Lifestyle Archives

30th Birthday with original CM team

Thirty is a funny kind of milestone. It doesn’t arrive with a drumroll so much as a quiet click—like a door latching behind you—and suddenly you’re standing in a room that feels both familiar and newly lit.

This one was spent with the original CM team, gathered close beneath big gold balloon letters that spelled out a simple, bright permission to celebrate. Drinks in hand, we held still for a moment in front of a wall of books, the background hum of a home around us—shelves, frames, small evidence of everyday life. The photo catches that in-between feeling: polished enough to mark the occasion, relaxed enough to be real.

I keep thinking about how time folds people together. Work becomes friendship without anyone making an announcement. You look up and realize you’ve collected a small history—shared late nights, inside jokes, the steady rhythm of showing up. It’s not loud, but it lasts.

If birthdays are supposed to measure anything, I hope it’s this: the warmth of familiar faces, the comfort of being known, and the kind of joy that doesn’t need much more than a room, a few friends, and a little gold light bouncing around.

30th bday Bubbles with Devon

Thirty feels like a small threshold you don’t notice until you’re standing in it—hands wrapped around a glass, the room soft with warm light, and everything glittering just enough to make ordinary moments feel ceremonial.

For this 30th birthday, the bubbles did their job: they slowed time down. The gold streamers behind us caught every flicker and turned it into a kind of weather—shimmering, patient, and a little unreal. Devon and I leaned into that brightness, shoulder to shoulder, holding our drinks the way you hold a quiet wish before you say it out loud.

I love parties most for their small details: the clink of glass, the half-second of eye contact before a toast, the way laughter rises and then settles again. The camera grabs one frame, but the night is really made of movement—people drifting in and out of conversation, music in the background, a thousand tiny celebrations happening at once.

Thirty isn’t a reinvention. It’s more like a new coat pulled on from the laundry room—familiar, worn in, and suddenly meaningful when you realize how many seasons it has already seen.

Here’s to gold light, good company, and the simple kindness of marking time together.

30th Bday with Jen

Thirty feels like a small threshold you step over without noticing until you turn around and see the room differently. Jen’s 30th birthday was all warm light and gold—shimmering fringe on the wall, a little metallic party hat tilted into place, and two coupe glasses held up like punctuation.

There’s something comforting about a simple celebration: a backdrop that catches every stray bit of light, a few friends close enough to stand shoulder-to-shoulder, and the quiet agreement that the moment is worth keeping. The gold made everything feel brighter than it probably was, the way memory does—taking ordinary corners of a room and giving them a soft, glowing edge.

We toasted to the past decade without trying to summarize it, because you can’t. You just notice what’s been built: the friendships that hold, the laughter that comes easier, the steadier sense of self that arrives when you stop racing toward some imagined version of “adult.”

If a birthday is anything, it’s a pause—a brief stillness before the year keeps moving. Jen looked happy, the kind of happy that doesn’t need announcing. Just a smile, a glass raised, and the gold behind her catching the light like it was meant to be there all along.

Silly 30th Bday with the Boys

Thirty feels like a small threshold you step over without noticing until you look back and realize the room has changed.

This photo catches the moment before the night blurs into laughter and louder music: three friends pressed close, coupe glasses raised, a gold fringe curtain behind us catching every bit of light. It’s silly on purpose. The kind of silly you can only commit to when you’re surrounded by people who have known you long enough to not ask you to be anything else.

Birthdays can make you count things—years, plans, what’s next—but nights like this pull you back into something simpler. The warmth of a crowded room. The shine of cheap decorations that somehow feel like celebration. The easy, familiar lean-in for a photo, the kind that says we’ve been here before and we’ll do it again.

I keep thinking about how memories live alongside you, the way a house creaks in winter or how a coat becomes part of a routine. Friendships do that too. They quietly collect in the background, then show up all at once when you need a reason to toast.

Silly 30th birthday with the boys—gold, laughter, and the kind of night that leaves you grateful the next morning.

30th Bday with Bae, My 2017 Birthday Celebration

| #birthday #party #boyfriendswhobirthday

| ???

| For my 30th birthday in 2017, I was told I had to “do it big”. A concept I have never really been into for my birthday celebrations. However, being the big three zero, I decided to give it a shot.

Burger Brunch Booyah!

| ??? | #burger #brunch #booyah @davidscafenyc

| Wow, what can I say, this burger was worth all the hype at David’s Cafe! The Burger Queen Deluxe is a double patty with American cheese, pickles, lettuce, tomato and a special sauce.

Weekend means Morning Coffee so Gimme

| ☕️?? | #coffee #boyfriendsWhoBrew #weekend @gimmecoffee

| Gimme that coffee please! Angel and I have been in our new apartment for several months now and we have been an a quest for a new coffee place.

