Yes. I Know. I Have Not Blogged In A While.

I have been busy. Mostly working. Other times exploring. Other times sleeping. Other times pondering life. You know? Stuff.

Yes I have officially started my job. The company is called Ledge Entertainment. It is an event planning company that specializes in radio festivals. We also do artist management and tour planning. I am super excited about working there. It is something completely different from what I have done for pretty much my whole career, but that is good. New city, new job, new everything. Well, almost everything. But in all seriousness, I am very excited for something new, and very excited to be working with this company. PLUS, one of my coworkers (there are only 4 of us) not only lived in San Diego, but also played in one of my favorite bands from SD, Da Bears!

Like I said before, it has been a while since I have posted so I got a couple of places that I want to write about that I have eaten at. First place is an awesome sandwich shop called Barnyard. It is in Alphabet City, which is about a 10 minute walk from our place.

I got the Mexican Cuban, which I am starting to find out is something a lot of places do around here. It is slow roasted pork, ham, swiss, avocado, pickled jalapeños (which were awesome), dill pickles and mayo. I went with the chipotle mayo though. Seriously good sandwich. A little on the greasy side, but seriously good.

We went back to a place I previously posted about. Rattle'n'Hum host tons of specialty beer nights. Well a couple Tuesdays ago they hosted a California beer night.

The selection was pretty decent. I think 15 beers in all. From San Diego they has Ballast Point, Greenflash, and Mission. Outside of SD they had Anderson Valley, Lagunitas, Firestone, Moylans, Nectar Ales, Northcoast, and Sierra Nevada. Not a crazy selection, but it did the job.

One thing we have noticed living here, in a 7 story walk up (we live on the 5th floor unfortunately), is that there is always shit just lying in the bottom lobby area. We have taken 2 things from there. I know what you are thinking, "Andrew, you are seriously disgusting." In most cases I would agree with you. But after careful examination we have grabbed two things from said area. The first one? A small shelving unit which we doused in bleach and other cleaning solutions. It has saved us a TON of room. The second was just yesterday. Sitting perched on a ledge right by the front door of our building were these:

Stoked.

Yesterday we decided to be tourists and go do the Statue of Liberty. Is it absolutely perfect weather in NYC right now. Yesterday it was 60 degrees most of the day which was amazing. So riding on a boat to Liberty Island looking at this, ain't too bad of a day. 

The Statue was cool. Not as cool as the first time I went back in 2000 when we could actually go in the head, but still cool. 

Most epic picture ever taken. Just so you know.

We kind of turned our Statue of Liberty day into a date night, so we went over to Brooklyn in an area called Cobble Hill (which we fell in love with) and saw Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Not exactly a great date movie, but a seriously good movie. One of the best I've seen in a long time. 

Afterwards we went to a highly rated pizza place called Sottocasa. Honestly, it was good pizza, but just WAY too acidic. By the second slice it was hard to get down cause it burned so much. Good, but not amazing. 

Worked today only to come home to a package from my mother. Here are six reasons why she is truly the greatest.

Another FOOD MEGA POST???? sorta.

So Mallory started her job yesterday. She had an absolute blast. It's gonna be a crazy handful of months, but all worth it in the end.

In other and not so surprising news, we ate some more awesome food. Yesterday while Mal was at work I went to this slider place called, Mark.

They do some really good sliders and are relatively cheap as well. Pretty simple. Meat, onions, pickle, and cheese. I add some ketchup. I could eat these things all day. Their fries are also super good.

After Mal got off I met her at a beer bar called, Rattle 'N' Hum. Lucky for us, it was imported beer night. Tons of beer Mal and I had never even heard of, almost to a point where I was overwhelmed. I went with the St. Feuillien Triple. Really really good beer.

It's a pub, so they have pub food. I went with the Tequila Chicken Sandwich with fries. 

I guess they do a lot of special beer events so we will definitely be back. Next week they are doing a California beer night, so you can bet your ass we will be there. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE HAVE BALLAST POINT BARMY ALE.

Today, Mal needed to go look for some models so we went over to Brooklyn, Williamsburg in particular, and went to this sandwich place that I had heard about called Graham Ave. Meats and Deli. 

I have eaten a lot of sandwiches in my day. And a good amount here in New York. I have never had a better sandwich. And boom goes the dynamite. Everything about the Godfather sandwich I got was insanely good. Chris Grillo knows exactly what he is doing. Hero bread, mozzarella, sweet peppers, 3 Italian meats, lettuce, onion, mustard, and their own special blend of oil and vinegar. Every bite was so damn good.

I had a bite of Mal's plain ol Salami sandwich, and it as well, was amazing. It is a shame this place is in Brooklyn, cause I honestly think I would be there every day.

After we got back to Manhattan, she needed one more model so we went to Union Sq. I guess every week day they have the Union Square Market. Tons of local stuff (vegetables, fruit, fish, meats, cheese, etc) all on the cheap. I got a bag of apples. One of the apples (and I have no idea which one) was the best apple I have ever had. I feel like I am starting to repeat that sentence a lot...