Bradley's Old Fashioned Weblog

Category: General Updates

Commentary on people, places, things, the news, current events, etc.

  • Summer Streets Manhattan Ride

    Summer Streets is an event in New York City where stretches of road are closed down from 7 AM to 3 PM to regular vehicle traffic and are opened up to pedestrians and cyclists for recreational use. It started out on just a small stretch of 4th Avenue, but year after year more roads and longer stretches of road are made available for Summer Streets use.

    I almost missed it this year, but my wife reminded me about it when she went out riding last weekend and accidentally rode into the Summer Streets route and wound up riding the length of Manhattan down to and over the Brooklyn Bridge. This current weekend was the last weekend for Summer Streets in Manhattan so I made sure to get out there, even if only for a little while, to enjoy having the whole road open to ride around on.

    Whole road is kind of an overstatement, though. There were so many people out there on bicycles and walking and running that it was actually a bit crowded. It was still a lot of fun, though, and made me wish that Summer Streets took place every Saturday from 6 AM to 7 PM all Spring, Summer, and Fall long.

    I do have one more chance for Summer Streets next weekend, but it will be here in the Bronx on Grand Concourse. I’ve done a few organized runs up and down the route that has been selected for use, so it won’t be a new area for me, but I’m going to do it anyway because it’s rare to have a long run of space to use for cycling in such a dense urban area. I’m grateful for the greenways and bike paths in parks here in the city.

    That being said, it’s kind of exciting to ride up and down blocks in Lower Manhattan. There’s a lot to look at and experience when you’re out riding on your bike and it’s not as dangerous as it used to be if you stay on the side roads or in the bike lanes on major avenues.

    We finished up our Manhattan Summer Streets ride with a trip to Chinatown to have a late lunch / early dinner at Tasty Hand-Pulled Noodles on Doyers Street. It’s a great place and if you haven’t been, I highly recommend it.

  • Sunday afternoon in Washington Square Park

    On the weekends, we’re almost always going out to do something active: chores, exercise, visiting family, eating out, etc. Yesterday, I had this idea in my head that I just wanted to get to a nice spot in a park and chill for a while. I could sit and read for a bit and take in the scenery. Instead of feeling pressed to do something, I could just lean back and relax and take in the sights and sounds around me, and that’s what I managed to do.

    My wife and I parked in the East Village and rode our bikes over to Veselka for brunch. Afterwards we rode over to Washington Square Park to look at the vendors and then we found a quiet spot in the shade, situated sort of behind the music stage area, to just sit and relax. The air was fresh, the breeze was cool, and it was pretty cool to be able to take in different types of music while reading on my Kindle. My wife spent her time sketching.

    Fun facts:

    • The house that Robert Neville stayed in (from the movie “I Am Legend”) is located on the periphery of the park near the arch.
    • Washington Square Park was used as a “Potter’s Field”, or burial site for poor people until about 1820 and over 20,000 people were buried there in mass graves, mostly victims of Yellow Fever
    • There is a 350 year old elm tree near the northwest entrance of the park that was used to execute ~20 thieves by hanging

    Overall, it was a relaxing success of an afternoon.

  • Getting there

    This is mostly Japanese language learning. I took a short break on Latin American Spanish but went back to Japanese.

    Next stop, 365 days. It’ll happen, because Duo threatens me daily from a widget on my Home Screen.

  • No. I want the sauteed string beans.

    Called a Chinese restaurant near my office after work to order food to pickup on my way home. The experience turned out to be extremely odd.

    “Hello. I’d like to place an order for pickup.”

    “Ok, what would you like?”

    “I want the sauteed string beans.”

    “You want the sauteed string beans with shrimp?”

    “No. I want the sauteed string beans.”

    “You want the sauteed string beans with rice?”

    “No. I want the sauteed string beans. I’m just trying to order vegetables right now.”

    “So, you want an entree of string beans? That’s $16.”

    “Yes. That’s fine.”

    “So, you want soft string beans with no garlic?”

    “What? No. I want sauteed string beans. You know what? Never mind. I’ll order when I get there.”

    After hanging up, I realized that I no longer had any desire to ever revisit the restaurant again. The string beans would have been part of a $70 order, but I wound up going somewhere else.

    Things didn’t go smoothly on that call either, though.

    “…”. Call answered but silence on the line.

    “Uh, hello?”

    “Yes. Hello.”

    “… I’d like to place a pickup order.”

    “Ok, sure. What’s your number?”

    [phone number that I’ve had for 13 years provided]

    “Ok. Is this Tracy?”

    “Uh, no.”

    “Mary? Are you Mary?”

    “No. My name is Bradley. Can I place an order?”

    “Sure. What would you like?”

    The order proceeded normally from there.

