Famous Ankles

Library Walk on 41st Street

Posted June 16, 2008 by Famous Ankles
Categories: Manhattan, Mid-town, Wanderings

Leading from Park Avenue and stopping at Fifth Avenue, right in front of the New York Public Library is a nice little memorial/salute/whatever. It’s Library Walk. On the sidewalk, in fact on both sides of the sidewalk, are brass plaques with literary quotations.

Well, the first one doesn’t have a quote. It simply states that the Walk is a celebration of the world’s greatest literature and that it was sculpted by Gregg Lefevre in 1998.

I still stop and read one or more when I walk on the street. And I walk on that street a lot. It’s a little sad that most people on the street don’t seem to notice them at all; but I do enjoy seeing a few people stopping and reading them each in turn.

Some are long; the one below by Gu Cheng is about the longest, and some are really short.

Some are old. The one below is from Francis Bacon. It reads: “Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.”

The next one is a bit desceptive. And I like it. It’s from Willa Cather and despite looking long, there is really only one message to it: “There are only two or three human stoires, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before…” It’s from “O Pioneers!”

There is an underlying theme to these plaques: literature and the human condition. I have probably read each of them a half dozen times, and some a lot more than that, and it’s always pleasant.

Like I said, literary in nature. Well, in the below case it gets philosphical (“Information is light. Information, in itself, about anything, is light” from Tom Stoppard). Okay, they are all philosophical, too.

Incidentally, there’s one of these plaques about every 10 feet or so.

Literature and international counterfeiting! These aren’t real coins. If they were, the homeless in the area would have chisled them out a long time ago.

There’s a dirty little secret to Library Walk, though. The plaques on the south side of the street and the plaques on the north side. Well, they are duplicates. The artist appears to have run out of grant money or literary inspiration.

-H

Comments: Be the first to comment

Adventure NYC Event in Central Park

Posted June 15, 2008 by Famous Ankles
Categories: Central Park, Events, Manhattan

On Saturday, there was a special exhibition being performed in Central Park. It seems to be called “Adventure NYC” and was pretty cool. The weather was hot and sunny (although it stormed much later in the day) and the biggest sight was a welcome one for a lot of kids and parents. A temporary water slide.

The line for it, as you might suspect, was huge. But the speed of the throughput of people was pretty minor

Near the waterslide were some tents/kiosks. They had a variety of items there. I managed to get a free sample of some pretty good Greek yogurt. There was a backpacking place. And a place that was showing off their one-man tents.

But the biggest thing around? A half-pipe for bikes. It was set up right in the middle of the Park and there were a lot of people around watching bikers going on it.

Because it was temporary; no elevator. At least no internal elevator. Instead, they had a cherry-picker that would take up two bicyclists at a time. One on this side of the half-pipe and one on the other side. That is, four bikers would meet on the same side of the actual pipe, but two came up a cherry-picker on one side and the others on the other side.

Here they are going up on the cherry-picker. It was 50 or 60 feet up, I would guess.

They would come down the same side one at a time. It took maybe 90 seconds for all four to finish each round and then new riders would go up. Here’s a shot of how they would come down the side.

Once they reached the top of the up-ramp part of the half-pipe, they didn’t seem to do any tricks. They’d just go for big air and a little hang time. This picture below is about the best one I got of the big air. Once they came down, they’d just ride off the ramp. They didn’t go back up the side they had originally come down.

And the half-pipe was only for registered riders. The public was just allowed to watch.

Nearby was a set of three artificial rock climbs. Two were in pretty good use, but the line was much smaller than for the water slide.

But the thing I liked the most was a trampoline set up near the clam shell.

It was a group of trampolinests called “Flying Aces”. It consisted of five guys from Utah, Texas, and New Jersey. They had two trampolines set up side by side.

Apparently, these guys ski and snowboard in the winter, but in the summer they trampoline. They pulled out their skis and snowboards to perform tricks, but they are probably just their training exercises for their real jobs.

One of them is up for the Olympics from what the announcer said. Who knows?

Nevertheless, they did one heck of a lot of stunts. They guy below was a real showman. At one point he did some stuff so high I couldn’t believe it. You just feared a puff of wind that would knock him ever so slightly off course.

Being side by side trampolines, they really got into synchronized stunts. Lots of flips and all done by both at pretty much the same time.

All in all, the trampolines were the height of the Adventure event. Really, really good.

