It has been literally (and I’m using the word correctly) years since my last post. Been keeping away because, while ridiculously productive taking pictures, I just can’t seem to work up the desire to write. Well, that’s not true: I keep a journal in which I write almost every day, sometimes pages of notes about the pictures I’m taking, the books I’m reading and assorted crap. Blog writing though… I don’t know… I start out and a sentence or two in (like right now!) I ask myself, ‘who cares?’ and don’t even bother to save the draft. Today I thought I’d ease myself back into it.
I’m preparing for a trip to New York City next week to see an exhibit of about fifty photos by Eugène Atget at the ICP – if my back can stand it, that is – by familiarizing myself with his work.
His photography, usually taken in the early mornings before there were people out and about, resonate deeply with me because they remind me of the pictures I would take walking around the near empty streets during covid. They are also the sort of photographs I would like to be able to take now but can’t unless I, too, get up very early to hit the streets before 5 O’clock.
[The picture above was taken on 19 December 2020, early afternoon, in DUMBO (Brooklyn, NY)]
2020.12.19 (13:39): the lunchtime crowd in DUMBO, Brooklyn
The blog entry linked below is from Art Blart (‘art and cultural memory archive’) which I only discovered this year, but has become a great resource for me.
So, I’m at lunch, having a beer (or two (or three (or I lost count))) and I’m scrolling Instagram thinking, ‘do men actually like women or have we been conditioned to like women?
What if we were originally meant to partner with dogs so as to create a race of elite beings who not only have opposable thumbs but also incredible senses of smell and hearing while maintaining man’s ability for color differentiation?
And what if a group of rich white men started making the rest of us believe that women were what we were really after, rewriting the history books and religious texts we read to reinforce this outrageous lie?
And all the while these dog fuckers are having the time of their lives, breading a super race, keeping us head down in servitude working for their enrichment and entertainment!
Well to them, all I have to say is: ‘Thanks! I may be living contrarily to the laws of nature, but I like it!
Alarm at 5:30, snoozed until 5:48. No real snoozing involved, just lying lazily in bed not wanting to get up.
Always keep a camera by the bedside for those lazy morning pictures
Tightly rolled up my clothes into the duffel last night which gave me a false sense of having made plenty of room in the bag until, this morning, I had to add my toiletries bag, a sweater and a sweatshirt, making it a cramming exercise again. Nothing in the bag that wasn’t there when I came, yet it seemed heavier.
Decided to Uber instead of walking to Union Station because of the aforementioned laziness. Uber ride was nice enough except for the smell of the air ‘freshener’.
Tried purchasing the train ticket to the airport with the company card again, again it was rejected. Bozos!
Turns out almost everyone else had this problem with the train ticket. Get a bunch of developers in the same room discussing something like this and it becomes a conversation bordering on theology as to the hows, whys, and wherefores of credit card processing and company policies. A couple of us spent some time in this before ending with the equivalent of god moving in mysterious ways.
Train to Pearson has plastic partitions between seats. They’re kept pretty clean. Thinking that in New York there would hair grease, skin oil, and clever epithets scratches into them from day one and they wouldn’t have been cleaned since day two.
Were it not for the reflection, and the constant bumping of the elbow, you wouldn’t know the partition was there
With the knowledge gained during my arrival, it was quicker to find my way to terminal 3. Security was easy enough, people here are sure damn friendly. Almost as if they like their jobs or something ridiculous like that.
Border control was a mess. Two lines: one for MCP app holders with nobody in it; the other for those without with the entire population of Toronto in it. I’m pretty sure that the reason is that people don’t know that leaving Toronto, Pearson (YYZ) is the ‘port of entry’ and many airports (like LaGuardia) aren’t listed. It confused me at first and there was none one to ask, but i reasoned it out: if there’s a border control here, then this must be the POE. Sailed right through.
Terrible breakfast at the airport at somethings called ‘Urban Market’ consisting of a container of chocolate milk, a lemon loaf (what nobody seems to call a lemon pound cache anymore), and a bottle of Perrier. Could have gone to the Starbucks all the way in the other side of the A Gates, actually did go, but the line there was almost as bad as the non-MPC line at border control
Illustrating the value of knowing your customer: shoeshine guy offers me a shine. I look down at my canvas shoes and say ‘no.’
