This is Rick. My sister took me to FAO Schwartz to put him together, a birthday gift months in the making. Like me, he enjoys a good Irish whiskey from time to time. Perhaps too much.
All in all I had a fantastic day today. Started out at FAO Schwartz with my sister, then to lunch at a great little burger bistro, followed by Alice in Wonderland (which I’m apparently in the minority for enjoying). After my sister and I parted ways, I went off to meet up with some buddies for amazing steak at Keen’s Chophouse, which was immediately followed by drinks at Tempest Bar, where I met and got on with two really cool bartenders. Though if we’re being brutally honest, I think Rick hogged most of the limelight tonight. He got cozy with one of the bartenders, got hit on by a drunk dude, had his picture taken twice, and attracted more than a little attention at the otherwise-quiet bar. That’s definitely much better than I average.
Perhaps I should just start bringing him with me wherever I go. I wonder if he could get me out of traffic tickets.
Not about to let Friday’s abundant snowfall go to waste, I grabbed my camera, two lenses, and headed off to Central Park.
Me and about half of New York, rather. I have never seen as many people out with cameras as I did today. At one point I saw about five or six people on the same small bridge, all looking out over one of the railings, shooting The Lake. It was kinda ridiculous.
Earlier in the day, I found myself walking around Jackie O Reservoir and happened upon a small hut-slash-gazebo right on the water, with some ducks milling about on (and in) the ice not five feet away. Inside the hut-slash-gazebo was a man and his dog, just hanging out. Despite the droves of people flocking to Central Park and despite the fact that we were in the heart of Manhattan, the scene was quiet and still. Quiet, that is, except for the soft, mournful tune emanating from the man’s harmonica.
I stood there for a while, taking some photos but mostly just enjoying the peaceful tranquility of the moment. The air was crisp, ducks silently milled about in the water, and all you could hear was the man’s quiet harmonica.
That, and the three other photographers, about fifteen feet away, snapping photos.
Just when I thought Winter was going to leave us with only one decent snowfall for the season (the one in early January doesn’t count, since I wasn’t around for it), he decides to give us one last hurrah. Normally on days like this I opt to work from home, but I had errands to run so I decided to go into the office.
If someone had told me sooner that a perk to working on heavy snow days was virtually empty trains, I’d have done it a long time ago.
I love train stations. There’s probably no more romantic an image of travel than standing on a train station, steam rising from the tracks, saying goodbye to a loved one as their car speeds away. It’s an image we’ve seen a hundred times before in a hundred different incarnations, all of them dark and romantic and mysterious and classic.
Which is why commuter trains annoy me so much.
As much as I can understand the logical, practical reasons for their blah and unsexy designs (the silver siding, for example, makes it much easier to clean graffiti), that doesn’t make them any less blah and unsexy. Train stations, especially by night, invoke a certain image and commuter cars just ain’t it.
It was my birthday over the weekend, and I spent it in Jersey with friends, doing nothing but play video games, watch movies, lounge, and read.
It was wonderful.
All that relaxing can be pretty tiring, however, and I haven’t quite recovered from it yet (as I was pretty busy today) so today’s update will be little more than this shot of a random traveler spotted in Penn Station. He’s not the real Epic Beard Man, but as the original is more of a Beard Man who happens to be Epic and this guy is more of a Man who happens to have an Epic Beard, I figure the distinction is enough to let it pass.
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