Jake, Jacob, Jen and I went to NYC May 3-4. The original intent of this trip was 100% business because Threadless was nominated for a Copernican Award. When we found out that only 2 people from each company were allowed to attend the dinner/ceremony (Jake and Jacob went), I invited Jen to come with me so we could have a night to ourselves in NYC! Besides, we were staying at 60 Thompson in Soho - a boutique hotel I've wanted to stay at since last year when I strolled in to utilize their facilities (so to speak). The Jakes and I also had a bunch of PR appointments for Threadless & ExtraTasty so that also gave Jen a day to herself in NYC... a much deserved vacation.

The flight out to NYC was rough. I'm not a huge fan of flying to begin with, but this flight in particular was pretty bad. We had turbulence the entire time so intense that they wouldn't even let the flight attendants walk around. Not to mention that because the Chicago to NYC flight is so short, the plane is really small. Jen got her plane tickets separately from us, so we all couldn't sit together. We did get to sit close together, however, between us was and giant of a teenager with bad skin, an oversized "Slipknot" tee, and according to Jen - a stuffy nose that desparately needed attending to. Yuck! Everytime I looked over at her, the guy thought I was looking at him and would look at me, which was a really odd interaction. Especially because it happened at least 10 times.

We got a ride to the hotel with a guy who solicited his car services to us while we were in line for a cab. He was a pretty funny guy. And by that I mean it seemed as if he had never driven in New York City a day in life. We were lost. The upside was that while being toured around SoHo trying to find our hotel, we got a pretty good glimpse at weight of the destruction we could do to our bank accounts in the few blocks that encompassed our hotel.

We checked in and immediately hit the streets. We all walked around for a few hours until it was time the the Jakes to get back to the hotel to change into their "business formal" attire for the dinner at 7:30pm. Jen and my reservation at Nobu wasn't until 9:45pm so we hung around the room and ordered a fruit & cheese plate and relaxed - which was much needed because ever since my surgery my insides cramp up for about half a day after flying.

Ok, Nobu. I've heard a lot about this restaurant, and since I love food and cooking, I've always wanted to try this place but couldn't ever get a reservation while in NYC. The reviews I read said that it's good, but the service is bad and it's overpriced. Haters! All of them! The service was amazing, and the food was spectacular. They were super accomodating to Jen and modified some dishes to be vegetarian friendly.

We both started with drinks: I had a caipirinha, and Jen had a 'Matsuhisa Martini'. Her drink was really good, and I should have known better than to order a Brazillian drink at a Japanese restaurant. The caipirinha was basically a glass full of Cachaça, a little sugar and 2 slices of lime floating in it. Gross! (Learn how to make a proper caipirinha!). That was the only bad part of dinner.

The menu at Nobu is broken up into three parts, which (left to right on the menu) are the suggested way of ordering. Cold dishes followed by hot dishes followed by sushi or sashimi. For some reason I thought that the dish size would be similiar to that of Tapas, but man was I wrong. We each had one cold and one hot. I was so tempted to order sushi as well, because ya know... when in Rome. I'm glad I didn't order it though, because it would have been too much.

Dinner went like this:

Cold dishes

Jen had a spicy spinach salad. They weren't kidding with the "spicy" either. Holy hell. This was modified from a dish they had which included lobster.

I had tuna tataki with cilantro dressing. This dish was huge! It was 8 pieces of tuna sashimi around a pile of greens. It was dressed perfectly in the dressing, and garnished with what seemed like some sort of miso paste/dressing.

Hot dishes

Jen had the 'mixed mushroom toban-yaki', which was basically a mushroom salad. It sounds plain, but it was fantastic. Man, I love mushrooms.

I had the 'rock shrimp tempura, creamy spicy style'. This dish couldn't get any more simple. Perfectly tempura'd shrimp very lightly coated in a mildly spicy, yet sweet cream sauce. Delicious!

Dessert

We were stuffed at this point. We did order the 'bento box' to share for dessert, which was a chocolate souffle and a scoop of green tea ice cream served in a tradional - you guessed it - bento box.

