Happy New Year New York ladies!

First, I hope all of your holidays were great and you've all settled back into your routines.  I've been hitting the gym hard to work off those holiday goodies and to look fabulous in a wedding dress (I got a special diamond ring for Christmas!).  Anybody else have an exciting holiday story to share?

Now that I'm budgeting for a wedding and maybe a new condo (I couldn't resist linking to two of my favorite sites!), I'm really trying to save my pennies!  I have to say Leslie's post about Smarty Pig was so helpful.  That website is AMAZING.  All of us are hoping to save up for something big, but what about our daily entertainment costs?  I just wanted to share two of my favorite websites EVER that specialize in free and low cost (and most importantly incredibly interesting/enlightening/FUN) events. 

The first is Gothamist.  Truthfully, I never read the Gothamist site, but I subscribe to the GothamList - their daily email highlighting 3-4 awesome events happening in the city that day/weekend.  Unfortunately because of an existing commitment I had to miss one of tonight's free events: a DJ and live musicians covering music from Sesame Street.  OMG.  You can also find Gothamist on Twitter.

The second is The Skint.  Same thing here - I subscribe to The Skint's daily email, although their list comes out mid-afternoon.  I usually get the Gothamist email un-Godly early so I can plan for events later in the day a little bit better.  I feel like The Skint is geared a little more towards free events and more shopping events.  Again, they post on Twitter.

Hopefully you find these sites as interesting and helpful as I do!  Anybody have any other good cheap-o/freebie event websites?

That's me as Mrs.Claus!Ok, I've been anxiously awaiting (until after Thanksgiving at least!) to tell ya'll about one of my favorite NYC Holiday traditions: Santacon!!!  Santacon is a hilarious "Santa Convention" held every year during the holiday season.  As the official Santacon NYC website says: "SantaCon is a not-for-profit, non-political, non-religious & non-logical Santa Claus convention, attended for absolutely no reason."  The only requirement is that you wear a Santa suit.  Or...holiday attire.  I've seen reindeer, gingerbread men, candy canes, Christmas trees, elves, and for my Jewish friends: a strip dreidle champion, Jews for Santa, and the always lovable Chanukah Chicken.  There really is no reason for the event, other than it's just one of those amazing community events I think you can only really experience in a big city.  At Santacon, every Santa is your friend, and you can go anywhere in the city, see another Santa, and you're instant BFFs.  Some may disagree about the purpose - it is definitely a 21+ ONLY event, for good reason...most of the day can involve drinking, however last year I actually didn't drink anything but soda and still had a fabulous time.  It's a totally free event except for your food/drinks, and if you purchase a costume (I've seen full suits for about $8 around the city).  Santas at Grand Central (c/o Anastasia Pluish)There are currently 4877 people confirmed as attending on the Santacon NYC 2009 Facebook page!  The event starts bright and early at 10AM on Saturday, December 12 and runs until...everyone runs out of gas.  One of the best parts of this event is the unknown.  A mysterious group runs each Santacon (held in cities worldwide - check here for your city's Santacon!) so you never know where the next meeting place will be.  You'll explore many parts of the city such as the South Street Seaport, Grand Central, Central Park, as well as lots of bars near these large meeting spaces.  You must stay tuned to the Santacon webpage the night before to find out the first meeting location and  you'll be updated throughout the day.  At each stop you'll know when to head out by the chants of "SANTAS ON THE MOVE"!  If anyone's interested in dressing up and acting ridiculous for a day, give me a shout and we can have a Gals' Guide Santa contingency!

This Thursday is the 83rd annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.  For those of you willing to brave the parade craziness, I salute you.  For those of you who aren't quite as brave, you can still see all of the parade floats up close on Wednesday night at Central Park West and Columbus Circle between 77th and 81st St!  The balloons are inflated on these blocks the night before the parade every year and the public essentially parades around the balloons to get a sneak peek!  Personally, I love this event.  It really has that family/community feel to it.  A couple years ago it started snowing while I was there and volunteers were handing out free hot chocolate - it was just one of those iconic New York moments.  I would recommend going later in the evening (after 5PM) when the balloons are more inflated and lit up with spotlights!

