Sorry, The Brooklyn Bridge Is Closed

Here's a story that crossed my mind recently, probably because the anniversary of it was just this past week...

Although I've lived in the Las Vegas, Nevada area for over 11 years now (!!!), I was born and raised in New York City. I grew up and lived in Queens for about a quarter century, and worked right in downtown Manhattan at 2 separate jobs for about 2 years total. Both jobs were within a subway token's throw of the late, lamented Twin Towers, right in the City Hall/Wall Street area. Being somewhat familiar with NYC, I've played tour guide on a couple of occasions for co-workers in my Henderson, Nevada Post Office who had never been to the Big Apple before. Both times my victims and I stayed at a hotel right in midtown for a great rate, thanks to a friend who worked there (hi, Cappy!). I made up loose itineraries beforehand, incorporating obvious touristy things that the respective couples wanted to see, plus a few interesting nuggets that I knew would be unfamiliar, yet interesting, to non-natives.

On the day in May of 2005 that this particular story revolves around, we made our way from the hotel early in the morning. The hotel itself was located right at 53rd Street & 3rd Avenue, around the corner from the Citigroup Center, one of the more interesting skyscrapers in New York. Completed in 1977, it's unique angled roof (originally designed to incorporate solar panels, a plan which never came to fruition), and one-of-a-kind base make it quite a standout among NYC buildings, which is no mean feat.

Also located within a block of the hotel is another architectural achievement, the Lipstick Building, so named for it's oval shape and rosy color. Since the building tapers in at points as it rises, it looks as if it could collapse upon itself, also like a tube of lipstick. While not a traditional sightseeing stop (it was only completed in 1986), if you're in the area, it's certainly worth a look. Like the Citigroup Center, it also has an interesting and beautiful base, this one comprised of many rosy-colored marble columns.

Our objectives for the day were the Empire State Building, Madison Square Park and the Flatiron Building, Washington Square Park, Foley Square (an area familiar to any of you who have ever watched the original Law & Order series, and I used to work in 60 Centre Street, the building featured in the opening credits), City Hall, the Brooklyn Bridge, and Ground Zero, where the Twin Towers used to stand tall. We worked our way south in the order just listed, so there were several short subway jaunts in-between each (it's really all walkable, but my co-worker's wife was not physically capable of doing that much walking without encountering real problems).

Since this was a Saturday, we were at the Empire State Building on 5th Avenue and 34th Street right at 9AM. There was no line to get in, and we were on the observation deck before 9:30, enjoying the view even though there was still a mild bit of haziness in the air. While it limited the amount you could see off to the outlying areas, it did nothing to detract from the view of Manhattan itself. I enjoy doing the touristy New York things with people who've never been there before, because A) it's great to see the enjoyment they're getting out of it, and B) since I only get in every couple years or so, I really enjoy it myself as well.

By the time we made it back downstairs, the line to get an elevator to the observation deck snaked back and forth in the staging area for something approaching an hour's length...which explained to my friends why we had gotten such an early start on a Saturday morning. Finally convinced them I'm not as dumb as I look (to which my co-worker would always reply, "Nobody could be that dumb!" With friends like these, who needs enemas...).

Our next stop was a half-mile south on Fifth Avenue to see the Flatiron Building, right next to Madison Square Park. Shaped like a clothes iron propped up, this is one of New York City's first skyscrapers. While it comes in at under 300 feet tall, which may seem small today, when it was completed in 1902, it was one of the tallest buildings in the world, and the first of New York City's tall buildings to be built north of 14th Street. Its iconic shape has made it a very recognizable structure, and I suppose its most recent claim to fame was its film portrayal of the home of the Daily Bugle, the fictitious newspaper of the Spider-Man universe.

We then wandered over to the Gramercy Park area, just a couple blocks to the east. Completely by accident, we stumbled into a street fair on Park Avenue South from around 18th to 23rd Streets. I suddenly had an extra added item for the visitors, because a New York City street fair on a beautiful day is a wonderful thing. Looking at people selling trinkets and clothing is always amusing, but the best part is always the food! I always tell people 2 things about NYC food. 1) If you recognize the name of the place (like a chain, or someplace you may have eaten in elsewhere in the world), forget it, avoid it. If you don't recognize the name of the place, and it looks like some dive or a hole-in-the-wall, go in, you're likely to get the best food you've ever had. And 2) some of the best dining to be had in NYC is right off the streets. Fruit stands, hot dog carts, pastry carts, street vendors selling all variety of edibles...you can eat 3 squares a day without ever sitting down at a table.

Washington Square Park was the next destination, just shy of a mile further south on Fifth Avenue. It's the gateway to Greenwich Village (literally...Washington Square Arch, a monument to General George Washington, sits at the north end of the park, right at the point where Fifth Avenue comes to an end), and it's surrounded by beautiful brownstone apartments and buildings that are part of the campus of New York University (NYU). It makes for a nice transitional point from corporate New York to a more artsy area. While normally a reasonably tranquil place to visit, on the weekends (and this was a Saturday, remember) it becomes an absolute hive of activity. The central fountain area of the park serves as a stage for all manner of street performers, doing their acts for the throngs of people who gather around, with the only admission price being a passing of the hat after the performance. Depending on the day (or time of day, even), you can see anything from stand-up comics to gymnasts to magicians, and everything in-between. Another of New York City's wonderful attractions.

Another quick subway hop got us a mile further south to the Foley Square area. As mentioned before, if you've ever seen an episode of the original Law & Order TV series, you've seen this area. This is where the main courthouses for New York City and New York State are located, as well as offices for the County Clerk and the City Register, plus a nice little park (Thomas Paine Park) as well. There's also a place to get an amazing chicken parmigiana hero, but since this was a Saturday and all businesses and offices in the area were closed, the area is fairly deserted, so they were closed too...damn...

City Hall, the Manhattan Municipal Building, the Surrogate's Courthouse, and the Brooklyn Bridge are all just a block or so to the south of Foley Square, so after admiring the architecture of "the Law & Order building", we made our way down to them. These were all built in the late 1800's & early 1900's during the "City Beautiful" era, when money was no object when it came to architectural design. The more lavish, the better. These are some of the more stunningly beautiful buildings in all of NYC, both inside and out. In particular, the Surrogate's Courthouse, while an attractive building outside, has an amazing all-marble lobby with a magnificent staircase leading to the second floor offices housing many records. I worked in this building as well for roughly a year, and would often marvel at the beauty of the lobby when I had a few minutes to sit during the work day. More than likely, you've already seen the lobby, since it has been featured in all kinds of media (film, music videos, commercials, print ads, etc.). And while all the pictures with this story are ones I took, the one exception is with this paragraph, which came from the Government of NYC's own web page about the Surrogate's Courthouse building...thanks!