Beyond the food, the interior of the restaurant was really cool. It looked like a forest of trees that were all made out of 2x4s. Very simple and understated - very different than what I expected. You walk into a place like Sushi Samba and you're not sure if somehow you took a wrong turn and ended up in Crobar. This was really nice. Plus, dinner ended up being like $150 with tip. Hardly "over-priced" for what it was, like the reviews said.

To top it all off, there were celeb sightings! Jeremy Piven and everyone's favorite bad-boy New Kid Donnie Wahlberg were there. A review I read on CitySearch by this girl said that when she went she sat at the table over from Jay-Z. Well, Jeremy Piven is no Jay-Z, but I do really like Entourage, so I guess seeing him was pretty cool. At least this time seeing him wasn't at 5am while he was trying to buy drugs from a raver at the Belmont rocks!

I heard from the Jakes just before we left the restaurant, and found out that we hadn't won the Copernican Award. del.icio.us and Heifer International had tied in our category: Under $100 million in revenue. Hmmm... one company owned by Yahoo! and one mega-quadzillionaire not-for-profit. How did they end up in our category? Either way, it was great to be nominated.

We ended the evening at the 60 Thompson lounge in the hotel and tried our best to kill a bottle of Veuve... an unsuccessful venture. Drunk and tired, we went to bed.

Our first appointment of the following day was at 10am at Businessweek Magazine. The Jakes and I got interviewed for a podcast, to supplement an article about Threadless for this week's issue. That was pretty fun, but I definetly had a headache from the champagne still!

The next appointment was at Complex Magazine. It was a standard "desk side", which to me, seems like a total technicality for magazines. Basically you get 5 minutes with an editor and give them the gist of what you do. This meeting was about ExtraTasty. It was a little embarassing though, because ExtraTasty has some issues with AJAX on Safari, so some of the stuff wasn't working on the editor's computer. Doh! Ok, this is crazy... While we were in there I was like "rad you have a basketball court in your office!". No, they don't - Marc Ecko (the publisher and mega successful clothing designer) has one in his OFFICE. Yep. The FIRST FLOOR of his personal office is a 1/2 court basketball court. At the 1/2 courtline, there's a 2-story black spiral staircase leading up to a loft where his actual office is. I didn't get to see the upstairs, but I can only imagine how insane it is. His office is bigger than my apartment. THAT'S how to live in NYC.

The last appointment we had was with Fred Seibert, owner of Frederator Studios, ex-president of Hannah-Barbara, ex-creative director for MTV. There seriously doesn't exist a nicer guy in NYC. He should teach classes to people of power, prestige, and experience on how not to be a total prentious assface. And to top it off, his laugh totally reminded me of Fred Flintstone! Fred Seibert... Fred Flintstone... Hannah-Barbara... coincidence?! (In all fairness, Mr. Seibert isn't old enough to be the basis for Fred Flintstone, who was introduced to the world in 1960).

Exhausted after a whole day of meetings, the Jakes and I returned to the hotel and met up with Jen who was freshly manicured, pedicured and had new purchases in hand from a day of shopping solo. We had a few hours to kill before our flight, so we decided to hit the streets again. The desire to cripple my credit at the MOMA store, Stackhouse, 555soul, WE, and Kid Robot was overwhelming. I did end up with a tee from WE (I would have bought more but I cleared them out when I was at their LA store a month ago), and a bunch of toys from Kid Robot. Holy hell do I love Kid Robot. Their employees must be broke from spending all their earnings on toys. I know I would! Also, while at the 555soul store I saw the newly painted mural by my compadres Chuck and Nigel. I'm so proud of those kids I don't have the words to express it. Tight. As. Hell.

The trip came to a close with a smooth flight back to Chicago that was spent reading the rest of 'The Dirt' by Mötley Crüe - highly recommended by the way, and a perfect landing that was even self-complimented by the Captain over the loud-speaker.