Man alone in wheelchair...what next? Big City Story.

Man appears to have fallen asleep in wheelchair...is he OK? Is he homeless? Unwritten code of the City is that everyone will just walk around him under maybe someone decides to call in to report him...he could be dead, who knows.

Remote control car and other toys

Man plays with remote control car on Midtown sidewalk-- fascinated little boy ( at upper right of photo) had to be dragged away by mother, he was enraptured. I was pretty interested in watching the high speed maneuvers of the car on the sidewalk myself...this car moved FAST, believe me.

I remember when I was about 12 I had a friend who built a remote controlled airplane...went with him and his father to way out to a huge field in the countryside where fellow enthusiasts brought their planes and flew ( or crashed) them

Have heard from friend who was so interested in equipment and model planes etc. just once since high school...he later was in the Air Force and was a cargo plane flight instructor, and then later flew cargo planes for 20 years or more. He now lives in Oklahoma and his main passion in his later years is riding his motorcycle...he complains about the roads way out in rural Oklahoma getting too crowded!

Gothic in Gramercy Park Area- Park Avenue South

Park Avenue South has all kinds of architecture ( a totally renovated modern looking building too)--
love this old Protestant Welfare League HQ building...what a Gothic pile it is...and of course the curious clock sticking out from building on Park Avenue South. What can symbolism of clock ornamentation mean?

It's...Megantic!!

What a stately entrance to the Megantic ( reminds me of Titanic!!) apartments in lowest Southern part of what people now call Murray Hill...

Of course, you will note security camera has been added to original design...

This was obviously designed as a "better class" of tenement building back when it was built ( late 1800's. probably) --and after going through who knows how many transformations is today I believe all "luxury" condos ( luxurious certainly as far as the price is concerned...)

Of course, it could still be a rental building with a few older people clinging on to their rent stabilized apartments ( not being able to move to anyplace else in Manhattan now!)

Ben and Jerry's, ketchup

Heard on the BBC that Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream was the best seller in Europe...I really should look for some additional verification of this, but let's just believe the BBC for once ( despite what my friend Claire from Belfast used to say about "never trust anything the BBC says,"...)

Also heard on same segment how ketchup is very big in one European country...bet you will never guess which one...well, BBC said it was Sweden. Why Swedes like ketchup makes no sense to me but then I was never that big a fan of Swedish food ( except for the meatballs and I eat a whole lot less meat these days, like a lot of people. Oh yeah, herring is O.K. too....)

Searching for Our Roots

A friend of mine sent me back pictures from Hawaii some time ago, some of them of the incredibly overgrown and tangled above ground roots of some of the trees.

Generally speaking, Manhattan trees just grow right out of the ground around them, but for some reason on East 30th  Street between Lexington and Park Avenue South there are a number of trees with complicated roots which have worked their way above the ground.

There is probably a very simple explanation for this...something blocking the roots underground, most likely...

Also on these blocks are a lot of very old, simple brownstone sort of houses which now are worth a fortune for the kinds of yuppies who invest in the area...30 years ago people did not want the houses much at all ( crime was worse then, especially at night) and of course they were available for a smidgen of what they cost now.

There is also a lack of certain "amenities" like close-by supermarkets and drugstores to these blocks...it is much worse in parts of the Upper East Side though ( HOW do some people up there get their groceries? Do they have lots of items shipped in from outlets like Whole Foods? You can just guess that most of the food flowing into these fancy uptown places is organic, free range ( if not vegan), and probably includes soy milk ( which I now have heard is not really so great for you....although I am sure at some point someone like that Dr. Oz from the Oprah show was pushing soy milk just like he is behind all sorts of other trendy diet developments.)

Anyway, I took some pix of similar roots a while back but the lighting was not very good and I said then I would come back again and get some better photos...

Heat Wave-- Peekaboo Views

Longest Day of the Year was also the hottest day so far...up to 97 degrees and very humid.