Going off on a slight tangent, I can even give you a little story about "movie magic" that directly relates to the Surrogate's Courthouse. There was some dumb romantic comedy out last year called When In Rome. This link here is to the trailer for the picture. Everything from 23 seconds to 53 seconds in the clip I linked to takes place in a hall or something in Rome where the reception for a wedding is taking place. It's towards the beginning of the movie, and it's pretty much the only part of it (aside from the end, apparently) that takes place in Rome, as the rest of it takes place in NYC. Except that all those scenes at the reception taking place in Rome, are actually shot in the Surrogate's Courthouse lobby in Manhattan, just steps away from the Brooklyn Bridge! Which should give you an idea of just how extravagant that lobby truly is. I remember emerging from the subway everyday to walk the half-block to get to the courthouse, and more often than not, especially on Fridays, there would be trailers parked on Chambers Street right across from the courthouse entrance. These would be for whatever filming or shooting that was to be going on at night or over the weekends right there.

I noticed something else about When In Rome that I feel a need to nitpick about. There's a scene where the female lead is jogging thru Central Park, and she's heading south as she runs across Bow Bridge. Now she's running thru The Mall (also known as Poet's Alley), when some guy starts chasing her. As she continues on, she's now running down the steps leading to Bethesda Fountain, with this guy still in hot pursuit. Except that if she were really still running in the same direction, she would have already gone past the fountain and up the steps in order to reach The Mall from Bow Bridge. Do I really care? No. But am I gonna point it out? Yup. You can argue artistic license, but if you're gonna make NYC the featured location of your picture, you can bet there are gonna be people who notice stuff like this.

And why did I watch something as vapid and stupid as When In Rome? Because when I stumbled across it on TV one morning, I instantly recognized the Surrogate's Courthouse lobby, and I'm a sucker for NYC locations in movies. Even more so when it's doubling for somewhere else, like, say, Rome.

As we headed towards the Manhattan entrance of the Brooklyn Bridge, we waited at an intersection to cross. The road is for traffic coming from Brooklyn and entering Manhattan from the bridge, and it makes a big curve to the right as it does so. You can't see more than 30 or so feet up the road from where we were trying to cross, so even though no traffic was passing, we weren't taking any chances, and waited for the light. Except I noticed that NO traffic was coming. While we waited for the light to change, not a single car came thru from off the bridge. Even for a Saturday, this was unusual, to say the very least.

When the light changed, we made our way across to the City Hall Park area, so we could get a good look towards the bridge. With the one companion having the walking issues, we probably weren't going to walk out onto the bridge, but we could at least get a good vantage point from here. What I saw though was a most bizarre sight for New York. There was absolutely no vehicular traffic on the bridge whatsoever. This was unheard of. The reason was plain to see from where we were, as the police had closed the Brooklyn Bridge! This is not something that happens every day. As a matter of fact, I'm not sure this is something that had ever happened ANY day. The Brooklyn Bridge, in addition to being a world famous landmark, and one of the most New York things about New York, also serves as a major artery for traffic making its way between lower Manhattan and Brooklyn and the outer areas. To close something like this must have meant there was a serious problem somewhere. In addition, all pedestrian traffic was being allowed to continue off of the bridge, but no one was being allowed on.

I made a couple of phone calls to friends and family in the area to see if they were seeing anything about this on the news, but no one was coming across anything. I made my way closer to the entrance, and started asking around if anyone knew what was going on. Eventually I was able to find out (I can't remember for sure, but I'm pretty certain I got this from an NYPD officer) that some moron had abandoned a rental truck somewhere on the Brooklyn side of the bridge. While that might not raise any eyebrows in a normal area, this was NYC. 9/11 had only happened about 3 and a half years earlier, and people were still pretty skittish about things like that. So when someone abandons a rental truck on a NYC landmark, it gets the attention of New Yorkers. More than likely, whoever left it had mechanical problems. But the fact that it never occurred to them that leaving it sitting on a venerable icon such as the Brooklyn Bridge would possibly be interpreted as a terrorist act is inexcusable. The only reason this wasn't a disaster of epic proportions was the fact that it was early on a Saturday afternoon. Had this happened sometime during the 9-5 Monday to Friday work week, it would have crippled millions of commuters, and would therefore have been MAJOR news. One can only hope that they found the idiot who left the truck and beat the shit out of him. Just sayin.

Blog Post Soundtrack; The Les Claypool Frog Brigade, Fear Factory, Kyuss, Minor Threat, Monty Python, Louis Prima, Prong, Django Reinhardt, Sepultura, The Bakerton Group (live), Beastie Boys, Budgie, Clutch, The Doors (live), Fear, P.J. Harvey, Hermano, The Misfits (live), The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Scott Reeder, Slipknot, Sly & The Family Stone, Tool, Yawning Man, Woody Allen, Band Of Horses, Björk, Sausage, The International Noise Conspiracy, John Connelly Theory, Korn, Busta Rhymes, Leadbelly, Limp Bizkit (live, covering House Of Pain), Metallica (live), The Glenn Miller Orchestra, Nirvana, Primus, S.O.D. (live, covering Ministry), Slayer, The Stooges, Sublime, System Of A Down, The Ventures (covering Booker T. & The MG's), Beck, The Ramones, Eagles Of Death Metal, Sex Pistols, Brant Bjork, Black Flag, Bo Diddley, James Brown, The Clash, Corrosion Of Conformity, Elvis Costello, Deftones (live)

New York City, October 2010, Part V

In an effort to try and confuse myself even more than life in general normally does, I will now shift gears completely and go back to telling the story of my most recent trip back to the town of my origin, New York City. It's now been 5 months since this journey, but it's still quite vivid and fresh in my mind, thanks to A) it being an absolutely terrific time, B) my previous entries about the trip here on my travelblog, and C) the literally hundreds of pictures I took while there that I refer to when I write these entries. Shall we continue?

When last we left our not-yet-weary travelers, it was Thursday afternoon, October 7, 2010. Having spent most of the morning and early afternoon getting to and exploring The American Museum Of Natural History, we were now slowly meandering south thru Central Park. After we (and the "we" in question would be my Long Island-dwelling Mom and myself), had spent some time enjoying the wonderful views that can be had in and around Bow Bridge, we continued on around the perimeter of The Lake. It was such an absolutely beautiful autumn day that plenty of people were taking the opportunity to rent boats and row out around The Lake, lazily enjoying the warm sun and the cool breeze. Following the path along, it turned west, and we eventually made our way out of Central Park back over by The Dakota, John Lennon's last place of residence. His 70th birthday was the following day, so there were already people in and around the area of the building and the Strawberry Fields area of Central Park celebrating the occasion, singing songs, buying and selling artifacts, exchanging stories, and just generally having a good time.

