Sunday, January 08, 2006

Day Five: Dec. 29, 2005

The Puck Building. The little gold guy is Puck. I don't know what they do in the Puck Building.

Fire escapes are neat.

While waiting for a table at Lombardi's (great pizza), I took in the local scenery of the Lower East Side. Or maybe it's Soho. Hard to tell where one starts and one ends.

I like the facade of this building with the verdigris. So pretty.

A rather aggressive sign for a playground, I think.

Neat tree. That's all.

So I thought Gatsby's Bar was famous. Guess not. Still a nice building though.

This is the Department of Parks and Recreation headquarters. Also known as "The Arsenal." But it's a very nice building. In Central Park.

Closer view of the door, with old swords and spears and whatever else.

The Central Park Zoo. There was a sea lion somewhere in that pool.

More zoo. I really like dead trees. Or not dead, actually, but bare trees. I think they're interesting and expressive.

The Delcorte Clock. No, not famous.

I really like it when nature grows over man made things.

Central Park is so beautiful.

This is my "sad leaf" portrait.

I'm tired of writing captions. There isn't much explanation to this one.

Bryan.

This sort of hut thing. Interestingly built.

Interesting graffiti.

This sounds like the lyrics to a Backstreet Boys song.

I think this tree looks sad, but interesting.

Some pond.

A red ladder. Overcast days are great for making colors pop.

An obvious shot.

I like this little dock thing.

Bench.

Inside the Metropolitain Museum of Art, in the Ancient Egypt exhibit.

The least specific sign in the world. It was inside a falafel place on the Lower East Side or the East Village or Aphabet City or one of those places.

All my photos of The Dakota turned out pretty awful. So none are here. But we went there and it was interesting. It's just this place, though, you know? If you didn't know it was what it was, you'd never find out by walking past it.

Day Four: Dec. 28, 2005

They have hybrid buses in NY! Why don't we have that?! Genius!

The Chrysler Building! Yes, most of my photos are taken at night because I like to sleep in, plus I was jet lagged on LA time, plus in winter the sun sets at like 4:30. Hence, barely any daylight photos.

There's always steam coming out of the sewers and gutters, it's kinda neat. It's warm but smells bad. So I guess it may not be kinda neat.

I sure do like that steam.

While waiting in line to get to the top of the Empire State Building, I remarked upon the interesting art deco embellishments. Nice interior.

I told you there would be a ton more cityscapes. There are a bunch of these.

I don't know what that big gold building is, but I like it.

More Chrysler Building. There's a ton more of that one too.

I don't know any of these buildings. None. But it's nice.

So I wrapped the string connected to the camera around my wrist like three times and dropped it over the edge while holding the shutter button, and this is the loveliness that I got. Scared me and everyone around me though.

Some more Chrylser Building and surrounding stuff.

This is a big street. I can't tell you which one it is though because pretty much all streets in New York are big.

That big thing on the right half of the picture is Macy's with their big old tree. Or just the lights anyway, that's not the big famous tree that everyone goes and sees, that one is at Rockefeller Center, and we didn't go there. Don't know where that is, actually.

The spear-like protector gate to prevent suicides. Kinda scary looking, but pretty as well.

Day Three: Dec. 27, 2005

Grand Central Station. Once used for above ground trains, now a really big underground train station. It's still all decked out and fancy like it used to be, but it's so utilitarian that I don't think most people really look at it that much. I mean, people that actually live in NY.

Like this chandelier! It's realyl pretty, I think. And I like the reflection. Windows are fun.

The grand hall room thingy. It's pretty grand.

Details of the ticket windows that are no longer in use.

Wow, I didn't realize I had so many photos of Grand Central. It is quite grand though.

The first glimpse of the Empire State Building we had, though it wouldn't be the last.

Tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiimes Squaaaaaaaaaaaaaaare.

I think this is funny, because there's a huge Cup O Noodles. You wouldn't think to see that particular product advertised in Times Square. I also like the "steam" on top. It's neat.

More Times Square. Otherwise, it's not that interesting.

So Charlotte took us to this CRAZY place, this Indian restaurant with all of these lights hanging from the ceiling and Indian music blasting, and when it was anyone's birthday, they turned off ALL of these lights and blasted a different song with the refrain of "happy birthday to you" and this weird disco ball thing went off and all the waiters danced with the birthday people, but the whole place was about the size of a hallway. It was great.

I color-corrected these ones to show all the crap that's hanging on the walls and in the lights. Chili lights, butterfly lights, blow-up pool toys, Christmas lights, holographic wallpaper, the works.

Another view.

Our benevolent host, Charlotte. She actually looks more normal than this.

Bryan looking surprised but is probably posing.