The Bridges to Brooklyn

May 30, 2025May 29, 20252 Comments

After a morning spent around Washington Square, the West Village, the World Trade Center monuments (the first time my wife had been there since 9/11 happened) and Wall Street, we decided to take the long walk across the very famous (and rightly so) Brooklyn Bridge. Pedestrians walk above the cars, but it was still very busy with people. The sky was busy too, clouds and sunlight intermingling. We took a lot of photos. Once we reached the end it was a bit of a walk around to DUMBO, the area named after the elephant (not after a political leader, as you might think). Actually it stands for ‘Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass’ which is a pretty brilliant acronym if you ask me. Literally anything else, they could have called it. It’s like renaming the South Bank in London, what shall we call it? How about ‘Thames Waterside Area Trail’, or ‘Along the River’s South Embankment’. Still DUMBO it is now, until a better name comes along. It started raining when we got there, and the view became a bit foggier, so we went inside the Time Out Market Food Court, which had a lot of choices. I had this very spicy fried chicken for some reason. Our legs were feeling distressed and ready for a sleep, so after a little look along the waterfront and a few photos, we decided to get the Subway back to Chelsea. Then I looked back as the rain was stopping and decided, wait I’m probably not going to be back here for ages. How about I skip the late afternoon nap and sketch this? So I did, while the family went back to rest at the hotel. I mean, what a view. This is one of the world’s best views. The last time I was here it was like being in the Arctic, and the time before it was so foggy I couldn’t even see across the river, so I took advantage of the momentary good weather. I sketched the view above, looking out to the new World Trade Center building. You can’t get this far in the Spider-Man game, it blocks you off halfway across the bridge. Brooklyn Bridge is older than Tower Bridge, and those iconic cathedralesque arches give you a chill as you walk beneath them. I also stood down under the Manhattan Bridge overpass to draw the iconic view of that bridge (which I have sketched before on a trip 17 years ago). This time I caught it with the outline of the Empire State Building in the distance. I had to get back over there to rest before going out to see a show on Broadway, so once I was done I looked for the Subway, and left Brooklyn behind. It would be nice to explore Brooklyn a bit more some day, it’s so big.

Sketching the Stonewall Inn

May 29, 20252 Comments

As Pride Month starts, here’s another place I sketched New York that is so important to LGBTQ+ history, and present, the Stonewall Inn National Monument. I remember hearing about Stonewall from my old professor at university but never really knew much about it, other than it was in New York, and central to the civil rights struggle for the Queer community. The Stonewall Riots began here in June 1969, kicking off a fight for LGBTQ+ civil rights and a larger gay rights movement in America and around the world. That fight goes on, and it’s not a fight that is going away. The current lot in charge have removed the ‘TQ+’ from LGBTQ+ and expunged any references to trans, non-binary, intersex etc individuals on the official government run Stonewall National Monument website, in an erasure of the monument’s actual history. they even took down the recommended reading list. I won’t link to that site now. I’ll link instead to the Stonewall Visitor Center, that was very interesting. I came down here twice, once to sketch it in pen and some paint (finished off the paint at the hotel), stood in the little triangle across the street which is part of the Monument, which has some very moving memorials and a lot of flags showing support for our trans friends, and then back again to get my sketch stamped at the Visitor Center, and look around some more. I got some nice metal pins. I didn’t go into the Inn itself, but I was glad to finally visit this important place, and walk some more around the Village. This area is cool. More New York sketches to come…

