Scott and one of his new friends in JP.
Salisbury Beach.
Jesse (my new friend and roommate) and Scott, prepping a lobster dinner.
A little Smokey (!!!)
The Mayflower.
Whale watching in Plymouth.
An afternoon on the Ocean Frank.
Dusk at Jamaica Pond with Basil.
This summer in Jamaica Plain included many day trips out, dinners in and a surprising amount of new dog friends for someone who doesn't own a dog.
In May, we scored a great sublet in Jamaica Plain (it's now my fourth apartment in that neighborhood) and settled in for a summer in the city.
A new home.
Commuting through Chinatown.
Charles Bradley in Cambridge.
The Charles River.
Locking up our new bikes.
Farmers Market in the North End.
Commonwealth Cold Brew at the JP Farmers Market.
Scott appreciating American portion sizes.
Wanting to re-create the magic that was biking around Newcastle, Perth and Singapore, we bought bikes and declared ourselves a two-man bike gang, cruising around everywhere: commuting to a co-working space downtown, to farmers markets in the North End, through Chinatown, Castle Island in South Boston, over the Charles River to Cambridge and yoga in Brookline.
P.S. I bought my sky blue Linus bike at Superb Bicycle on Beacon Street and now it's now become one of the top 3 items I wholeheartedly recommend to people (...the other 2 being a Spotify account and an electric toothbrush -- all 3 will elevate your quality of life enormously). If you want a bike that's super comfortable, easy to ride -- and (let's be real here) hella cute -- I deeply recommend a Linus.
Landing in Boston. I was overjoyed to see the Pru from the plane, but was simultaneously crying from watching the end of the movie "Me, Earl and Dying Girl" so it was a real rollercoaster of emotions.
New England quaintness.
Cape Cod Canal.
Ryan Family Amusements.
Ikea.
Craig's List find.
Pizza at Mark Anthony's in Onset.
Arriving home in Boston, Scott and I hunkered down at my Grandmother's beach house in Wareham. It was April, so it was more rainy than beachy, so there wasn't much to do. We hit up the arcade and other local hot spots (like Target) but spent most of our time scouring Craig's List for apartments and furniture in an attempt to piece together a solid home for the summer, and perhaps beyond.
After being away for an extended period of time, being home has a way of smacking you in the face with the realities of life.
That was especially true this summer, but having Scott around as part of my team made everything a little easier. He has a way of making even the boring domestic stuff weirdly fun: treating Craig's List like a treasure hunt, never failing to be delighted by ordering "a slice" (you can't order slices of pizza in NZ, only whole pies) and getting excited about grocery shopping ("I discovered this awesome place today. It's called 'Whole Foods'. We HAVE to go there").
On my way back to Boston, I visited Austin for my friend Jordan's wedding.
Tourists.
When in Rome.
Jordan and Maggie (her Maid of Honor) singing Karaoke at the spot Jordan and Timmer first met.
Scott, dressed like a local.
Springdale Farm.
Timmer's clan and their newest member.
First pizza as husband and wife.
BC'08
Jordan + Timmer got married in a sweetly romantic ceremony at Springdale Farm, in the pouring rain. Jordan and I met at Freshman Orientation and it was wild to see her walk down the aisle 12 years later, with a husband so perfect for her it was as if 19 year old Jordan conjured him into being.
After 8 months away, I returned to the States with a layover in Los Angeles. It was apparent how thrilled I was to be back in the USA (despite the fact that the American state of affairs appears to be an absolute shit storm from afar) when I audibly squealed spotting Obama's portrait hanging above the escalators at LAX.
American accents were music to my ears as we power walked through the airports to grab our luggage, rent a car and make the most of our 9 hours in sunny LA.
Filtered coffee/pure joy/airplane hair. I think I look a bit like The Weeknd here.
We got breakfast at the must-always-visit Sloopy's, walked off 14 hours of flying on the boardwalk, got caught in signature LA traffic and hiked up a canyon for a view of the LA skyline.
It was warm welcome (almost) home.
A cotton candy gray sunset showing off behind Surfers Paradise (actual name) from Currumbin Alley.
Brisbane, capital of Queensland.
Technically, it's only ocean water in a pool set-up. But it's really something wonderful.
More photos here too.
Scoring the ultimate backpacker goldmine (a house sitting opportunity) I unpacked and settled into Newcastle, a port city in New South Wales.
The small, very bicycle-friendly city has a blue collar grittiness thats mixed with a laid back surf vibe. It feels like a hidden gem on the brink of being overrun with people looking for an alternative to massive Sydney. It even had hints of my beloved Fremantle, with charming historical buildings sitting right along side the coast.
Two of my favorite things combined: kombi vans and coffee.
Farmers market bounty.
We visited Newcastle last year and were very pleased to come back. The Newcastle lifestyle is extremely easy to adapt to. The three weeks consisted of bicycling along the boardwalk, working out of the strip of cafe's on Darby Street, cooking curry dinners and enjoying the salt water of the Merewether Ocean Baths.
Merewether Ocean Baths
Ladies, hold on to your ovaries
2 of the 3 home owners, Charlotte and Jemma.
From our time there, EditMate ended up doing some videos for HUNTERhunter, an online guide to Newcastle and (the surrounding) Hunter Valley. Their website is a cool guide for what to eat/see/do in Newcastle but here are some of my favorite spots:
MoMo: Beautiful, airy restaurant in a heritage building with giant high ceilings and delicious whole foods.
One Two Seven Darby: Lovely set-up and they put gorgeous FLOWERS on your organic quinoa oatmeal and it makes you wanna go meditate and be a vegan even though after, you'll go get bacon flavored gelato at Monella, which is just a few doors down.