We made our way down Central Park West to Columbus Circle, the southwest corner of Central Park. We lingered there for a few minutes to take pictures, because it was a beautiful weekday afternoon in one of the busiest areas in one of the busiest cities in the world. Definitely a great time and place for people watching and picture taking. I have this little quirk where whenever I take photograph in New York City, I try to get at least one yellow cab in the picture. It really isn't that difficult to do, but I have found myself occasionally having to wait a couple of seconds for one to enter the shot. Not a problem at this locale at this time of day.

As we started to make our way south down Broadway, I saw something that I'd never seen before...which in NYC, is something that can occur on a daily basis. That's one of the things to love about New York. It's always full of surprises, and something new is a regular occurrence. In this particular instance, it was a woman carrying a small step-ladder. No big deal, you say. To which I would agree. Except that the reason for her carrying the 3-step ladder was simply to afford her different perspectives for taking pictures. This was not ascertained as the reason for her carrying the ladder until she stopped midway across 58th Street, set up her perch, climbed to the top, and proceeded to snap a few pictures of the area. I instantly thought that was a terrific idea. She wasn't an overly tall woman, but by no means was she short either. So it wasn't for height reasons that she was doing this, it was simply to get pictures at what must be a very unique angle. She's dead center in the picture at the beginning of this paragraph, just left of the pedestrian signal. I think it's such a great idea that the next time I go back to New York I'm seriously considering buying a similar ladder and wandering the streets of NYC with it, seeing what kind of interesting shots I can get standing atop it. Even things that I've taken pictures of before will probably look brand new; you'd be surprised at what a big difference a subtle shift in camera angles can make. I'm a big fan of kneeling down and placing the camera on the ground to take shots (an idea I cribbed from artist Dave McKean...again, see the picture accompanying this paragraph). While a difference of maybe only 5 to 6 feet, it makes for a completely different picture from the worm's eye view.

As it was approaching late afternoon in New York, the sun was coming in at more of an extreme angle. What with many of the buildings lining Broadway being encased in glass, the reflected light that rebounds around makes for some interesting effects. I particularly like the way the light has a "shimmering water" look on the brown building on the right in this photo, and I like the way The Dream Hotel has an extra set of "light windows" between its own actual windows in this shot.

Continuing south down Broadway (the only major thoroughfare in Manhattan which actually runs true north-south; all the main avenues run at a northeast to southwest angle, consistent with the way the island actually is), we then made our way past The Ed Sullivan Theater, home of The Late Show With David Letterman for nearly 20 years now. I attended at least 3 tapings there, including one in 1993 a month into his CBS show run...when I missed seeing Bill Hicks live by one day.

Making our way further down Broadway, we eventually stumbled across Times Square. Even in the late afternoon, it's a hub of activity. Currently, if you stand in front of the New York Marriott Marquis (between 45th and 46th Streets), you can look up across the way and see a giant video board showing live pictures of the area of Times Square you are standing in. If you look closely, you can see both my Mom and I taking pictures of ourselves on the board. We're the ones just to the left of the giant woman's top 2 knuckles.

Now that we'd gotten our self-portraits, we then finished making our way back to Penn Station, underneath Madison Square Garden, to take our Long Island RailRoad train back out towards my parent's house. And meeting us at the train station near my folks' house would be a friend that I've known for around 20 years, who would be driving me and Mom the mile back to the house. Upon arriving at the house, I did a quick change, and then hopped back in my buddy's car so we could go hang out for the evening. This man was/is the host of Video Game Night, a weekly occurrence back when I was in my early 20's and the main group of idiots all lived in Queens, one of New York City's 5 boroughs. At one point he had practically every video game system known to man under one roof, and we would gather together at least once a week to play games, watch stupid TV, eat, laugh, joke, have fun, and just enjoy being a group of friends. Obviously, since I moved from New York to Las Vegas (11 years ago this month as of this writing), I don't get to see him very much anymore. So, upon leaving my folks' house, my friend and I started the drive out towards his neighborhood, and talked. And talked. And talked. And then went to a nice little Italian restaurant by his house. And talked. And talked. And talked. And then we made the drive back to my parent's house, and as we did so, we talked. And talked. And talked.

It isn't very often that him and I get a chance to hang out, just the 2 of us, and actually talk. There's always at least one other friend around, usually a whole group, and they've all got families, wives, kids, etc. So it's really nice on the rare occasions when I get to just be with one of my old friends for an extended period of time and actually find out what's really going on in their lives, delve into how they're feeling about things, discuss some of the other mutual friends we have, and just chat about life in general.

All of which finally got me to bed at around 2 in the morning, after starting at about 6AM, with another early wake-up fast approaching, as I had another big day in the city ahead of me...


Blog Post Soundtrack; Pearl Jam (live), The Doors (live), The White Stripes (live), The Misfits (live), The Who, Monty Python (live), Tool, Corrosion Of Conformity, The Black Keys, Blondie, Slayer, Grandmaster Flash (live), Les Claypool Frog Brigade (live, covering a King Crimson song), Howlin' Wolf (live), Bob Dylan, Mozart, The Specials, The Ramones, Björk (live), The Minutemen, Lily Allen, Henry Rollins, Refused, The Strokes, Rage Against The Machine, Nirvana (live), Anthony Jeselnik, System Of A Down, Public Enemy, Alice Cooper, S.O.D. (live), and the New York Rangers going in and defeating the Pittsburgh Penguins

Do You Know The Way To San Jose?

As a matter of fact, yes, I do, thank you very little. Having spent the previous weekend in Seattle (and yes, I know I haven't finished writing up the details of that journey), I then drove to San Jose and back this past weekend. Unlike my recent Los Angeles trips, however, yes, I stayed over in San Jose. Actually, I stayed 2 nights, because it is a long drive (about 540 miles one way), and I'd never been there before, so I thought I'd check it out a bit.

The drive is one I have done before, but never in this direction. Since you can't get there from here, you have to actually travel a little south from Las Vegas first in order to get to San Jose, which is actually quite a bit north. Welcome to America.

