be treated like any other, I must admit that I quite enjoyed the calm fabric of this February 14th. It was the day I embarked on another of my adventures.
My newest adventure is to go to "literary places," basically, to write in cafes and other areas around the city so that I can explore and give myself some time to write. Perhaps it has been done before, but it seems that was how the greats got their work going, so I thought I might try it. At least it gets me out of the house.
Anyway, this first endeavor I took occurred today - at the Hungarian Pastry Shop. The following is a literary description of this fantastic place:
After celebrating our vaginas by listening to the the Vagina Monologues performed at Columbia's Roone Arledge Auditorium, reading trashy articles about what V-day gifts "really" mean, and exercising monetary frivolity in the purchase of another hard-backed legal pad, Liberty and I set out on a journey to this quaint little cafe on 111th and Amsterdam.
A short post-dinner walk later, in the brisk cold of Upper West Side Manhattan, we arrived at the doorstep of a smallish cafe that had many beautiful bohemian wall things, low mood lighting, and a stretch of college students munching on delicate cookies and rich pastries. They read their books and made notes, proving that this was still, after all, the Columbia neighborhood. As we approached the counter, two ladies with black curly hair looked up at us with a polite stare, rather than a smile. They were busy, we could see. I stared into the pastry case and was dazzled by the different choices - cookies, tiramisu, chocolate, chocolate, chocolate - and finally decided on an amalgamation of two hazelnut cookies and chocolate mousse. With milk.
I was shocked to find that they delivered it to our table, where Liberty and I were cautiously commenting on the atmosphere and taking out our books to read and write. I found myself lapsing into the balmy atmosphere of the place, listening in on the academic chatter that swirled around us. I was transfixed by the bathroom, with swirling graffitti plastering the walls - all the people who had ever come before. I pumped out a few paragraphs and found that it was a place to return to, perhaps in the daylight with a cup of hot chocolate centered between two palms.
Liberty finished her book and we rose to go, paying at the counter before we left. As a spot for eking out ideas or studying the pages of a book, this place was awfully calming. I will come again.


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