very simple

As anyone who spends any time looking through my photos can figure out, I’m a sucker for signs, particularly of the old/neon variety. Here are some I’ve shot in my wanderings around town.

The clover delicatessen

The Waverly restaurant

Bigelow drugs – this sign is such a landmark that I got worried for a second when I saw the scaffolding. But when I got closer I saw they had carefully worked to build around the sign while they did whatever facade/renovation work needs doing.

Sometimes you wander around the local Sunday flea market and find some really great jewelry or a fantastic vintage cigarette case.

And sometimes the local serial killer clown decides to rent a booth in order to sell off some of his clutter.

Milk silos on a dairy farm in western massachusetts, vs. water towers on a rooftop in new york city.

Catching up, again, with a backlog of photos. They accumulate in my camera and on my computer and then I get bursts of inspiration to start sorting through everything in order to post.

Part of the NYC that is disappearing, excellent sign for an old school laundromat that isn’t buried in a basement.

Today was the March for Our Lives, organized in the aftermath of the Parkland school shooting, but expanded to encompass so much more than that. For too long, the entire “debate” around gun control, or even the most basic attempts at minimal regulation that couldn’t even be described by any reasonable person as “control”, have been driven by the gun manufacturers’ lobby, otherwise known as the NRA. Having seen attempts to get anything done in the aftermath of myriad shootings get caught up in their rhetoric in the past, I honestly don’t know how this ends, but I’ve never felt this hopeful before. After Sandy Hook, I just felt despair – I remember writing posts on social media practically begging for something to change, and just…knowing that nothing would. But people don’t sit at home and write posts on social media anymore. Well, they do, but those posts are to organize and take to the streets. The biggest march today was in Washington, but as of last count, there were 817!! sister marches around the world.

The New York City march started (as they all do these days) at my front door. So I headed out this morning in my most comfortable shoes and my puffy vest that leaves my arms free to take pictures, and I took a bunch. I wasn’t close enough to the speaker stand to see anything, but I was really impressed that most of the speakers were young people. The two recognizably “adult” people were the librarian from Sandy Hook elementary school who survived the shooting there, and the mother of a shooting victim from NYC. There was also a significant emphasis on black lives matter and the fact that, despite the obvious attention the shootings and schools like sandy hook and parkland receive, black kids are ten times as likely to be victims of gun violence than white kids. That should not be forgotten. It’s also not just about school safety. It’s about life safety.

On another note, from the moment I entered the march, and throughout, there were teams of people trying to register folks to vote, checking to make sure people were registered to vote, reminding people to vote, etc. That is the most important thing right now. Nothing happens if we don’t vote in November.

Anyway, here are the pictures.

It’s been a year. An entire year since the inauguration. And a year since we created the largest protest in the history of our country. There have been more protests since then, and activism, and donating money, and time, and explaining to my dentist that I’m grinding my teeth like never before, and living every day like there’s another shoe (or worse) about to drop.

But it’s been a year. So we marched again.

Last year it was enormous, but organizationally complicated. This year it was simple. They started this year in my neighborhood. The entrance (until it got so crowded that the police had to keep moving it northward) was literally my street. So after I finished up my morning routine (including, yes, the aforementioned dentist), I fortified myself with some lunch, got my camera, and just walked out my front door right into the middle of things.

I realized I haven’t posted anything in about a month, despite the fact that I always still take take pictures. Here’s one I took about a month ago, walking around the village one evening. I love the idea that they re-used the old sign as the base. My theory is actually that new hanging signs like this are actually prohibited (because they have the potential to fall on people’s heads), but the old/existing signs are grandfathered in, so these guys found a loophole. Which is awesome.

I try to get out to Coney Island at least once every summer – it changes so much year-to-year, while retaining its essential Coney-ness, that going out to photograph it always seems like a good idea. Not necessarily a good idea? Deciding to do this on a really beautiful, and hot, July 4th. I did try to take precautions, like looking up when the hot dog eating contest was supposed to start (and end), but apparently published times are not accurate. I arrived at 1:30, almost perfectly timed to get trapped in a wall of humanity that was being blocked from moving anywhere while protesters tried to disrupt the main event.

So after that claustrophobic mess, I finally made my way to the boardwalk for my yearly photo stroll. This year with many, many more people. Next year I’m going back to my normal tradition of going out there at 6am on a random non-holiday. Still glad I went. Despite what others might think, New York is the most quintessentially American place on earth.

Spotted about two weeks ago in Columbus Circle. It took me a minute of watching her twirl around the statue of Columbus to realize she was part of a gimmick being put on by one of the tour bus companies that would drive around the circle periodically.

Two separate trips to the high line over the past month. First, in mid-April, some of my long-lost cousins from Israel were in town, so we spent some time together, including a trek on the high line. That was much more about spending time together than getting good photos (and wrangling ten family members on a gorgeous holiday weekend, including toddlers, will throw a wrench in ANY artistic endeavors!). Second was last weekend – the weather was supposed to be wretched, but it ended up not raining (unlike today), so I decided to take advantage of the surprise good weather and spend some time in the open air again.

The two walks were only three weeks apart, but its quite remarkable how much more green there was on the second trip – you can see the distinction from the first few photos, where the trees are barely blooming and the grasses are still mostly brown and barely grown-in, and then the latter photos, where everything is just an absolute explosion of greenery. It’s really no wonder my allergies have been completely haywire for the past few weeks.