First impressions of Stokey, AND: first night bartending, AND: miscellaneous other stuff along the way.

I'm terrible about keeping up on things, I know, I know...once I have my own place I presume it'll be easier...

1: STOKEY
On Saturday Bunny, Pete and I went out to Stoke Newington to check out the area and see what is soon to be OUR FLAT. First, the flat itself:
It's a-mazing. It's just as great as, if not better than, the pictures we saw online. It's on a residential street of all old row houses, trees, the like--totes picturesque. You go in the front door, then another door (there's 1 other flat in our house) and you come in on the upper level, which is above the street. There's one bedroom (what looks out on the garden) and the living room, which is HUGE and has gorgeous ceilings and detailing and a hearth. Oh, and A FUCKING MASSIVE BAY WINDOW. Then, downstairs there's a full bath and the kitchen, which requires its own explanation. It's really big--big enough to have a table and all--and has windows looking out onto the side of the garden. There are: A WASHER/DRYER and A DISHWASHER! !!! The door from there goes into the other bedroom, which also looks out/has a door to the garden. When you go out to the garden, there's a little trestle (???) you walk under and then the garden itself is massive. When we saw it it looked like a jungle but they said they'd have people in to clear it up and paint and stuff. Amazing! We're really excited, the space seems to be perfect for us.

View of the garden from the kitchen.
After that, Bunny and I went for a walk on Church Street, the 'main drag' of Stokey. Loved it. There's a farmer's market every Saturday; a secondhand book/record shop; and a pub that has a 'Bowie barbecue' once a month. We also located the one pound shop, a pink and sparkly Mexican restaurant, and the cutest little tea shop. Interestingly, there were the perfect number of hipsters there--a few kids wearing white Ray-Bans or vintage sundresses, but not like in Shoreditch. It felt like home. I can't wait to move!

2: BARTENDING
So on Bunny's advice, I went out to Camden looking for a job at 2 of my favorite bar/gig spaces in London, Proud Galleries & Barfly (the latter what was immortalized in one of my columns last year.) The manager at the Barfly took my CV and said he'd call later this week for a trial (aka: get behind the bar and work. SCARY.), and the manager at Proud was like, come in tomorrow night and hostess for us. I was like uh, okay. So I went to Proud on Tuesday all dressed in black, like I was told, with a bottle opener. Rad. So it turned out I wasn't going to hostess at all--instead, I ended up having to do some kinda crap bar back duties at first, but ended up bartending for half the night. Scary!!! I don't know how people do it and don't get totally stressed out. The first 2 hours were an open bar of Peroni, pear cider, and black Russians, so I learned how to make a damn good black Russian...then after that I had to like make change and stuff. It was kind of fun, but not as awesome as I'd expected--I don't know if it's just because the bar staff wasn't super-friendly (and weirdly only like 1 of them was British--the rest were from all over the place) or what. So the party they were having was for the opening of their Sid Vicious photo show (Proud is a photographic gallery by day, gig/bar/club space at night) so I got to serve drinks to fake-Sid, fake-Nancy, and fake-Johnny Rotten--that was amusing. Also I made 20p in tips!!! Go me. Still haven't heard back about it, and also unsure if I'll take the job even if I get it--but at least now I know what it's like to be behind a bar, which is certainly a big improvement.

3: OTHER STUFF
*Walked to Brick Lane last night with Riddick. SO DELICIOUS though it cost 14 quid (well, that included a bottle of wine.) Then watched Blue Velvet. WTF?
*Went to a pub in Angel with Katie, the other Columbia/UCL girl (who wasn't weird or Barnard). She's still awesome. We need to start hanging out in America someday.
*On way home from Proud, got pulled into a conversation with two British men, one a black dandy who reminded me of the Marquis from Neverwhere:

They wanted to read me my horoscope from the London Lite. They were innocuous enough, and were also talking to an older American man, so I wasn't sketched. The dandy gave me a hug when I got off the train and the American and I got to talking--he told me that this is the only time in my life that I'll be able to run off like this and have adventures, so it's great that I'm doing so. I agree. I taught him to stand on the right/walk on the left and showed him where his train was. Who says the Tube isn't friendly?