Love letter to New York #1: West Chelsea

If you have been reading my blog, you know that I have never shined away from professing my love of this city. This series just makes it official 🙂

After a rather traumatic return from the twins’ first dental visits, and two hours of non stop tantrums today I was…Well, let’s say that even a glass of red wine could not take the edge away. But as I lay in my bed and everyone around me is snoring, I remember that when things get tough, it always helps to think about someone you love.

Tonight I am thinking about our walk through West Chelsea last Saturday where beauty and ins/aspiration elevated me. Art galleries and design showrooms cannot stop mushrooming in this area. We lived right in the heart of this hood…that is until G & P started to crawl and our 650sft apartment by the Highline thus became a bonafide nursery.

I love the warehouses, the cobble streets, the brick walls, how street art coexist with expensive sculptures or furniture…and I love imagining what the hidden lofts in these old buildings could look like. What do people hang on their walls when they have so much beauty at the bottom of their stairs? Do they sleep in silk sheets on the floor with just a gigantic glass chandelier floating above them or some shit like this?

Anyway, I got glued by the windows of Beyond 7, a retail store for a designer showroom. Dummies were decorated with hundreds of brooches, pearls, ornaments, you name it. Insanely quirky, insanely stunning. I managed to snatch a couple of shots but a real visit to this place is now on my ‘to do in New York before I die’ list.

A gallery owner then invited us 5, our 2 dirty strollers, our scrappy outfits and dirty faces (runny noses have lately become our middle names) to come inside and check out paintings by French Artist Laina Hadengue including a beautiful Frida Khalo inspired piece. I am grateful that this sophisticated lady showed us around so that our kids could see Art. And I am grateful about how she gently smiled when they eventually begged to go to the park. Unbeknownst to her, she made DH and I feel like humans again, humans who can appreciate air light brush strokes or ingenious collages. Without any prejudice.

5 minutes later, our 3 kids literally spent 2 hours throwing blocks of ice into the Hudson River while P had to pee against a tree and wipe her bum against her dad’s trousers 🙂 Days like these make me feel complete; that’s what I need to think of as I am nursing my left wrist that P scratched earlier today (it actually really hurts!) and as L is waking up just now to interrupt my middle of the night blogging/therapy…