street art part II

Where was I? On my way to the Chelsea Marketplace, no doubt. This formidable building was the bakery for the National Biscuit Company until a couple of decades ago. NABISCO, to those of you who are too young to remember the real name - LOL. The whole first floor has been reinvented and is full of too-cool shops and a few wonderful food places: a fish market, a meat market from 1912 that has relocated to Chelsea, a few gourmet shopts, a restaurant/cafe that also sells trendy clothes and decorative objects, a gelato place, etc. I don't know what this WAS, but right now it is a waterfall in the middle of this huge open space. See the exposed brick wall? The whole place is like this: RAW and wonderful. Tired and thirsty and in search of something cold and not sweet, I came upon this wonderful tea shop with zillions of kinds of hot and iced teas. Here is what the tea bar looked like. The whole place was soo soothing and peaceful. I ordered a glass of lemon earl grey with lots of ice, put my feet up, and relaxed for a while. Hated to leave.

Nonetheless, I took my glass of ice with me and sat down at a cafe table to watch the crowd go by for an hour or so.The marketplace takes up 1 square block, from 9th-10th Aves and from 14th-15th sts. Upstairs, there are lots of offices: Channel 1 (NY News TV), The Food Network, and other companies. People walk through from 10th-9th instead of going outside to walk the long block. Here is what else I observed as I watched: 1) Most women were in skirts or cropped pants and a few in shorts & heels- but I would say 60-75% skirts. Young, old, slim,heavy - it didn't matter. Skirts - mostly full or tiered - knee length or longer. And sundresses. 2) Very few long pants on women. (I was wearing cropped pants, so - phew! I was ok) 3) Men mostly in khakis or jeans. 4) Many men with backpacks (oof - heavy, too) 5) in one hour and hundreds of working people, only one man in suit and tie. 6) Almost EVERYBODY either on a cell phone or with earphone thingies that were evidently PODS of some sort. 7) You could tell the tourists because they ambled.

I did not sit here, but it looked tempting for my next trip.

There were several of these marble couches, which probably are more comfortable than they look. Only in NY?