Casimir, Ray's Candy Store and The Blarney Cove

Once in a while, I go out and kind of forget that I have to take pictures to document the night for this blog. That kind of happened with this post. I went to Hi-Fi and met up with Biff and Paul who you saw in yesterday’s blog and Goggla and Ed showed up as well. I forgot to take any pictures of this. Then my good pal, Shawn Chittle invited us over for a drink or three to his apartment and then we went to dinner. As we walked into the restaurant I realized, that I needed to start taking photos, so this blog starts at this point in time. And it’s awaaay to that point in time we go now!

We decided to go to Casimir, which is right next to Manitoba's, which is where we were the other night. I forgot to take a photo of the outside, so I borrowed this one from New York Magazine's website. Thanks, New York Magazine!

Okay, now my inner blogger takes off and I remembered to start taking photos. Here's the bar in the front of the restaurant.

Since it was Friday night it was packed inside, but we still managed to get a table.

And here's our table, from left, Shawn, Biff and Paul.

Biff displays her iPhone at the table.

Shawn and Biff share an iPhone moment as I recoil away in horror.

An annoyed Biff defiantly looks at her iPhone at the table despite me taking mocking photographs.

This painting gave me a Marjoe Gortner flashback and then I was slightly embarrassed that I have Marjoe Gortner flashbacks. Anybody else remember him?

Then...suddenly...bread appears! And I have a David Gates flashback. I'm really hating these flashbacks tonight, why can't I have a good old fashioned acid flashback like Joe Friday used to promise I'd have?

And now, a quartet of "S" foods, first up, snails.

And then...steak...

Steak...

And even more steak. The food was delicious and it was a great Friday night dinner.

Afterwards we stopped over at Ray's Candy Store for dessert.

And here's Ray in action behind the counter, whipping up a chocolate egg cream.

And here's Ray posing with Paul and Biff. You gotta love Ray!

And because of my horrible directional skills, we kind've walked around in a big circle and happily landed at the Blarney Cove for a nightcap or five. This is Biff's last night in town and it was great as always to hang out with her and have her be part of the blog! Paul may make an appearance in tomorrow's Cheeseburger Saturday Night, so tune in tomorrow for that. Have a safe trip home, Bifferoonie and I hope to see you soon!

Casimir
103 Ave. B (near 7th St.)
212-358-9683

Ray's Candy Store
113 Ave. A (Near 7th St.)

Blarney Cove
510 E. 14th St. (Near Ave. A)
212-473-9284

Further Reading: NY Times, Fork in the Road/Village Voice and Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York.

No one gets it, no one sees,
So here you stand beloved freak,
You’re not alone.

Surprise link, click on it...I dare you!

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Bonus Photo From Tompkins Square Bagels!
As Biff, Paul and I were traveling to a deli to get some beer to take to Shawn’s apartment, we ran into Chris from Tompkins Square Bagels and he showed us the sign that he was going to debut today in front of the store. The Bloomberg Special! Ha ha ha! Order The Wombacher and get a free drink!

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Bonus Art From Jaws!

Jaws the Cabbie sent in this "Boris"-inspired piece of art in a response to my comment from him today. Nice work, Jaws! And check out all the different items the art can be found on at Jaws' Printfection Store.

Randolph Beer, Lombardi's Pizza and Manitoba's

Hello and happy Friday! Welcome to this week’s worth of posting, hopefully there’s still some people out there! Since it’s been a while since I’ve put anything up here, I thought I’d give you a treat for tuning back in and give you three trips in one! And there’s loads of special guest stars involved as well, one of them most of you know from her wonderful comments here and on my other two blogs in the past. So where are we going and who are we going to meet? Well, you’ll just have to follow me to find out, let’s go.

And we're off. Why hello, Mr. Green Jeans, please give Captain Kangaroo our regards.

And here we are at the hotel where we're supposed to meet the first two guest stars of the evening. Sadly, moments after I snapped this shot, I got a call that they were running late and wouldn't be at this meeting place for a bit.

Well, when someone's running late, the best thing to do is to start drinking and this place looks pretty good and it's right next door to the hotel.

And speaking of looking pretty good, here's Hayley, the pretty hostess and waitress here. She told me I was more than welcome to sit at the bar and have a beer or three, so who I am I to refuse an offer like that?

