Sunday Downtown

on going places alone, how not to get massage oil on your cupro dress, cold brew iced tea, and a Grafton Street institution

I had a really nice Sunday downtown this week. I was having what I call a “Jade Day”. A Jade Day means that you go for breakfast alone (and usually get to skip the line of couples who give you a filthy look for being allowed to sit at the counter without waiting) and then go shopping and get a beauty treatment or go to a movie.

My June Vibe - Clockwise from top left: Mango Dress, Stray Rats tank, LA Apparel shorts, Kotn off the shoulder tee, Thistles sunglasses, Telfar bag, Dave & Buster’s and Regal Unlimited card for some air conditioned R&R, Le Labo Gaiac 10, Mansur Gavriel sandals

I started my Jade Day with (oreo stuffed) pancakes at Shopsin’s and then mooched around the LES for a bit. I saw that Sweet Pickle Books has opened up another space next door with a more curated selection of rare books. It is very pleasant to browse in there. I stopped myself from buying this book on lucid dreaming.

Sweet Pickle Books

Spencer’s Spa, Soho

I was all movied out from having seen I Love Boosters on Thursday night and Cool World on Friday night, so I capped off my Jade Day by visiting Spencer’s Spa in Soho. I had not been there yet. The space is gorgeous but the music lets them down. It was very royalty-free-lofi-beats-to-study-to on this particular day.

They are positioned as something between a budget spot and a true luxury spa. In that respect, their pricing is really only competitive if you sign up for their monthly membership - but I wanted to try them out before I committed to that.

There are no showers, steam, or sauna, but upon arrival they give you plush slippers and chic brown socks that I ~think~ you get to keep (sorry, I did). You are separated by curtains rather than separate treatment rooms - but they’re thick luxurious floor to ceiling curtains that look and feel expensive. They use Aesop oils and wipe you down with a warm wet towel at the end so you can go about the remainder of your day without feeling like you are getting oil all over the cupro skin tight halterneck dress you are trying on at Mango across the road when you just popped in to check out the Eckhaus Latta collab for a quick second.

My massage was really good, and because the therapists all have to whisper due to the lack of walls the requisite end of massage lecture about how my shoulders are so very tense was way shorter than I’m usually forced to endure.

I’ll be trying their Williamsburg location next month for a Lymphatic Face Massage Facial so will report back swiftly!

I enjoyed a perfect peach iced tea at Din Tai Fung in Las Vegas which led me to become obsessed with re-creating it at home.

I feel like a lot of my friends from Ireland and England have their ‘summer holiday drink’ - the drink you have on your patio with a bowl of salty or paprika crisps after having a shower and changing into your holiday dinner outfit. You’re probably a bit sunburnt and going to dinner with wet hair. You’re probably going to a local pizza place that doesn’t require dressing up but you all do because it’s your summer holiday. For people who went to Spain it was usually Fanta Limón, for people who went to France it is usually Lipton Ice Tea Pêche.

Extensive research taught me that cold brew iced tea tastes better, so I picked up this carafe from MUJI. I wanted something glass, with a wide neck, so that I can put tea bags in it. I cold brewed 2 bags of Yorkshire Gold for 12 hours (Don’t shoot me! I am usually a Barry’s girl but Yorkshire is easier to get my hands on in NYC).

I bought frozen peach slices with the intention of making my own syrup but then I saw this Liber & Co peach syrup and swiftly got real with myself.

I also bought these teeny tiny measuring beakers because I wanted to make sure I was using the exact same amount of syrup once I had perfected my recipe (15ml btw)

When I poured my first glass I was bracing myself for disappointment. I had just had an utterly disappointing iced tea at Pura Vida the day before. I took my first sip and IT. WAS. PERFECT!

Drink of the summer = found.

Cool Facts™️

The legendary Captain America’s restaurant on Grafton Street in Dublin closed last week after 55 years. Credited with introducing Ireland to both sesame seed burger buns and iceberg lettuce, it’s hard to explain this restaurant to somebody who didn’t grow up in Ireland.

In the 70s it was (according to my anonymous source) a genuinely cool place to hang out. Said anonymous source also let me know that she didn’t get hired there because she “forgot to take her bra off that day”.

I spent my childhood summers there having birthday meals with my cousins. For some reason their vanilla ice cream with melted chocolate sauce felt really special and elegant to me. Something about the way the chocolate would solidify on the ice cream. Something about the texture of cheap ice cream and cheap chocolate combined (see also Vienetta and Romantica).

The walls were covered with signed rock memorabilia as well as large hand painted murals of Captain America. This was pre Marvel pop-ification and saturation. I remember being scandalised by one of the murals depicting a German soldier with horrible teeth saying “Holy Shit!”

When I moved back to Dublin for college one of my friends from San Francisco was visiting. I told him to meet me at Captain A’s and we sat at the bar. This is where I was when I found out that happy hour had literally just been made illegal in Ireland. They hadn’t even updated the menus yet.

Anyway, the cool fact™️ that I learned this week was that Jim Fitzpatrick, who painted the murals, is also the creator of the iconic Che Guevara poster. This print was ubiquitous in Dublin when I was growing up. Because we moved around a lot, I never quite know if something is an “Irish” thing or just a “my family” thing. I had to ask around to find out if this print was everywhere in 90s specifically because it was Irish or was it global? I have since confirmed with my sources that teen boys in America and England were also wearing the t-shirt and hanging the poster.

The artwork and memorabilia is going up for auction, including Jim Fitzpatrick’s murals. Here is an old menu I found (signed by Rod Stewart) - worth a look if you want to see what their menus looked like when a hamburger cost 40 pence and a 10oz steak would set you back a little over a quid.