Colossal Waste: NYC, March 2010, Day 6

The last morning in NYC. The four previous mornings we woke to the sound of rain. This morning... it was suspiciously quiet. A look out the window revealed why.

Clear blue skies over Manhattan.

This is the view out the same window, but looking to the left. With the rain gone, I realized that Denise's little guest room we have been enjoying has quite the view. "What view?" you ask. In a minute. I have to cover something else first.

I've never read a study on it, but besides the obvious general greatness of human sight, something about sight plus the brain enhances imagery. Go with me on this for a second. Look at something and jump up and down. The greatest motion stabilization camera system on Earth cannot do what your eyes and brain just did. On top of that, our eyes have great depth perception. Case in point immediately below.

In the view above, with my naked eye (okay, given, I have 20/20 vision) I can clearly make out the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building. Clearly. Yet even when zooming, it is hard to see.

But there they are, visible from our little North facing window on the Lower East Side.

Orio Shpeedvagon (I Germanized the pronunciation in my head this morning) was pretty uninterested in my looking out windows. After all, the tall, furry-faced human had a job to do.

This is Mein Shpeedvagon rubbing against the iPhone holding hand, insisting that it do the standard forehead to neck to back press that he'd become accustomed to from me.

Seriously, go to the rainy day pics and then back to this one and... well... sunny days sure are nice. Oh hell, this is the modern technowonder knows as a blog. You do not have to go anywhere. Here is the same view three days earlier:

Sure, this Day 2 pic may be a waste of time. After all, I doubt anyone was going to say, "No, the clouds and invisible rain looked far better than the blue sky and sunshine."

Stanton meets Clinton. I know that there are people who love their Suburbs and Exurbs. And that is okay. I cannot explain it, but I find the Urban Landscape more compelling. In fact, to me this pic screams "Neighborhood" while the aforementioned areas do not.

Partially due to the sunshine and partially due to the fact that we fly to California in seven hours, there is a lot on the plate today. We are going to hit the Standard Hotel over in the meatpacking district, check out the High Line (which is a former elevated railway turned into a pedestrian walkway and public park), and then perhaps zip up to Times Square because they have changed it. Changed Broadway, that is.

No subway pics, so just imagine being underground and then emerging on the opposite side of the island. We walked past the Gansevoort Hotel which had been our NYC home more than once before, and proceeded an extra block West to the Standard Hotel.

Okay. Seriously. There is architecture and then there is Architecture.

The sun crept into this second shot, so we banished the colors.

There is Architecture and there is Design. In this case, the entry to The Standard is cool, but I have a feeling it will soon feel dated and therefore be changed. Just a hunch.

Based on our level of hunger, and the knowledge that the Boom Boom Room at the very top of The Standard is not open until 4pm, we decide to hit the High Line first and then grab lunch.

There it is, the end of the tracks from below. I love the concept of taking the leftovers of industry and turning them into public spaces.

The Standard Hotel above the High Line. What I failed to do is walk to the edge of the High Line which I showed you from below to take a shot from that point. Sorry. Would have been a good one.

The tracks that remain are incorporated very artistically into the design of the High Line. Once again I am forced to consider my hometown and the lack of preservation there. Sure, Los Angeles has been ruled by property developers since its inception, and that tends to guide it towards Sim City like explosion and reconstruction with the past eliminated. But damn if that is not a mistake.

We did not get too far down the High Line. Soon after we passed under the hotel, Barbie realized that she had dropped something. We went back for it, found it safely on the ground, and at that point we both felt like grabbing lunch at The Standard Hotel Grill.

If my chest had eyes, this is what they would see.

I had eaten too much this trip. In five days I am literally losing one belt notch. My reaction? Lunch at the grill is the Cauliflower Soup with Egg and a side of Grilled Brussels Sprouts. Above, you see Barbie's BLT.

I do not care if there are Brussels Sprouts haters in the world. I would eat Brussels Sprouts every meal if given the option.

Lunch was made more memorable because we began conversing with the two tables next to us. It all began with the obnoxious woman behind Barbie, who wanted everyone in the room to know that she existed no matter how uninteresting she happens to be. When she loudly asked the Lord Above what lyric follows, "Where did you go, Joe DiMaggio?" Barbie turned to her and gave her the answer, and in a matter of minutes we knew that this older, skinny woman with leathery skin was sleeping with a married man who was willing to buy her a $1.1 million apartment in Costa Rica but not a $1.3 million apartment in Manhattan (which leads me to think he intelligently wants her far, far away yet available for visitation) and that her lunch companion was a subtly wealthy man from the Carolinas who now lived in and owned a winery in Santa Barbara. I could tell you so, so much more.

