Saturday in the Park

I'm currently stuck in the SeaTac airport for six hours on layover and I'm rocking out to Chicago, so it only seemed natural that when I was about to write a post on Saturday's activities, I'd use a line from one of my favorite Chicago songs as my title! And how apt, as I did spend Saturday in Bryant Park! But lets not get too far ahead, I'll start with the blogger brunch that happened that morning.

We met up at Frankies on Clinton st. for brunch on Saturday morning and it was so delicious. I think on my breakfast scale, it's definitely in the top ten. Probably top five. Me, Tieka, Andrea and Julie all had this breakfast sandwich on rosemary bread with scrambled eggs, thick cut bacon, and aged provolone cheese.

I got to meet Christina from Second Skin (who is such a doll and I am really bummed because I never actually got a chance to really talk to her), Mel from Idee Geniale (such a funny girl), And Nikki from Wild as a Mink (totally a rockin' chick). I seriously wish I could've gone on a week long vacation with all these girls so I would have all the time in the world to talk to each one individually. I've never felt so bombarded by cool and amazing people before in my life!

(photo from Nikki)

After the brunch we had a little bit of time to kill before Chictopia 10, so Nikki suggested we go to this cool candy shop with all sorts of old fashioned candy, so she led the way. It was such a crazy place! It was floor to ceiling candy, every kind you could ever want! I got candy cigarettes and a rock candy. Mel and Christina got these hilarious mustache candy things and candy cigarettes.

After that we went to the Chictopia 10 conference. I had two tickets for the Academy of Art University's grad student fashion show in the tents, so Andrea and I left to go see that before the conference even started. We took the train up to Bryant Park and were so excited to see the huge tents. Neither of us had ever even been to the tents before, so it was a really surreal experience to see in person this whole event we'd only see on TV and in photos. I'm sure there were famous people hanging out but I'm so bad at recognizing people. We got our seats and went into the huge main tent where there were hundreds of black seats lining the white runway. There were tons of photographers at the end of the runway, waiting to capture the models' end-of-runway poses. We were pretty close to the beginning of the runway in row five, so we had a really good view of everything, including the celebs in the front row.

After that we hurriedly tried to make our way back to the Chictopia conference and eventually got there. I honestly don't remember much from the conference. I'm kind of glad I missed the beginning though. Everyone said there were a bunch of technical difficulties with sound and projection and that had to all get up and move the seating around. It was difficult to hear or was too loud and the information didn't seem geared toward the actual bloggers (and I thought the majority of the audience was bloggers). I also wished we'd had time and space to mingle. I was really looking forward to meeting other bloggers but I only met one or two. I'm sure next year they'll have ironed out the problems with this first conference.

We were pretty wiped out after the conference so Andrea, Tieka and I went back to the hotel and relaxed for a couple hours before the Chictopia after party at the Tribeca Grand. Changed into my trusty vintage zipper dress and we caught a cab for the party!

(photo from Christina)

Me and Andrea were getting down, can you tell? Haha. This photo cracks me up. It probably had a lot to do with the fact that I was already tired, but the afterparty wasn't really super fun. I liked dancing and hanging out with all the girls, but felt really out of place in such a pretentious New York club. $13.00 drinks aren't really my thing and I don't have a trust fund (no offense to anyone who likes $13.00 drinks and has a trust fund, it's just a lifestyle that I don't understand). I'm more of a dive bar type girl- more tackiness please!