The tagline of this project is to live in as many different neighborhoods as possible so I wouldn’t blame someone for wondering why I moved from 34th between 9th and 10th to 35th between 9th and 10th.  And yes, while that isn’t quite how I envision my different neighborhoods, there is a shift in perspective with a move just one block north and different people make for different experiences.  It was actually very nice to have such an easy move at such an early stage in the project.  And to be honest, I had not really committed to this idea until my experience staying with John and Paul last week.  It was the first true “couchsurfing” experience as I had stayed with friends the previous two weeks.  I needed to see what it would be like to stay with people I didn’t know.

John wasn’t a complete stranger.  I was connected to John through Sid, whom I met while couchsurfing in Hong Kong for a week during my travels a few years ago. Sid is a fascinating guy — he started Life Unlimited, for which I’ve been helping out with the selection of candidates for the past few years.  Sid told me John was a high powered ideas guy.  He is just that.  Check his web site out athttp://www.johndbritton.com.  Some of the things he is into are P2PU, an open source university for which he taught a class on web development.  He is very well connected with Couchsurfing hooked me up with some of the meetups that go on throughout the city.  He also gave me an awesome t shirt he designed and helped me get this blog in better shape.

I arrived a day earlier than John, but his roommate Paul was there to welcome me. Paul and I went to Lezzete which is one of the few restaurants in that neighborhood that seemed like it was worth going to.  One of the few words I learned while living in Turkey was lezzette (tasty) and I figured they were Turkish. They were, and had the quality pistachio baklava to prove it.

John arrived back on Tuesday from San Francisco where he had a job interview for a unique startup called Twilio.  Twilio provides a platform to make voice applications — in fact, John built one that allows you to call a phone number, speak some text, and have the text translated into Dutch and sent in the form of a text message back to your phone.  Twilio also happens to be backed by the same investors as the company I am working for.  John got the job and we celebrated with some Chinese Hot Pot in Chinatown.

I spent the weekend there before heading to Park Slope on Sunday.  We were able to check out the Affordable Art Fair (nothing over $10K so still not that affordable) and I liked http://www.claysinclair.com/.  We wondered down to the West Village on the kind of day when you fall into the wind and it holds you up.  In the West Village, we met up with a friend for Vietnamese sandwiches (which seem to be all the rage these days).  We also briefly checked out the Shepard Fairey exhibit.

We did a few other things, but I’m trying to keep these posts relatively short.  I did try unicycling for which I failed miserably, but learned there is a unicycling club (of course there is) that meets right near where I used to live.  If only I had known!

A few photos will be posted until the recap from Park Slope.

Please note that I sent this post to Kevin beforehand.  I’ll do this for anyone who hosts and I can talk more or less about the actual host.

I arrived at Kevin’s on Sunday night. This was the first time leaving the old apartment felt real. I now have a large eagle creek backpack, a small computer backpack and a wheeled garment bag on my person. It is definitely a lot of stuff, but the bags work together well, I’m pretty well balanced and feel like I could walk a solid mile or two without too much trouble. It’s liberating.

Kevin lives in a studio so quarters were decidedly closer than my other spot in Hell’s Kitchen. But it seemed to work out fine – you can read his testimonial. The first night (Sunday) signified what this idea is all about. It’s what I envision from doing this, or at least some of the time – I know every experience will be different. I cooked Pad Thai and a friend of Kevin’s visiting from Italy came over with some Sicilian wine. The TV didn’t turn on and we talked about ideas.

And Kevin can talk – I think eventually Kevin will be an activist for a cause he really believes in. There are quite a few right now. In no particular order, they are 1) being barefoot (I borrowed his Vibram’s one evening and he ran barefoot (yes, barefoot in NYC) 2) Standing up at work – he has a standup desk rigged up in the office, 3) awareness of where our food comes from – something I was telling him about when we worked together. It’s great to hear the passion he has for these causes and I’m planning on getting myself a pair of Vibram’s. I’m also thinking about standing up at least an hour or so a day at my job.

What else did we do? I was introduced to Gogol Bordello at a concert at Brooklyn Bowl. I haven’t seen energy like that on stage in a long time, if ever. They dub their music gypsy punk rock. It was a great show.

The nomad was in DC sans aerobed for Georgetown’s lacrosse weekend, and moves on to a new spot tomorrow.