I have not been posting much lately due to illness, hope to get back to this blog now.

Peek-a-boo views of diverse kinds of architecture are revealed everywhere in Midtown...meanwhile, an ad for GNC Stores near Midtown Tunnel obviously portrays California lifestyle... GNC is not my favorite store, they went on selling the poisonous Phen Phen until the government absolutely forced them to stop pushing it... think they are just another health craze place that puts profits first ( happens too often in this society).

Manhattan Roots

MOST trees in Manhattan just grow straight out of the ground with little above ground root action..
These trees on East 30th Street between Lexington and Park Avenue South are an exception..
Wish there had not been so much direct sunlight on roots, it makes it hard to make out the complex shapes, but you get the idea..

Trees with big above ground roots are common some places, like in Hawaii...

Block has some very old houses, some of which still seem to be single family homes. Very secluded feeling....

Manhattanhenge May 2012

TWICE a year, the sun sets in alignment with Manhattan's "east-west" streets ( which are not "true" east west but more ENE-WSW)...the effect is something of a light show.

Went out at the appointed time but no light show...too many storm clouds on the horizon...women passing by said to me, " Is it happening?" And I had to say, "Afraid not!"

Here is like to Guardian article on what Manhattanhenge is supposed to look like etc.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-news-blog/2012/may/29/manhattanhenge-2012-new-york-city-sunset

Balloon Happiness

Helium sources may be being depleted, and the substance growing more scarce, but people still love helium filled balloons and they are searching for new helium sources all over the globe.

This young woman seems either to be coming from or going to a party-- and is smiling at the camera, which is rare in New York City!!

On May 20, a colorful Asian street bazaar was held to help aid North Korean refugees and also the Church of St. Francis of Assisi ( which does not have a regular "parish" but caters to the community as whole with a lot of outreach and social programs)...

The event was right off of Greeley Square ( just South of Herald Square)--close to Macy's and the other big stores there...

All sorts of Asian specialties were displayed, and there were also men in costumes representing a Martial Arts School...

This is also close to the "Korean District" with all its shop signs in Korean and a magnet for Koreans in New York....although the crowd was very diverse, attracting many tourists who are always in that area in particular.

Ataturk Day -also Youth and Sports

On May 19, people of Turkish heritage turned out near the United Nations to celebrate a National Holiday of that country-- Ataturk, Youth and Sports Day.

The masses of people who showed up with Turkish flags ( Crescent and Star) also wore lots of red and T-Shirts with slogans on them...

In the midst of the very celebratory throngs, a group of young girls looks bored!

Deco Japan at Japan Society

You usually do not think of Japan when you think of the Art Deco movement, but the years between the World Wars saw a flourishing of art in this style, now on exhibit at the Japan Society in Manhattan (near the United Nations).

A lot of the art of that period focuses on "the modern girl"-- sometimes an updated traditional Japanese girl, but also often a kind of glorified geisha...

Great website also has video:

http://www.japansociety.org/event/deco-japan-shaping-art-and-culture-19201945

Street Sculpture in Manhattan

Manhattan has so much street sculpture...here are just a couple of examples of ones I have just noticed lately...

Walking, headless figures were on Dag Hammarskjold Place near United Nations...they may have moved them already....

Likewise, abstract car was also in the same area...

The one really puzzling one is the weird dark shape near Union Square, which someone suggested to me was " an elephant standing on its trunk." Maybe...

A lot of the sculpture you see in front of buildings is very abstract and it is much harder to warm to some of them than to others...

Sweet Shops

There are all sorts of sweet shops and the like in Midtown....here are two just a couple of blocks away--the upscale 5th Avenue Chocolatiere and the Heavenly Delights shop..

Heavenly delights is more for kids and average people...did not check all that closely but probably does not pay all that much attention to current preoccupation with "healthy choices" ( low fat, no sugar added, etc.)--but I am not sure because I did not really look as I said.

