That Summer Feeling

Today there was some rain--while I took a nap in the afternoon, a squall passed through and knocked down trees down near Battery Park City. 

Which makes me wonder how soon the Hurricane Season will begin again...and when we will have to deal with another storm like Sandy. According to the experts, it will not be that long.

Hope everyone is better prepared this time.

Shabooms?

Don't even ask me what this is all about...just another one of the passing mysteries of Midtown

Sukyo Center

"An Eye for an Eye Will Leave the Whole World Blind," notes this Center for Spiritual Development on the edge of Kips Bay area...

Wish we had more places like this around and fewer nail salons and weird trendy hair stylists.

Oh well, Manhattan yuppies are not known for their spiritual depths...

The place with the lousy food and the ugly owner

Love this sign over a side door to the Waterfront Ale House in Kips Bay....

Rare to see any kind of place have a sense of humor about itself like this!

Belly Dancing on 34th Street

When I posted this photo on Facebook, one of my FB friends noted, " watch out for those Gipsies!!"

So, belly dancing has made a comeback at this place on East 34th Street! Rack it up to the ethnic diversity of the stores and bars in the neighborhood...

Summer is here-- traditional ice cream like Good Humor bars

Well, here is a sure sign Summer is really here, when they start advertising traditional ice cream treats like Good Humor bars and the Klondike stuff at a local store.

Notice they also have Ben and Jerry's these days-- thought I read somewhere that Ben and Jerry's was bigger in Europe these days than the U.S., though I would have to check on that.

 

Please, spare me this kind of movie

I wonder if I should even give any sort of attention to awful "entertainments" like this seems to be-- more and more common these days of course,  playing to some kind of audience that is seeking out the blood and gore and cheap thrills that this sort of thing purveys...

Notice the ad also warns the picture also contains " smoking and drinking"-- a nod to political correctness in that direction ( suggesting it is for "mature" audiences)...(what do they mean by "mature", though, of course?).

Zuckers-- an old fashioned concept in modern dress

Heard comedian Mel Brooks  on Public Radio here the other day talking about how typically some Jewish immigrant from Eastern Europe would come to NYC and open a little store selling smoked fish and a few food items...

I suppose Zuckers in Midtown probably started off that way, but in its present form it is as you can see a much classier looking place than that.

Some of the stores that are in the Zuckers category are I believe in the category of "Appetizing" rather than " Delicatessen"-- such as the famous Russ and Daughters on the Lower East Side.

Traditionally, one of the main features of these old places was the owner "schmoozing" with the patrons, whom he often got to know quite well...all their little triumphs and also their "tsouris"-- soft pedaling the triumphs, usually, because , like their Sicilian neighbors, many of them were  afraid of boasting and bringing on the curse of the Evil Eye--

Don't know how much of the schmoozing goes on in Zuckers, because it is not in its traditional kind of neighborhood. But I am sure it busy serving up lox and bagels with a schmeer all the time just as always...

Fighting the Library Cuts

Ye

Yes, once again Bloomberg et. al. want to slash money from the Public Library budget...

Was thinking the other day how great it is to have this local Kips Bay Library here in the neighborhood-- I use the Public Library all the time, although of course since I am getting books there I am in the minority (most people are getting movies when I go there).

I have signed an internet petition to save library funding and I hope more people will do so.

Having recently had a hernia operation followed closely by pneumonia, I have been home a lot recuperating and have had more time to read. Whether I will get through all the books I have checked out or not is questionable though-- I simply do not feel that much like reading these days, although I was able to get through a book I bought on the internet ( by a Barbara Korsch, M.D., on how to speak to your doctor)-- (which by the way was informative but I have realized that the real problem is with the doctors--these days they are always in a hurry and often running late and the problem in communications is THEIRS, not mine.

Incidentally, one of the books I have out is a bio of P. G. Wodehouse which I ordered from the NYPL without paying enough attention to its length. Yikes! It is a huge volume-- hefty bios like that are usually the roughest kind of book for me to read, I just do not want to know every little detail of someone's life and times.