Canvas shoes, canvas bag, nylon backpack
Paid an extra 47 bucks for upgrade to business. Wonder how they came up with that amount. Why not 45 or 50? It’s like they prorated some intangible thing
((comfort * distance/ticket cost) * remaining seats). Anyway, worth the money to get in first and the comfy chair (crowd mumbles ‘the comfy chair?’, ‘the comfy chair!’)
The woman in seat 4A show you just how comfy the chairs are.
Especially with a full flight, it’s nice to have the extra room for legs and elbows between the seats. (Bonus: fig bars and a seltzer served in an actual glass. Coming up in coach we were offered nothing and told we couldn’t bring beverages on board)
Am in the aisle, so no inflight pictures except for this one
Seats 2 and 3A
The woman in 4A was leaning across the aisle and saying something to me. I couldn’t understand her, her voice was muffled. I leaned closer to hear her and the sound of my book falling woke me up. When I looked across the aisle the woman, a very different woman than the one in my dream, was sitting back in her seat reading. The muffled in my dream was that of the pilot, who was still talking, announcing our descent into turbulent skies above New York. I picked up my book and, packing it into my backpack, started to feel the initial jolts which lasted about fifteen minutes until we reached the ground. The woman in 4A took pictures documenting our approach.
First time flying anywhere since pre-covid. Heading to a team meeting in Toronto with mixed feelings, as always: on the one hand, I’m looking forward to seeing people I haven’t seen in close to three years; on the other, I don’t really like traveling all that much.
It’s not so much the traveling, but the crap around it: booking; getting to and from airports; the whole security hassle; our company’s (explitive) expense system and its requirement that we use the corporate credit card for everything that they’ll eventually question you charging; and now, apparently, dealing with multiple apps.
Travel to Canada now requires you to use their ArriveCAN app where you scan your passport and vaccination record and answer all those annoying questions about carrying large amounts of cash and visiting farm areas. You have to show the app to the person when getting the boarding pass, again at the gate getting on the plane and again at Canada customs. The American Airlines app, when you try to check in, now requires yet another app: VeriFLY. I had no idea about this app, had to download it and was such a pain in the ass trying to figure out how to add my personal and flight information that I gave it up I got my boarding pass from a real person (NOTE: I did try the self-service kiosk, first, which showed me ‘we’re processing your request’ for five minutes before crapping out).
APPS IN USE FOR THIS TRIP:
American Airlines
VeriFLY
ArriveCAN
Hilton
CBP MPC (‘Official App of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’, no less – for the return
CHECKING IN WITH A REAL PERSON:
Real Person: Where are you going? Me: Toronto RP: what time is your flight? Me: 10:05 RP: so, that’s the 8:40 flight to Toronto. Me: no, 10:05 RP: …(gives me a look and types furiously)
Self-service iosks and apps never give you a look. That’s the only thing I like about them.
Left the house too early to stop at my favorite place for coffee, so waited in an interminable line at Beecher’s (LGA, Terminal B) to get something, having first stopped at Bar Veloce only to discover that, even at 7:30 AM, they only serve alcohol (I actually considered it but, no).
The coffee Line. When you’re almost through the line, you’ll find a sign with a QR code that tells you that you can use it to order on line and avoid waiting in line. Very useful place to have that.
MENU BOARS AT BEECHER’S: Ice Tea – $2.49
Me: I’ll have an iced tea, please. Counter Guy: we don’t make any iced beverages, only hot. Me: … (giving him a look) I’ll have a black coffee, then, thanks.
Online ordering apps don’t give counter guys a look. That’s the only thing they like about them.
On board. We are on an EmbraAir E170 or 171 (seat card is for both.) My assigned seat was 20D, but I was, fortunately, able to jump the aisle to 20A, away from the pleasant, but malodorous, young man in 20F and with two seats to myself.
Boarding, a woman, expressed several times that she couldn’t believe that she had the ‘last seat in the plane! The very last seat!’ (21 C).. By several times I’m thinking that if I heard it only six times it’s because I must have missed two others while trying to fasten my seatbelt. She was incredulous and not a bit happy about it. One of the flight attendants was kind enough to find her a seat closer to the front.
I don’t understand airplane seat numbers. My side of a four-seat row they are 20A and 20C, across the aisle are 20D and 20F. It’s like someone forgot how the alphabet works. I might understand going from A and B to E and F, leaving a space for an invisible C and D, but missing letter in the middle of a sequence of adjoining seats is beyond me.
Unhappily sitting in the very last seat on the plane.