Understand that there are all sorts of small chocolatiers all over the U.S. now...saw a contestant on "Wheel of Fortune" from Oregon ( who looked exactly like some hip guy from the late 1960's...the hair and mustache were perfect replicas) who started his chocolate shop in his basement and now has a thriving business there.

Food experts are divided on benefits/dangers of chocolate, of course, and disapprove of sugar more and more...( latest TV show I saw on it had this one doctor raving on how "all sugar --even from honey-- is poison!") Nobody knows where the food police will strike next....

Who owns NYC, American Agribusiness

Was just reading an article on "who owns Manhattan" 

( one real estate type says there are 30 or 40 families,

 who, along with Trinity Church, own an incredible amount of 
the real estate here).

 http://www.quora.com/Who-owns-the-most-real-estate-land-in-Manhattan 

Bruce Feldman writes there

"Most
 of the real estate in Manhattan is owned by a handful (perhaps 30-40) 
of long-standing real estate "families," the largest of which is the 
Estate of Sol Goldman, who died in 1986 and who, at the time, was one of
 the largest owners of real estate in New York City.  Currently, the 
largest owner of properties is probably Trinity Church, which at one 
time owned almost the entirety of lower Manhattan but still owns major 
properties and office buildings throughout lower Manhattan. "

 Also know foreign investors and co-investors own all sorts of

 property here...remember hearing Donald Trump speak about it 

at a business meeting here long ago ( he knows more 
about real estate in NYC than many other topics). Columbia 

University and NYU own a lot, 
I can tell you that..

Which made we wonder what the state of American Agribusiness 

was like these days...found 
a really good but pretty academic article about it

http://web.missouri.edu/~ikerdj/papers/Wash%20DC%20Reclaim.htm

There are also articles on the internet about the probable

 effects of run off of 
chemicals from agribusiness all over the U.S.

You can google up a lot on this sort of topic..

Every once in a while, a show like 60 Minutes runs

 something about some aspect of topics 
like these but we do not hear much about them 

( sometimes, in my paranoid moods, I feel 
we are DEFINITELY NOT to suppose to know about them)

Madison Square Post Office

Madison Square Post Office on East 23rd Street has a treasure trove of WPA wall murals of all sorts of Manhattan scenes from the 1930's....

However, they look so dark and dingy now it is really a shame...there obviously has never been any money to clean or restore them and from the way the Postal Service is going, probably never will be..

Well, it is hardly the Sistine Chapel ceiling or something but it is a great display of classic American WPA Art...

Oh yes, it seems that to compensate for hopelessly darkened murals, this Post Office has a newer painting of Madison Square area ( not geographically accurate but fun)....it does not make up for the neglect of the old murals but is OK.

Manhattan suffers from a surfeit of all sorts of historic riches and some of them just go by the wayside...too bad but you cannot save everything I guess.

Earth Day 2012

The first Earth Day back in 1970 was a very happy, hopeful event...it has not been an easy battle to save this planet, and the fight is still on.

Here is a current update from the internet--there are tons of activities all over the world now, and they make the claim that a billion people will be participating...hope it helps.

http://www.earthday.org/2012

But is it Art?

Sculptural works, temporary or permanent, are fixtures of the Manhattan landscape...this one, at the South end of Central Park, looks to me just like a pile of truck tire inner tubes...

When I show people pictures like this on Facebook, they usually jokingly ask " But is it art?" I believe we have to be pretty flexible about what we accept as art-- the question more often being " Is it good art or bad art?"

I could never stand Picasso's "Guernica" painting when I was young ( I see more merit to it now) and of course Andy Warhol's Campbell Soup Can paintings--which many people dismissed as a mere trendy phenomenon when he first unveiled them-- are now pretty much accepted and people will pay a lot of money for them ( but then, when people start treating art mostly as an investment, it is all speculative play at work, anyway).