Cocowhip: OR if you want to ride that healthy train into an ice cream station, you can go get "bio fermented coconut soft serve" from Cocowhip. What it is, I don't actually know... but I know it's delicious and there's lots of fun toppings.
Newcastle City Farmers Markets: I've been to a few farmers markets in my day and this was one of the best.
Goldbergs: Dark wood everything, bohemian feel and hearty, savory real-good food. Super nice staff. Excellent coffee.
Newcastle Memorial Walk: Endless ocean views. Nice spot for watching the paragliders.
Merewether Ocean Baths: JUST HEAVEN.
...AND of course, all of the Newcastle Beaches. There are 5 (!) of them.
Lastly, for a little preview of what goes on in Newcastle -- here are the videos we edited for HUNTERhunter:
Spider-people.
We went to Sydney to rep EditMate at Ad:Tech Australia and stopped by the harbor to marvel at the Opera House and it's window washers.
I spent a morning at the Andy Warhol + Ai Weiwei exhibit at the National Gallery of Victoria before my flight out of Melbourne.
Both men disrupted the art world while compulsively recording their lives, during different eras. Warhol with his tape recorder and Weiwei with Instagram and Twitter. Both have been criticized with desecrating art but actually have morphed the way the world understands art.
Every morning, for 600 days, Weiwei put a bouquet of flowers in the basket of the bicycle that is outside his studio as a daily demonstration against the Chinese governments confiscation of his passport. He documented each day on his Flickr.
Weiwei's Han Dynasty-era vases to resemble cheap modern containers, an example of his "long-standing interest in notions of cultural heritage, authenticity, and -- appropriately enough -- the value of art."
Ai flipping off the worlds most important monuments. "He describes it as his personal form of rebellion against any government authority who blatently or covertly disregard the freedom of its citizens."
Warhol's Chairman Mao portraits. His idea for this began when his dealer suggested that Warhol return to painting by making portraits of the most important figure of the 20th Century and celeb-loving Warhol remembered that he read Mao Zedong was the most famous person in the world at the time.
Ai's wife, Lu Quing, lifting up her skirt at Tiananmen Square.
While Warhol died in '87, Weiwei is only 58 years old and continues to create very political work.
I read a New York Times article about this exhibition at another gallery and it detailed that when Weiwei first viewed his work displayed with Warhol's he seemed "genuinely taken aback by how Warhol had influenced his work, often unconsciously"...
“It’s as if we were brothers,” he said, noting the similarities of Warhol’s early bird’s-eye ink sketches of the Manhattan skyline to his own youthful renderings of Shanghai’s rooftops. “Who could imagine that a poor Chinese kid would one day be showing his work alongside Andy’s?”
The postcard I bought at the gift shop on the way out is an old photo of a young Weiwei posing in front of an Andy Warhol painting at NYC's MOMA in 1987... just after Weiwei moved to New York and was taking odd jobs since he failed the entrance museum to Parsons School of Art + Design.
And now, 30 years later, he's exhibiting with Andy Warhol. How cool is that.
I flew to Melbourne, Australia for an EditMate meeting and acted like fancy, high flying exec with curry and cocktail lunches at Chin Chin and dress shopping on Chapel Street... but I also slept on an inflatable mattress in Scott's sisters living room because, you know, reality.
The city hasn't changed much since my days of running amuck there as a 22 year old living at Flinders Station Hostel. It was wild to meander through the same alleyways I used to, remembering how I once skipped dinner for 3 weeks to save up money to buy a coat I kept eyeing on my morning walk to Spring Street Cafe, where I was making sandwiches and not putting my bachelors degree to good use.
Hosier Lane
Views of the Yarra River.
Federation Square
7 years later, I still wear that coat but I found that Spring Street Cafe no longer exists. The laneways however remain brightly spray painted and all the tiny, artsy coffee shops still lured me in and left me hyper-caffeinated.
The shopping is still worth skipping a few meals to save up for too.
If you ever find yourself in Melbourne, may I recommend checking out:
A25: I literally ate an entire pizza here. Go do the same.
CUE: Shop here if you need to buy an outfit that says "I am a creative business owner" when all of your other clothes say "I have been living out of a backpack for the last year and a half". An incredibly chic sales woman really won me over her by being wildly helpful and lovely, but I later cursed her name (Jan) when I saw my credit card bill.
Ponyfish Island: Outdoor bar in the middle of the Yarra River. Great sangria. Beautiful view.
Urban Yoga: For yoga AND a vegetarian dinner for $14. I don't know what those Hare Krishna's are chanting about but they sure know how to cook.
Good 2 Go: Take away coffee place on the famous Hosier Lane that trains and employs homeless and disadvantaged youth to get them in the job market. Also has killer cappuccinos.
Lord of the Fries: The name alone is reason enough to visit but they do have outstanding "hot chips" (french fries) as well.
Australian Center for the Moving Image: Incredible exhibitions. I saw a really interesting one called "All Current Art is Fake" featuring Cate Blanchett... and how awesome does the current Scorsese one look?
Goat. Owner of aforementioned boat.
Chelsey.
Scott.
No fish were harmed on this trip (i.e. none were caught).
I've been all over the map the last few months.
Scott and I left New Zealand to expand EditMate into Australia (and explore along the way), then headed back over the Pacific for a day of swimming in everything that's glorious about America (filtered coffee! right side of the road driving!) in LA before landing in Austin, TX for a week of wedding festivities and taco hangovers. Then, we headed north to Massachusetts where we've settled into my beloved Jamaica Plain, for a TBD amount of time.
More on all of that soon.
Until then, here's a few photos from a nice morning at O'Neill Bay in New Zealand. It was a perfect morning for a surf, a nap and an expansive game of fetch for Smokey.