Tourist buses everywhere

More tour buses on the streets of Midtown than ever before, and of course one of the buildings they all want to see...I checked and was surprised how much it costs to go to the very top of the Empire State Bldg now, (less for the lower 86th Floor open air viewing area)-- but the price of everything in Manhattan has gotten way out hand for so long I don't know what else I expected

Tudor City Spring

Like everything else about it, Tudor City is really pretty when it comes to its little parks...I can remember way back when people were not very eager to live there, but the air is much cleaner there now and the traffic improved once they moved out the East Side Airlines Terminal from nearby.

42nd Street Subway entrance

Most NYC subway entrances are so gloomy, this one across from Grand Central is unusually posh.
I ride the subway less and less these days as the crowding gets worse all the time and the tension there gets on my nerves...alas, the bus is often no better. Some of the bus drivers are idiots.

Spring weekend brings out basketball players

Basketball courts are already crowded and even more guys kept coming...wonderful weekend for playing basketball ...right behind the group above were some more people with basketballs...not enough space for all who expected to play.

Spring is Here, finally

Spring has finally come here...when the first Magnolia trees were blossoming, I saw these what I assume are grandparents out with their granchild picking one of the first blossoms from a tree in St. Vartan's Park.

Flower District (II)

As noted, Flower District is blossoming again....below, tourists are for some reason fascinated by ad on side of pay phone enclosure...they took several pix of it with their cell devices...

Spring in the Flower District (I), retail stores changing

Well, as Spring has come to the ever shrinking Flower District, more flowers and plants are out on display...just as the local daffodils have finally started to bloom. Tulips are threatening to bloom in many places now...delayed by a cold Spring....

Shop that was once a wig store or something is now an electronics place...will be a shame when all the typical wigs, perfumes, accessories places have gone...which is what Bloomberg has in mind of course.

Graffiti never really goes away

Over in the Garment District, two trucks show different approaches to graffiti...

The truck on top is just a typical average grey truck which has been defaced..

The one on the bottom was painted over with " Art Graffiti" on purpose-- but other people have added new scrawls over it anyway...

Actually, I feel the Art Graffiti truck is pretty successful visually, it is just a shame other graffiti minded people don't leave it alone...

I wonder when the City stopped its "zero tolerance" policy on graffiti...it seems to be creeping back into the subways too....

Billions of Cicadas on Their Way

Yeah, the Cicadas which live underground nourished off roots for years and years are due back this year...

I wonder how many there will be in NYC? Probably not as many as in the areas around NY...
I wonder what Central Park would look like if the Cicadas really come up there...

Well, we will see...

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/billions-cicadas-set-invade-east-coast-spring-article-1.1310555 

Spring Arrives, or so it seems--St. Vartan's Park playgrounds

WEATHER has been fluctuating lately ( getting very cold at night but Springlike during the day) and now they say April will average above normal temps by the time we are through.

Well, youthful energy is bursting out on the local park playgrounds, that's for sure...though it never really stopped all winter. Only thing that kept people off the play areas was snow, and then the little kids made snowmen. But people were out there all winter, just dressed more warmly...

The Amateur Artist....

Just for fun, I am including a horse head sculpture I did for an art class some years back. In truth, it was all experimenting for me, because I had no training or experience with sculpture at all. But I will inflict it on you anyway

Art, Design....what is modern?

When I was growing up, I was always hearing adults saying, " I don't know much about Art, but I know what I like."

People in Manhattan are not modest about what they know about Art. They usually just do not talk about something at all if they don't like it-- except when it gets out of hand, like Graffiti.  ( I occasionally saw Graffiti that was artistically inspired but most of the time it was just-- well-- vandalism).

Most of the art stores around here cater to just about every taste in Art.

Take this painting. Please. ( LOL). In my opinion it shows the triumph of the idea of Design over the Idea of Art, something for which we have to blame critics, and prominent artists like Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse. They were naturally very talented artists for whom realism was easy --and also boring-- and so they got carried away more and more with design experiments. ( If you want to see Picasso when he was back in realistic mode, he did a lovely portrait of his daughter that is in the mode of realism with the influence of Impressionism , for instance).

I cannot explain completely why I like some artists more than others but if pressed I can tell you why I like individual works of art. I like to paint and draw myself, but have not done so in a while...I am too aware of the limits on my talents. Here is a nude I did some time ago which my art teacher at the time HATED-- but I have artistically minded friends who like it and I like and that is good enough for me

To Hell with Bloomberg

I have noticed that Ruffino has started a big ad campaign which obviously shows nostalgia for the carefree, more risk taking days when people rode around joyously on motorbike and bicycles without helmets....and all the other safety features which we now have to have.