    On the way home, I had one person pull in front of me and come to a dead stop. I had two others pull in front of me and slow down to 7-10 MPH in a 25 MPH zone. Absolutely bizarre dinner ordering and evening commute experience.

  • Went out for a ride today for the first time in quite a while

    It was nice to get out and ride around in the city a bit. I actually prefer it to the greenways sometimes because it’s more engaging and there’s more to look at. Sadly, I paused my workout while taking photos and forgot to restart it when I was down by Pier 36, but that just gives me an excuse to redo the route next weekend.

    I definitely need to find more time in the week to exercise. I feel a lot better after spending the day outdoors. I’m also thinking about getting another gym membership. The issue would be finding a way to fit it into my schedule. Something like Harbor Fitness might work. There’s a location close to where I work.

  • Getting a little work done

    Getting some new brake pads and rotors.

    Now I have to be careful. The last time I had brake pads and rotors replaced on a car, it was totaled while parked a few weeks later. I’d also just had a major service performed, so I was out of a car and out of the money for the service. Luckily, the insurance payout was fair, but it still sucked having to eat the loss of the payments made towards the loan that weren’t reimbursed because of vehicle value depreciation.

    This time, I didn’t wash the car or fill the gas tank, so I should be ok.

    Yes, I’m feeling a little paranoid. And superstitious.

  • Another Star Trek series off the bucket list

    Kind of surprised that this scene from “Star Trek: Deep Space 9” made it onto regular broadcast television back in 1999. I could have sworn the only thing this risque on TV back then was “Real Sex” on late night HBO. But maybe I just wasn’t paying attention. Or don’t remember it too well. I don’t remember watching a lot of TV back then. I think I spent most of my time reading, doing school work, and then I joined the military.

    I’m sad that I finished this show. I’d like to see some of the characters again, further on in their journeys, but given that Deep Space 9 ended 25 years ago I know it’s not going to happen. Man, I can’t believe it’s been 25 years. At least there’s some new stuff to see. I’m probably never going to watch Discovery, but Strange New Worlds has been very entertaining so far. I’m not sure how I feel about Spock seeming more emotional. Even T’Pring seems emotional. I’ll give it a chance though.

    TOS, TNG, now DS9, Voyager, Enterprise, and a few episodes of Lower Decks complete. After Strange New Worlds, I’ll probably switch over to Picard.

  • Subaru Justy & 90s cars

    I’m at the Subaru dealership in Englewood for regular servicing on our 2019 Forrester. Every time I come here, I love to look at this old Justy. It’s a subcompact car that hasn’t been manufactured since 1994 and the aesthetic reminds me of the first car I ever drove, a 1986 Toyota Corolla. When I was a teenager, my dad bought me my first car. It was a choice between an ’86 Corolla and a slightly newer hatchback, maybe an ’89 or ’90 Toyota. I don’t remember for sure.

    At the time, hatchbacks weren’t fashionable so I went with the older ’86 Corolla. I think my dad paid about $1000 for it. If I could do it again, I would have gone with the hatchback. It would have been more fun. I also would have put more time and money into maintenance (if I could do it again, not because it was a hatchback). The transmission in the ’86 Corolla wound up failing about a year later. It had about 100k miles on it, but knowing what I know now about Toyotas, I should have been able to get another 100k miles out of it, easy, with proper maintenance.

    The Subaru Justy would be perfect for driving on narrow New York City streets and squeezing into small parking spaces. I think I would have a lot of fun driving it, especially if I could figure out how to squeeze an upgraded stereo system into it.

    Here’s a cool video about ’90s cars:

  • Smoking mushrooms

    Literally smoking mushrooms. Although it’s more likely to be spores.

    Spotted in The Ramble in Central Park in Manhattan, New York City on June 21, 2024.

  • Social media sites are temporary, but WordPress is forever

    I was thinking about my old Twitter account today and how most of what I posted there is lost to time. That’s probably a great thing considering most of what I posted on Twitter was shitposting garbage, but it just made me think that things like Twitter will come and go but my WordPress blog will always be here for me. As long as I pay for the hosting anyway.

    Thankfully, I have an archive of my Twitter posts if I ever feel the need to go trawling through them for the rare gem or two, and I’m starting to realize that not everything posted to WordPress has to be long-form content. When Twitter and related services like Plurk came out, it was kind of a crisis, because then you had to ask yourself ‘should this be a Tweet or does it qualify for a blog post?’

    140 characters (Twitter’s original post limit) seemed clever, and a way to push people to be more clever and concise, but in retrospect, it was bad for the internet and online discourse. I hate that culture of one-upmanship that you now find most prominently in Reddit comments. It’s not thoughtful and it doesn’t really add anything of value to my life.