brucepix

The basement of this building
is apparently on the top floor.

Uptown around 33rd Street you come across one of those NYC
parks that occupy those triangular islands of land where two streets
converge. Horace Greeley once said “Go west young man, go west”.
However it appears that Mr.Greeley went north to 33rd St. and found
a seat.

Whether you’ve got a political statement to make or you just
“love NY” this is a cheap place to buy those T-shirts to bring
back to the relatives.

Well, it appears that I’m not the only guy who doesn’t
wear pants on Wednesday.

I did actually take one photo yesterday. This photo was taken
from my bedroom window about an hour before sunset. There was
a short cloudburst which left the surface of Queens Blvd. just wet
enough to reflect the headlights of the rush hour traffic. The rain
also produced this magnificent display of color.

I have to get my butt moving today even if it’s just to move my car. We’ll see where we go from there.

      A couple of places to chill out.
      
     
     New Yorkers just love their parks. It doesn’t matter if the park is grand like Central Park or Prospect Park in Brooklyn or just one of those little neighborhood patches of green where you can take the kids for a couple of hours, we just love to be able to chill out. This year it seems that New Yorkers have been using  these parks in record numbers. Maybe it’s because the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation under the direction of its commissioner, Adrian Benepe, has been doing an outstanding job in keeping the parks not only clean safe and usable but also beautiful. Whoever is responsible for some of the flowers and plants, even in the small parks, really knows their stuff.  I’ve never seen such a variety of  unusual plants and flowers as I have seen this year. This spring the city was awash in yellow daffodils and every variety of tulip not to mention those terrific African Violet floral arrangements in those planters around town. Even the parks that have traditionally been known as virtual supermarkets for drug sales, prostitution  and other abhorrent behavior, such as Tompkins Square Park, are now not only free of dealers and hookers but have seen the return of moms and kids and even some tourists.
     Yesterday, having really no theme walk in mind, I decided to see what was doing in two of New York’s urban parks.Union square Park on 14th Street and Madison Square Park on 23rd Street. These parks are only about ten blocks apart but are worlds apart as to who patronizes them.
     Union Square park is a place where people go to see and be seen. It’s a place where people go to sell stuff (legally) and to look for deals on arts and crafts. It’s a place where you go to rest your tootsies after a hard day of bargain hunting at one of Union Square’s mega stores or to grab a snack at the very trendy Snack Shack.
     The park at Madison Square (23rd Street) is for people who need a place to take their kids, walk their dogs, eat their lunch or just sit on the grass and listen to a concert. It’s also a place ,that for some reason, manufacturers like to hand out free samples of whatever they are trying to promote. Something to watch out for. In the past few weeks I have obtained samples of Snapple, a low cal chocolate something and an over the counter pain reliever. It’s a bonanza!

            A street for all cultures.

    This past Sunday afternoon, on a street on the Lower East Side Of Manhattan, not far from where the giant, noisy Manhattan bridge looms over a neighborhood of small restaurants and open air vegetable stands, a coming together of sorts, of two diversely different cultures in front of a restored synagogue.
     Eldridge Street, just off Canal Street, in the heart of what once was the center for the Jewish immigrant community, was the host to a uniquely New York cultural event. The first annual (maybe) Egg Roll and Egg Cream* festival. It wasn’t one of those giant street festivals that take up blocks and blocks of city streets this time of year. Instead this very modest affair took up only about a half a block of a street shared by Chinese and Jews alike.
     The festival was organized by the people who run the recently restored Eldridge Street synagogue, a building that was left to ruin before private benefactors stepped in to bring the place back to its original glory. The synagogue was once the cultural and religious center for Jews who came from the ghettos and schtetles** of an increasingly hostile (at least for Jews) Europe.
     Today the street is made up of businesses that cater to a predominately Chinese community who’s residents take pride in their culture as the Jews did almost a hundred years before.
     The Egg Roll and Egg Cream festival was meant to recognize the very natural melding of two cultures that, for some reason, have aways been linked via food. There is not any group of people in this country that has embraced Chinese food more than the Jews, a fact not left unnoticed by anybody opening a Chinese restaurant. Go to any Jewish neighborhood in New York and you will find a plethera of oriental cuisine. Jews are the Chinese restaurant’s best customers. Open up a Chinese restaurant in a Jewish neighborhod and your success is assured.
     Thus we have this event that sort of puts an official stamp on this Sino-Jewish relationship. I’d like to see this continue and expand with maybe some other dishes in addition to the egg rolls and egg creams.

The restored Eldridge Street Synagogue in front of which    
the Egg Cream and Egg Roll festival was held.

Eldridge Street. The Jews on one side the Chinese on the other.

Learning the ancient Chinese game of Mah Jong. The only people
I know of in this country who still play this game are old Chinese  
ladies and old Jewish ladies in Florida. And maybe these two.

Hand made yarmulke’s (skull caps). I’ll bet you don’t have
one.


How about a nice glass tea?. Who knew there was a ceremony
that goes with it.


Egg Cream fixins’. Sort of.


Here’s a guy drinking an egg cream and looking at an egg roll.


A Chinese string orchestra. I was waiting for them to do a
rendition of “By mir bist du shoen” but it never happend. Where
was the klezmer band?


The monks in front of the Buddhist temple,
which is right next door to the synagogue,
seemed amused at the whole thing. Maybe
they were trying to find the ZEN in egg creams.