There are many sculptures around in Midtown that leave me cold and others that have grown on me with time...I doubt I will ever think that much of this work, though. Maybe if I and it are still around in another 20 years, I would say differently...

East River Vistas-continual transformation

The East River Esplanade is one of those projects that has been in the works for many, many years and while some sections of it have been completed ( such as far up on the Upper East Side), others have just been "on the boards" for years...with a promise now that a lot more will be done.

This section shown here is hidden away at the East End of 37th Street, and I stumbled on the entrance to it pretty much by accident...it is only a couple of blocks long and is something of a "secret garden."

While the City is always complaining of being out of money, my state representative sent me a newsletter noting that that more work was going to be done linking the area that has been done with the empty site below the United Nations...somehow they got the money approved at some point and then the Esplanade will really be more of a resource for people who live in lower East Midtown.

I may no longer be living in this area when the work is finally completed...but that's the way things go in New York these days...for instance, the Second Avenue subway is (of course) taking much longer to build and costing a hell of a lot more than originally estimated...even in its now truncated version ( it was supposed to extend down to Wall Street originally, but not will turn over to Grand Central Terminal, where other new rail links are also going to be put in for Amtrak trains).

Building the Esplanade will probably somehow affect the traffic flow on the FDR Drive --more aggravation for people in cars and taxis-- but that will nothing like the problems the new subway has already caused ( displacement of huge numbers or rats, cutting off businesses from street traffic, and weakening the foundations of all sorts of buildings near the route--all that blasting takes its toll, of course).

They are, in fact, having so much trouble building the Second Avenue subway that it is like somehow New York has forgotten how to build subways along the way...while other cities like Washington D.C. are always expanding their lines and in places like Paris, the Metro stations have often been turned into works of Art.

So, we will believe in the extended Esplanade when we see it...

Luggage Choices and Shopping in Midtown

Both these stores on Third Avenue are having sales, but I imagine the starting prices are very different to start with...

The Italian based Flora Louis luggage looked so much like the goods available at a store up the street ( which is an outlet for Samsonite and other well known brands) I just wondered what people are really expecting when they make choices like this.

It seems they still make some items to last for a long time ( like Pendleton shirts) but most of the items we buy these days often seemed to be of lesser quality than they used to be....in fact, in terms of some imports from China etc. are demonstrably of lesser quality than people used to expect.

I remember when quiz shows on TV always had luggage sets as prizes...rarely see that anymore.

Well, travel is not what it once was, especially air travel. I am old enough to remember when flying was fun and exciting ( but then, most people did not fly in those days as compared to now)....the security concerns we have now of course bug the hell out of most people and having criminal gangs rifling luggage and just plain stealing it is so much more commonplace than it used to be.

NYC Easter 2012

Easter and Passover coincided very neatly this year ( reminding us all again that the Last Supper was a Seder meal)...

Manhattan seemed to belong entirely to the tourists this weekend. Sunday a lot of the Avenues in lower Midtown were almost empty of traffic...

The End of An Era in Clothing Styles...One trend I have been noticing in New York is how young people in particular are so loathe to "dress up" for anything, -- and this included the participants at the event at the Armenian Orthodox St. Vartan's Cathedral.  Neat but very casual, this look has spread even to the middle aged -- is it the high cost of mens' suits and ties that is behind some of this, or is it due to a world where more and more people are connected to computers and social media so much and the " dressing down" atmosphere they seem to have at some high tech workplaces has just become more and more a standard deal...

Forget the "Easter Parade" this year, folks...I went up to Fifth Avenue and 57th Street and found the Avenue blocked off by the police South of 57th Street, where the mob scene ( and all the Easter costumes and finery) was too claustrophobic to be entered into...

If the trend is continuing, the number of tourists milling about outnumbers the real Easter Parade people by about 100 to one...of course, a lot of kids are some adults had bunny ears and there were big bows in the hair of some women etc. but it was the same masses of neatly but casually attired people...
( Maybe this clothing trend is part of the "suburbanization of America" which I read about somewhere...

