Raiders of the Lost Blog

We finally got some rain over the past few days here in NYC. A great thing,
as after a few weeks of hot dry weather the city gets a little on the fragrant
side. So I have a few pictures with some clouds from the storm. The view
of the Empire State Building is right in front of the McDonald’s on 6th avenue
& 29th street. Every now and then I have to stop and just look around at
the crazy cool views I have in this city.

So this weekend on my expedition with Charisse and Jason, we went to a Charlie
Parker jazz festival! I took pictures along the way and throughout the day,
as usual.

One weird thing, we wanted to start the day at the National Museum of the American Indian
run by the Smithsonian, but when we got there they had total airport-like security.
X-ray machines, metal detectors, and they wouldn’t allow pocket knives. I always
have a swiss army knife on me, as it helps with opening and fixing computers,
but I couldn’t go into this museum with the knife. They wouldn’t check the knife
or anything.

The funny part is that NO ONE goes to this museum. It’s down below Wall Street,
and fairly un-visited. We thought we’d go by and check it out. All the "real"
museums in the city just do a cursory bag check and leave it at that. I mean
if the Met doesn’t care, why should this one? As we were talking about what
to do the guards told us we had to leave the lobby too, we couldn’t linger.
Like we were going to hijack a museum with my oh so deadly pocket knife. This
is going a bit too far with the security. Who would target the least-visited
museum in NYC? Fittingly the museum is also home to the US Bankruptcy Court.

So after that we went walking up through Chinatown to the fantastic Pearl River
Trading Company. It’s right on the NE corner of Canal and Broadway. Kind of
like the Macy’s of Chinatown. Two floors of food, pottery, tchotchkies, dishes,
clothing, shoes, curtains, rugs, you name it… and it’s all incredibly cheap.
A really fun place, if you’re ever in Chinatown you have to check it out. They’re
moving slightly uptown soon to SoHo, although it’s only a few blocks up.

The jazz festival was fun, it was really
packed! They were playing some great music.

After that we went to see One
Hour Photo with Robin Williams. It totally rocked my world. Got goosebumps
after I left it. The show is amazingly creepy, great music, and the director,
Mark Romanek, has such a wonderful style. There are so many wonderful shots
in the film, at almost any point you can stop the picture and see a perfectly
composited shot. Man, that film was tight! Surprisingly it’s only at 2 theaters
here in NYC, the Union 14 and the Loews Lincoln Center. Try and see it if you
can, it’s a great picture. It did make me really happy that I use digital cameras though instead of having to develop pictures. You’ll understand when you see it…

This is a weird tree by my house	The side of a restaraunt in Park Slope
A garage with a really strange vent	One of many churches in Park Slope
A cool house in Park Slope	Another church in the Slope
7th Ave in Park Slope, way south	Native American museum, which includes the US Bankruptcy Court!!
Great alley by J&R	Me in the alley - everyone’s leaving the frame!
Me again	Verizon’s main switching building downtown - no windows! Looks like the Death Star
Dragon in Pearl River Trading Co.	Dork with dragon in Pearl River
Camera shy	Physical Graffitti house
Nice tattoo	Charlie Parker festival
Me holding the camera and taking a pic

I can’t say how many times I’ve been to Prospect Park but each time I see something new. Today I found a tiny trail I hadn’t gone on before that led to a wonderful wild area. Other than the path and stairs all over the place it was very grown over, and so quiet. You can hear the animals & insects. I took a movie clip so you can see some of it and hear it. It’s amazing that there’s such a nice, wild, and empty place so near to where I live. Of course “empty” is relative, even on this lonely hill hidden in the park there were still a few joggers who went by. Relative to the rest of the park though it was deserted.

Click on any picture for a larger view.

I was just thinking of that song they do on the news with the Wednesday’s child adoption. “Wednesday’s child is full of woe/Wednesday’s child has nowhere to go…”. Pretty sad stuff. Why am I thinking of it? Just had to come up with something with Wednesday in the title.

I’ve been playing with Mac OS X 10.2 “Jaguar” on my iBook. Man, it’s sooo much nicer than before! Faster, and easier to network with windows machines, and finder is vastly faster now.

But enough about that, here’s some pics! The top two are from brownstones on my street. There’s a sunset there from a building on Prince & Broadway and a statue down in Chinatown.

It’s absolutely stunning outside in NYC right now. Just shy of 80 degrees, sunny, blue skies and fantastic clouds. So I figured I’d walk around a bit at lunch and take some pictures. As always, click on any picture for a larger view. This is what I saw on my walk…