The coffee is always good, the milk a great consistency, and it’s known all over New York as a benchmark and often other baristas train there (the guys at Saturdays Surf did … which explains a lot!). It got to the point at Chelsea Market that The Mister always ordered 2 coffees because they were so good! I have a Ninth Street Espresso pin I wear in my jacket and one time when I was ordering coffee the barista was very concerned that I wanted it in a takeaway cup, wouldn’t I prefer the experience of a real cup … I wasn’t sure why his concern that I get the best possible coffee until he pointed to my t-shirt! It was my Supreme shirt that used to be the official Supreme shirt worn by Supreme-qualified baristas in cafes in Wellington – it has a coffee handle on it so he figured I was some kind of expert. He also spotted my Ninth Street Espresso badge (only available at the 9th Street cafe) and was impressed to hear that we often went there to Chelsea Market from Murray Hill just for the coffee!

We have a bit of a history with them, having gone there on most of our visits to New York so I’ve dug out some photos.

Our first visit to the 9th Street cafe (November 2008)

Our first visit to Chelsea Market (November 2008)

Taking friends there for the first time (June 2009)

Some of the many visits to Chelsea Market this year

and got back to a freezing New Zealand early Sunday morning – it was 4 degrees in Auckland when we went outside to head across to meet our domestic flight to Wellington.

Hi, my name is @orangegirlnz

I heart @TeamXero

I tweet @Xero

Recently the company made a promo video and asked Tweet4yourtee wearers to join them in Wellington to take part – of course I couldn’t be there and was so disappointed, but have always sent them photos of me wearing my t-shirts (from both sides of the globe it turns out!) and if I could’ve joined them I would’ve!

However, I got a really nice surprise today when the promo video promo was released as a teaser …

Then the real video was released a few hours later

Famous me! Am getting a spot up the front when they do it in a year – I wonder how many tweeting t-shirts will be around by then?

We get on at 33rd Street

Then stop at 28th Street

23rd Street

14th Street – Union Square

Astor Place

Bleecker Street

Spring Street

And get off at Canal Street

• When you first get outside from being in the air-conditioning you feel like you are walking in a warm bath if you have shorts on (yes, talking about me here) – the heat is so enveloping and so hot it feels just like water
• The floor in the apartment is almost hot, like underfloor heating has been left on high and it doesn’t cool down, not even by 4am
• The metal bars on the subway entry carousels are very hot to touch
• Liquid that comes out of pump-pots, hand soap, moisturiser and the like is warm
• Glasses and plates from the closed cupboards are warm
• Potato chips are warm
• Window glass is almost hot
• I now have a new appreciation for labels on bottles and packets that say “store below 30 degrees C” – I always used to think that was some kind of warning to not keep the item in the oven for some dope that might, but I know now that ordinary cupboards in ordinary houses can actually become like ovens in some climates!

Boy I am sick of looking at my greasy face in the mirror, pores wide open gasping for air so from that point of view, winter will be welcomed.

How time as flown by and we’ve gotten to know the guys and certainly don’t feel like non-surfer-dudes any more! We’ve taken our visitors there, have gone just about every day over the last 4 months, have watched the guys build up their little backyard and tried not to listen to their banter about arranging stuff in the new garden shed, tried to talk surf stuff, have got Saturdays Surf t-shirts, have gotten to know which surfer dudes make the best coffee, showed them Xero and have had some great coffee.

Behind the scenes I’ve also had to put up with The Mister miming being a surfer at his desk and saying “surf’s up” when he’s ready to go get coffee … and surprisingly he’s come with me to get the coffee every day except one so I hope that continues when we get back home!

So thanks Josh, Morgan, Mitch and most of all Casey for the welcome and the fantastic coffee. It was great having you as part of our daily New York life and of course when we come back we’ll be coming in to say hi.

This presented the perfect opportunity for The Mister to try pulled pork. We’d got into a long conversation with a chef at Williams & Sonoma (kitchen store) a few weeks ago about it after going to the Madison Square BBQ Block Party and after that and the pulled pork he always orders at Morrell’s he was really wanting to try it.

So when Cousin Grant said he loved pulled pork there was no holding us back.

In a very cool cooking 2.0 experience, The Mister tweeted @EatMeaty – the butcher in Chelsea Market and asked if they had pork for making pulled pork and any advice. They responded and expected our visit on Sunday morning. Very cool.

It was great hanging out at Cousin Grant’s and using his kitchen – his place has central air (we were there one of the days of the heatwave when it was 39 degrees C outside), extremely sharp knives and a massive gas oven. Eventually we found the light switches, a casserole dish and some piggy salt & pepper shakers (felt kind of cruel putting them on the table but they were orange), and luckily we took a few other supplies of our own because everything I didn’t think he’d have, he didn’t!

We put the pork in the oven for 4 hours and enjoyed a nice cool quiet afternoon working.

The house smelled great! And Cousin Grant said so when he burst through the door right on dinner time. We toasted the family gathering with champagne, assembled the burgers with pulled pork and some caramelised onions I’d made the previous day and coleslaw I’d made that afternoon and sat down to an extremely delicious family dinner.

So now we have to set about finding BBQ sauce (not something you’d normally find in our pantry) and other tomato-based basting ingredients to try it at home ourselves. Perhaps our Thanksgiving Dinner this year will be a burger feast!

The Rockefeller Centre had swapped its flags of the world for all American ones.

The 4th of July fireworks were a much anticipated even for us and we decided to splash out and get one of the 3000 tickets for a seat on the flight deck of the intrepid (retired aircraft carrier now a museum on the Hudson River). We’d seen the ship before when we went on the Circle Line tour with Mother and Father and it was cool to finally get on it. We had to join the world’s longest, sweatiest line to pick up our prepaid tickets but once we got into the cordoned off area we felt quite the hoi-poloi seeing the crowds of people along the closed off WestSide Highway.

Up on the ship we found a great posi behind the seating where we could stand and see the crowds on the massive cruise ship docked alongside, the water cannons from the tug boats and of course the fireworks off 6 barges along the Hudson River.

The fireworks were really great – I reckon from each barge they didn’t do anything more spectacular or larger than the Wellington fireworks display but with it being from 6 barges, perfectly choreographed and lasting about 30 minutes it was rather impressive. They were set to uplifting orchestral music, the last piece being the American National Anthem at which point everyone leapt to their feet and there was no chattering – just the booming of the fireworks and fighter jets doing fly-by. Very patriotic.

Here’s a 40-second snippet on video.

The walk back in to 42nd Street was hard work – the night was extremely muggy and 33 degrees, even at 10pm and a million people (literally) were all heading towards the subway.

While we were there I noticed 5 jets flying in what I thought was formation except the jet streams coming out of the back of them were more like coughing dots than a stream that I worried they might be in trouble. The Mister went to a clearing to take a couple of photos and when captured as a still pic it was clear that they’d been squirting out words! Really clever.

We recognised some advertising for GEICO (insurance) and a phrase that said ‘hot summer days’.