Washington Square people

May 28, 20251 Comment

Big fan of Washington Square Park. Always enjoy coming here when I’m in New York. If there’s anywhere to just sit and chill, with New York all around you, this is it. On my trip here in 2016 we stayed nearby here on Bleecker, right in the heart of Greenwich Village. On the first morning in New York City this time, I headed out a little early, planning to meet the family downtown later, and headed to Washington Square. I noticed my Pigma Graphic pen was running low on ink, which would usually mean that oh well, nothing I can do about that. But I’m in a big city, of course I can find a replacement pen in one of the first shops I come across. This is New York, you don’t have to look too hard. New pen in hand I went to the park with the big arch to sit and draw the people. Well I drew the Washington Square Arch first, above, looking up towards the start of Fifth Avenue. It’s not Marble Arch, but what a world-beating location. Greenwich Village is where NYU (New York University) is located so there are a lot of students around. I would have liked to have gone here. I remember looking around here on our trip in 2002 when I was thinking about doing a Masters degree, but I saw how much it would cost, and ended up staying in London to do a Masters at King’s, and then moving to California in 2005. All worked out. It was funny listening to people talk, I wrote some of it into the sketch, some students who I think were visiting NYU or maybe just new here, talking about their experiences. “I don’t want to sound dramatic,” one young woman said dramatically, “but the three hour time difference has literally ruined my life.” Most overheard conversations are generally boring as hell but this one made me laugh. In fact I overheard a lot of amusing conversations in New York, it’s almost as if being in a big city is more interesting in general than, you know, Davis. I overheard two guys while walking around in Chelsea who spoke in the most thick and colourful New York accent, completely opposite to the regular vanilla-flavoured California voice (which I like, don’t get me wrong, but we are kings and queens of the generic). These guys would have needed subtitles on American TV. One had a scratchy throaty voice and the other was pure cartoon Noo-Yoik, discussing some TV show or movie they had seen, it was the highlight of my year.

What is it about New York that makes me want to draw more people than in other cities? Big city people are different, they dress different, they move and stop different, they talk about different things, and they sound different. I don’t know, I like the diversity. I notice it in London, and in a place like New York my urban sketcher radar is on overdrive. I drew people in Washington Square with the thicker black pen that allows me to just go quickly. Here are a bunch.

I liked the guy sitting with a tall wizard hat, I think he was reading tarot cards or telling fortunes or something.

I was walking this area with my teenager after a morning at the Guitar Center (a morning well spent) when we sat in Washington Square for a bit and I drew this group of young women sat near to us, chatting animatedly. The big bushy jacket of the one on the left was interesting.

Return to Pete’s Tavern

May 16, 2025Leave a comment

A little place of mine in New York is Pete’s Tavern, down in Gramercy Park. For really obvious reasons. It is one of the oldest bars in the city and still a very popular pub, in a well-to-do neighbourhood, on the corner of Irving and E 18th. On the first day while the family rested at the hotel I walked down as far as Pete’s, and stood across the street to start the sketch above. I didn’t get that far, because I was eager to go inside and have a beer after the walk through the city, so I drew the outlines and did the rest later on. I came in and ordered a Pete’s Ale, and spoke to a guy at the bar who was waiting for his friend to arrive (when they did he said “this is Pete” and I said “welcome to my Tavern!” because I am cheesy). Pete’s has been going since 1864, same as my jokes, and is a great place to sketch. I remember first finding it on our trip to New York in 2008, but I spent a fun day here celebrating my 40th birthday with two of my best friends from London back in 2016. Here’s my post from 2016. On that day I sketched a similar view to the one below, but in the afternoon, and on the way through several more beers than I could have now.

On the last evening in New York, after dinner and a walk in the rain, I decided to get on the Subway and go down to Pete’s for a last time to sketch the inside. It was a busy evening, but I found that same spot at the bar, got a Pete’s 1864 Ale and sketched fast before jumping on the Subway back. I enjoyed this one, plus I got a couple of beermats that say ‘Pete’s Tavern’. Until next time, Pete’s!

