Bowling Ball Lullaby

Last night we slept badly; in the room above us a bowling-ball party was taking place. At least that's the only reason I can think of for the intermittent clonking noises that started at four this morning and continued, at five minute intervals, until we left the hotel after nine o'clock. The Marcel on Gramercy might be many things, but luxuriantly soundproofed it is not.

As a result, we were a little sluggish today, taking our time to wander down Bleeker Street, where in the past I would have stormed down it in fifteen minutes flat and then gone to the pub. This time round we stopped at Bleeker Street Records, which has two enormous grey cats, and displayed on the wall the strange combination of two LPs, one a recording of a Goebbel's speech on 'total war', and the other Jane Asher reading Alice in Wonderland. That's one pair that's not crying out for a mashup.

We visited a hat shop where a Spanish man was buying a knife, a coffee shop selling zombie chewing gum, Murray's cheese shop (where we bought a bottle of ginger beer and some bread) and the Magnolia cupcake bakery from Sex and the City. The cupcakes were ... so so. Not awful, but not the best I'd ever tasted.

After all this wandering, plus Chinatown, one art gallery in Soho and a visit to Yellow Rat Bastard, New York's finest purveyor of nasty t-shirts to adolescents, we had to stop and have a nap, before going out for more food.

Because President Obama was out fundraising in New York this evening, the streets were full of overweight cops with guns. When we arrived at Two Boots, it was full of secret servicemen. They don't seem to have figured out the 'secret' bit yet, unless they think an adequate disguise is a wire from collar to ear, a blue suit and identical haircuts for everybody. Still, nobody was assassinated in the pizza joint while they were there, so I suppose they did their job.

Up to now, I hadn't realised secret servicemen needed to eat pizza. I assumed they ran on microscopic nuclear powerplants or somesuch.

Anyways, we ate The World's Most Unfeasible Pizza and went to watch Obama drive past in a car. Maybe I'm cynical, but when you've seen one person drive by you at night in a vehicle with tinted windows, you've [not] seen them all, so the exodus of the president from there wasn't that thrilling. All around me Americans were making cooing or squawking noises, as if this were the most exciting thing that had ever happened.

There weren't even fireworks.

I suppose it probably isn't a good idea to start detonating gunpowder near the leader of the Free World - people might take it the wrong way.

Before I could say anything seditious, I was whisked away to eat more cupcakes. These were better than Magnolia's, which is a bad sign because they were about nine hours older, and still more tasty. You just can't believe Sex And The City, apparently.

So, a good day. I've seen some things, been twice to the High Line, and got within fifty yards of the President. Tomorrow we're off to look at the world's second biggest Gothic cathedral (unfinished) which makes me wonder if they're tempted to bang on another nave or something and really go for broke.