Something fun to do while flying: almost everyone takes in-flight picture or videos out the window. Using my iPhone, I wanted to try using the panoramic feature while resting the top of the phone against the window, the body angled slightly so that the phone was, roughly, at an 80° angle. Took a few pictures like this over New York City and a couple more above some clouds. They came out unexpectedly well! This technique worked well in the air, but not so well on the ground.
Pano 1: Flying over New YorkPano 2: Flying Over New York Pano 3: Still over New York. Here you can see the GW Bridge distorted because of the plane’s shakingPano 4: Above the clouds somewhere over HellifIknow, New YorkPano 5: Above the clouds about fifty miles from HellifIknow, New YorkPano 6: About to land in Toronto
There was a drip above my seat I could never find the source of. I checked the air nozzles, the area around the lights and the seams around the panels: noting – no moisture and nothing dripped as I held my hand under the area and above where I had felt drops falling on my head. By the end of the flight, I began to suspect the flight attendants were spitting at me from the galley, two rows back. Perhaps turning the tables on the current spate of nasty passengers and becoming, themselves, unruly. And who could blame them? Why shouldn’t I be happy to oblige by giving them a target for their pent up hostilities.
The galley – the mischievous flight attendants were to the right and out of sight.
It was supposed to be raining in Toronto and, from the turbulence during the approach, I expected a monsoon, but, once on the ground, it was only partly cloudy.
As it goes, customs was easy. Worst part of the ordeal was walking there from the gate. It might have been a half mile but seemed longer carrying my duffle and a backpack with the world’s heaviest laptop and a power supply that looks like a black brick with cables coming out. (I would have opted for a MacBook, but that would require doing all my dev work on VMs since nothing we do do we do on MacOS (liked all the ‘do’s in that last sentence?).)
Another schlep (second favorite word, only because I feel there has to be a first favorite I have yet to come upon) was from customs to find the train to terminal 1 to catch the train to the city.
As I said earlier, the company wants us to use the corporate card for all purchases. If you don’t, you have to write a nicely worded letter of explanation stating why you didn’t. Otherwise, it has been my experience, you’ll be given a hard time even for a minor expense, such as a twelve dollar ticket for the train from Pearson Intl to Union Station, downtown. So, like a good soldier, I attempt to use that card which was, of course, declined.
I figured it had to do with my never having used the card since it was issued – I haven’t traveled, right? So, I call Bank of America Global Bullshit Services (number on the back) and the very nice woman on the other end of a ten minute hold and five verification questions tells me: no, no, the card is fine. It’s the vendor code. Your company has approved certain vendor codes and this one, 4131, is specifically denied.
Fine, I say, I’ll use another card, then asked if she could send an email (to an email address she just verified was mine) to that effect so that I can rub my company’s nose in it. Oh, sorry, no, she says. It’s against policy and some bullshit privacy policy (hence my calling it Bank of America Global Bullshit Services before). I ask for that vendor code again, write it on the palm of my hand, and verify that the card is okay for future use.
(NOTE: We have people coming to the Toronto office all the time! Why has this not been a problem before? I Teams-text a coworker who said he had the same problem. He said he just kept trying and it eventually went through, he said, by entering it as a new credit card. Really? Ok, next time.)
Walk from Union Station to the hotel (about 15 minutes) was hot, but not bad. Wished I had packed lighter, though – or brought a rolling suitcase.
Hotel checkin was smooth. Was expecting the corporate card to give me another headache, but no! I even remembered my PIN number from three years ago!
Not sure if the people in the room above me are having sex or making popcorn. There are sounds coming from upstairs that could be either. Hopefully it’s popcorn.
At the hotel I unpacked my stuff – hung up pants, shirts, jacket; put away shoes, underwear and socks (I’m staying five days but, oddly, I brought ten days worth of socks! Wonder what was going through my mind.)
Now going to take a quick walk to the office, camera in hand, and see what’s up for tomorrow.
Yesterday I used my lunch hour to go to the local Barnes and Noble bookstore to get the latest issue of i-D Magazine. Turns out they didn’t have it. It’s an import from the UK and they are still one and a half issues behind on the magazine racks here (another issue is due out soon).
I was disappointed that I had wasted my time on the short drive, made long because of the traffic. But was it a complete waste?
As usual, I had one of my cameras with me. I took some meh shots walking through the bookstore …
Looking out the window by the magazine racksDescending the escalator to the lower levelAnother shot looking out the window by the magazine racksA selection of magazines (why is short American Short Fiction on the upper shelf where short people would find it hard to reach?)
