Famous Ankles

As the next few posts will show, this weekend is all about running.  Saturday morning at 7:36, the US Olympic trials for marathon runners was held.  And Famous Ankles was there….as an observer, of course.

I arrived well before the start.  The run was to go from Rockefeller Center on 50th Street to 6th Avenue, cut south to 42nd, go to Times Square, then north to Central Park and then around the inside roads about four times.  My original thought was to go to Central Park and catch them from there.  I then thought that it might be great to see them run through Times Square (as I’ve seen the half-marathoners do).  As I was walking to the area, I noticed that there was almost no one around on Sixth Avenue and figured that the crowds would be less than I expected.  So, I decided to see how close I could get to the beginning.  The answer:  pretty close, indeed.

That’s some of them.  When I first got there, I thought these were wannabes while they kept the real athletes warming up someplace else, but that only lasted a few seconds.  I never could figure out a count, but there were a bunch of guys looking to fill just a couple of spots on the Olympic team.  I did talk with one of them, but it was just a “How ya’ doin?  Good luck out there. Thanks, appreciate it.” sort of exchange.

The day was cool/cold at about 45 degrees F.  But the wind was a killer.  Fifteen to 20mph.  I didn’t envy any of them.

I did get to the actual beginning point of the race, but didn’t stay there.  The crowds were pretty significant.  Not overwhelming, but a bunch of die-hard supporters.  Lots of cowbells.  Lots of them.

I don’t know who “Ritz” is (presumably Dathan Ritzenhein, who ended in second place), but the sign of Ritz Rocks was the only sign I saw.  Nevertheless, this was a crowd that seemed to know the runners.  I’m not sure why I got that feeling because I never saw anyone conversing directly with the runners, but it was a family-type atmosphere and very friendly.

The guys, it was the men’s trials, were very intense, though.  You have to remember that this may have been the most important day of their lives (at least professionally).

Below, was above the start line and a number of the runners were lying down and doing their stretching.

At about 7:30am, the cops started to clamp down more and more.  The tension in the crowd grew and everyone was really expectant.

There was a shot and the run started.

That’s my first picture of the runners.  Here’s my second.

That was as fast as my camera could take pictures in that light.  I even had to brighten these two photos to bring out the detail.

The actual passing by lasted about five seconds.  The crowd instantly broke up.  I heard a number of people talking about going out to Central Park, but I had other places to go.  But that’s for a later post.

Much later in the day, I learned that one of the runners, Ryan Shay, died during the race.  I’m shocked and saddened by that.  These guys all seemed in perfect shape, Olympian shape.  If you look at the picture of the runners as they were coming toward me, I believe Mr. Shay is the runner in the front, toward the right, wearing a white sleeveless shirt.  My sympathy to his family and friends.

-H

No matter how many times I tell myself to take my camera, I seem to ignore my own advice.  Today is Halloween, and in NYC that means the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade.  That’s one parade I really don’t plan to cover, but everybody keeps telling me I’m really missing something.  Maybe I am. Well, I’m actually sure I am, but I don’t know that I’m unhappy about missing such a bacchanal.

But, there was to be a parade in Tudor City.  I don’t think it was to be a real parade, but more along the lines of people going out in costumes and wandering the local streets.  In preparation for that, I decided that I needed to have my camera battery fully charged, so I put it in the recharger before I went to work.

And completely forgot that the company’s annual Halloween ice skating event at Rockefeller Center.  I’ve posted on that before and I really do enjoy skating there.  So, I went without camera.  So, no great ice skating shots from Famous Ankles, just some descriptions.

The rink isn’t large, but it certainly can accommodate a couple of dozen people at the same time.  What really happens is that the watchers outnumber the skaters by 3:1 or 4:1.  You’re always catching flash bulbs going off out of the corner of your eye, but it is often people on the ice taking the pictures, too.  This evening was a lot of fun.  One of my co-workers brought her sister and niece to the rink and, because neither of them skates well, let me take the young lady (10 or 12, I’d guess but I really don’t know) to go around it.  The kid had the gumption, but not the skillset at the time and it was more of a matter of letting her hug the rail the whole way around.

We did it about four times with each of the first three times becoming progressively better and better.  She did get to the point that she could “walk skate” ten or fifteen feet without the rail as her closest friend.  But by the fourth time she was exhausted and decided that the rail was the closest friend she had in the whole world and wouldn’t let go until nearing the very end. 

I’m happy to say that she never fell once under my tutelage.

As usual, the grandeur of the place is overwhelming.  You’re below ground level and the Rockefeller Center building just towers over the place in a way that’s beyond my ability to describe…well, beyond saying “overwhelming”.

-H

I took some time off and spent part of Friday wandering through the wilds of Chelsea (forthcoming posts) and decided to walk home from there.

I was walking on 39th Street toward Madison Avenue when I noticed that the crowd at the corner was a little odd.  They just were standing there.  No one crossed the street and I noted that they seemed overwhelmingly Hispanic.  My instincts said something was up and I looked across Madison and saw that there was police tape up blocking off 39th Street from eastward traffic.  I crossed and found another crowd (nothing huge by any means) and spotted a CBS cameraman doing some filming.  I took some quick photos, knowing something had happened/was going to happen.

I noticed a double-line of yellow tape and noted that everything was pretty low-key.  As I was standing next to the cameraman, and he looked rather bored, I asked what was going on.  He said that there had been a bomb.  I said, “You mean a bomb threat?”  He answered, “No, a bomb.”

That’s a real wake-up call as you can probably imagine.  It turns out (well, it’s still ongoing) that someone early in the morning had thrown two gernades, or gernade-type devices, into the Mexican Consulate.  As this was nearly 11am, the event had been going on for hours with me blissfully unawares.

You could see the consulate from the block entry point.

I knew nothing about when the bombing had occurred, so I was a little surprised that it was so sedate.  I waited around for a few minutes and captured some crowd shots.

I then went over to 38th and cut over to Park Avenue and got there in time to see the NY CSI unit pulling away.

When I saw that, I knew that it must have taken place a long time before.  So I wandered on home.

This sort of thing happened nearly two years ago at the British Consulate up in the 50s and Third Avenue.   Thankfully, it’s been minor stuff at night.

-H