It seems like everyone in NYC has some great shots of these past few weeks of winter…
well here are some of mine!
The camera is not great on the Nexus 5 but I managed to get a few good shots of my commute home and then a fun walk in Riverside too.
34th street unplowed
The Park
I’ve been plugging away on my proposal – so most of my writing juice – in fact most of my time is going towards that endeavor.
This means there’s less time for fun things like reading, biking, and city seeing…Which also means less to write about.
Luckily I’m nearly done with this draft!
Until then, my brain feels like this:
What I do have time for is reading poems, especially those from the New Yorker which are typically short, thoughtful and great for commutes, trips to the fridge or moments when you just want to ponder.
Here are three of my recent faves:
by Dean Young
by A.E. Stallings
And finally, Death of Argos got taken down, and possibly thrown away, because it was making Sand sad.
I read the Odyssey years ago in high school but this translation tells a piece of the story in a really amazing way:
Citi Bikes on the Upper West Side! If it was going to happen anywhere it would be here.
Riverside has always been a mystical park. Even as Guilliani and now Bloomberg whitewash the city Riverside resists.
As youths, it was in Riverside where we escaped the confines of prep school to frolic in the animal kingdom, or trade stories with an old man who lived underground while his campfire cracked and licked at painted walls, and it was in Riverside on Christmas eve that Lester, Bat, Marley and I dove into piles of freshly discarded pines – light as haystacks and fragrant like a forest.
These days it is Riverside where the green turf fields turn to sheets of sparkling white – illuminated by the dipping winter sun, and in the summer it is Riverside were behemoth bottom trawling fish spill their guts, and bearded warblers sing of bygone eras.
So of course it would be Riverside where a wily band of nudniks chose to dump their dozen Citi Bikes. Were they stolen? Has someone figured out how to hack a Citi Bike rack?
But it had to be a group because the nearest station is over a mile away, and to get twelve bikes to 97th – from 59th – that would take a lot of time. Were they somehow lost – at $1,000 per bike -that would be a hefty fine! Or was it a statement “Bring Citi Bikes to the Upper West Side, By Any Means!”.
Materializing after midnight and vanishing before dawn their origins and disappearance remain a Riverside enigma. Though the intent seems clear, these stolen Citi Bikes set free in Riverside Park send a message of dissent to the Bloombergian powers that be.
Riding down Riverside with Manfrank, Marsky and Sanderson on a lovely sunny day.
While locking up our bikes near the Pier i Cafe on 72nd (I just learned this place had a name). Some tourists were exclaiming about the stench of the Hudson, or so I thought.
As a I peered over the boardwalk’s steel railing that divides the human and the marine I noticed that what stunk was not only the Hudson, but an enormous fish. Some claimed it was a barracuda, though the short nose and seemingly bottom feeding mouth made me think otherwise.
Mankfrank, an accomplished fisherman in his own right, subsequently identified the fish as a sturgeon (shortnose? atlantic perhaps?). Who knew the Hudson was still home to this caliber of fish?
In fact the sturgeon is the Hudson River Estuary’s logo, though I’d never seen one outside this blue and white image posted on the highways and byways running along its shore.
And though it was dead after all, seeing evidence of large life in the Hudson could be a heartening sign of the river’s health.
The other day a couple people from the Times were at our usual morning dog romp, here’s a link to what they created, as the multimedia component to this piece by Jan Hoffman on naming a dog.
(I couldn’t resist including the above image of mayor Boomberg in her best)
Snow covered Riverside pitch
I just finished reading “This is How You Lose Her”. Sometimes my body feels like Yunior’s.Though recently things have been going better. After a few years struggling with nagging injuries and not being able to play, in the passed few months I’ve finally been getting a few good games in! This isn’t me, but it’s a shot of one of my favorite places to join some pickup. Also, De Gea was ridiculous in the Champions league the other day.