… but, going back back outside through an entrance I rarely use, the area looked slightly different than I remembered. I thought I’d try doing one of the ten exercises I started writing about a year or more ago. I would stand in the same spot, moving my feet only to turn a bit, and take a series of pictures.
Here, now, I shall impose the results upon you.
They’re just moving furniture into this restaurant. One of two places that are ‘opening soon’Don’t know what either Plans A or B were, but neither proved to be successful. The sign out front advertises the ‘coming soon’ of a comedy club. The weather’s been dismal and I look forward to a few laughs.This was the something-or-other building on Tresser Boulevard. Now it’s the something-or-other-else building. Companies come and go taking their names with them; buildings stay until they start to crumble and are torn down – hopefully before falling on someone.#1 Those eyes! A mural created by Sen2 (Santo) Figuero [@sen2figueroa on Instagram#2 Same position as #1 – different focus#3 A little bit lower now.#4 And a little bit lower now.#5 A little bit higher now.
All shot with the Olympus OM-D E-M5 Mark II on aperture mode with LUMIX II Aspherical 20mm f/1.7 lens
Today I finished this book in the same place where I found it. [Olympus OM-D M-5ii, LUMIX 20mm Lens, f/16.0, 1/30s, ISO 180]
Just finished reading Tim O’Brien The Things They Carried, a coherent collection of short stories about Tim’s time as a soldier in Vietnam. I call it a ‘coherent collection’ because the stories, any one of which could stand its own, flow in either chronological or narrative order.
It’s a book I picked up by chance off a shelf at Third Place, a shared work space in Stamford, CT. Written in 1990, it had only just recently been brought to my attention: my wife, Jane had finished reading it a few months before and told me about it without a lot going into much detail (something like ‘you’d like this. It’s about Vietnam and it’s very moving at times’), but I dismissed it as something that had been written either after the fact by someone who hadn’t been there or by an embedded reporter. But I came across it at Third Place and the coincidence made me pick it up, read the first few pages and become hooked.
I read the last few pages of the book today in the same place where I found it – not by design, it just worked out that way.
The book resonated with me in so many ways (it was real; it recalled the military for me in ways that I hadn’t thought about since I left; it was philosophical; it was instructive) , and I found it moving more than just at times.
In the last story, ‘The Lives of the Dead,’ a childhood girlfriend, Linda, who died from a brain tumor around the age of nine, answer’s his question, ‘What’s it like to be dead?’, in a dream saying, ‘Well, right now [in the dream] I’m not dead. But when I am, it’s like… I don’t know, I guess it’s like being instead a book that nobody’s reading… All you can do is wait. Just hope somebody’ll pick it up and start reading.’ I loved that analogy.
It’s one of those books I’m sorry I finished: it made good company and I’d like to have kept on reading it.
Here I will admit to having a kind ofphotographic Tourette’s Syndrome in that, when out by myself, I cannot sit more than a few minutes without pulling out either my phone or my camera and taking a picture. The impulse is still there when I’m with others but, unless there is something truly compelling, their presence tempers my impulse to snap anything that catches my attention.
So, to illustrate, let me take you through the hour I spent at coffee this morning at a cafe on Grigg Street, Greenwich [CFCF Coffee – if you’re ever in town, I highly recommend any of its three locations] while trying to read through the magazine I brought with me.
There are fifteen pictures below out of roughly sixty taken and several different edits – so, for the sake of argument, let’s average it at one picture per minute.
