I’m not that much of an art afficionado, but there are a couple of places I do enjoy. The first is the cartoon art place that I’ll eventually post about, and the second is “Eden Fine Art” located on Madison Avenue around 47th or so.
I don’t even know the right names for the styles it has, but there are certain things I like. Look at this display.
Ya gotta love a painting with a mathematical formula (E=mc squared in the above). Maybe they have one with the Fibonacci Sequence…
-H
As I wandered around the city on Sunday, I ran into some sophisticated entertainment. The venue? Why the subway system, of course. The subways have lots of entertainment, sometimes they are gymnastic:
These were from a group at Times Square. There are several of these groups and they all operate by telling some jokes, blasting a boombox, and collecting money.
But one that I don’t see all that often is the Saw Lady.
Yes, she is playing a standard wood-cutting saw. The sound is ethereal. As I recall, she was playing some familiar tunes, but I can’t remember which ones.
The weirdest part? A couple of hours later I was walking through Times Square and heard someone else playing the saw! Two separate saw-player sightings in a day. Now, that’s interesting.
-H
Maybe this has spread far and wide, but I’ve recently seen an interesting phenomena where technology allows people to interact physically with projected pictures. The most elaborate have been games where you “herd” ducks into a nest (that’s located in the South Street Seaport), but when I was at Union Square, I ran into this one and wasn’t the only one who found it interesting.
The sign was normally just a blue background with a “CBS Outdoors” logo projected onto a tile wall. Whenever someone walked between the projector and the wall, it would cause a cascade of “bubbles” as if the person’s walk caused cavitation.
Utterly of no use, it was nonetheless visually interesting. But, then, I’m easily amused. And I wasn’t the only one; there were about 3 of us watching as people did “the walk”.
-H
I’ve been meaning to post this for a long time. When I go to Church, I often pass this place on 45th.
“Little Italy Pizza”? And I always thought Little Italy was below Houston…actually, I know it’s down there. Apparently, the owners of this have been chased out by the encroachment of China Town and want to set up a new neighborhood.
And I don’t think it’s a franchise. Just someone who wanted to catch tourists before they got in a cab.
-H
Lately, I started thinking that I wanted to see how Coney Island was doing in the winter. So, there I went. So, how’s it going out there? Pretty much nothing’s happening…at least on the weekend I was out there.
Or, one can make the case that it is doing a whole lot. The place is shut down, but what does this picture suggest to you?
To me, it looks like the long promised re-building has started. And there a few signs talking about the plans, but it’s the closing of Astroland after 2008 that will be the real event. Here’s a shot of the closed-for-the-season Astroland.
As I understand it, by 2011 or so it will be completely revamped into a new park. In the meantime, the Wonderwheel and the Cyclone will still operate.
But in the meantime, it is closed for the season until April or so.
As I was walking along, I found there were some residents…some rather protective residents.
I can tell you that they weren’t happy to see me. Hungry, maybe; but not happy. And they weren’t the only protectors in the area.
The boardwalk was nearly deserted. It was a cold noontime and there were precious few of us in the area.
And the beach had the traditional guy with a metal detector hoping to find lost dubloons, or maybe quarters.
I did get to Nathan’s though.
As usual, it was jammed. They closed all of the outside vendor windows so everyone crowded inside. It was one of very few open places in the whole area, but they were doing a booming business. I went in and discovered their service is as bad in the winter as it is in the summer. After 10 minutes I left. In my line, only one customer had been served and only a couple of others from other lines had also gotten their food (and I was maybe 5 back in line). In honesty, it probably isn’t just their fault. People were calling out to each other to order additional hotdogs and the like.
-H
Famous Ankles 