The young people at the table that completed our triangle, who also found her why-not-call-it-shtick amusing, soon took the whole vibe to the next level when the waiter brought them the most impressive drink I have ever seen.

Look! Look at that ridiculous beverage! It's something like champagne with grapefruit juice and a few other things, but the point is that goblet. I feel like the word goblet does not do it justice, but then again there is no word for a ridiculously large beverage glass because there is no need for such a word to exist.

-- Business Proposal Break: Let's open a bar in Los Angeles where the drinks are all served in goldfish bowls and aquariums. --

Lunch is complete. Time to go back into the hotel.

Candid Lobby Portrait, in sepia. Yes, those are my knees.

Okay, this needs a setup. We get into the elevator to take us to the top of the hotel, where one finds the Boom Boom Room. (I am both happy and sad that they did not go for the gusto and name it BoomBoomRoom without spaces.) In the elevator, there was art. Video Art. Eventually, my iPhone will be upgraded and I will be able to show you movement. For now, you will have to imagine the movement inside your brain.

This image was on a screen on the wall of the elevator, around eye level, and was ever moving along several planes. Clouds, fire, lightning; everything moving at all times. Insane Art, and clearly Hades-esque. I loved it.

The Hudson and New Jersey. This is the first view out of the elevator. But as you walk through the curtains of the Boom Boom Room, you see this:

Not your average hotel bar.

Our friend the Empire State Building, as seen from the North side of the Boom Boom Room.

The Gansevoort Hotel. We stayed in THAT suite a few years back and loved it.

The Statue of Liberty. Don't believe me?

Bugger! I can normally get the finger closer than that.

Time to ride the elevator down.

The video art brings us something a bit more Heavenly on the way down.

At this point, we hop in a cab to hit Times Square. We used to often stay in that area, and almost never go there anymore, but now that the great Broadway experiment has been made permanent, it is time for us to visit.

For those who do not know, Broadway cuts across the perfect right angles of Manhattan at a whimsical diagonal. This means that it often intersects other streets in the most traffic inducing manner possible. Mayor Bloomberg is an out-of-the-box type, and when engineers told him that removing streets can sometimes improve traffic, they began experimenting. In August 2008, they closed two lanes of Broadway from 42nd to 35th, creating public plazas. In May 2009, they closed Broadway entirely to automobile traffic through Duffy Square, Times Square, and Herald Square, basically 47th to 34th. Other streets still cut through, and apparently even though traffic did not improve a whole lot, pedestrian injuries almost disappeared while foot traffic increased, making both residents and businesses very happy. Last month they announced the changes are permanent, and I expect the "Plazas" created by this move will evolve over time to be more like Europe's great plazas. Or not.

La Place de Fois. More commonly referred to as Times Square.

You would never call it beautiful, but it is something.

I guess these pics do not mean much to many, but you have to think that this used to be filled with cars. With traffic. Noisy traffic. There are now cafés and people walking every which way. Definitely an improvement.

Time to hop on the subway. There is an airplane to catch.

When we came out of the subway, I finally took a picture of the Williamsburg Bridge. Sure, we have friends in Williamsburg now, but the actual reason I wanted this picture is that one of my favorite bands, Soul Coughing, refers to this bridge in the song, "True Dreams of Wichita."

Walking up Clinton towards Denise's for the last time. (This visit, that is.)

Casa Denise in the sunshine.

We lucked out. Denise had the time and kindness to drive us to the airport, sparing us using a car service or taking the train.

Cruising across the Williamsburg Bridge. The Soul Coughing lyric is, "And you can stand on the arms of the Williamsburg Bridge crying, 'Hey man, well this is Babylon.' " Funny how modern poetry has been horribly pretentious for around 50 years, except for the songwriters.

I love getting a shot of the destination on a highway sign.

I apologize. I shouldn't even tell you. But if I did not tell you then I would not be Me. That picture was taken inside of a Kennedy Airport Bathroom Stall.

Sometimes the jiggled pic comes out perfectly. That is what the world looks like when you're waiting for a flight. I think that one would look great with the color sucked out and the lights turned green.