It's a lot of desert from here to Barstow, with not a hell of a lot of interesting landscape to look at along the way, outside of some nice hills and mountains that you climb thru almost immediately upon entering California. Once you get to the other side of Barstow, you now have to leave I-15, the main freeway (the same road you take from Las Vegas nearly all the way to Los Angeles), and go to CA 58, which initially resembles I-15 quite a lot, but eventually morphs into something quite different. By the time you're leaving CA 58, you've driven thru lush, green, rolling hillsides that seem as though someone severely misplaced parts of the Scottish Highlands. It's a beautiful section of country, made even more so by the fact that it comes as such a juxtaposition to the countless thousands of acres of desert that surround it.

In the vicinity of the town of Tehachapi (yes, that's spelled right), is the Tehachapi Pass Wind Farm, a collection of giant fans/windmills used to harness the power of naturally flowing winds and convert them into energy used to power parts of Southern California. It also makes for a uniquely stunning visual sight, seeing row upon row of spinning propellers perched high upon mountaintops. Not the sort of thing you see on a daily basis...unless, of course, you happen to live in Tehachapi.

The day I drove to San Jose (Friday the 11th of March) was a beautiful sunny day, so I was a little surprised to see a sign warning of heavy dense fog ahead. There were clouds around, especially one seemingly low-lying patch that looked as if it ended not much after it began, but they were outnumbered by the vast blue sky. Once I'd driven thru that, I forgot about it, and continued the ascent up CA 58. Upon beginning the descent, however, is when I realized the warning that had been posted earlier had been accurate.

The bright sunny day very rapidly disappeared as I, and the other drivers in my vicinity, went into a near solid wall of fog. Whereas we'd all been travelling close to 80MPH for the duration of the trip, with plenty of gaps between us, everyone now became bunched up in an effort to find the road at about half the velocity. Since visibility had been reduced to nil, it forced us to bunch together, as everyone was relying on the vehicle in front of them to help find the road. Cars were no more than 2 or 3 lengths apart, and even then the brake lights and a hazy outline were barely visible. This was made all the more interesting by being a downhill, twisty section of mountain road. Great fun! Which, for me, is the truth. I enjoy driving in those kind of situations where you're forced to sit up and REALLY pay attention. Something about that is really enjoyable to me.

Finally emerging from the cloud a while later, it was smooth, fogless sailing the rest of the jaunt to San Jose. CA 58 runs into I-5, which is then pretty much a straight shot northwest up to the Silicon Valley area, so named for the vast number of high-tech corporations which are based there. Getting to my hotel in the mid-afternoon, I checked the iPhone and paperwork provided by the hotel for nearby restaurants, of which there were an immense number within walking distance. Settling on a safe bet of an Italian restaurant, I sat down to a terrific meal of chicken parmigiana and vegetables coated with garlic butter at a nice place called Bella Mia. Gilroy, a town about 30 miles to the south, is apparently built around the garlic industry. The vegetables were fantastic, an excellent compliment to the chicken, which had a good amount of cheese and a nice marinara sauce on it.

Saturday morning I spent wandering around the downtown area, just exploring and admiring the monuments to computer technology that had been constructed. Many of the bigger technology firms in the world have their large corporate headquarters located within a few blocks of each other, along with quite a number of large financial institutions...and each with a uniquely designed building. I'm a fan of interesting architecture, and there was definitely some of that on display in downtown San Jose. Made for an interesting morning's stroll and picture taking.

I then headed over to the San Jose Museum Of Art in the early afternoon, which was located pretty much around the block from my hotel. While it was a nice place, and had some interesting displays (a display of Robert Mapplethorpe celebrity portraits, recent photographic pieces from other artists, and my personal favorite, a display of recent paintings by artists from India), having grown up in New York City, this museum paled in comparison. It's kinda tough to go visit museums in other places, unless they are MAJOR cities, when you've grown up with The Metropolitan Museum Of Art as your local museum. Again, I don't mean to knock the San Jose one; I liked what they had, but even taking my time, I wasn't there for much more than an hour. At The Met, an hour would get you thru maybe 2 rooms, leaving about 150 more to go. Still, I enjoyed what was in the San Jose Museum, and I'm glad I did it.

This was all a preamble though, as the main reason for my trip was Saturday night's National Hockey League game with the San Jose Sharks hosting the visiting New York Rangers. When I looked at the schedule many months earlier and saw that this was the week after the comic convention in Seattle, I figured taking a week off for the 2 events would be a great idea. Again, my hotel was within walking distance of the Shark Tank, which is what the locals have dubbed the arena with the ever-changing corporate branding that the Sharks play in. Seems that everything there is right on top of everything else, which is good if your visiting. There doesn't seem to be much living space right in downtown, as it's mostly corporate castles, upscale hotels, eateries, shopping, and spaces for the arts (theater, comedy clubs, etc.). Yet there were literally hundreds of people walking right along with me to the game, and I was going early, because I wanted to take in warm-ups, as well as have some extra time to explore and soak in a new-to-me hockey arena. It's possible many of them had taken either buses or trains that run with amazing frequency thru the downtown area that would have left them in the vicinity of my hotel, which was about a 15 or 20 minute walk away.

I don't like to let these entries get too long, so I'm shutting this one down here, with obviously more to come...


Blog Post Soundtrack; Björk (live), Tom Paxton, Tricky, Unida, TV On The Radio, Monster Magnet, The Chemical Brothers, Faith No More, Soundgarden, John Lee Hooker, Corrosion Of Conformity, Fu Manchu (live), Hermano, Tomoyasu Hotei, Misfits, The Lively Ones, Les Claypool, Ozzy Osbourne, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, John Frusciante, Galactic, The Doors (live, covering Van Morrison)

The Travelogue Stops In Seattle

This weekend was a quick in-and-out jaunt up to a favorite city of mine, Seattle, Washington. This marked my 5th visit to the area, my first being in the summer of 2001. It's a great place to walk around, and I've managed to have excellent weather nearly every time. Even when I have been there during some rain, it's never been more than a drizzle or light showers. I'm fairly certain I wouldn't want to live there, however. Not because of the rain, but because it can be kinda cloudy and grey there...a lot...so much so that it would be rather depressing on a daily basis. It makes for vibrant, lush countryside; the Pacific Northwest area of the country has some amazing forests, and the rain is vital for that. But to be in a city day-in and day-out with grey skies over grey buildings, um, no, thanks. I'm too much a creature of sunlight. I'm not a tanning person at all; I actually cover up as much as possible when I'm working, because skin cancer is a definite hazard of my job, especially out here in the deserts of the American Southwest. But I just love natural light. When I'm home during the day, I've got blinds wide open to let as much light in as possible. I only keep the ones covered that would let the sun stream in directly...the electric bill is high enough trying to keep the house cool in the summer.

