very simple

67th street studios

I love this building

purple

I kind of love the audacity it takes to coat a classic upper west side building in the color purple.

another empire state building

I loved erector sets when I was a kid, and found this in the transit museum store. put it together in an afternoon.

For those who don’t know what the high line is, it is an elevated rail track that runs along the west side of manhattan in the meatpacking district. Back in the days when they used to actually bring in cattle to the meatpacking plants instead of celebrities to nightclubs, it was an essential part of the industry. But over the years it fell into disrepair and disuse. So in the past few years, it was turned into a park, which opened earlier this year. The best part about the high line is, of course, the view. In addition to yesterday’s 365 pic, here are some other shots that I took while wandering around (click to enlarge)…

As part of both the 365 project and the photo classes I’ve been taking, I’m pretty much obligated to go out and take pictures every day. I also have a decent amount of free time at the moment, so I’ve challenged myself to go outside of my neighborhood/comfort zone of the upper west side. I realized that this would be made easier by the fact that, sitting on my shelf gathering dust, was City Walks: New York, which I bought ages ago and then promptly put on a shelf. I’m not promising to do all 50 or anything (in large part because at least some of them are part of my “regular” route, so they don’t interest me as “new” places to go), but I am going to try to use the box as a resource when I’m at a loss on a beautiful day like today.

So this afternoon, I picked two walks that backed onto each other, the “wall street” and “city hall” walks. Aside from the sad panda below, here are the rest of the pics that turned out OK (click to enlarge).

empire state building

I always love it best when the ESB is dressed in white.

Last week’s episode of Mad Men focused, in part, on the planned destruction of the beaux-arts masterpiece that was Penn Station in favor of the horrendously ugly madison square garden. Considered one of the greatest architectural travesties in the history of New York City, not even an adman as great as Don Draper could sell the “futuristic” MSG believably. I wasn’t even alive when they tore down Penn Station, but I feel the loss every time I see a photo, or have to take Amtrak. And they’re still trying to fix the error by reshaping the companion post office across the street as a “new-old” railway terminal (one which faces endless delays in its own right).

But the one good thing that the travesty gave us was new rules regarding historic preservation in New York City. Which is the only reason that the New York Central Railroad wasn’t able to do the same thing to Grand Central Terminal (and yes, there were plans on the books to tear that one down as well). Instead, the station was renovated and renewed, and is now considered one of the crown jewels of New York City architecture, one of the most beautiful train stations in the world, and one of my personal favorite places to go. Sometimes I just stop by when I’m in the neighborhood to stare at the ceiling. One of my favorite birthday dinners ever was a spur of the moment decision to eat at MJ’s steakhouse, sitting under the great ceiling. The food was fine, but the atmosphere was what couldn’t be beat. The Summer Streets events that just concluded here in NYC afford pedestrians and cyclists a unique opportunity to stop and take a lingering look at portions of the great station that otherwise go by as a blur in a taxi window.

Now, if only something could be done about the monstrosity of the MetLife building in the background.

Did anyone else read this story when they were a kid? I always loved it, probably in part because it was based on a real lighthouse under the George Washington Bridge.

They’re clearly rebuilding the park up in that neck of the woods, but last night I made it all the way up there, and was surprised at how easy it was to get up close to the lighthouse (and how tiny it was).

So, about a year and a half ago, I noted that, while I was shipping off to Palau for two weeks, they’d be filming a movie in our conference rooms with an

[extremely attractive, academy award-winning, awesomely liberal actor/writer/director].

Not that I’m giving away who such actor was, but let’s just say that if you might just want to go see Michael Clayton when it comes out.

So I’ve finally gotten around to posting some of the photos I took in Milan during my last few days there (and on the return trip over Easter), and Here they are. They’re mostly from the top of the Duomo, which I climbed with a friend on my last day of work (talk about a long lunch break), but there are a few thrown in of the Castello (which looks cool but was completely rebuilt, so it’s kind of fake), and some other random stuff.

[Update 2015] In an effort to reduce the number of holdover pages on the blog, I am slowly (very slowly) integrating these albums into the appropriate historical posts on the blog itself. As such, photos are now directly below.