*The Egg Cream: From what I could see nobody at the festival knew how to make an egg cream. At least not the way I know how to make one. I have the only official method of egg cream preparation as practiced by the “candy store” owners of Brooklyn. A method that I spent many a day observing in front of the counter of my local luncheonette on Bedford and Clarkson avenues. While there may be many so called official egg cream recipes only this one is the true official one as set forth by the Society for the Preservation and Perpetuation of the Egg Cream.

   …and there’s not a traffic light in    sight.

     Last Friday, in a fit of wanderlust, I decided to hang the cost of gas and get out of town. I needed to see some farms and cows or at the very least  someplace without a traffic light. My personal opinion regarding traffic lights in an age where waisting gas is downright unpatriotic is to do away with all of them. Just think how much gas we would save if we didn’t have to sit idling waiting for the light to change. “But there would be utter chaos with no lights” ,you say. For a while maybe, but soon you would  just get used to it and settle down and become courteous well mannered drivers willing to let the other guy cross the road while you wait for a second or two. O.K., maybe not. So before they come to take me to the home, let me tell you about a place that does not have a traffic light or traffic jams for that matter. That place is the magical upstate New York town of Woodstock New York. Woodstock was a sleepy obscure little village tucked up there in the beautiful Catskill hills until that one summer when the famous or infamous music festival named after the town, took place a few miles away in a farmers field in Bethel. They were originally supposed to hold the festival near Woodstock but the venue fell through at the last minute. By the time they finally secured the Bethel location the tickets and posters and advertising had already been printed and distributed and it was too late to change them. As it turned out this was the best thing that could have happened to Woodstock. The town received all the fame without the hassle.
     Today, Woodstock is pretty much as it has always been, a quiet immaculate little village that takes up only about a half mile of route 212. The town thrives off of its namesake notoriety and has done its best to perpetuate the image of peace and love.
The town is just chock full of galleries, antique shops and artist studios and best of all genuine circa 1969 tye died in the wool hippies. Oh yes. There’s not a traffic light to be seen.

    From Bryant park to the river, and then some….

     Over the past few months, in an effort to make my walks more interesting and to actually give them some purpose or goal, I have developed these little self guided walking tours. Although they are unstructured they all have a set beggining and an end which may or may not be set. As any good walker will tell you, one should be flexible.
     Yesterday I started at the subway station at 6th Ave. and 42nd St., Bryant park behind the library, and walked down 42nd St.  past the Chinese mission, past the Tibetan protesters and down to the river. I walked along the river’s edge past the tow impound lot and the heliport to Chelsea Piers. I took a brief rest at the marina and continued on to Chelsea Market on 15th St and eventually cross town to the 8th Ave. “E” train subway station and home. I’m not sure of the exact mileage but it has to be four or five miles anyway. I usually don’t count miles or time. When my legs start to hurt I stop. I figuer my body knows when to call it a day.
     Here are some pics from yesterday……

     To say it was just hot out yesterday would be doing a disservice to the word hot. It was dangerous hot. If you live in a climate where it’s usually hot like Texas, Florida or Newark New Jersey you know how to adapt to the heat. You simply don’t go outside.You live in an air conditioned world. But us city dwellers here in the northeast aren’t used to this sustained heat. We don’t respect it. In fact we rather enjoy it. For a while anyway. But soon the reality begins to set in. It begins with sweat. First just beads of it. Then rivulets begin to run down your forehead. Sweat begins to form in places it never has before like your back and neck. And then it happens. That expensive underarm deodorant that you spent five bucks for because it says that it would stop odor and wetness for 12 hours falls pitifully short of its mark, by eleven hours and forty five minutes. You seek shelter in a Starbucks and order what has become America’s drink de jour, iced latte with whipped cream on top, merci.
     As dangerous as it was for us two legged citizens it becomes even more so for the animals that cohabitate with us here in the baked apple. A couple of days ago we received some information from a reader informing us of the rules governing the use of horse drawn carriages in New York.  Simply put, you can’t work a horse if the temperatures are over 90 degrees. The reader also explained that there is  difficulty in enforcing these regs because of the lack of ASPCA officers and the unwillingness of the carriage operators to comply. With this in mind I ventured back to Central Park yesterday armed with the Nikon to see if any four or even two legged folks were working. I waited for the time-temperature sign on one of the tall midtown buildings to hit 90 and headed for the entrance to the park at 5th Ave. and 59th Street, the place where all of the carriages wait to pick up fares. I am pleased to report that although there were plenty of tourists there was not a horse to be found.

     No relief in them northern woods.  

     As New York melts into its third day of record breaking temperatures it’s getting to feel more and more Florida-like. In fact all we are missing are the palm trees the knobby knee’d old guys with the white plastic belts and an early bird special or two. In fact if it doesn’t start getting cooler around here we can expect to see stone crab restaurants and a Publix supermarket popping up on every corner.
     Being a man of unlimited time but limited means my choices for heat beating diversions are few. I could go to the beach but that means trading one hot location with dust (my apartment) for another with sand. Instead I decided I would head for the cool north woods. The call of the wild was strong my friends. My primal need to commune with nature called to me. Hang the gasoline, hang the tolls, come on up. And up I went. I decided to point the Civic in the general direction of the mountains. I would go as far as a half a tank of Saudi’s finest would take me saving the other half a tank to get me home. I got as far as Bear Mountain. All I can say is I hope the bears were keeping cool, I wasn’t.  Despite the trees and the rivers and the lack of concrete there was no hiding from the heat. I stayed about an hour before I took shelter in the air conditioned heaven of my Honda. The lack of photos is reflected in my haste to leave.

       It’s June. What did you expect?

All photos on this and all previoius blog entries are (c) 2008 Bruce Cooper.