Mar

A Walrus on a Friday

Swinging back to my husband, it was his turn again. Considering he took me on a subway ride last time, I did not know what to expect.

He sent me the link halfway through the day. I had to meet him at The Cardinal. There really isn’t much to be said for the website. It only has the menu listed with no images.

The Cardinal is one of those restaurants that falls under the saying “you should not judge a book by its cover.” It doesn’t look like much and I suppose you can call it “rustic New York” or low-key Southern with wobbly wooden tables and menu items scrawled across one wall. As of today, three hard-working waiters run around but no customer is ignored.

All of this doesn’t really matter once you get your food. I ordered the chicken with two sides and it was absolutely amazing. The skin was wonderfully crispy, the chicken was moist and the two sides of macaroni and cheese and green beans could not get in my mouth fast enough.

The only downside is that if you’re eating here, you cannot plan to go anywhere else after, except home. The portions are very large, considering what you paid so you might have to doggy bag a lot. Maybe we ordered with our eyes and not our stomachs but I waddled out of there. Subway stairs were an inconceivable challenge so we cabbed it home. Skinny jeans off and sweatpants on and we laid walrus-like for the rest of Friday night. It was well worth it.

12 years ago Short URL Comments

Feb

Two Drinks to One

My turn for the semi-cheap date night. I found a way around going to a nice place and still keeping it cheap: you are only allowed one drink. That was the deal to get us to the Jane Ballroom at the Jane Street Hotel.

There wasn’t a lot of research put into this place. In fact, I arranged date night to be on Wednesday night after work and around 4:00 the same day, I thought “oh f@#!. What am I going to do?” Co-worker to the rescue and the Jane Ballroom was recommended.

The Jane Ballroom is the bar for the Jane Street Hotel. The hotel itself has some interesting history, according to New York Magazine. It provided accommodation for sailors in the early 1900’s and was used to house Titanic survivors when they arrived in New York City. The Hotel has recently been redone by Eric Goode and Sean MacPherson (the same people who did the Maritime Hotel). The rooms are extremely small and most don’t have private bathrooms (although there are rooms with this option), but they’re comfortable and offer an economical way of staying in Manhattan.

The ballroom looks like someone’s 1920s parlor room decorated with everything they bought while traveling. We went in the evening, around 6:30, and I wished I could have showed up with red lipstick, pearls, and a flapper outfit. The prices are not the cheapest but I didn’t expect them to be.

Courtesy of http://thedizzyfizz.wordpress.com

My idea of keeping the date night cheap by only having one drink presented a whole new issue: my husband drinks two drinks to my one. It doesn’t matter about what he is ordering: a martini, beer, vodka sodas, wine; it’s always two to my one. Solution: he has to get the cheap drinks (like beer) and I get a glass of wine. Somehow it worked – to my surprise, my choice was actually a good first date night!

12 years ago Short URL Comments

Feb

A Zit and a Subway

The challenge was set: each week my husband or I had to find a semi-cheap new thing to do in NYC. With a flip of a coin, he had to go first.

As a cruel measure, my face seemed to erupt into one large zit on my forehead. This was one of those groundbreaking pimples; the kind that prompted remarks from my father, such as “wow, your zit now has a face.” I had several client meetings the same week, making me extremely self-conscious about the red mountain.

My husband was pretty excited about our first date night, exclaiming he had found the perfect one. I met him after work, at the Union Square station for the downtown 6 train. He had a small pack of papers in his hands that I was to read on the subway.

Riding the 6 train to Brooklyn Bridge by Raúl!

It was sweet he had done research and as I read, I found out we were on the train to see an abandoned subway stop. If you stay on the 6 past the Brooklyn Bridge stop, you can see old City Hall stop, as the train loops back around to go uptown. The former stop is now open for tourists and New Yorkers to see.

According to Jonah Green at The Huffington Post, the station was built in 1904 and closed in 1945 because only 600 people used it per day and the loop made an unsafe gap between the platform and the train. Recently, the MTA will let people stay on the train and see the abandoned stop. (To see images, please go here or here.)

After catching the short glimpse of it, you are left wondering of other NYC abandoned spots that are probably just beneath our noses.

As we headed back uptown, my husband said, “well, that was cool, huh?”

“What? We’re going back home now?”

“Yeah, I thought this perfect. You’re so self-conscious about the zit on your face, our date night was to take a subway ride. No one cares what you look like on the subway.”

About 10 minutes later, we were having a drink at Asselina, the Italian restaurant at the Gaansevoort Hotel on Park. (Asselina, by the way, has really soft lighting so it’s also condusive to making you look good.)

To my husband’s credit, the date was cheap, interesting, and you learned something. I just didn’t expect a subway ride and a 10 second glimpse of an abandoned subway stop as my date night. He was right, though, it’s a great place to go with a massive zit on your face.

12 years ago Short URL 1 Comment

6 train/abandoned subway stop/asselina/the huffington post