Maggie and I returned to her 2nd hometown of New York City last week to see Faust play at Market Hotel, a venue where she worked years ago.  Maggie also had a doctor’s appointment at Mt. Sinai.   We decided to stick to an all sandwich diet, partly for Steve’s research and partly cause we’re cheap and it’s tough to get into too much trouble with buying sandwiches.  I got a little overwhelmed trying to figure out where to go while not really knowing our schedule 100%, so I started adding places into a google map trying to fill out all of the city, so we could just stop anywhere when we got hungry.

We stayed in Long Island City at the Paper factory.   It was very affordable and clean, the lobby was quirky, the staff were friendly.  The hotel isn’t really near anywhere though, just in storage building central and we were starving. So we decided to go to the closest place on the map to the hotel, Cemitas El Tigre.  It was about a 20 minute walk, 15 of which were through deserted warehouses.  We saw some guys demolishing a building from inside which was cool.  But otherwise the lack of people was a little weird.  Everything got better near the restaurant though.  We got micheladas, a barbacoa cemita, and a carnitas burrito.  Maggie’s often on the fence about ordering carnitas places since it’s often kinda dissapointing, but I was happy to prove her wrong here.  That burrito was so good.  So was the cemita.  I wanna get some papalo for myself.  We were having a great time relaxing after the drive.  My sister texted me that Fritz was playing fetch with her and sent us a cute picture.  We were relaxed and full and warm and ready to just uber back to the hotel to get an early start the next day, when I realized that my phone had turned itself off and wouldn’t be joining us for the rest of the trip.  Dumb.

Maggie’s doctor was in the UES by all the rich babies and old ladies.  We walked around to some children’s clothing stores looking for a baby is born gift for my sister and laughed that they cost more than our adult clothing.  It’s pretty excessive to dress a child in a $180 shirt for two months.  You know, unless you’re dressing them in some linen clothes that make them look like a japanese farmer.  I thought I saw something that looked like it turned the baby into a starfish, but then i saw arm holes. pass. I didn’t really have anything that wasn’t at least an hour away, so we went to the coffee shop we always stop at by the hospital and bought some little sandwiches and went to the park to eat them.  Maggie kept walking around looking for benches and some stuff, and I was hungry and thought we should just eat.  Eventually she took me over this hill to the whoa it’s the city and a pond spot.

We took some pictures and thought about stuff and had a little gaze. There were no benches so we went back down to eat.

We got a soppressata and petso chibatta thingy and a prosciutto and mozzarella on brioche.  They were good.   Next we went to Kitchen Arts & Letters, which I had wanted to visit for a while.  It was crazy and we wanted to buy everything.  We got a couple little books to read on the subway and remembered that we’d have to carry whatever else we bought for the rest of the day.

We went to the met to do a quick jog through and look at all the decapitated head paintings.  This older guy was peeing in the fountain.  I guessed so.  Then we headed to the Met Breuer to see the Unfinished show.  It was really cool, worth checking out if you’re up there before it closes.  Give yourself a few hours, it’s nice to read the stories behind everything.  I like the one with the victorian lady missing her face the most.  Or maybe the one next to it.  Or like 20 other things.  We almost bought the book for it, but luckily remembered the carrying thing again.

This was at the beginning of our walk out of the met.  Nice and springy and happy.  Flowers blooming and children playing.  We had about a 40 minute walk to get to Alidoro.  We considered a taxi, since we had been on our feet since 9 am and it was about 3:30 then, but it was only 15 minutes faster and decided to go for the walk.  Twenty blocks left it started getting bad.  The dogs were barking, we were hungry, getting pretty tired.  Ten blocks left, almost there, can’t wait to sit down.  Two left, so close.  Finally Alidoro! aand they’re closed.   We had a bit of a cry, and looked at my map and the closest place was another 20 minutes away.  So we picked something from google, Untamed sandwiches.  It was pretty close.

Whoa were we lucky.  It was great.  We got a Nettle Neck Lamb sandwich, which was lamb neck with nettle pesto and some other stuff, and a chicken tinga with jalapeno, cilantro and stuff.  So good! They also had beer, so double relaxing.

We were rejuvenated after that and strolled to the subway to get back to our hotel.  We passed Maggie’s favorite building.

It was getting late, and we were going to relax a bit before heading to Market Hotel for Faust.

The Market Hotel was cool.  I met Maggie’s old pal Todd P and he showed us around the place.  I also met Jean-Hervé Péron and Werner “Zappi” Diermaier, which was crazy.  Faust had miked up the M train that runs past the window and incorporated it into their show, and had the front of the audience sit down and watch some knitting.  It was hard to believe that I was seeing them, after they had only lived in records for so long.

After all the excitement, we broke our sandwich only rule to get some late night snacks from Mr. Kiwi on the heels of the Lucky Peach fame, and went to bed.