photographs and random miscellaney from my brain
I finally went to the new Whitney in Chelsea this past October. One of the lovely features is an outdoor space on each floor where you can see sculptures and also take in various views of the city. Here, you can see the High Line (normally everyone’s favorite spot for elevated skyline viewing) from high above itself.
View of my parents’ apple orchard in early August, and then this past thanksgiving weekend.
even if unintended, I saw this on my corner today, and it comforted me. Please keep being kind to each other.
I was just amused by the juxtaposition of these two police cars. And wondering who gets stuck driving the tiny car.
Also, yes, they’re totally parked in the new bike lane on Amsterdam.
I don’t think my distaste for New York’s Penn Station is any secret, but it only gets emphasized when I get to spend time in other train stations that are more beautiful. Obviously, here in NYC, Grand Central and the new Oculus are great spaces (and vastly different to each other), but other cities still have beautiful Amtrak stations.
I took a short trip to Philly this summer to visit friends, the weekend before the DNC, and so 30th street was at its shiniest, spiffiest best. This is one of my favorite stations – sure Amtrak does its best to muck things up with its standardized modern signage that makes zero effort to blend with the classic art deco building, but it’s still OK.
Pete’s tavern. They’re very subtle about the fact that O’Henry used to write here.
(I actually love this bar and on the rare occasion that I have gotten my act together to celebrate my birthday, this has been one of my more favored locations)
The most common definition for corruption has to do with grift and dishonesty. But corruption can also mean decay and rot.
Both variations of the word are appropriate here.
When people learn about late 19th and early 20th-century New York City political corruption, one person (Boss Tweed) and his machine, Tammany Hall are at the heart of the story. But what people generally don’t realize is that Tammany Hall was an actual, physical…hall. It had a few locations, and this was the last.
The building has spent the last few decades operating as the union square theater, and is now vacant and being gut renovated.
If you get up close, you can see the inscriptions to the old order of Tammany along the side. My favorite though, is the discovery of grift never ends – they’re attempting to preserve some of the friezes on the building, and they’re basically disintegrating to the touch because it turns out that they’re just something like plaster of Paris instead of proper building-grade materials. Heh.
Union square. These days, I think maybe we all need one of these.
