I’ve been spiraling lately. I’m probably mid-spiral right now, writing this. I’m becoming self-aware about this blog—thinking it’s not good, or that it’s a waste of time. Maybe both, lol. I was confident at the start that it would be worthwhile. Now I’m not so sure.

Still, I’m really into posting lately. I like the activity of it, and especially having done it. I can mostly let go of worrying about the shelf life of any given post. It’s a break from my phone. I like that it’s a challenge.

Anyway, here are some remaining photos from my last trip to New York. Most are from a walk I do downtown. It’s a loop I’ve walked for some years, as a way to mentally and physically reset.

Certain spaces give me energy. In the right place, I feel 10–75% better, or more productive. I first noticed this during walks I used to take when I lived in New York. I thought the mood boost came from just the walking itself, but I came to understand it was also from the spaces I was stepping into.

The exact places are a mix of restaurants and retail stores. The restaurants are a complementary mix of predictability—I tend to order the same thing—and transience, with different people coming and going. It’s therapeutic to be in the middle of both things happening at once. I weirdly like the soundscapes, too.

Growing up, my mom used to go into jewelry and home goods stores just to vibe—not to buy anything specific. I didn’t get it back then. Now I do. It’s soothing to be around the orderly presentation of well-crafted objects. The right things, arranged the right way, create a collective spatial and visual energy. In New York, the effect is amplified, as you’re going from the chaos outside to the curated order inside. It’s also not unusual, being in New York, for the "stuff" to be some of the best in the world, too.

Here are some of my favorite places to go on the walk in New York.

Café Mogador

Café Mogador is my favorite restaurant in New York. I have been going for 20 years, since when I lived nearby. It’s not fancy—it’s just perfect. It’s one of those if-you-know-you-know places.

The soundscape is part of what makes it. The music is always slightly obscure, so it never steals too much attention. There’s the right amount of “clanging” of glasses and plates. I usually sit at the bar and order the chicken kebab plate. The hummus is some of the best ever, but I try not to eat it too often these days because I don’t want to get thicc. 🥹

Café Gitane

Also good, but a little more vibe-forward than Café Mogador. The best part about Café Gitane is that you can sit right on the sidewalk of Mott Street in Soho, and watch all of the fantastically dressed, self-designed people go by. My friend Nick and I go and get a coffee and it’s chill. There’s a pattern at Café Gitane of all of the servers being young, attractive women. It’s exciting at first. But it starts to feel somewhat Jeffrey Epstein-coded. Personally, I find that disappointing.

La Cabra

I’m actively caught in the trap of thinking this place rocks. It became popular on TikTok and people have been flocking there based on their algorithm. Me? I just found it in, like, a boots-on-the-ground, walking-down-the-street, oh-what-have-we here kind of way. I get a chocolate croissant and a canelé. The complementarity of the two forms on the plate—the rectangular chocolate croissant, the dark, cylindrical canelé—provokes me to anthropomorphize them, like a famous duo. Timon and Pumba. Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan.

La Cabra plays weird, ambient techno music that makes it feel like Vanilla Sky. You wonder if at any moment, the lights will dim, and everyone will put on masks and start having sex.

DS&Durga

One time I walked in here basically anti-perfume, and walked out fully pro-perfume. The transformation was enacted by a guy named Joey who worked there.

He gave me a tour of the fragrances, describing each one with incredible precision: “This smells like a Milanese horse saddle mixed with peak-summer Long Island strawberries, sitting in the backseat of a 1995 Toyota Land Cruiser.” And then it would. It was wild. Honestly, the experience f***ed me up.

I’ve been into fragrances ever since. Shoutout to Joey.

Also, small bottles? I don’t even care what’s in them. I need them all.

I’ve heard the brand was started by a married couple—supposedly the guy is a perfumer, who designs the fragrances, and the girl is an architect, who designs the stores and packaging. All to say that there is a felt coherency inside of the store—the interior layout, furniture, product packaging, scents, all “match” somehow.

APC

I do this thing where, if I like a piece of clothing—especially if it fits well—I buy two more copies. Not variants, but exact duplicates. A few years ago I found the perfect white button-up shirt at this store, so naturally I followed the protocol and bought two more. Six months ago, somehow, two of the shirts went missing. I was shattered. I was ambiently spiraling about it for, like, two whole weeks. Then one day, while swapping clothes in the laundry room of my building, I saw one of the shirts—my shirt—in someone else’s laundry basket. It was incredible. We were reunited.

While I honored the moment, and felt grateful for rejoining with this second shirt, I also paused to acknowledge that the third shirt is still out there. It’s like the formerly-Paul Whelan of the shirts—once held captive somewhere, detained indefinitely, with no clear path to return.

Mast Books

There’s a thing that happens in skateboard shops, where the veteran guys behind the counter “vibe” the younger newcomers. It’s like a low-grade hazing. They give off this unspoken sense that you’re not cool enough to be there.

That’s what happens at Mast Books. It’s an art bookstore in the East Village, where you get vibed.

If you’re not a regular, the people at the desk talk to you like you don’t belong. Like they’d actually prefer if you hadn't even come into the store. It’s confrontational in this specific “New York” way. The books tend to be good. Rare art titles. Nice typography. The whole place feels intentional, like someone spent real time thinking about what should go on every shelf.

That's all I have.