Usagi and Mooshi Time at Tokyo Record Bar

| ??? | #nyu #japanese #oishi @tokyorecordbar

| Accidentally, Mikey (Usagi) and I (Mooshi) made reservations at one of 2017 summer’s most trendy restaurants, Tokyo Record Bar. There are a few interesting gimmicks about this eatery:

First, it is a small Japanese style restaurant that has the feel of “small & off the beaten path”.

The location itself is the basement of a champagne bar in NYU-town and only seats about 14 people. To enter the bar you must be lead through a champagne bar, down a small set of stairs, and into a small 8×10 foot room. At the beginning of your meal each person at your table chooses a song from a playlist that will be played through the meal. An in-house DJ will compile the songs into a playlist and the fun starts. For the record, pun intended, I chose the song “Creep” by TLC. The locations serves two seatings a night and the entire meal is coursed, without substitutions. I will not spoil the last course for you, but it is not your typical Japanese dish. Overall the experience was good and I give it a B+ rating. I do think the art painted on the walls is especially good; there are even mountains that look like breast. However I think the fox in kimono stole the show in the whimsey department.

The food was not 5-star quality and wish the restaurant would have played more into storytelling that they did at the beginning and end of the meal. That being said, the price was right, but still prevented this from being an “A” in my book. I would still recommend the experience of a Japanese style pub, especially when given the changes to enjoy some music on vinyl.

| Read Insta-comments -> http://bt.zamartz.com/2yMvkcI

Book Boo in BK

There’s a particular kind of quiet you can find in Brooklyn when you’re near the water—busy, but softened. A long stretch of boardwalk, the river breathing beside it, and the skyline set back like a thought you can’t quite finish.

He sits with a book open in his hands, cap pulled low, knees folded in. The page has that steady pull that makes the rest of the world feel optional. Around him, the city keeps its own pace: distant footsteps, a few voices drifting past, the metal rails holding the edge between land and water.

It’s an ordinary scene, which is why it feels like a small miracle. The kind of moment you don’t plan for, but later you remember the light and the space and how simple it looked to be completely elsewhere without leaving.

I like the way places can live alongside us like that—how a walkway, a bench, a view of towers and clouds can become part of a memory without announcing itself. Brooklyn doesn’t always give you room to exhale, but sometimes it does, and you take it when it comes.

Book Boo in BK, paused mid-chapter, with the whole city behind him like background noise.

As Seen in NYC

As Seen in NYC doesn’t announce itself. It shows up halfway through a block, under scaffolding ribs that turn the sidewalk into a narrow corridor of shadow and noise. The city is loud here—traffic bouncing between buildings, metal humming overhead—and most people are already past before they notice anything at all.

A DUANEreade by Walgreens sign hangs above, big, official, corporate to the core. And underneath it, sprayed fast and unapologetic, is ZAMARTZ. Not sanctioned. Not polished. Just there.

That’s New York. Even the most controlled branding eventually gets interrupted. Someone leaves a mark. A clean surface becomes lived-in.

People move beneath it without breaking stride—heads down, shoulders forward, chasing the next light before it turns red. The crosswalk raises its little stop hand. The corner pretends to be a pause. Nothing actually stops.

I like this kind of detail because it isn’t trying to be iconic. It’s a reminder that the city is layered: scaffolding and storefronts, temporary structures and permanent ambition, private intent written in public ink. The mundane here isn’t empty—it’s textured.

If you’ve ever walked under scaffolding and felt the world compress into a tunnel, you know the feeling. And if you look up at the right moment, you might catch the city leaving a note.

Sometimes, it even says your name.

Avocado Toast & Local Crottin Cheese

??? | #avacadotoast #laborday #boyfriendswhobrunch #microgreens

| Today was another exciting day to make a variation on Avocado toast. This toast was made with all local Ingredients, mostly from the Greenpoint Greenmarket. This toast was built special starting with Cheese from Cheval Farmstead Dairy and topped with micro greens from Two Guys from Woodbridge.

| Read Insta-comments -> http://bt.zamartz.com/2xKn7EP

Boys in the Jungle

There’s a certain kind of quiet you only find in a room full of plants. Not silence exactly—more like a soft, green breathing. Leaves cut across the light like slow-moving shadows, and everything feels paused for just a second, as if the city outside is holding its noise at the door.

Boys in the Jungle is what we called it, which sounds dramatic until you realize it’s just two of us standing close, half-hidden behind long blades of green. A mirror selfie, sure, but also a small record of being together in a place that asks nothing from you except to look.

The plants do what old houses do: they make the air feel lived-in. They hold onto warmth. They turn the ordinary—glass, fluorescent light, a phone held at chest height—into something a little more like a scene you’d remember later.

We’re in Brooklyn, but the image doesn’t insist on location. It insists on texture: patterned shirts, hats pulled low, the bright wash of indoor light, and the bold interruptions of leaves in the foreground. The jungle isn’t wild; it’s curated. Still, it has that same effect—making you feel smaller in a good way, like you can step back from yourself.

Sometimes that’s all a photo needs to do: prove that a moment existed, green and uncomplicated, before you walked back out into the day.