So this visit to Seattle was strictly about attending the Emerald City Comicon. Last year my visit to the show was incorporated as part of a 10 day Pacific Northwest driving vacation which went on as far north as Vancouver, British Columbia. I spent 3 or 4 days in Seattle, wandering around, doing touristy things with my Mom, and only went to the convention 1 day. This year, I wasn't even originally planning on attending the event, until they announced Frank Quitely as one of the guests. Quitely is an artist who has worked often with Grant Morrison, one of my absolute favorite writers. Quitely is from, and lives in, Scotland, so his appearances in this country are quite rare. In talking with him at the show, he said he hadn't been to the United States since 2002. So when I had seen a while ago that he would be in Seattle, I looked into it, saw that it would be convenient enough for me to go, and the rest just became history.

Flying out of Las Vegas Friday morning, I landed in Sea-Tac airport a little before noon. I hadn't flown into Seattle since 2008, so this was the first time I was able to take Seattle's Light Rail train system from the airport straight into downtown. The cab ride I used to take for the same trip would run around 50 bucks or so with a tip. Light Rail? $2.50. Roughly the same amount of time, nice smooth ride, good views, and let me off about a block away from my hotel. Fantastic.

Through the convention website, I was able to get a nice hotel literally across the street from the convention center, so I really wasn't going to be doing much other than going back and forth from my room to the show. By the time I'd checked in and settled my stuff into my room, it was just after 2PM, which was when the show was to open on Friday, so I just threw a few of the books I'd brought with me into my backpack and headed downstairs. By the time I got over there the show was open for business and already humming with activity. I made a beeline for Quitely's table, only to discover that his line for signing had already been cut off. I realized this when I stumbled across the person wearing the "I Am The Last Person In Line" placard that convention staff gives out to certain people in line for particularly popular guests. I was a little stunned, as it was only about 2:30, but then I saw the sign at Quitely's table that said he'd only be signing from 2-3 and 7-8 on Friday, with the rest of the time allowing for him to be on panels and do sketches which were being commissioned from him at the show. Okay, change in plans...

So I decided to make my way over to go and see Mike Mignola, the creator of Hellboy. I've mentioned Mignola here before, as he is one of my favorite comic creators. I was such a big fan of his work a long time ago that I wound up interviewing him for Amazing Heroes back in 1991. I've followed his career for nearly a quarter century now, which makes us both older than we'd really care to admit (he just recently turned 50...he's got me beat by a little over a decade). He had a line, but I wasn't in any hurry, so I just got on to the end of that, with the trusty iPod and iPhone to occupy my time. Turns out, they really weren't all that necessary, as most folks just want to get things signed, and don't bother talking to the people whose work they enjoy. Except me, of course...

I cued my iPhone to a picture of me from my first driver's license way back in 1989, and was about to place that on the table in front of Mignola and his wife Christine to spark their memories of me, when Mike looked up, and without any prompting, recognized me on his own. No, it hasn't been since the interview that I've seen him. I've run into him at maybe a half-dozen shows across the country in the intervening years, and he still manages to remember me every time...but it still takes me by pleasant surprise every time when he does remember me. I showed them both the picture anyway, as I felt I owed it to Mike to show him an "embarrassing" picture of me, since one of the last times I'd seen him, I'd presented his wife with a bunch of pictures of him from around the time of the interview. We both were of the long-haired-hippie variety in 1991...and we both are of the smooth, shiny, chrome-dome now. Yeah, we all got a chuckle out of it, and talked for a couple minutes, but I don't wanna monopolize time when there's other people waiting to get stuff signed, so I headed off, knowing I'd see them again over the weekend.

Wandering around the show floor, I made my way over to the Image Comics booth, where Erik Larsen was going to be set-up. I'm not a big fan of Larsen's work, but I respect his work ethic, and thru his Twitter account, I respect his opinions. He has been the writer and artist of his creation, Savage Dragon, for about 20 years now, managing to put out an issue practically without fail every month in that time span. In addition to that, he also works on other Image projects, as well as being one of the chief officers of the company. I just wanted to let him know I was one of his Twitter followers, thank him for having and expressing opinions, and to pick up a copy of his new Herculian book, which was a collection of non-Savage Dragon odds and ends he'd recently put together. He'd mentioned how much fun he'd had putting this together on Twitter, so I figured the least I could do to thank him for his Twitter entertainment was to get a copy of this for myself. Read it in the hotel that night, and the fun definitely shines thru, even in the main story, which had some serious overtones to it.

The main story is of particular note as it was originally produced as a "24 Hour Comic", which means that the entire 24 page story was written and drawn over a single 24 hour period. This was started back in 1990 by Scott McCloud and Steve Bissette, and has grown to have it's own annual day. Larsen took a recent 24 hour comic of his, had it colored, and made it the first half of his Herculian book, with some other shorts and strips filling the second half. A 24 hour comic is a tremendous achievement, and if you don't think so, try coming even close to doing one yourself. It normally takes 2 artists a full month to render a 22 page comic that a third creator has written. There is quite an amount of work that goes into creating a single page of a comic, let alone entire books, and further on month after month. There is definitely a real strong and admirable work ethic involved in consistently producing a monthly comic book.

Around this time I made my way over to where Kevin MaGuire was seated. MaGuire is another favorite artist of mine, having rendered many issues of Justice League from the late 1980's and early 1990's that struck a chord with me. His speciality was, and is, his remarkable ability to capture a tremendous array of expressions on faces. He has always been able to draw characters with a smirk, or a frown, or a raised eyebrow, or a come-hither look, or whatever emotion or expression you could think of, better than just about anyone in the business, and do the full gamut of emotions equally well. Again, something that you would think would be easy to do, but believe me, it isn't.

After speaking with Maguire and Rosemary Cheetham, the colorist on his current book Tanga, I started to wander back to the hotel...only to suddenly realize it was about 4:30, and the panel focusing on Quitely was due to start at 5. I'd been thinking about getting some food, but now knew I was actually a little pressed for time, so I made a quick trip back to the hotel, grabbed only the books I had for Quitely, and headed back over to the convention center. As I was entering the building, I sensed someone was approaching behind me, so I stopped and held the door open as I normally would...

...and turned to see that it was Quitely himself I was holding the door open for. To quote John Cusack's Martin Blank character from Grosse Pointe Blank, "Dumb fuckin' luck!" I instantly told him that he was the reason I was heading into the building at that moment, and since we were obviously heading for the same place, hoped he wouldn't mind if I tagged along. He was fine with that, so we started chatting. I got the chance to tell him he was the reason for my attending the show at all this year, to which he was flattered. He talked about how he sits in his house working on this stuff, and since he doesn't do many conventions at all, let alone in the US, he's never really quite sure how well received the work is. Then he'll sit at his table at this Seattle show and see his line cut-off because so many people want to meet him, and he's a little taken aback.

