tonight was a pretty good night. my good friend melissa and i were craving hamburgers so we went searching for a place that handed an amazing hamburger to her through a taxi cab window off of the 2nd ave stop on the F in manhattan. when we got there a man wearing a very flamboyant shirt was standing outside, and he said, "there's really good burgers at this place." "was this where you went?" i asked melissa. turned out it was. it's called the national underground, which is supposedly owned by gavin degraw? it was totally empty while we were there and they gave us our own roll of paper towels. they kept talking up the burgers, and we were like, you know you're leaving us with high expectations. "that's fine!" they said.
(i liked the velvety wall paper at the bar)
they ended up being right about the burgers.
it came out open faced, with a cross hatch design in ketch up and maybe mustard? or some kind of secret sauce. i got all the normal burger toppings, and it came with three (sliced) grilled american potatoes and some grilled onions. just the right amount of sides, instead of the too many fries like most burger places do. seriously, this burger was pretty phenomenal. i definitely recommend this place to anybody looking for a good burger in NY. it's not too expensive, either (and apparently only 5$ if you get there before 5?).
after that i left melissa and went to pick something up at the studios. i ended up running into my friends jordan, hannah, and brian and we went gallery hopping. we ended up going to a place called the powerhouse arena in dumbo, which doubled as a book store and gallery space. it was a pretty cool venue, seemed like it was built in an old warehouse but i could be wrong. there was a band playing but i'm not sure what they were called.
there were two photographer's work being featured. one was a person who took pictures of muslim punks, and the other one was a guy called trevor traynor who took photos of hip hop artists. it was a show called "i shoot people."
it was pretty interesting. the way traynor's stuff was installed kind of reminded me of the way shawn moriarty hung up his photography from india.
if you can't see it it's a print of a man and a woman with the words "man's strength and women's beauty - the prefect physical form." i don't know, i just liked it and it wasn't very expensive.we stopped by another place, too. it was a high end furniture store doubling as a gallery, and they were doing something to benefit something- i forget. and i forget the name of the place. oops! they were giving out free flavored waters though, and amaaaazing cupcakes. they were provided by a place called Bcake, apparently.
yum!!
after that we walked around chelsea trying to go to more gallery openings but it seemed like all of them closed already or were closing soon after. we walked around a little bit then went over to jordan and melissa's house, where i had some more really tasty vegan sausage. all in all i would say this was a pretty successful day, especially foodwise.