Grigg is a short (one-block) street close to the bottom of what would be our ‘High Street,’ Greenwich Avenue. There are only a few shops there, notably CFCF, Diane’s Books, and Grigg Street Pizza. Not a lot to take pictures of. However, there are…
9:14: Blue Skies/Blue Umbrellas; White Skies/Black Umbrellas (Color: iPhone XR/B&W: Olympus OM-D E-M5 Mark II)9:16: The corner of Grigg Street and Greenwich Avenue – this is a window into Meli-Melo, a very popular restaurant (which I have yet to go to, since it’s jam-packed every time I try). I love the bottom of the window frame that gives the original name building and year it was erected. (Olympus)9:17: A woman sitting across at a table Greenwich Avenue – I didn’t even know there were tables there (Olympus)9:18: I don’t know why this woman’s feet caught my attention, but I kept seeing them out of the corner of my eye while looking down at my magazine. Finally, I gave in and took a photo (iPhone)9.19: Then, looking down at my own feet, wishing I had better taste in socks (grey carhart socks with brown pants? Please, someone rescue me from my lack of fashion sense!) (iPhone)9:19: within seconds of my last picture, this man and his prodigious beard catches my attention. That’s the beard I want to grow, but I just don’t have the patience to maintain it (iPhone)9:23: Three minutes and, perhaps, ten pictures later… the woman who was with the beard, sitting at the table in front of me. I thought shooting her through the empty chair in front of me would make a nice picture. It’s the lack of someone in that chair opposite me that has made all these pictures possible (iPhone)9:27: The leaves in the planter next to me catch my attention. Upon inspection, they appear to need a shave . This is actually a composite of two pictures to mimic depth of field: one with the front leaves in focus and the other with the inner leaves in focus (iPhone)9:40 & 9:41: Whenever possible, I try not to post pictures of people where their faces are fully visible, but I couldn’t help it here: this couple is just too good looking. Before this shot I think they were taking a selfie (iPhone)9:42: Sink in the restroom. Good to see that whoever was there last used soap (iPhone)9:52: Effortless elegance (iPhone)10:05: Suddenly, there’s a crack in the sidewalk that needs photographing (iPhone)
This clock is located at 145 Duane Street which used to be the headquarters of the Nathaniel Company, a shoe wholesaler which had been in business from the 1860s until 1953.
Duane Street was central to the City’s shoe industry.
Their original building at this location was destroyed by fire in 1864 and a new building with a cast-iron facade was built in it’s place. A second fire in 1894 gutted the top floors and severely damaged the lower, but the cast-iron facade survived and the building was repaired. This clock was added sometime after an fire in 1894.
This clock no longer works. I don’t know when it was last operational, but pictures I’ve seen of the building from 2009 and a bit before has the clock showing the same time as mine, the clock is accurate two times each day now.
The Silk Clock, 470 Park Avenue (corner East 32nd Street), New York City, NY
When you walk around New York City you see all sorts of interesting things. I’m always on the look out for old clocks on the side of buildings. You see them everywhere, especially below Canal. I stumbled on to this one a bit further up town on Park and E. 32nd and was fortunate to find some information about from a 1996 New York Times column. Thought I’d share it.
Q. What is the history of the interesting clock on the building at 470 Park Avenue South, between 31st and 32d Streets? There is a wizard, a man hammering and a woman on it, and they move. What does all this represent?
A. It’s called the Silk Clock, and if you look at it carefully, you can envision a scene out of Arthurian legend, says Conrad Milster, the chief engineer at the Pratt Institute and a clock aficionado. At every hour on the hour, the wizard Merlin raises his wand and taps the squatting blacksmith on the head, who hammers away at King Arthur’s sword, while the Lady of the Lake rises out of the clock’s case. The clock, built in March 1926 by the Seth Thomas Clock Company of Thomaston, Conn., got its name from the building’s original owners, Schwarzbock Looms, who worked in the silk industry. Fittingly, the face of the 2-foot-by-3-foot clock is adorned with a silkworm motif, including mulberry leaves, the worm’s favorite food. But over time, the city’s grime fouled the clock’s mechanism, and it sat idle for several years — no one knows exactly how long — until the building’s current owner, S.L. Green, asked Mr. Milster to restore it in 1984. It’s a New York rarity, says Mr. Milster, in that it’s still run by a weight-driven pendulum. And its whimsical characters create quite a commotion with passers-by when they swing into action, says Darlene LaColla, the building’s concierge. But don’t set your watch by it. Because the five-foot-long pendulum is made of wood, seasonal shifts in the humidity cause shrinkage and expansion, which can tamper with the clock’s accuracy by a few minutes.
I’m in the middle (almost finished, actually) of reading Hold Still a memoir (with photographs) by Sally Mann, a photographer I’ve admired since the late 80s. Really good read and I recommend it, not just for the discussions of her work and some of the controversy it caused in the 90s when Immediate Family came out, but the general way she writes about her life, her children, her husband and their family histories – really well written stuff.
Anyway, this morning I decided to print a self portrait of hers from 1974 intending to use it as a bookmark (I do that a lot: use pictures I print as bookmarks). The printer, it turned out, was out of paper and when I went to load it, I put the paper in upside down. This is how the picture came out:
I kind of like how the picture came out, but unfortunately, it never dried (I’m talking 6 hours later!), so I couldn’t use it as intended. I wonder if spray fixative would have let me keep it?
Joearf’s Thoughts 