As we made our way up the escalators, we exchanged introductions. Frank Quitely is just a pen name, but he's used it for so long that he answers to it as well as his real name. Amongst his friends, he's Vin, but I'll keep referring to him as Quitely for the sake of this piece. We talked about various subjects, including his most well-known creative partner, Morrison, and about drugs, since Morrison makes no secret of being a taker of many mind-expanding substances. That then led to the subject of Bill Hicks and George Carlin, and to my surprise, Quitely had never heard of Carlin. Thinking about it later, I realized that Hicks, while being huge in the UK and relatively unknown here in the the US, was exactly the opposite of Carlin, who was huge here and never really toured, or caught on, outside of the States. He was interested to learn more about him however, since I'd mentioned him in the same breath with Hicks.

We then made our way to the room where he was supposed to be fronting his panel, and as it was still occupied with the current talk, we stood in the hallway and continued chatting. I asked him about the recent animated adaptation of the wonderful All-Star Superman book that he and Morrison had put together, and he responded by sheepishly telling me he hadn't seen it yet. He hadn't been invited to the premiere, and hadn't even been given a copy of it (which DC staff at the show were trying to rectify immediately). I had just gotten the Blu-Ray the day before, put a digital copy of it on my iPod, and watched it earlier that morning on the flight up to Seattle. So I cued it up, and had Quitely watching some of it on my iPod there in the hallway, which I found somewhat surreal.

Around this time someone else finally recognized him, and asked him if he would't mind signing a book. He obliged, and I said to him I hadn't done that for fear of bringing a crowd around him (which is true...I had things I wanted him to sign, but if I brought them out there in the hallway, the moths would have all been attracted to the flame, and I was much more enjoying just talking with the man). He said he didn't mind, so I opened up my portfolio and showed him the 3 original pages of his that I own. Upon looking at the page of his I have from Batman & Robin (again written by Morrison), I asked him about the change they made to the piece. The published version has a very different graveyard to the one on the original piece, and even he wasn't really sure as to why they had him do a re-worked version, but they did. He also told me that he made the changes digitally, which explained why there was no patch that came with the original penciled page that I'd bought.

He also signed the 2 pages that I have from the All-Star Superman series, and I told him that the unfortunate thing about that was they were both from a scene that was cut from the animated movie. Since the film only ran 76 minutes, a lot of things had to be cut from the 12 issues that Morrison and Quitely had produced. He commented that he didn't know why they just didn't make it a series, and do the whole thing, but oh well.

As usual, this entry is taking on a life of it's own, and with plenty more to tell, I'll save that for another time...


Blog Post Soundtrack; The Police, Pennywise, Pantera, Desert Sessions, The Strokes (live), Kool & The Gang, Soundgarden, Muddy Waters, Metallica (live), The Mars Volta, ZZ Top, Deep Purple (live), Björk, Pearl Jam (live), Lily Allen, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Queens Of The Stone Age (live), King Missile, Hater, The Blues Brothers (live), The Clash, Oysterhead, Slayer, Social Distortion, Scatterbrain, Eagles Of Death Metal (live), Judas Priest (live), Jimi Hendrix, Monty Python, Santana, Infectious Grooves, Lenny White, Fugazi, The Marx Brothers

My Dinner With Andre...Err, Mike Zeck (Florida January 2011 Part IV)

While continuing with one theme, I'm switching gears on another. We shall continue with the travelogue, but we're going to switch back to Florida from New York. When the Florida trip of January 2011 was last discussed, I had gone with my uncle to Tampa to take in a Lightning game (which means I now have another excuse to post this picture...whoo-hoo!). Picking up from there...

We stayed overnight at a hotel in Lakeland, so we could get up early the next
morning and make our way over to Epcot Center. My uncle and his wife are big fans of Disneyland and all the parks therein, so much so that they have season passes, or annual passes, or whatever they're called. Arriving early enough for opening, after loading up on the way with another terrific breakfast at a Cracker Barrel location, we met up with his wife after making our way in. We then spent several hours wandering thru Epcot, taking in a couple of rides (I particularly enjoyed Soarin', as it simulates a hang-gliding experience thru the beautiful Northern California scenery...I've taken a couple of driving vacations thru Northern California, and truly enjoy the area), several exhibits, and just enjoying the meticulously landscaped grounds. There is a wonderful array of colors surrounding you at all times, not just from the random Disney characters that will appear here and there, but mainly from the beautiful flora and fauna that is seemingly ever-present. You'd be hard-pressed to find an area of the grounds that does not at least afford a view of some colorful flowers somewhere. Many areas are devoted pretty much specifically towards beautiful arrangements of flowers, plants, and trees. Although I love living in the desert, the predominant color is brown, or some shade of it. So it's nice to be able to get to places that want to show off their vibrant colors.

After spending the morning and much of the early afternoon in Epcot, and having a nice large snack/small lunch in the French section of the international area, we headed off in separate directions. My uncle and his wife were heading back to their house, where I would be joining them later that evening. But I had another item on my agenda this day that was going to be rather interesting as well.

I've been a fan of comic books as an art form for over 25 years now. I really enjoy the medium as a form for telling stories, and it's also nice that many of the creators
in the field are accessible at either conventions or, in later years, thru the internet either thru their own personal webistes, or Twitter, or things like that. Over the years, I've been fortunate to make a connection with many of the artists and writers whose work I really admire and enjoy. The walls of my home are covered with prints, posters, original pages, and commissions from many different people whose work has meant something to me on one level or another. In attending many conventions in New York when I was younger, I was able to make such a good connection with a couple of people that I managed to conduct interviews with Paul Chadwick, the creator of Concrete, and Mike Mignola, who would go on to be the creator of Hellboy, which eventually became the subject of 2 terrific films directed by Guillermo Del Toro and starring Ron Perlman as the title character. These interviews were done back in 1991 and 1992, when I would have been all of 19 and 20 years old. Yes, there will eventually be full blogs detailing the events of those days, but let's get back to Florida for now...

In going to those NYC conventions when I was a mere lad, I used to make it a point to see Mike Zeck at every one of them. This was an artist whose work I really enjoyed. Among his many accomplishments at the time, the ones that really stood out were his 3 year run on the monthly Captain America comic, and an incredible 6 issue run on one of the better Spider-Man stories of all time called Fearful Symmetry: Kraven's Last Hunt. Both of those books were done in conjunction with a terrific writer (and fellow blogspot blogger) J. M. DeMatteis, an excellent and prolific writer who I've also been fortunate enough to meet and talk with. The genesis behind the Kraven story is as interesting as the story itself, as DeMatteis detailed in his blog.


