One Hour Photo
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…
