You said something....

"on a roof top in Brooklyn one in the morning
watching the lights flash in Manhatten
I see five bridges
The Empire State Building
and you said something I've never forgotten" P J Harvey



Rachel and I went to New York for a week of shopping and site seeing. We stayed in the Deauville Hotel - the same hotel where Sid stayed when out on bail for stabbing Nancy. (Amazing)!



So this trip was a bit of a mecca for an old punk - I had to go to The Chelsea Hotel and Bowery. Shame CBGB's no longer exists.



We HAD to do the tourist visit to the top of the Empire State Building and we had been advised to get there early to avoid the crowds.



Rachel at The Empire State Building

We met friends whilst in the city who took us to The Rockefeller Center, the Garment District, Diamond District, Tribeca, Canal Street (yuk) and Little Italy.

Times Square at night.

Crossing the Brooklyn Bridge, looking back toward Manhatten.

To commemorate the fire fighters who lost their lives on 9/11



The Dakota Building. Nearby in Central Park is a mosaic called "Imagine" but it was very hard to see as it was surrounded by a group of teenage girls singing John Lennon songs (double yuk)!

The Flat Iron Building, the first "skyscraper" in New York in 1902. We caught the ferry at Battery Park over to Liberty and Ellis Islands. But most of our trip was shopping - with Rachel emptying every American Eagle Store she could find!

Suicide Glass!

Fused glass and razor blades are made for each other! With the latest craze of Steam punk* these glass items seem to fit right in.



I fused my first Blade Dish about four years ago and I have been making them occasionally since. They are a combination of float glass (picture glass) which gives the glass a greenish tinge and red enamel powder sandwiched between the glass. Oh, and don't forget the razor blade. Because steel blades are so thin they don't cause fractures when fused.



My first dishes were always shallow, because I worried that a deep slump would cause the blade to fracture the glass. But as you can see from the deeper dish (above) the metal is flexible enough to bend and slump with the glass.

The ultimate steam punk accessory must be the Rock n Roll Suicide pendants. I wear one to work sometimes and I always get comments (and sometimes funny looks). As David Bowie said "Your too old to lose it, too young to choose it..."

Pendants and dishes are now available for sale on Folksy and Etsy.

* "Steam Punk is a sub-genre of fantasy and fiction that came into prominence in the 1980s and early 1990s. The term denotes works set in an era or world where steam power is still widely used—usually the 19th century, and often Victorian era —but with prominent elements of either science fiction or fantasy." Wikipedia.