new york evening, chelsea mornings

May 13, 2025May 12, 20251 Comment

New York is not my favourite city. My favourite city is London, but New York is a very close second. Sometimes when London isn’t listening I tell New York that it’s my favourite, but when London walks back into the room I grin suspiciously and go on about how the Underground is better than the Subway and curving streets are so much nicer than straight ones, but it’s hard for a proper city person like me to hide it, New York is just great. It literally does feel like you’ve stepped onto all those TV shows, those movies, those great records, and certainly all those Spider-Man video games I like so much. It’s an urban sketchers paradise. Arriving by train through New Jersey I was filled with excitement at a glimpse of the skyscrapers. There seem to be more of them than last time; my most recent visit was in early 2016, which in historical terms was a long long time ago now, a special birthday trip with two of my oldest friends. Obama was still president. Leicester were going for the league, with Spurs and Arsenal chasing. My visit before that was in late 2008, with my wife and baby son, just before Obama won his first election, just before Lewis Hamilton won his first championship, and Spurs had just recently won the league cup, which would surely be the first of many trophies to come. And my visit before that was in another age still, at the end of 2002, the middle of the first George W. Bush term, still in the recent post-9/11 world, my first trip to New York, a city I’d wanted to visit my whole life. It was exactly as I imagined and it remains so, but my gaps between visits keep getting inexplicably longer. We got to our hotel on the corner of 6th and 28th, in the Chelsea neighbourhood, staying on the 28th floor with an incredible view down towards the World Trade Center, looking up at the Empire State Building and over to the Chrysler. Not gonna lie, that view was pretty world-beating. I could not wait to get back down to ground level though, and explore the streets, so I went for a walk towards Madison Square Park. The traffic, the people, the sounds and the smells, I love being back in an urban environment. The Flatiron Building was all covered over, but I sat in the park with a milkshake and sketched up towards Midtown, as that Empire State dominated proceedings. I walked about the neighbourhoods a bit before heading back up to the hotel, where we got a massive proper New York pizza and watched The Avengers.

I have a lot of New York sketches and will try to present them thematically or geographically, but for this post here are some sketches from the area of our hotel. There were lots of florists everywhere, this may well be called the Florist District. It isn’t though. I looked up the Manhattan neighborhoods on Wikipedia, and while this is very much within Chelsea, it was historically called the Tenderloin, the area between 5th and 7th, 24th and 42nd. I don’t know if people still call it that. There were a lot of flower shops though, and hotels. I drew the one above while on my morning sortie.

I always like a morning stroll when I visit a new place, before the family get up. Chelsea is a good area to explore. One morning I was walking down 23rd Street, the sun was casting Spring light down the long streets making everything look like an album cover, when I spotted a place so steeped in musical history it knocked me off my feet to see it. The Hotel Chelsea on 23rd Street has so many pop-culture names associated with it that it could be a six season Netflix series all of its own and still have secrets to share. Writers, musicians, actors, filmmakers. Maybe urban sketchers, though I have never stayed there. Bob Dylan stayed there, and Janis Joplin, Joan Baez, Jimi Hendrix, Madonna, Edith Piaf, Alice Cooper, Bob Marley, Iggy Pop, Leonard Cohen, Jim Morisson, you name it. This is where Sid Vicious stayed with Nancy and where she died, allegedly killed by Sid. Rod, Jane and Freddy probably lived there for a bit, for all I know. Writers like Kerouac, Burroughs, Miller, Twain, Ginsberg, Quentin Crisp. Dylan Thomas lived and died here in 1953, so did Brendan Behan a decade later. Sarah Bernhardt slept in a coffin while she lived here. Stanley Kubrick, Al Pacino, Eddie Izzard, Bette Midler, they all stayed here and I’d like to have been in the hotel bar that night. Ironically I don’t think Jose Mourinho or John Terry have ever stayed here. I stood across the street with that Joni Mitchell song in my head, while the traffic wrote the words. I had to check on my phone this was definitely the right place, it would have been embarrassing to have sketched it with all this cultural history going through my head only for it to be the wrong place. I bought some cannoli from a place down the street and went back to the hotel. Check back for more New York explorations…

