A place for when you only have a day and your soul needs the smell of an ocean breeze and to feel sand between your toes. You can watch all the craziness of Coney Island from across the water.

When I first moved to New York, enamoured by its parks and museums and design firms and restaurants and bars, I never imagined that there could be much more to its geography than that. How wrong I was. My first drive across the George Washington Bridge was jaw-dropping - the cliffs of New Jersey are astonishingly tall, covered in a dense thicket of trees. But that was just the tip of the iceberg. Drive up 87 to the Catskills or the Adirondacks and you'll witness the Hudson River winding its way through spectacular scenery and unforgiving seasons. Now I can't get enough; just two hours up the road, it's like the city never existed. Perfect recuperation after a long week.

I am definitely a creature of habit, some good, some bad, and some worse. This is one of my better ones. Pretty much stop here every day on my way to the studio for caffeine. They brew up stumptown and always see someone I know from the neighborhood. When I get to the front of the line there is already a large coffee ready for me.

It's a sweet agave bar hidden in the fridge of a Mexican grocery store that use to be a laundromat. It doesn't get more Brooklyn than that but the tourists haven't found it yet so I highly recommend it. Music is really good and they have a great selection of mezcal. Felipe, the owner, also owns the adjoining restaurant Cerveceria.

By chef Ignacio Mattos, it’s just great,.