Most of you have heard of speed dating.  Well tonight I tried something similar, but called speed friending (Marisol wrote about her San Fran experience a couple months ago, but I wanted to give you my NYC take)!  I attended the very first NYC women's speed friending event run by GirlFriendCircles.  This event was designed to help women who value close female friendships find new friends that are also seeking new relationships.  We all know it can be difficult to meet new people (outside of co-workers, people we already knew, etc.) in a big city, especially like NYC. 

The event was held at Sweet Revenge - a RIDICULOUSLY COOL PLACE!  We were placed into small (3 women each) groups and given a list of prompt questions.  The groups of three would rotate throughout the evening so you would get to meet a new set of women at each rotation.  For each rotation we were assigned one of the sharing prompt questions.  Each woman would have 2 minutes to respond to the prompt to her group.  At the end of the two minutes, the next woman would respond to the group, and so on.  While we were responding to the prompts, we were served the most amazing cupcake and drink pairings, and then had a few minutes after the prompts to eat, drink, and have some additional chatting.

So let's recap:

1. Cool chicks looking for other cool chicks seeking to develop new friendships.
2. The most amazing cupcakes I've ever eaten.
3. A new wine/sangria to pair with each of the FOUR cupcakes we sampled.

Uhm...awesome.

Once we completed all of our rotations, each woman filled out a matching form.  You could choose to have your email address given to anyone who listed you as someone they'd like to know better, or you could choose to only have your information given to someone who selects you, but you also select.

I have to say, this was a total shot in the dark for me.  I thought 'oh, it might be ok' which kind of means 'I hope this isn't a bunch of socially awkward weirdos'.  Unfortunately in some of my other friend-making attempts I've run into some of these socially awkward groups.  I was very pleased when all of the women at this event were smart, grounded women who all seemed to have their 'stuff' together.  I was also pleased that the "sharing" questions were not TOO personal or in-depth, but were still topics anyone could talk about (job, family, friends, neighborhood, etc.).

I came home tonight and signed up for GirlFriendCircles, which means for a small fee ($5/month) I will have access to more of these small meet-up type events with ladies in my area.  The dates, times, and locations are picked for you to meet up with other members of the site.  I can only hope our future activities will be as much fun as wine and cupcakes!  This is a pay site, but this is done to ensure that the ladies who sign up are actively persuing and genuinely interested in developing new friendships.  GirlFriendCircles is also on Twitter.

I tweeted about this event while I was walking to the cupcake shop from the subway.  When I left Sweet Revenge, I had several responses asking what/how the event was.  I see a need for this kind of event everyday in the city, and based on the Twitter responses, women seem very interested but hesitant to try something like this out.  I can only speak for myself, but I really enjoyed my time and think it was well worth the ($15 with discount) price I paid for the great food, drinks, and conversations.

To top things off, Marlo from Sweet Revenge gave us each a cupcake to take home!  I picked the Pure cupcake.  If you can't make it to Sweet Revenge, you can make your very own Pure cupcake!!!

If you're interested but still have questions, please don't hesitate to contact me and I'll give you my two cents!

Happy Friending!

Nez Perce warrior on horse c1910November is Native American Heritage Month in the US.  I have always thought American Indian culture was fascinating and beautifully in-sync with the earth - frankly, in a way I know I will never be able to experience. I also believe American Indians are one of the most discarded socities I'm aware of.  When I was an undergrad at the University of Illinois, the Chief Illiniwek controversy was raging, and everyone seemed eager to voice their opinion whether the mascot was offensive or not (he was - in case you're wondering - retired).  However, I heard no conversation whatsoever about the socio-economic conditions most Native Americans live under, and I would argue how American Indians have sometimes been treated in this country is really the offensive action worth debating.  I'm not sure why the mascot debate never opened up more dialog about American Indians in the US today, other than it seems like one of those almost "taboo" topics - no one knows anything about it, and everyone is too afraid to say something un-PC to discuss it.  An episode of the show "30 Days" hammered all of this home for me with an episode called "Life on an Indian Reservation" (I strongly encourage you to read the synopsis - it really is incredible).  It was beautiful and devastating, fascinating and frustrating.  For those who would like to take a peek into Native American culture, there are many events taking place this month in NYC.  Another option is the National Museum of the American Indian - a free museum at Bowling Green, just footsteps from the 4/5.

What are some other Gals doing to observe Native American Heritage Month?