habemus papam

May 12, 20251 Comment

And so, we have a new Pope. I happened to be working from home last Thursday when I saw the news headline pop up that there was white smoke seen from the chimney at the Vatican, indicating as you all know that the Conclave had reached a Conclusion. I switched on the live footage (actually turned on Sky News for some reason) and watched as the crowds gathered in St. Peter’s Square, as all the speculation mounted and people tried to predict who the next pope might be. It’s not like predicting the next Dr. Who or James Bond, because these days you have a fair idea about that, but with the Conclave they say you enter as a Pope and leave as a Cardinal, meaning the list of favourites never win election. Nobody was predicting Robert Prevost from Chicago, so when the cardinal came out and said “Habemus Papam!” (not “abemus”, as I wrote, my Latin is bad) and announced who it would be, it was for sure a surprise. He took the name Leo XIV, and is the first American* Pope. (*from the US; the first American Pope was the last one, Pope Francis, who was from Argentina, but this is a question for trivia bores next century). Pope Francis died on Easter Monday, I liked him a lot. I’ve not seen many Popes in my lifetime, John-Paul II came in when I was a baby and was Pope until just before I moved to America* (*the US), and I remember that Papal Conclave back in 2005 when they got Ratzinger. I’m not a Catholic myself but many of my family are, and a lot of my neighbours growing up in Burnt Oak so the Pope was a big deal for a lot of them. I thought there might be an Italian Pope again for the first time in my life, or maybe even an African Pope, but I was very surprised to see an American* (*US) Pope emerge. He’s spent a lot of time in Peru and is strongly connected there, and even spoke in Spanish for a bit while addressing the crowd at the Vatican. I sketched the TV and wrote down some of what people were saying on the news. He’s young at only 69 (so people kept saying) so might be the Pope for a good while yet. So there we have it, a new Pope, and he’s from Chicago. That’s pretty cool.

DC Part 5 – Ben’s Chili Bowl

May 8, 2025May 8, 2025Leave a comment

The final sketches from our recent trip to Washington DC were very different from the other places, as this is not a museum or a marble monument, but a humble diner up on U Street, a few stops up from downtown on the Metro. This is Ben’s Chili Bowl. I’d seen it in an Anthony Bourdain episode on TV and even the thought of it made me feel hungry, indeed I’m feeling peckish right now thinking about those cheesy fries. Ben’s Chili Bowl is, as the sign says, a proper historic Washington landmark, having been an important local staple during DC’s era of the fight for civil rights. This area around U Street is historically known as the ‘Black Broadway‘, with the large Lincoln Theatre next door to Ben’s being one of the most iconic venues of a cultural and musical renaissance showing acts like Duke Ellington, Nat King Cole and Ella Fitzgerald. A couple of blocks down, the Bohemian Caverns (formerly Crystal Caverns and originally Club Caverns when it opened in 1926) was the preeminent jazz club of the city. While Ben’s wasn’t here during the golden age of jazz, it opened in 1958 by Ben and Virginia Ali in a period of great cultural change in DC, a time when segregation was only just starting to end. Martin Luther King Jr regularly ate here, and the March on Washington in 1963 led to the Civil Rights Bill; Ben and Virginia were there and donated food to the marchers. During and after the DC Riots of 1968 Ben’s kept its doors open to provide food and shelter. Check out this fascinating interview with Mrs. Virginia Ali, widow of Ben and co-founder of the diner, who tells some amazing stories. You can learn more about Ben’s Chili Bowl on their website (but it will make you hungry).

I had the cheesy fries (not being a meaty chili eater myself) and sat inside to sketch quickly; I only did outlines and the people because I wanted to eat my cheesy fries, and go outside the draw the outside. Next door to Ben’s is a bar called ‘Ben’s Next Door’ which was quite popular, but I didn’t go inside. A massive group of schoolkids arrived with their teacher on some sort of field trip, and they were all going into Ben’s for a milkshake after looking at the large murals in the alley between Ben’s and the Lincoln Theatre, ‘Ben Ali Way’. The murals were painted a few years ago and show a series of black leaders and heroes, with the faces of Barack and Michelle Obama prominent at the alley’s entrance. Obama came here in 2009, knowing what an important landmark this was during the civil rights era. I miss them.

And so that concludes our little trip to DC, it was an interesting place and I’m glad I finally went; if I ever come back, I would want to spend more time in the museums, appreciating them while we can, and then come back up to Ben’s for some more cheesy fries. Next up, sketches from our trip to New York City. There are a lot!

DC part 4 – Dinosaurs and Co

May 6, 2025May 5, 20252 Comments

I walked across Capitol Mall towards the hotel, and stopped into the National Museum of Natural History, which still had about an hour and a half before closing time. I love that it’s free to enter the Smithsonian. If it wasn’t for my sketchbook I could have still seen a lot more of that museum, but I wanted to draw dinosaurs. Or rather, Dinosaurs And Other Prehistoric Creatures. The dinosaur displays at the Smithsonian are pretty great, and I did see as many as I could in such a short time, but I really wanted to draw the skeleton of the Tyrannosaurus Rex biting into the frill of a stricken Triceratops. It was a real frill-seeker. The museum was quite busy, and this was a popular display. Poor Triceratops though.

