LO takes on NYC

I'm back from a week-long trip to New York and finally have a chance to give an overview. We had a booth at the National Stationery Show and it was our first time and we had no idea what to expect. We'd been preparing for a couple months, but it was always squeezed around putting together projects and minding the store, so it was crazy to think the trip was upon us and we still weren't really ready for it. Jeremy had to stay home to hold down the fort, but luckily I had assistance in the form of Lart and my brother George. I met up with Lart, who flew in from Berlin, at JFK late Thursday night and after a few hours of sleep and a stop at an art auction (crazy! like in the movies, but more chill), we made our way to the massive Javits Center, which is basically an evil sort of biosphere. We managed to improvise our set-up (our theme ended up being green masking tape and salvaged foam core) by 8pm and were excited to have Saturday away from Stationery Show madness.

The day off flew by--although we worked in breakfast with Jeremy's great aunt & uncle, some vegan cookies, pizza, and cake, and a visit with friends Lawrence, Julia, and baby Fiona--and we were back there bright and early on Sunday. To be honest, the next four days are all mashed into a big blur for me, but it was great to meet old and new stores and fellow vendors. And I finally got to meet Allison Cole in person, who was at the neighboring show SURTEX helping her old teacher. It's always nice to be able to put a face to a name, not to mention a LO collaborator! We got to have a nice non-work dinner at Red Bamboo (vegan fish sticks anyone?) and an in-the-booth work session on our new tour diary travel planner & journal. Exciting!

Lart and Allison waiting for the subway

I also got to drop in on Eun-Ha and Karl of Milky Elephant to have a nice dinner on their patio, a peek at Eun-Ha's progress on the very cool (if we may say so) new postcard calendar that she's working on for us, and my introduction to Wii (which I suck at). Besides work, other memorable moments include a pop into Central Park (watched softball, kickball, and a squirrel chase), stone rice bowl at Hangawi, a quick jaunt through ICFF (the design fair that was downstairs at the Javits--like walking through the contemporary design wing at a museum--so cool!), lunch special at Pukk, St. Marks Books (besides being a great store, they took some copies of Teen Power!), Vegan Treats peanut butter bomb cake, listening to Mirah on the way to the subway, randomly coming across our cards being carried at Bluestockings, and Lifethyme's strawberry shortcake. hmmm, do you see a trend? New York is vegan food central so I can't help but get as much of it as I can. Even though I got to try a couple new restaurants, there are so many other recreational things (food and non-food related) that I didn't get to do on this trip, but hopefully we'll be back soon. More importantly though, I did get to meet tons of awesome people and come home tired but inspired.

a sneak peek at Eun-Ha's new calendar