We noticed a few things this week.
A few theaters, some roasteries, that cute florist you didn’t know existed, and more cozy spots from the cities we live in.
- Pull Up a Chair
The Window Stool at Tiong Bahru Bakery That Faces an Entire Neighbourhood Waking Up
The far-left stool at Tiong Bahru Bakery’s Eng Hoon shophouse faces the neighbourhood waking up. Free on weekdays 8–9:30 — the place at its most honest.
- The Odd Edit
A Cocktail Bar in the Former Printing Room of the San Francisco Examiner
A candlelit jazz bar in the basement of SF's Hearst Building — once the Examiner's print room, now home to marble from Hearst Castle, newspaper cocktail menus, and live jazz every night.
- The Odd Edit
A Hi-Fi Listening Bar Built to Sound Like the Inside of a Speaker
A hi-fi listening bar in Greenpoint built like a recording studio — birch plywood, Danley speakers, vinyl residencies, and cocktails without a menu.
- Nice but Free
A Dead Architect's House Where Every Room Is a Different Century
Sir John Soane's Museum: free by Act of Parliament since 1837, unchanged since his death, with an Egyptian pharaoh's sarcophagus in the basement.
- The Long Way Home
Walking Off the Brooklyn Bridge Into the Neighborhood Below
Walk the Brooklyn Bridge, turn left into DUMBO, and keep going until you reach Pier 1 at blue hour. Forty minutes, and none of it is the obvious path.
- Pull Up a Chair
A Window Stool Above Singapore's Oldest Estate
Tiong Bahru Bakery's window stools face Singapore's most intact prewar estate — best at 7:30 am on a weekday, when two versions of the same morning overlap.
- Pull Up a Chair
A Reading Room Built for One Man's Private Obsession
The Morgan's East Room — three stories of walnut and gold built for J.P. Morgan in 1906 — is the quietest reading chair in midtown Manhattan.
- The Odd Edit
A Prohibition-Era Speakeasy That Still Requires a Password
At 501 Jones St with no sign and a password on the door, Bourbon & Branch has occupied San Francisco's most seriously run speakeasy since 2006.
- The Odd Edit
A Tesla-Themed Speakeasy Behind a NoMad Coffee Counter
Inside the 1890s NoMad building where Nikola Tesla lived and ran rooftop radio tests, a coffee counter closes at 5pm and a hidden cocktail bar opens behind it.
- The Long Way Home
The Java Beach-to-Lands End Walk, Along the Coast of What Used to Be a Pleasure Railway
A 5km coastal walk from a family-run Outer Sunset café, along Ocean Beach, through the Sutro Baths ruins, and onto a Victorian pleasure-railway bed that is now the Lands End Coastal Trail.