Wow, nice wooden bar and it seems to go on forever. Let's grab a chair.

And check out the impressive beer list. This is a craft beer joint and I always get confused if they don't have Budweiser on the menu, so I had the bartender choose a beer for me.

And so that's just what he did. This is Anthony, who's one of the friendly bartenders in here and he told me the name of the bar is Randolph's Beer. The bar is part of the Randolph Hotel and they have a sister bar next door.

Tables are lined up opposie the bar for seating and dining.

There's also booths up front and you can see Hayley in action at one of them.

Here's a sign at the end of the bar announcing specials and new beers available.

A shot of the long wooden bar from the opposite end.

And...ta da! Here's the first of tonight's special guest stars, Biff and Paul! Many of you know Biff from her great comments here at TMW and most of you don't know Paul, so please introduce yourselves, I'll give you a minute...Okay, on with the show.

Cheers, from all three of us stooges! Biff and Paul are in town from Ohio for the weekend, so they'll be showing up on the blog tomorrow as well.

And after a quick beer, we're off for the dinner portion of the evening which takes place at...

Lombardi's Pizza. The oldest pizza parlor in New York City and the first pizza parlor in America.

Smile.

We were told there would be a ten minute wait for a table, which is lucky, usually it's about an hour wait, so we thought we'd wisely spend this waiting time at the bar. And I think I spy a familiar face behind that bar.

And those of you who followed my 365 Bar blog might remember this fellow, it's Ricky who served up beers when I stopped here on the bar crawl with my friends Tim and Colleen.

And since I took a photo of Ricky, he insisted he take one of us, so here we are at the bar. Three amigos or three stooges? You make the call!

And our table is ready. We were led to the narrow back room.

And here's Paul and Biff at our red-checkered table. All we need now is pizza because we are starvin' like Marvin here.

Well, ask and ye shall receive. The pizza here is the best.

Burp.

So did we!

And we decided to have a nightcap or five at Manitoba's Bar on Avenue B. Biff has a friend who's bartending here tonight that she hasn't seen in years. Her name's Debra, so let's go in and say hello to her.

And here we are, Biff says she sees Debra behind the bar.

And here she is, the pretty and fun bartender, Debra. It was great to meet her and she's at Manitoba's every Wednesday night. Stop in and tell her you saw her on TWM and maybe you'll get a discount...then again, maybe you'll get charged double. You'll never know till you stop in!

And even more friends of Biff's are at the bar. She's got more friends in this town than me! Meet Annie and Michael who were nice enough to travel all the way from the Bronx to meet us. I documented Manitoba's a few weeks ago here, so I'm not going to take many more photos. But, speaking of photos...

Photobooth!

Whenever you have five people at a bar and one Photobooth about five feet away, you have to squeeze yourselves in and take some really goofy, drunken photos. It's just the rules. Thanks to everybody for hanging out and we'll see you all tomorrow.

Randolph Beer
349 Broome St. (between Bowery and Elizabeth St.)
(212) 274-0667

Lombardi’s Pizza
32 Spring St. (Near Mott)
212-941-7994

Manitoba’s
99 Avenue B (between 6th and 7th Street)
(212) 982-2511

Further Reading: Grub Street, Serious Eats/Slice and New York Magazine.

Who will save rock and roll?

Surprise link, click on it...I dare you!

Another Stupid Announcement From Me

 Okay, I've got bad news and some more news about the posting here at TMW First off, the freelance job didn't work out, the commute was too long and there's other factors I'm not going to get in to here. As I've always said, I don't blog about my job here. So that didn't work out, which means I have to get serious about looking for a job, which means I can't be updating this blog everyday. But I don't want to totally stop the blog while I search for a job, so I've decided to post updates, Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday. Tuesday through Thursday there probably won't be anything. I figured four days a week are better than none and again, I appreciate everyone's loyalty and nice comments. Now I'm going to relax and try and get rid of this sinus headache that is making me feel like I'm bleeding from the eyeballs. We'll see you next Friday! Thanks for being patient with me and this blog! Oh and if you're wondering why there's a picture of Joan Jett up there, I figured that if she Google's herself (and who doesn't?) maybe this will come up and she'll give me job, hey you never know!