Friday in the West Village

Sarah and Elisa at No. 28

Friday I met up with Elisa, an Italian friend I hadn’t seen in a very long time. She was my Italian tutor before I went to Rome and we randomly bumped into each other on the subway about a month ago. She’s an incredible Siciliana who works for the United Nations. We began our night having drinks with her friend Luigi at a Brazilian bar, where a hostess/model type invited us to go clubbing next week (which I doubt will happen as I’m sure I’m in bed by the time she goes out).

After we left, Luigi departed to meet up with his Parisian girlfriend and Elisa insisted that she needed to get her nose pierced. We hopped in a cab that took us to Venus, which looks like a fancy jewelry store, but the employees are tattooed and pierced from head to toe. Elisa asked if I thought it would hurt and I said that when I pierced my nose years ago it hurt like hell. However, when the needle went through her skin, she didn’t flinch! And by the next day her nose wasn’t swollen at all. I asked her piercer if the holes in my earlobes were too closed up to jam a piece of jewelry. He said no, but recommended I have a professional piercer use a needle because he’s seen people get weird tumor-like growths on the back of their ears due to self-inflicted and piercing gun trauma—ew!

Bad photo of me and the cooks at No. 28.Then we went to No. 28, where everyone knew Elisa, for some Napolitano pizza. We took photos of ourselves and then Elisa had me go into the “kitchen” next to us, where they were spinning our dough.

Finally, we went to another nearby pizza place so she could say hello to a friend who was having a Nutella pizza with some friends. A very fun, Italian—and New York!—night.

Sarah Mikutel