Tag Archives: cool places

Cool Spaces … At Happy Bones Coffee NYC

Lately we’ve started popping into the recently opened Happy Bones Coffee a lot. (See pix below.) Happy Bones is an ~~Aussie~~ Kiwi-staffed espresso cafe in downtown New York City. It’s a tiny place with three tables on an short, less-remarkable stretch of Broome Street in the ill-defined, mashed-up border area where Chinatown, Little Italy, SoHo and Nolita all converge at the Lower East Side’s western edge.

Happy Bones serves up a solid menu of third-wave coffee brews and espresso drinks, including an honest “flat white.” Their coffee is roasted and supplied by Counter Culture (its barista training center is a couple of blocks away). But what really strikes us about the cafe is its decor, the clever design and clean style of the small space, which is drenched in a white minimalist color scheme that’s warm and inviting rather than cold and stark. A skylight and floor-to-ceiling glass frontage draw light into the place and give it some comfortable airiness.

The cafe has a legit downtown-culture and art vibe. A playlist of mostly 1980s and ’90s British music invariably is playing over the sound system (tunes by the likes of the Clash, Specials, Blur, etc.) and a collection of coffee-table art and photography books are on sale next to bags of coffee beans.

BTW … what’s with all the Australian expat baristas and bartenders in NYC these days? Seems like an invasion, and we <3 it. (The Kiwi invasion, too.) 😉

On the Scene … At Propellor Coffee in Greenpoint, Brooklyn

We recently popped by Propellor Coffee in Greenpoint, Brooklyn on one of those interminable snowy days during this year’s remarkably harsh winter in New York City. This cafe is a solid, local ‘third-wave” coffee joint with much more generous space than many of the miniscule espresso bars that these days seem to be opening up every five seconds in NYC. The atmosphere is warm, mild, friendly, unobtrusive amid a decor of spare 1960s- and ’70s-era vintage furniture and walls filled with thematic, similarly aged and well-preserved photography of airplanes and airlines, in keeping with the spirit of the cafe’s name. The usual retinue of cafe punters are here, the laptop brigades and freelance designer/scriptwriter/fashion blogger types, and the local hipster coffee nerds. It’s a wonderful place to while away an hour or two on a lazy Saturday afternoon nursing a hot latte while reading an actual printed newspaper copy of the New York Times, checking your Instagram, and staying warm.

Cool Spaces … The Interior at Room Service NY

The main dining space at Room Service in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen. Room Service is probably the most beautiful, sparkly and glamorous casual-neighborhood-type Thai restaurant in New York City or anywhere.

On the Scene … NYC Commes des Garçons Store as Street Art Mecca

The front of the pioneering Commes des Garcons concept store in New York’s Chelsea art-gallery district has become a mini-mecca for street art in recent years. Layer upon layer of wheat-pastes posters, stencils, graffiti, spray-can art, paint and stickers by various artists, graff writers, designers and creators cover the brick exterior and sidewalks on either side of the shop’s aluminum tunnel-like entrance on W. 22nd Street. The street art-bombed frontage is a beautiful contrast to the minimalist-futurist polish of the store’s architectural design, which looks as cool now as it did when it opened in 1999 on the site of the Heavenly Body Works auto-body shop (the sign is still there).