-H

Comments: 1 Comment

ISKCON – the Annual Hare Krishna Parade

Posted June 14, 2008 by Famous Ankles
Categories: Events, Manhattan, Mid-town, Parades

When I went to the NYC dot gov events calendar, I thought they were kidding. They had the annual Hare Krishna parade set to go from 59th Street on Fifth Avenue (right at the corner of Central Park) going down to Washington Square Park.

That would make it a three mile route. New York may be one of the last places in the USA with an active Hare Krishna population, but it sure couldn’t support a three mile long parade. On Fifth Avenue, too. Fifth Avenue gets most of the biggest parades.

So, I decided to test the waters and went to Fifth Avenue and 41st Street and found absolutely no preparations for a parade. No barriers. Traffic running non-stop. I even asked a Public Safety Officer about it and he said he hadn’t heard a thing.

I’ve actually seen it before. Last year, I was wandering around the Park and had seen part of the parade. So, I knew for a fact where they started. I decided to go there and see if it was on or off.

So I went up and sure enough, they were gathering.

Lots of them. Well, not a tremendous number. By far the largest ethnic group were from India, but there were a lot of Caucasians and quite a few Blacks as part of the gathering.

Just after noon, the parade started. There was one vehicle in the parade and it led the group. It had the Hare Krishna/Rama chant written on it and they were blaring it from some loudspeakers, but not obnoxiously loud or anything.

I got to the front of the group and started snapping some pictures. Most of the crowd just followed along behind the lead vehicle.

The crowd was pretty diverse, but it did appear that people were wearing their traditional clothing for it. Not all by any means, but most.

The next picture is pretty interesting to me. You see, besides the lead vehicle and the crowd behind it, the entire parade consisted of three floats. In this picture, I captured all three of the remaining floats.

The floats were some sort of temple or temple-standin. This guy led the first one and was symbolically sweeping in front of it.

Each of the floats (well, of these three floats) were self-powered by volunteers. That is, members of the crowd joined in to pull the floats with attached ropes. It was extremely democratic. When I had been in the original crowd, a guy with a loadspeaker had been asking for volunteers to pull them.

The floats all contained an area with people in it. I presume they are the leaders or otherwise are dignitaries…or just people who were happy to ride in the heat of the day. I never caught any sort of idea of exactly what the floats were supposed to symbolize or honor or whatever.

Here’s the third float. That is, the second of the self-powered ones. This was my best picture of the pulling action of the worshippers/volunteers.

This one seemed to have a special symbolism. I noticed that the pullers were mostly female. Maybe they were all female, I spotted that issue when I was taking a picture and didn’t notice if the pullers in front were male or not.

The end of the parade. This guy was just at the back end of the fourth float. He wasn’t a tall guy, but look at how he compares to the wheel. These were tall floats.

And so ended my coverage of the parade. From the time the first float/vehicle past to the last was 15 minutes. They don’t block off Fifth Avenue for that size of a parade. I think they just marched them down one lane of Fifth Avenue all the way down. I see that a lot in the smaller parades or in parades that are using 2nd or 3rd Avenue. I hadn’t realized they would do it for Fifth.

-H

Comments: 3 Comments

You can buy anything in NYC, but this is ridiculous

Posted June 13, 2008 by Famous Ankles
Categories: Manhattan, Mid-town, Wanderings

Seen on 23rd Street and Park Avenue.

I shoulda stopped in to see what it is really about. I think it’s just a restaurant with an interesting name: Live Bait.

-H

Comments: Be the first to comment

Tudor City Greens Concerts

Posted June 12, 2008 by Famous Ankles
Categories: Events, Manhattan, Mid-town

I keep planning on sharing more on one of the best parks in all of NYC: Tudor City Greens. But, I keep waiting for the right time to photograph and share it.

Right now isn’t one of those times, but I do want to let you know that the Greens holds a music concert every two weeks or so throughout the summer. It’s on Wednesdays and goes from 6pm to about 7pm.

It’s always classical or jazz. The musicians this year are from the Mannes College of Music (part of the New School out of Greenwich Village). One of the great benefits of being in a place like this is the availability of people like this. On the other hand, we provide them with appreciative crowds. A win-win.

To give credit, Michael Engstrom (trombone), Audrey Flores (horn), and Gary A. Padmore (trumpet and flugelhorn) did a very nice job of playing. There were maybe 40 or 50 of us in the audience.