what about the plastic animals?

Opening and Closing

Opening soon.

Closing soon.

While walking down Amsterdam this morning I noticed that chocolate was on the shelves at the Scharffen Berger store. My guess is their opening is imminent. Please, please, please have hot chocolate.

Later, I decided to try the Shake Shack one last time before it closes for the winter. See that line? It took about 20 minutes to get near the front. Once there, I heard them say it was another 45 minutes to get your food. An hour wait for a hamburger? Shake Shack's burgers are good, but not that good. I left. What a waste of time!

To top it off, until they close next week the Shake Shack is serving fancy concretes. Concretes are really thick shakes. So thick they don't spill if you turn them upside-down. Concretes are made by obliterating all ingredients in a high-speed commercial blender. The point of blending roasted apples, caramel and cinnamon until you can't tell any of the ingredients apart is beyond my comprehension. They might be fine separately, as in a sundae, but blending seems rather pretentious. I can't help but wonder if the Shake Shack has jumped the shark.

Scary Monster

Happy Halloween!

Office View, October 29th

View out my office window this afternoon.

Previous office views:

31 Dec 2003
3 May 2004

Random Weekend Images

There's an Osage Orange Tree in Central Park near 100th St and Central Park West if you want to save yourself a dollar.

If you are Chinese, and have dirty hands, this is the place to go.

Big Big Penny at 91st St. Part of theTom Otterness on Broadway exhibition that runs through November 22nd.

There were hundreds, if not thousands, of these forms in the parking lot at Hudson and W. Houston St. Sunday afternoon.

I saw these at Fairway Friday evening and thought I'd give them a try. The ginger beer was ultra-medicinal nasty. I had to dump it out. The cola was drinkable but not very good.

Hiatus alert: I'm hosting a meeting at work this week and won't be posting for a few days.

Manhattanville 4

Bridges

Looking north under Riverside Drive. Before this viaduct was built Riverside Drive ended with a loop around Grant's Tomb and where the Claremont Inn once stood.

Alcove at the north end under Riverside Drive.

The 125th St. station was recently renovated. Not the supporting structure, just the station.

The AIA Guide says the ironwork here is "worthy of Eiffel".

The part of Manhattanville that I was interested in was that between the Riverside Drive viaduct on the west (first two pictures) and the viaduct that carries the 1/9 subway line across the valley to the east. That doesn't quite encompass what was historically Manhattanville and you can still see remnants of the old street layout to the east of the subway line. The building of these two bridges at the turn of the last century gave people the opportunity to easily cross the valley and bypass the village below.

Previously:

Manhattanville 1
Manhattanville 2 - Empty Spaces
Manhattanville 3 - Buildings

Photobloggers and Cream Puffs

Nice combination, eh?

Last night I went to the very interesting Paul Shambroom Photographs Democracy at Work at the Apple Store in SoHo. In addition to Shambroom's presentation of his photographs of (mostly) small town meetings that have recently been published in a book, the meeting featured photobloggers Jake, Mike, Rion, and Eliot. The photobloggers shared their more politically oriented photographs and discussed the extent to which their photography has a political impact. There were a couple of photojournalists and artists in the audience and there was a lively discussion. The professional photographers were impressed with the democratizing potential of photoblogging. Democratizing in the sense that the Internet is open to anyone so that interesting photographs can get quickly noticed, and also in the sense of capturing images of events that the mainstream media might not want, or be able to, capture. That is, there are potentially a lot more photobloggers, or just amateur photographers for that matter, than their are photojournalists. By sheer numbers and range of personal interests the photobloggers are going to pick up on events that major newspapers and other media outlets are going to miss.

As the discussion was winding down someone in the audience made the astounding claim that there weren't any Midwestern photobloggers and that he was working to send New York photobloggers to the hinterlands to train people. Shambroom politely told the guy he needed to get out of New York a bit more often. Let's see, there's Rachelle in Chicago, Fourteen Places to Eat in Indiana, Kansas Flint Hills, Fiatvera in Pittsburgh, Arkansaw Pitchers, and A Walk Through Durham Township, Pennsylvania to mention a few. Sure, not all of these are in the Midwest, but they are far removed from NYC in spirit if not distance. I'm sure there are many more. Feel free to link to your favorite Midwestern photoblogs in the comments!

I left soon after to do some shopping when I had the urge for a cream puff. A Beard Papa cream puff at their recently opened Astor Place location. I've been to their Upper West Side branch more than a few times. The downtown store is a bit different. For one, they have coffee and other hot drinks. Sad to say the hot chocolate was terrible. The cream puffs, I can happily report, are just as good as they are uptown. This store also has helpful signs explaining each step of the cream puff production process.

Yes, Deer

I went for a walk this afternoon at work and startled this deer. We stared at each other until the deer decided to run away and I decided to go back to the office.

Tree Fade

No particular reason. I just like how the colors fade from green to light brown. Anyone know what kind of tree this is?

Juvenile Humor Lives!

On W 116th St.

Chili Cook-Off

Explaining the voting procedures

Tending the pot.

Tasting.

The vegetables were ignored.

The winner!

Our annual campus Chili Cook-Off was this afternoon. Monday is an odd day to stay late at work and drink beer, but the beer was free, there was plenty of good chili, and I had a valid reason to leave my office a couple of hours early, so I will not complain. Perhaps because it was held on a Monday, there were fewer entrants (only about 15) and fewer attendees this year than in previous years.

Way back in 2000 I won the contest with a pork mole chili. I was runner-up a couple of years after that. Over the weekend I made a variant of my winning recipe. It turned out pretty good, at least I thought so (and I heard unsolicited compliments from complete strangers), but not good enough to win. It was probably the spiciest chili of the lot so that may have worked against me. The competition was pretty stiff, many of the entries were quite good and I didn't eat any bad concoctions. Okay maybe the dry beef bits with sesame seeds and anise was a bit odd, but I only had a small bite of it.

Maybe once I recover from this bout of chili-making I'll make another batch and have a chili party!