conquered

NYC: Queensboro Bridge
Originally uploaded by wallyg

59th Street Bridge: May 7, 2008, in exactly twenty minutes with two vodka cranberries and one and one-half mojitos in me.

Greenpoint Avenue Bridge: December 21, 2005. No transit strike is going to prevent me from visiting Bill!

Williamsburg Bridge: August 14, 2003, date of the northeast blackout. Trekked from 2 East Broadway to Greenpoint with a shopping cart filled with two small bookcases from Target. Fought with bikers and baby strollers the whole way.

Brooklyn Bridge: Columbus Day 2001, after surveying the damage at World Trade.

Pulaski Bridge: Too many times to count.

***
I am a Noo Yawker, and as such there is no inch on this earth I cannot reach without my feet and directions.

bridge and tunnel

DSC00576
Originally uploaded by rutila

Yesterday I was a tourist in my own backyard -- Hoboken. What did I learn?
• Hoboken enjoys redundancy in its signage and banks; the latter reminds me of Greenpoint, where ninety-nine-cent stores breed like rabbits.
• Hoboken doesn't mind using Native American imagery.
• Hoboken thinks it's a borough of New York City. (And Not For Tourists agrees.)

See the sights Joisey has to offer.

cat porn

I got an e-mail from Meg in which she writes:

And now your moment of Zen: a video of my sister's pug sleeping. That's it. I defy you to find anything more calming than the sound of a snoring pug.

I replied:

I see your sleeping pug and raise you cat porn.

Cat porn can be a little disturbing, I admit, but it's gaining popularity:

Compliments of Miss Heather.

Originally meant to be posted May 6, 2008.

separated at birth?

The New York Stalker has the same style as the New York Neurotic:


No one should wonder how Susan Sarandon can pull off drag queen like no other:

disbelief

Dear Subway Gods:

Thank you for one of the best commutes this lifelong straphanger has ever encountered. I haven't ridden the G as regularly as I have been recently since before early 2002, when both the train and line were castrated (from six cars to four and from Forest Hills to Long Island City) to make way for the pitiful V, instead constantly opting for the B61 or L.

This morning I was blessed with a G that arrived at a full-ish Queens-bound platform within minutes of the MetroCard swipe. Though I had missed the Manhattan-bound E at Ely, another one pulled in shortly.

The return trip from West Fourth was as timely: just caught the E, and a G was pulling in at Court Square.

And the business meeting was outstanding too, though Subway Gods had nothing to do with it.

Blessed be,
PR

Disclaimer: Listening only to Crosby, Stills, and Nash's lovely and bitter-free "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" may have rose-colored my journey. Stephen Stills's demo is especially precious.

L-train observations

Setting: Eighth Avenue terminal

8:49 PM: Regardless of origin, real Noo Yawkers are exhausted -- the female of the species carries at least two bags, one on each shoulder and perhaps another slung on her back, and the male's head bends uncomfortably to lean on his shoulder. Hipsters are chatty with animated mouths and hands -- females carry one small handbag, and males wear caps despite the lack of natural light.

8:53 PM: Us naïve, Catholic-high-school girls had wondered Where does a penis go in pants: down a leg (doesn't that cause an imbalance?) or down the center (somehow)? during lunchtime conversations. Well, a fop standing in front of a sitting me provided a bulging eyeful and dressed right.

and rolling papers

This is newsworthy of the New York Times?

The Grateful Dead, whose songs celebrated personal freedom, American idealism and mind-altering drugs, will donate a cache of their papers, posters and props on Thursday to the University of California, Santa Cruz, which plans to use the musical miscellany as part of a research center to be known as Dead Central.

[...]

University archivists say the collection was drawn from the band’s various studios and business offices and dates back to the Dead’s founding in 1965. Among the items are rare photographs, press clippings, stage props, vintage posters, backstage passes and set and guest lists for some of the band’s innumerable concerts, which were famed for their lengthy jams and die-hard tape-swapping followers, the Deadheads.

Disclaimer: not all Deadheads are potheads, and not all potheads are Deadheads. All Parrotheads, however, need serious help.