New York's over aggressive little billionaire Mayor of course, even wants to tell people what size soda containers they can buy...before he moves on to some new restrictive idea. All for your own good, of course.

I sense a spirit of revolt brewing in people which the Ruffino people also have picked up on-- even if , in the end, people will just go along with the safer lifestyle choices. 

Also, for older folks, who would not like to be young again and have that kind of sublime over self confidence ( at least in some areas) of their palmier days?

Remanants of Hurricane Sandy, five months on

While the power was out for a week in this area (or even longer for some unlucky people),
there was not the real damage that Hurricane Sandy inflicted on Coastal areas. ( Of course, NYU and Bellevue hospitals, which are on the edge of the East River, had real flooding problems and it must have occurred to someone finally that having their emergency generators down on the lowest basement floors which would be the first places to flood and the last to dry out was not the wisest of ideas).

I follow the progress of Recovery from Hurricane Sandy on WNYC, which always it seems has some kind of update on a Sandy-related story on its website.

Kitsch Everywhere

It has always been there to see, of course, but I was just struck again the other day how many stores and delis around here have "kitsch" ( cheap and tawdry and lowest common denominator taste) items for sale around here, even though this is such an "upscale" area.

The local Rite Aid, where I took this shot, has a whole section filled with all kinds of figurines and other objects that are--well, you could call them whimsical and cute etc. but they are all pretty much in the "kitsch" category when you think about it.

Some delis in particular have stuff like this, including such outdated items as weird cute ash trays for sale. ( Guess more people than you realize still smoke, they just do not do it in public much any more. Wait a second, just the other day I passed about four of five people in quick succession on Second Avenue who were all puffing away on cigarettes. One was a much older woman, not badly dressed at all but with a rather haggard face, up on raised area above the sidewalk that was part of the Kips Bay Plaza Apartment complex. 

She was puffing away with grim determination on a windy day and was indeed like a small smoke stack...

I saw a young intern at my clinic not so long ago ( I now go to a clinic for older people) who, when I told him I had quit smoking some years back, actually asked me if I would tell anyone I knew who still smoked why they had to quit. He seemed upset as he said this, as if he was running into older people all the time who probably just told him, " I'm too old to quit now," or something. 

Fact is, I don't know anyone well who smokes-- whoops, I DO know one man in my building, he looks much younger than he is still is, who is an integral part of our Tenants Association. Every once in a while he ducks into the courtyard behind the building Community room to puff away furiously for a few minutes.

I would never think of telling him, "Hey, you ought to stop smoking." I mean, he knows that. And I, like Mark Twain, quit smoking hundreds of times before I was able to finally stop for good --going to Nicotine Anonymous and using Nicotine lozenges is what made all the difference for me. My group had some great people in it, some of whom had not smoked for up to ten years or so, others who had just started smoking again after three or fours years off of the evil weed ( I know that pattern all too well). 

Listening to how addicted these people felt resonated very strongly with me and the shared resolve and support I felt there helped me more than I can tell you.

Oh yeah, I paid no attention at all to all the mystical "higher power" aspect of our meetings...I am more interested in what someone like Paul Tillich has to say than in the watered down semi religious stuff they use at Nicotine Anonymous. 

This Neighborhood has more young kids than ever

This whole area of lower Murray Hill/Kips Bay had a noticeable number of small children when I first moved in here ten years ago, and seems to have more than ever now.

Was just walking around the other day and realized how many windows on houses have child window guards on them...required by City law. Usually, you really see a lot of these mostly in housing projects where poorer people live ( fact: poorer people in NYC have always had more kids than better off people, also, number of singles and childless couples in Manhattan in particular is a much bigger percentage of the population than most places in America).

And, of course, you see the endless parade of nannies and young mothers with baby buggies and strollers out on nicer days --they seem to favor certain hours but I have never kept a log of this so I am not sure what those times are...

I guess the same pattern has been holding true for years: people move in here and have a couple of kids and then move on to some place else, and are replaced by new young(er) couples who start to have children.  As elsewhere in America, a lot of the mothers are over 30 I would say, because they wait to finish school and establish themselves somewhat in careers before they have kids. The double incomes are a necessity for many people, especially because it costs so much to live in Manhattan.