Let me see if there is anything on the internet about all this--well, here is an excerpt from an article about "Dressing for Success in the Workplace"

It’s not an easy task to find a job these days. So when you do get called for a job interview you need to make the best impression. There’s one easy method of doing this: dress for it.
I know what you may be thinking: “The business world has gotten so casual—people wear flip-flops for goodness sake! Workplace attire doesn’t matter anymore.” Not true! The way you dress says a whole lot about you and how you feel about your career, and potential employers certainly notice.
This simple rule may help where job interviews are concerned: Better to be overdressed then under-dressed. Even if the company you happen to be interviewing for says, “You don’t need to dress up, we are very casual here,” it is best to still wear proper business attire to your interview. Your clothing is capable of showing how serious you are about your work, and employers want someone who wants to grow with a company and takes their position seriously. In the event you dress for an interview in t-shirt and jeans, you have made a bad first impression, even though you may blow everybody else out of the water with your qualifications.
In the workplace you should still think about the clothing you wear. Even in a casual place you can still look sharp. Should you just grab yesterday’s jeans off the floor and run out the door you won’t get noticed. People who put more thought into their style stand out from their peers, which is never a bad thing if your boss is looking to promote someone!

NFL Shop

One of the biggest marketing triumphs in the history of the United States has been the popularizing of Pro Football..

When I was a kid in Chicago, people were interested in college football and pro football did not excite too much attention. There was a time where you could hardly give Chicago Bears tickets away..

Today all major sports have clothes and accessories outlets...Yankees and NFL are both in the Garment Center area. Not inexpensive stores, by the way....of course, this being New York, you can shop around and look for discount places ( they list all sorts of places to look on the internet) and find knock off versions...Chinatown used to be the knockoff ( or piracy ) center...Canal Street also used to be a great place to find a fake Rolex watch etc. City has been cracking down in last ten years, however....

Andrada Statue- Sixth Avenue in Bryant Park

Again, have walked past this statue of The Liberator of Brazil countless times and not paid it too much attention...it is just another of the many statues that are in Manhattan's Park ( Union Square used to have one of Gandhi in one corner---why, I don't know)

Before I get to quoting the story of this from the internet, just want to say a few words about the statue's placement on Sixth Avenue-- which is officially Avenue of the Americas.

The Avenue of the Americas name was adopted back in the 1930's as part of the "Good Neighbor Policy" ( the U.S. realized with a start that war was probably coming with the Axis and that there were a lot of Axis sympathizers in Latin America...witness Juan Peron's later attempt to emulate Mussolini...)

Anyway, there was just a popular revolt against the renaming of Sixth Avenue, and now the City has given up more or less and has "Sixth Avenue" signs below the "Avenue of the Americas' street signs.

Still are these big metal medallions in some places I think that hang from light poles and show emblems of various Latin American countries..

Anyway, here is the lowdown on Andrade:

This statue of the naturalist and hero of Brazilian independence Jose Bonifacio de Andrada e Silva sits on the west side of Bryant Park, towering glumly over the sidewalk near the corner of 40th Street, a stern counterpoint to the much-smaller and more engaging figure of Benito Juarez, the first native-born president of Mexico, which is just a few dozen feet up Sixth Avenue. Which was about the spot where Andrada’s statue originally stood before it was moved with not a small amount of controversy in the 1990s, during Bryant Park’s famous renovation.

