S
Sir Novelty Fashion
Guest
Ganja's not the only one to have made the trip south recently. I did too - my first trip - with photos to show; the primary difference between our offerings being:
1) The weather was nastier when I was there
2) My wee tiny camera takes wee nasty photos
and
3) I'm not a very good photographer.
Still. Here's what I got:
----
Stayed a night at the Newark airport Days Inn. There was pea soup, and a monorail:
This was the first thing I saw when we got out of the Holland Tunnel. It was a large building.
The East Village - very twee, very tidy.
In a rainstorm, on the west side:
New construction on the Bowery, near where we stayed. A lowrise that would not have looked out of place in a Context project:
More Bowery. The interesting thing about much of Manhattan is that the buildings are roughly in scale with one another, and yet very few are actually the same size or shape. So on one hand, you get a unified aesthetic, but nary a cornice-line.
Washington Square Park. It was save the unsaved day. I wanted to talk to one of the young acolytes ("...so, who WOULD Jesus bomb?") but time was short.
Fifth Avenue
Midtown
The inside of the Fifth Avenue (?) H&M. Just for reference.
In a window display nearby. The MTA gets it about self-promotion.
Towers: pointy
...And here we are.
On the inside, this sign was still up. An Apple Store employee gingerly asked me why I was taking a picture of the sign. I told him that this was the most famous elevator malfunction on the whole Internet. (Several hapless patrons had been freed by firemen after a few hours trapped in Steve Jobs' great glass elevator.) He was unimpressed.
The staircase still worked.
There was nothing much to see on the inside. Take the Eaton Centre store and multiply by, I don't know, six. Same deal. That day, we walked from Washington Square to 70th Street, though it was getting to dark and wet for photos by the time we hit Central Park.
Home again to the hostel:
Looking up the Bowery on a nicer day:
Ghost bike:
The garment district on the Lower East Side, kind of an overblown Kensington. I wasn't a huge fan.
Looking north from the balcony of the Tenement Museum in that neighborhood:
Dome-type thing of some variety. Possibly famous. This is where the Brooklyn Bridge enters Manhattan.
Edit: where the Manhattan Bridge enters...
Off Canal Street, we ran into a Catholic procession and band. It was great:
Wall Street-ish: dead on a weekend
Brand-new Staten Island Ferry terminal:
By the time we got on the Staten Island Ferry, my feet were killing me. I sat down next to one of my friends, and popped up to look over the rail. When I turned around, some lady had taken my seat. "Excuse me," said my friend, "he was sitting there." The lady looked a bit smug, and said - I kid you not - "I was here first." I glared, and went back to the railing. She stayed in the seat for five minutes - just enough to prove her point - and then was gone.
On the way back, a group of frat boys were arguing earnestly over whether the curvature of the Verezano Narrows bridge reflected the curvature of the Earth.
The view from the rail:
Downtown Brooklyn:
Back in Manhattan: infill development going up:
Looking up Broadway from 3rd Street:
Edit: Looking down Lafayette, not up Broadway. Looking somewhere, anyway:
The reason for my visit - it was a bit disappointing, but that's another story.
There were skyscrapers going up all over the place. I kept wondering what was demolished to make way for them, Manhattan not having our natural wealth of parking lots to cannibalise. I wonder if it was blocks like the one on the right:
Times Square:
The saddest part of trip was my determination to find Penn Station. I kept seeing signs for it, but I could find the station itself anywhere! I remembered reading such great things about it, somewhere...
Grand Central, and its reflection:
The Citi-thing tower that apparently needed to have all the joints re-welded after the fact to keep it from toppling in a hurricane:
The next day I drove back to Toronto, and for the first time in my life, I crossed its city limits having driven from a big town to a small one.
C'est tout.
1) The weather was nastier when I was there
2) My wee tiny camera takes wee nasty photos
and
3) I'm not a very good photographer.
Still. Here's what I got:
----
Stayed a night at the Newark airport Days Inn. There was pea soup, and a monorail:
This was the first thing I saw when we got out of the Holland Tunnel. It was a large building.
The East Village - very twee, very tidy.
In a rainstorm, on the west side:
New construction on the Bowery, near where we stayed. A lowrise that would not have looked out of place in a Context project:
More Bowery. The interesting thing about much of Manhattan is that the buildings are roughly in scale with one another, and yet very few are actually the same size or shape. So on one hand, you get a unified aesthetic, but nary a cornice-line.
Washington Square Park. It was save the unsaved day. I wanted to talk to one of the young acolytes ("...so, who WOULD Jesus bomb?") but time was short.
Fifth Avenue
Midtown
The inside of the Fifth Avenue (?) H&M. Just for reference.
In a window display nearby. The MTA gets it about self-promotion.
Towers: pointy
...And here we are.
On the inside, this sign was still up. An Apple Store employee gingerly asked me why I was taking a picture of the sign. I told him that this was the most famous elevator malfunction on the whole Internet. (Several hapless patrons had been freed by firemen after a few hours trapped in Steve Jobs' great glass elevator.) He was unimpressed.
The staircase still worked.
There was nothing much to see on the inside. Take the Eaton Centre store and multiply by, I don't know, six. Same deal. That day, we walked from Washington Square to 70th Street, though it was getting to dark and wet for photos by the time we hit Central Park.
Home again to the hostel:
Looking up the Bowery on a nicer day:
Ghost bike:
The garment district on the Lower East Side, kind of an overblown Kensington. I wasn't a huge fan.
Looking north from the balcony of the Tenement Museum in that neighborhood:
Dome-type thing of some variety. Possibly famous. This is where the Brooklyn Bridge enters Manhattan.
Edit: where the Manhattan Bridge enters...
Off Canal Street, we ran into a Catholic procession and band. It was great:
Wall Street-ish: dead on a weekend
Brand-new Staten Island Ferry terminal:
By the time we got on the Staten Island Ferry, my feet were killing me. I sat down next to one of my friends, and popped up to look over the rail. When I turned around, some lady had taken my seat. "Excuse me," said my friend, "he was sitting there." The lady looked a bit smug, and said - I kid you not - "I was here first." I glared, and went back to the railing. She stayed in the seat for five minutes - just enough to prove her point - and then was gone.
On the way back, a group of frat boys were arguing earnestly over whether the curvature of the Verezano Narrows bridge reflected the curvature of the Earth.
The view from the rail:
Downtown Brooklyn:
Back in Manhattan: infill development going up:
Looking up Broadway from 3rd Street:
Edit: Looking down Lafayette, not up Broadway. Looking somewhere, anyway:
The reason for my visit - it was a bit disappointing, but that's another story.
There were skyscrapers going up all over the place. I kept wondering what was demolished to make way for them, Manhattan not having our natural wealth of parking lots to cannibalise. I wonder if it was blocks like the one on the right:
Times Square:
The saddest part of trip was my determination to find Penn Station. I kept seeing signs for it, but I could find the station itself anywhere! I remembered reading such great things about it, somewhere...
Grand Central, and its reflection:
The Citi-thing tower that apparently needed to have all the joints re-welded after the fact to keep it from toppling in a hurricane:
The next day I drove back to Toronto, and for the first time in my life, I crossed its city limits having driven from a big town to a small one.
C'est tout.