Nearby was this ashen-boned skull of an Allosaurus, another of my favourite dinosaurs when I was a kid. As with so many things, my all-time top-five dinosaur (and other prehistoric creatures) list was established when I was about five or six from the two very important dinosaur books I owned (one of which I still have, ‘Dinosaurs Discovered’ by John Gilbert), and specifically from the Guy Michel artwork inside. This was back when dinosaurs stood upright like people or kangaroos, letting their tails trail on the floor behind them, the good old days. One of those favourites was the Allosaurus, which I think I liked more than the T-Rex because it had three fingers instead of two on each arm. A bit like Mourinho holding up three fingers to show how many Premier Leagues he has won. I still remember being a young dinosaur lover, going to the Natural History Museum with my big sister, and still have my original pronunciations of prehistoric words in my head, like the ‘cretackus’ period, or the ‘velo-kee-raptor’, or the great feathered ‘archie-oper-terrix’. I wouldn’t say those now, but Diplodocus is and always will be ‘diplo-DOcus’, not ‘di-PLOD-uckus’, none of that nonsense. Allosaurus is easy enough to pronounce, although this one being ‘Fragilis’ reminded me of A Christmas Story, the box marked ‘fra-gile’ which must have been Italian.

One creature whose name I’ve grudgingly accepted isn’t pronounced my way is Dimetrodon (more ‘di-MET-rodon’ and not ‘DYMER-TRODON’, whatever).I say creature because this one is not actually a dinosaur, coming from a much earlier time period, the early Permian period (the Cisuralian epoch of that period if we are being precise, and there was no way five year old Pete was pronouncing Cisuralian without bursting into laughter, even forty-nine year old Pete thinks it’s funny). This one was on my top five list for sure, because I had a plastic toy of it and it had that cool sail on it’s back. Did you ever have those old plastic toy dinosaurs? I don’t mean like flimsy easy to break ones, no these ones were completely indestructible. In the early 1980s when we were all having nightmares about nuclear war (we still get those, don’t we fellow Gen-X-ers!) I knew for a fact that the only things that would survive a nuclear bomb were cockroaches and my toy dinosaurs. Even though this is not a dinosaur, as far as I am concerned it is part of the club. It’s like John Hagen, he was part of the Corleone family, but they would always remind him he was German-Irish and not really Sicilian. I had never seen a Dimetrodon skeleton in the, er, flesh, so I had to sketch this beauty. You would not mess with this. I’d like to see fight between a Saltwater Crocodile and a Dimetrodon, or Luca Brasi and a Dimetrodon. Things were better in the old Permian period though weren’t they, not like now. There weren’t all these ‘continents’ that you have nowadays, it was just one continent, Pangaea, and one ocean, Panthalassa. It was just better wasn’t it. If you were a Dimetrodon back in the old Cisuralian epoch, you could walk from Gondwana to Laurasia and not get hassled by ice ages. Then all the continents started breaking up, egos got involved, the dinosaurs came along, the Atlantic Ocean started filling up, and now there’s all this.

Before the museum’s closing time, which as coming at me like a steam train, I decided to fast forward several hundred million years to the Time of Mammals. The continents were not quite where they are now but they were well on the way, I think India was still sailing through it’s Ocean, leaving Antarctica very much out in the cold, and England had just started counting it’s ‘years of hurt’ since winning the World Cup. This is the Uintatherium Anceps (I’m not even going to try to pronounce that, I couldn’t even spell it while writing the word down from a sign), which was an early ungulate relative from Wyoming, you’ve all had those relatives. I think it was a bit like a massive rhino, but with big tusks like a Smilodon. Elongated Tusks were still quite fashionable back then, before everyone realized how weird they were. This skull is an amazing shape though, you wouldn’t want to tread on a plastic toy of this, never mind Lego blocks.

And then the people came around to tell me that the museum was closing, and the last thing I wanted was to get stuck in the museum. I’ve seen those films, they are very scary. I walked back out onto Capitol Mall with a book full of new sketches, and then decided to go and do some more. See you in DC Part 5.

