Famous Ankles

The weather has been so good for so long that I barely check the weather anymore.  A few days ago I had seen the all clear for another beautiful weekend…and got surprised.

I initially went down to Union Square and found the usual artists and farmers markets in full bloom, but nothing else of any particular interest.  One artist’s work caught my eye and that of others.  He was painting a nice depiction of Union Square.

Although in a wheelchair, he stood up a moment later and did some moving around.  I don’t know if he uses it as a medical necessity or just to cart his stuff around.  I suspect the latter.  And…if I were really cynical I could make a further guess.  I won’t…at this time.

Anyway, I wandered off to Greenwich Village (AKA West Village, AKA the Village) just to do some wandering.  Okay, right now the purists are shouting that “Greenwich Village” is the whole area east to west.  True in definition but not really in practice.  If you want to talk about the East Village, you say “the East Village”, but if you’re talking about the West Village, you can use any term you want.

The Village was, as always, wonderfully calm and cool (in all the senses).  The best part of the area is how weird the streets are laid out.  If you know NYC, you know that avenues go north-south and streets go east west.  So how do you get an intersection of 10 Street and 4th Street?  I’m not even going to try to explain the layout.

As I was wandering, it started to rain.  At first, lightly.  Later it grew to moderate size.  I found myself at the corner of Charles Street and Hudson Street under some scaffolding (it does come in handy sometimes even though it usually annoys me).  For a long time it was just me, a little traffic on the car and sidewalk, and a teenage candy vendor trying to sell his wares to passersby.  Very, very relaxing.

It seemed that only about 60% of the pedestrians were using umbrellas.  A lot of them had abandoned themselves to a wet fate.

After a while, I decided to get my own umbrella and then did some more wandering.  Here’s Waverly Street.

And, of course, now that I had my umbrella, the rain lessened.  It did kick up now and then, but no problem.

12th Street is one of those streets in the Village and SoHo that have the old paving.  It has to be a pain for the streets department, but it is very cool.

So, my wanderings around and about the Village were cut a bit short, but it was pleasant and I have to admit after last weekend’s wall-to-wall events, it was nice to stop and just watch a pleasant rainfall.

-H

This entry was posted on September 22, 2007 at 3:52 pm and is filed under Greenwich Village, Manhattan, Union Square, Wanderings. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.