Fake taxis and an early Halloween
04/27/03
Even stranger than this former taxi are these fake-looking alleged movie taxis. They were parked within a couple blocks of each other in Inwood, and at least one is owned by an acupuncturist. (Acupuncturists get special license plates now?)
Around Isham Park, Inwood
I got on the F train at Jay Street today, and there were no lights. Other than occasional flickers, we were in the dark, lit only by sporadic tunnel lights, all the way under the river. The conductor came on over the PA and said, in full-effect Halloween voice, "Scaaaary train ride," then cackled and repeated it. Now that everyone was grinning, he said in a rapid staccato, "No it's not. No it's not. Just keep moving." Whoa.
Too bad I had to get out at East Broadway and couldn't hear more. But, speaking of East Broadway, the token clerks are getting restless:
East Broadway
Then I got thoroughly drenched by water dripping into the A train, underground, when it hadn't rained in at least 20 hours. It was an odd day.
8:47 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
East Village
04/26/03
Look closely at the clock.
Houston and Ave. A
Ave. A
Ave. B and 6th
10:38 AM | Comments (9) | TrackBack (0)
The Voice of God
04/25/03
Did you ever wonder what the Voice of God would look like? Wonder no longer, because here he is (the guy with the beard).
How do I know he's the Voice of God? He told me, silly (and the rest of the train). And really, don't the cats clinch it?
A train, Brooklyn
10 a.m. update: Had another preacher this morning, this one a remarkably loud-voiced woman in the first car of the C train. (Her voice, incidentally, was much louder than the Voice of God.) And when she started talking about how she had reached her destination, and praising the Lord, I was momentarily almost convinced that the world was about to end -- but no, she just meant that she was getting out at Jay Street.
For sheer religious fervor, there's nothing quite like the Fulton Local. In the last ten hours, at least.
8:25 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
first first first second first
04/23/03
My favorite thing about Brooklyn, at the moment, is that even the easiest-to-remove graffiti sticks around for ages. (In this case, six days and counting.)
Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn
Brighton Beach, Brooklyn
The best kind of copyright infringement? Decades-old copyright infringement.
Coney Island
Jamaica, Queens
Harlem
10:46 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
Masked men
04/22/03
Does anyone have an explanation for the ubiquitous masked men on Sixth Avenue yesterday? They were all well-dressed and carrying objects; I saw them twice, several hours apart, and many of my co-workers saw them too, at different times.
6th Avenue and 46th Street
Canal Street
Red Hook, Brooklyn
Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn
8:57 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)
Flatbush
04/21/03
Flatbush, Brooklyn
9:55 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)
Pictures of tourists taking pictures
04/20/03
Rockefeller Center
Times Square
World Trade Center site
World Trade Center site
12:38 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack (0)
Springtime for Hitler
04/18/03
How often do you get asked for directions in New York? It tends to be about once a week for me, but it happened twice today, including once in a random part of Queens I'd never been to before. (The other time was someone on my block looking for the A train.) Do I just look like I know where I'm going, even when I don't?
Tribeca
|
Park Slope
|
Magician on the F train, Queens
Park Slope
Park Slope
Fort Greene
11:38 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
Room with a view
04/15/03
There's no joy quite like riding an A train into Hoyt-Schermerhorn when the conductor has a Dutch accent and gives it the full phlegmy-throat treatment.
The view from my new office building:
Times Square between 44th and 45th
10:26 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)
Summer? Finally?
04/13/03
And the end of an era. *sniff* It couldn't have happened on a nicer day.
103rd and Lexington
City Island, The Bronx
City Island
City Island
10:00 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)
Upper Manhattan
04/12/03
Why did no one ever tell me that there are buildings on stilts in Manhattan?
Inwood
Generally good advice.
Inwood
Inwood
Living in California, I learned that stores ending in -eria sold the item before the "eria": thus taqueria, panaderia (bakery), etc. Imagine my surprise, then:
Inwood
(It actually means "hardware store," alas.)
8:14 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)
Take this job and...
04/11/03
I quit my three-week-old job today, and the boss quickly called up the recruiter who placed me there and spewed lies about me. So I'm not in the best of moods, but walking in the rain helped a little:
Archaeological strata, Flatbush Avenue
Neighbors, surprisingly many blocks away from 666 Fulton
Prospect Heights
Yum.
Fort Greene
8:42 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
Traces of the past
04/10/03
Via Lightningfield, Storefront Churches of Brooklyn. See also here. How long will it be until someone gets the idea of a combination storefront church and laundromat?
No longer a taxicab.
Cypress Hills, Brooklyn
No longer a telco truck.
Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn
No longer an effective billboard.
Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn
No longer...um...never mind.
Above Japan
Yu Yuan Gardens, Shanghai
10:46 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
FJB, and digging into the morgue
04/09/03
Knitting Factory Old Office
Maxwell Dworkin, Harvard
My famous (non-vanity!) license plate
Shanghai
Shanghai, same place. The text reads: "Carry forward diet civilization. Bring along a period in one's life swim."
Update: Starr reports that this appears to be a character-for-character dictionary translation. A better translation would be something like "Expand culinary culture! Advance the development of food trends!" As for "swim," that comes from the word for "trend" -- it's like a water current.
11:00 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
To Boston and back
04/07/03
The ultimate culinary experience.
Eliot House at Harvard
They can program this into the trains, but it's been two years and they still think the B and D go to Brooklyn?
Bowling Green
Penn Station
Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn
5th Avenue and 21st Street, today
9:50 PM | Comments (1)
Writing titles is hard
04/03/03
Shop at our store! All items are either 99 cents, less, or more!
Bowery, Chinatown
Chinatown
23rd and Park
9:44 PM | Comments (1)
Monkeys, what they eat, and where it goes (not in that order)
04/03/03
In Lauren's office
Madison Square
Nothing so special about this, except that I spent two years working with an open-source program called SpiderMonkey.
Museum of Natural History