Perhaps the character Zeck is most identified with however, was from a mini-series in 1985 starring The Punisher. That series took an almost throw-away character that was used sparingly in guest shots in books here and there and brought him to the forefront of the Marvel Universe. The popularity of the mini-series generated enough interest in the character to grant him his own regular series soon after, which then spawned another regular series, then another, plus numerous gratuitous shots in other big books, specials, one shots, team-ups, etc. The character eventually became so big that 3 Hollywood movies have been based on him (although none have really been able to do it right...). But it basically all started with that mini-series from 1985 that Zeck drew (most of), written by Steven Grant.

These are books that I first read when I was in my late teens, so needless to say, they wound up having a profound effect on me. So it was nice to be able to meet the man at shows in NYC, and talk with him a bit, get some books signed, and even get a sketch. At one show he did a Captain America piece for me that hung on my walls for many years. He was a big Miami Dolphins fan, and I remember him wearing a Dolphins jersey at a show one January, as they were playing the New York Jets in the playoffs that day. This is pre-smartphone days, kids, so I remember him asking "What's the score?" more than once...

For various reasons, the big comic book shows dried up in the New York area by the mid-1990's, and then I moved out to Las Vegas in 2000, and Zeck moved from Connecticut back to Florida in 2003. Also for a variety of reasons, Zeck has been a total non-figure on the convention scene for quite a few years now. But he maintains a website, and also has a presence on the Comic Art Fans website as well. So thru these places, I was able to keep in some sort of contact with him over the years, occasionally buying some pages from him when he had some things up for sale. I bought a certain Batman page from him because of a memory it triggers for me involving my father and I when I was a very young boy. I also bought some pages from him from a book he did called Damned (again with Grant), which was quite an artistic departure for him, stylistically speaking. So due to this occasional contact, I sent him an e-mail a few months before I was going to be in Florida, letting him know of my impending arrival, giving him ample time to make preparations to evacuate. Much to my amazement, he seemed up for a meeting...

...which eventually led to my driving away from Epcot towards Ocoee, Florida, where I wound up having dinner with Zeck at Matthew's Steaks & More. A terrific German steakhouse, it's got a bit of a following among locals, and after eating there, I can understand why. The food was excellent, and the family-run establishment takes as great care of its customers as it takes care of its meals. The steak I had was seasoned with a blend of authentic imported German spices (the family makes a trip back to Germany at least once a year to restock the spice supply) that made for a very unique, and fantastic, flavor on a perfectly done piece of meat. Some fantastic dining, I would highly recommend it to anyone who is in the area.

I had brought along some posters of Zeck's work that adorn the walls of my home for him to sign at dinner (yes, I checked in advance if he was OK with this...), along with a page I'd bought almost a year ago from the Spider-Man Kraven book. The originals from that 6 issue series (which ran thru 2 issues each of the 3 Spider-Man titles that were being published at the time) were sold by Zeck as a unit to a single collector, who hung onto them for a LONG time. Eventually, they were bought by someone else, and then an art dealer bought the pages from that person, although he didn't relinquish the covers (I'm passing along the information I got from Zeck at dinner that evening, which I may not be entirely accurate on...if any corrections need to be made, I'll be e-mailing this blog entry to Zeck). In March 2010 the pages from this book, originally published in 1987, finally surfaced for sale, and were quickly gobbled up by collectors, despite some of the enormous price tags associated with the premium ones. Merely having Peter Parker in costume as Spider-Man on a page from that 6 issue series means a price of around $5,000. Some of the more important splash pages (either a one-panel page, or a page with one panel dominating more than half the page), with either Kraven of Spider-Man on it, were commanding 15 to 30 thousand dollars each...and they seem to all be sold now.

While I enjoy original comic book art, I also enjoy things like eating, and the house I live in, so being able to pay for groceries and the mortgage have a little more importance to me than a piece of artwork. But I knew I couldn't pass up the opportunity to own SOMETHING from this series. So I found a nice page from the second chapter that featured none of the main characters, but still demonstrated the excellent storytelling and drawing abilities of Zeck, in this instance inked by Bob McLeod. And even with shipping, it managed to come in well under $500, which I was fine with. I got it just in time to go to Anaheim last March when I got to meet DeMatteis, where we chatted theology, philosophy, and, oh yeah, comics.

Zeck and I sat and talked comics, family, sports, art, life, and many other subjects over the course of a couple hours. He was gracious enough to sign all of the posters I'd brought, the page, and a couple books, but my reason for that is pretty simple; so that every time I look at one of those pieces, I'll be reminded of the time I got to have dinner with an artist whose work (and work ethic) I greatly admire.

Blog Post Soundtrack; Metallica (live), The Ramones, Queens Of The Stone Age, Ted Nugent, Fu Manchu, Anthony Jeselnik, Pearl Jam (live), Glenn Danzig, System Of A Down, Iron Maiden, Run DMC (covering Aerosmith...gee, I wonder what song THAT could be?!?), Yawning Man, The White Stripes (live), Spike Jones (sort-of covering Johann Strauss...), Them Crooked Vultures, John Lee Hooker, Vance Gilbert, The Chemical Brothers, Tom Lehrer, Corrosion Of Conformity, The Fratellis, The Black Keys, Les Claypool, Rollins Band, The Misfits, Mike Patton, Sex Pistols, White Zombie, Soundgarden, The English Beat, Soulfly, Infectious Grooves (live), Steve Martin, The Doors (live), Faith No More (live), Judas Priest, The Police (live), Red Hot Chili Peppers, Audioslave, P. J. Harvey, Sugarcubes, Morphine, Clutch (live), Mike Watt, Rollins Band (live), Medeski Martin & Wood, Pantera, Bob Dylan, Madness

New York City October 2010 Part IV

Since I'm going to the MGM Grand tonight to see Drew Carey's Improv-A-Ganza here in Las Vegas, I figured I'd take the day off from work. I spent entirely too much time working last year, and I told myself I was going to take more time off this year to A) avoid burning out and B) get out to more shows, events, and road trips. So tonight I'll be seeing basically the 2011 model of the US version of Whose Line Is It Anyway. In addition to Carey, there will also be Ryan Stiles, Colin Mochrie, Brad Sherwood, Chip Esten, Jeff Davis, and Kathy Kinney. Other performances feature some different performers, including Greg Proops. These performances (several scattered thru late January and early February) are being filmed, and will start airing on the Game Show Network (GSN) here in the United States beginning March 28. Looking forward to it.