DC part 3 – Day at the Smithsonian

May 5, 2025Leave a comment

I was super excited to finally visit the Smithsonian, one of the greatest (maybe the greatest?) collection of museums in the world, all free entry, an absolute gift to the world. I obviously go to these places now with filling a sketchbook in mind, but I’m actually just super interested in all the history on display, and eager to see it all. When I was a kid, I remember my mum’s friend Terri went to America and visited the Smithsonian, bringing me back a pen from the National Air and Space Museum, one of those special pens that astronauts use that can write upside down. I imagined astronauts up there writing postcards, or drawing. I was delighted to see the gift shop still selling these gimmicky pens, but I treasured the one I had when I was a kid and would show it off at primary school. Of course I would just write the words upside down, wondering why astronauts needed to write upside down words, possibly to confuse any hostile alien life forms they encountered, or maybe like when you see ambulances display the word ‘ambulance’ backwards so motorists can read it in their wing mirrors. It’s all part of astronaut training I suppose. Now I like to draw airplanes (I say aeroplanes) even though they are a bit difficult, they are fascinating. The wings are always a lot longer than you expect. You really need those double-page panoramic spreads in the old Moleskine. Above, a whole selection of planes drawn from the second floor. There was a large section of the Museum that was not open to the public, unfortunately, which according to the man included the plane called ‘Spirit of St. Louis’ (I am glad I never asked about that plane, because as established in a previous post I would definitely pronounce it wrong). Still, I wasn’t disappointed. We spent a lot of time doing the slow museum-walking around checking it all out, until we needed an overpriced snack, after which the family left while I stayed to sketch.

Now this here above is one of history’s greatest bits of technology. I draw a lot of stuff, fire hydrants, trees, but once in a while I get to draw an actual piece of significant human history. this is the Apollo 11 Command Module, Columbia, the actual thing that the other fellow sat in while Neil Armstrong and Buzz Lightyear (sorry, Aldrin) gallivanted about on the surface of the Moon. They were faffing about making small steps and playing golf or whatever, while up in space the other fellow, Michael Collins (not that one, Irish history fans) had to stay in the car. A bit like when you’re a kid and you have to wait in the car while your dad and your uncle go to the pub. It’s amazing to look at it and think that is the actual module, the real thing that went to space, that we all learned about at school (except in conspiracy-theory states). I’m standing there just inches from history, and it’s a tiny tin can. Definitely had to draw this. I also had to draw some of the space suits on display, see below. Imagine having to wear that. Being an astronaut is no walk in the park. I remember seeing this really realistic film when I was a kid called SpaceCamp which taught me exactly what real astronaut training must be like, and that ended my dream of being a space traveller.

Speaking of space, there was another piece of history on display, a life-size actual X-Wing fighter, suspended high above the seats next to the bathroom. I sat and drew that, of course I did. It was a T-70 model, which as you know is from the Resistance era, the sort Poe Dameron would fly, not Luke Skywalker. Strange that it had a little model of R2-D2 in it and not BB-8. I prefer the Rebellion era X-Wings, because their engines don’t split in half for some reason when they lock S-foils into attack position. What do I know. The X-Wing is like the Spitfire of Star Wars. Or maybe it’s like the F-16, I love an F-16, and the Naboo Starfighter is like the Spitfire. Oh I don’t know, it’s a pretend spaceship.

Still we came a long long way from what came first, which was the original Wright Brothers flyer, from 1903, as flown on that fateful day at Kitty Hawk. Here it is below, the real actual one. It reminded me a little of the Ewok gliders, but as you know the Ewoks could only glide from the trees, they were not technologically advanced enough to achieve take-off. This though is another piece of real actual history. Sure, we would have figured it out in the end, but from the moment humans learned to fly, figuring out how to both take off and land, well that was it. Game over. Of course Wilbur/Orville (below, the one who looks like the conductor from the Polar Express) was obviously lying in it backwards as we all now know, but back then they just didn’t know any better. It still looks more comfortable than flying Virgin Atlantic economy.

The day was moving away from me fast, and I can only draw so much in such a short period of time. I spent a lot of time looking at racecars, but it was time to go and draw dinosaurs…