Famous Ankles

Hurray!  It snowed.  Not a great whopper of a storm, but a nice dusting that actually stuck around for a few hours or most of the day.

Here’s a couple of shots in Tudor City on 41st Street.

The above were taken around 9:15 am or so.  I then cut over to 42nd Street and headed westward.  As I was walking by Grand Central, I noticed a sight you’ll see everywhere that a surprise snow hits:  a woman in sandals.  Not unique to NYC as I’ve seen that sort of thing in other cities, but I always wonder about it.  It wasn’t that much of a surprise.

Speaking of Grand Central, just a wintry shot of the southwest entrance.

I then went to Church at Times Square Church again (I’m starting to go there more regularly now).  I actually have gotten a seat twice in a row – both times in the nosebleed section, but I vastly prefer it to the annex area I used to go to in the basement.

Something you never see at Times Square Church during a Sunday morning:  a front area unjammed with people.

It’s actually to the left of the McDonalds, but the real annex is above the McDonalds.

Don’t pay any attention to the lack of people in the front.  As usual, the service was packed!  As usual, very vibrant.

More snow postings to come, probably tomorrow.

-H

When Christmas comes to NYC, there are a number of inescapable direct commercial tie-ins.  There are the Christmas windows in the major department stores and then there are shops opening up in common areas such as Bryant Park and Union Square.

The shops are virtually all small kiosks and are open-air.  The vendors are very specialized and seem to be mom-and-pop type of operations.

Lots of stuff that looks hand-carved.

There’s a long line of them that goes from one side of the Library to the other…or almost all the way.

It actually ends on the south side at a pretty large Christmas tree.

Not as grand as Rockefeller Center’s, though.  (Note, I didn’t go to the lighting on Wednesday night.  That place is unapproachable by the time I get off work.  It’s much better to watch at home…not that I did, but it’s the only way to see that spectacle.)

The shops are also adjacent to the free ice skating rink (well, you can rent skates for a price but it’s free if you bring your own and are willing to wait to get on the ice).

But I’ll show that in another post.

-H

I don’t know if this guy is a courier or not, but I like to think of him as such.  Without a car in Manhattan, it can be tough to get packages around.  Typically, you hail a cab and hope it can fit in; or wait to get one of the few minivan cabs.  Or pay for separate delivery…at their time, not your’s.

But this guy has an alternative for a bulky package:  skate with it.  I can’t imagine it was very heavy nor breakable, but it was a cool sight to see.  It’s a little hard to grasp from the picture, but the bag was huge and bulky.  It didn’t phase the skater, though.

-H

After I watched the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, I walked back home.

On Fifth Avenue, just south of Rockefeller Center, I spotted something I’ve heard about from New York’s recent past:  a three card Monte game.

If you aren’t aware of it, three-card monte involves you and the dealer…and the dealer’s friends who pose as other customers.  In my case, they were all playing as if they didn’t know each other and the friends were making the absolute worst choices of the red card.  What terrible luck!  The players didn’t even notice that the red card had a big crease in it!  Easy money?  There was no way I could lose!  Without me saying a word, the dealer looked at me and asked me if I knew which one was the red card.  I pointed.  I WON!

The dealer then tried to press a $100 bill on me…as the real winner of course.  A woman with the original loser told me I “have to take the money.”  I declined and walked off.

I don’t know how they were going to get it back (with the rest of my money) but perhaps I was going to be set up for pick-pocketing or maybe if I were to try to leave there would be some sort of loud objection or something; but I knew that there was no way they were going to let me off with any of their (or my) money in my possession.

I did get away.  And I spotted another game a block further on.

I thought the cops had gotten rid of these crooks.  Maybe it’s indicative of an economic downturn or maybe I’ve just been oblivious to other games (and, no, that ain’t the truth).  But it does worry me.

-H

It’s Autumn and the days are getting shorter.  Oddly enough, the nights are lasting longer.  Whoda thunk?

I don’t often post night pictures if for no other reason than I refuse to fiddle with the camera settings to get the optimal exposures right.  It’s not that my little Sony takes bad pictures, they just aren’t optimal.

On a recent evening, I decided to do some local wanderings and snapped a few pictures.  New York City at night is always cool.

Moments after I took that picture, I heard a siren.  Hey, it’s NYC and there are always sirens.  The ambulance came by within moments.

It seems one of those facts-of-life that here I was having a pleasant evening and someone else was having a particularly terrible one.  Just a few feet apart and altogether different perceptions of the world.

-H