Since I have the day off, I also told myself I'd get some writing done today. I've got so many unfinished stories to put up here, as well as many stand-alone ones, but I like the travelogue format that this seems to have turned into, so for now I believe I will stick with that. Recently I've been recounting my mid-January trip to Florida, but I think I'll change things up and switch back to my early October trip to New York City. When last we left our intrepid traveler, he had just made it to The American Museum Of Natural History, accompanied by his New York-dwelling Mom...


We finally made it into the museum at around 10:30AM, and due to Mom's intelligence and library savvy, we managed to avoid waiting in line to get in, and also were able to get in for free, using passes she had borrowed from her local library. If you live near any kind of big museum, look into your local library to see if they have anything like that. The library near my Mom's house in Long Island offers passes to many of the major museums in New York City. There are limits and restrictions of course, but it is definitely worth investigating if you are at all culturally inclined. Libraries aren't just about books, kids...


As I'd mentioned in Part III of this NYC Trip story (yes, I've linked to it twice in this blog...sue me...), I had been to this particular museum many times as a youngster growing up in New York, either on day trips with my Mom, or as part of a field trip for school. I always enjoyed the place, and it was with a mix of nostalgia and appreciation that we wandered the many cavernous exhibit halls contained within the walls of the mammoth building. One of the nice things about the museum is they don't frown on picture taking as most other museums do. Granted, many of the other museums I go to are art based, and having flashes go off in immediate proximity is detrimental to the condition of the paintings, so I understand, but still, it's nice to be able to take pictures of the exhibits.


It isn't just what's on display at the museum, but how it's presented that always appealed to me. I love dioramas, and I really appreciate the craftsmanship that goes into making the pieces. I love all of the little details, and the perspective that you get by being able to take in an entire scene of whatever era and culture you happen to be looking at. This photo illustrates how a group of Native Americans used to hunt buffalo by herding them into an area where they were froced to fall off a cliff, which seemed rather clever and efficient to me. Why waste time and effort, and potentially injure yourself or lose your life trying to kill one buffalo, when you can relatively risk-free knock off a bunch at once, enabling you to clothe and feed an entire tribe or village for a significant amount of time?


Also in the course of wandering the insanely huge museum, we stumbled across a very familiar looking animal, which answered a question that had been lodged somewhere deep in the dark recesses of what passes for my mind for many years, freeing up some valuable space for other useless information. One of the few happy memories of junior high school that I have is an art class I took in either 8th or 9th grade with a fantastic teacher named Mr. Kelly (and I just pulled out my Jr High Yearbook, and no, it doesn't give his first name...I see a Google search in my future..). One of the projects we did was to do a large pastel drawing of an animal of our choice. I found some interesting one somewhere (remember younglings, this is the dinosaur pre-internet days, so no going home and Googling "interesting animals"...), and did what I thought was a decent piece. No, I have no idea whatever happened to the piece, but I was happy with it at the time...which was not something I could often say at that stage of my life. However, I had also long forgotten the name of the animal, until suddenly there it was right in front of me in the museum...the gemsbok (told you it was an interesting one...).

After over 2 hours of exhibit examining and slow walking, plus the 2 hours we'd spent meandering thru NYC going from Madison Square Garden to get up to the museum, we were a little tired and hungry. Fortunately, the museum has a wonderful cafe located in the basement, filled with excellent food and plenty of variety. Thankfully, the variety included a healthy dose of Italian based choices, so I was going to be happy. Nothing better in the world to me than good Italian cuisine, especially pasta with a nice marinara sauce and some meat to go with it. As many of my friends will attest, I'm simple.


After refueling in the crowded cafe, we made our way back outside into the brilliant sunshine beaming down onto New York on this amazing early autumn day. The temperature was in the low 70's, absolutely perfect for walking and enjoying the sights. This picture was taken just outside the front door of the museum, looking north up Central Park West as we emerged into the daylight. Just over 3 hours had passed since we entered the museum, but since we got an early start on the day, we still had plenty of time before we needed to make our way back out to Yentaville. So seeing as how it was a truly beautiful day, and I don't make it back to New York that often (this was my first trip there in 2 & 1/2 years), and I was having a nice relaxing day hanging out and talking with my Mom, we decided to take a leisurely stroll thru Central Park on our way back downtown. Mom doesn't make the trip into the city too much without me, so it's good for her to get to places in New York she doesn't see too often.


Central Park is one of my favorite places in Manhattan. A true oasis from the concrete jungle that is what most people think of when they picture New York City, this sprawling man-made landscape is the perfect respite from the non-stop chaos this is New York City proper. It is possible to get immersed in it enough to actually forget that you are in the middle of the busiest city in the world. There are places you can get to deep inside it that make the constant din of human and automotive traffic almost disappear. What makes it most interesting though is when you can see the dichotomy of the lushness of Central Park against the backdrop of the striking architecture of New York City. On a stunningly wonderful day such as this, the rich greens of the trees and the deep blues of the skies make for a terrific contrast with the sunlit tans and stone greys of the buildings.


There is some wonderful gothic architecture within the confines of Central Park as well. Bow Bridge (and from researching, I've found it's as in bow-tie, not as is in bow-down...I always wondered about that...) is a perfect example of that. Crossing over the mid-section of The Lake (the middle of the 3 main bodies of water in Central Park, with The Pond to the south and The Reservoir to the north), it is an arch bridge that is beautiful in its style and simplicity; a fantastic example of form and function merging perfectly. And it provides some of the most amazing views of the city on a day such as this. Being me, I chose to put a shot up here of the atypical view (facing southeast), because the view in the other direction, while terrific, is too overused for me to want to post it here.

There is much more to this day's wandering to be discussed and photo-illustrated, so I'll pause the telling of it here for now...



Blog Post Soundtrack; Colonel Claypool's Bucket Of Bernie Brains, Public Enemy, Mondo Generator, Bill Hicks, Pearl Jam, Les Claypool's Frog Brigade (live), Dropkick Murphys, Fun Lovin' Criminals, King Missile, The Mars Volta, The English Beat, Deep Purple (live), Bob Dylan, The Ramones, The Buzzcocks, Parliament, Primus (live, covering Rush), Anthrax, Monty Python, Fear, Goldfinger (covering The Misfits), Björk, The Misfits (live), Ted Nugent, Beck, Hungry For What, Cold War Kids, Metallica (live), Jimi Hendrix, Tchaikovsky, Sublime, Black Sabbath (most of Vol 4, most of Sabotage)