A view of Jose from the bus lane on Sixth Avenue.
The figure of Andrada is larger than life size, nearly nine feet tall. He is standing with his heels together and his right knee slightly bent, as though he is about to take a step — or kick a passerby in the head. Andrada is wearing colonial garb, with his left hand clutching a coat or cloak that is slung over his left shoulder and his right hand holding at his side what appears to be a rolled-up piece of paper. On the whole, Andrada looks like he just stepped out of an unsuccessful audition for the role of Ebenezer Scrooge.
The statue was a gift to the City of New York from Brazil, for whatever reason. The New York Times reporter who covered the statue’s dedication called it “symbolic of Brazilian-United States amity.” An amity that is scarcely heard about today.
The figure was made by the Brazilian sculptor Jose Otavio Correia Lima, who won the commission in a competition sponsored by the Brazilian government.
The statue was dedicated on April 22, 1955, in a ceremony presided over by the infamous parks commissioner, Robert Moses. Cardinal Francis Spellman gave the invocation, and there was the typical blah, blah, blah from the Manhattan Borough President Hulan E. Jack; Edward J. Sparks, the deputy assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs; the Brazilian Ambassador to the United States, Joao Calos Muniz; and Mayor Robert F. Wagner.
Moses’s remarks were the most interesting, if not the most delusional. He said that the statue was another sign that the Avenue of the Americas, which had been renamed just six years earlier, was “coming into its own,” according to a story in The Times the next day. Moses mused that one day Sixth Avenue would resemble the Prado in Havana, with a landscaped promenade down the middle. (The figure of Andrada is one of six statues commemorating historical figures from the Americas along the avenue from SoHo to Central Park.)

Pookie Sebastian

Pookie Sebastian is a store on Third Avenue in Murray Hill that has a lot of interesting clothes for women....hell, there are a LOT of interesting stores of all kinds dealing with all kinds of clothing in Midtown, especially as you get over into the Garment District.

Liked these summer dresses...colors are cool and so are designs. Not that I plan to wear one myself..

A little bit more about Fashion and Design in Midtown--notably the Garment District ( from Wikipedia)-- article notes Garment District's Uncertain Future  because of Foreign Competition,
especially manufacturing loss to Asia etc..,,

New York City is arguably the fashion capital of the United States and the entire world because the industry based there generates over $14 billion in annual sales and sets design trends which are mirrored worldwide.^{[citation needed]} The core of the industry is Manhattan's Garment District, where the majority of the city's major fashion labels operate showrooms and execute the fashion process from design and production to wholesaling. No other city has a comparable concentration of fashion businesses and talent in a single district.^[1]

Information kiosk

The Garment District is home to a number of well-known designers, their production facilities, warehouses, showrooms, and suppliers of fabric and materials. Many in the industry allege that this dense concentration of talent, entrepreneurship and supply stores functions like an ecosystem in which each of the parts help sustain the whole.^[2] Major fashion labels such as Carolina Herrera, Oscar de la Renta, Calvin Klein, Donna Karan, Liz Claiborne and Nicole Miller have showrooms, production facilities, or support offices located in the Garment District.
While historically known as the center of textile manufacturing, global trends have changed the way the fashion industry in the Garment District functions. Over the last 50 years, New York’s garment manufacturing sector has experienced a steady decline within the City overall and within the Fashion District specifically. This has occurred as a result of domestic manufacturers becoming less competitive in the global marketplace. Foreign labor pools have taken a dominant role in manufacturing due to their significantly lower costs. Advancements in technology will only make the world manufacturing arena more competitive. Additionally, barriers to domestic production continue to pressure the industry.
The decline of the manufacturing sector has proven to be a serious problem for the Garment District in midtown Manhattan. In 1987, the Special Garment Center District zoning (SGCD) was enacted by the City to help preserve garment manufacturing. The zoning places manufacturing use restrictions on large portions of the district in an effort to keep manufacturing rents affordable. However, the City’s use of zoning as a job retention tool did not achieve its goal, and manufacturing has continued to decline at the same pace after the zoning was enacted as it did before the preservation measures were in place. This issue has been visited and revisited by policy makers, fashion industry representatives, manufacturing and union representatives and owners of property in the district, but the fate of the district remains uncertain.