It’s really hot today. We were going to do something fun, like go over the Brooklyn bridge, but with it being over 90, with the heat advisory and the air quality advisory, we decided to just stay at home. I dragged our portable air conditioner out of the back of the closet and set it up, to take the edge off the heat. Now we’re watching a True Detective Marathon to catch up to the second season. It seems pretty good, so far.
Last Sunday, the weather wasn’t that bad, so after we visited FAO Schwarz for the last time, we sat in Central Park for a while, by that little pond (called “The Pond”) in the southeast corner by the Central Park Zoo, and had a mini-picnic. It was nice. There were a lot of people out there hanging out, relaxing. Smooth breeze, a lot of chatter, the sun shining on the water as it set. It was nice, sitting there, doing nothing for a while. I read for a bit. I picked up this book called Ready Player One, about a future where the world is suffering an energy crisis and most people retreat to an online 3D virtual simulation called the OASIS. I’m liking it so far.
The Pond, looking south towards 59th Street.A girl laying on the huge rock overlooking the Victoria Gardens Amusement Park.Southern Central ParkThe Sheep MeadowJust a cool light post.
After we’d sat for a while and it was starting to get dark, we packed up to leave. We walked across to the west side and exited by 70th street afterwards to catch the train. It was a really great way to spend a late afternoon and evening.
A neat looking building on the west side of Central Park, around 67th Street or so.
FAO Schwarz’s flagship store in New York City, on 5th Avenue near Central Park and the Apple Store, is closing on the 15th. We heard about it on the news, but you wouldn’t be able to tell otherwise. Their website doesn’t even mention that the store won’t be around anymore in a few days. There are no signs out front mentioning the fact. Nothing inside to show that they’re closing other than a lack of product and that the bottom floor is completely sealed off. I did talk to an employee that seemed depressed and annoyed with what was going on. I don’t blame her, considering she was basically losing her job. She said that display stands were being taken down right in front of customers and the floor sales people were trying to promote products that were sitting unceremoniously on plastic push carts.
I was hoping there would be sales to clear inventory, but that wasn’t the case. It’s as if they’re trying to keep up the facade that the store is temporarily embarrassed until they don’t open the doors again. The shelves were half empty, the store was dirty. The bathrooms were half flooded, quite literally. The air conditioning was nice, though, and walking past the mock toy soldiers at the front door, seeing the spinning FAO Schwartz sign above the troughs of candy, and the smell of sugar and baked treats was exciting. It reminded me of what I love about going to FAO. There are so many types of toys, so many different types of candy to look at and consider buying, and so many different and odd people to watch. The place is always packed with tourists and locals. Just being there and being part of the crowd is a fun experience, but we rarely walked out empty-handed.
Large floor piano.
I had been to FAO a few times as a kid and regularly as an adult, but usually just to pick up some candy or wander the aisles and see what sorts of toys were selling. I was disappointed when I heard the place was closing, but I mean, come on, when you’re selling 700 dollar stuffed dogs in 2015, what do you expect? One could argue that FAO was targeting a particular demographic, but most kids come from families that can’t afford a 700 dollar stuffed dog, and I’m pretty sure that even the ones that do would rather spend that 700 bucks on a PS4 or XBox 1, some accessories and some games. Making things even tougher, most games are bought as digital downloads now. Saves the trip of having to go up to the store. No travel fare, no gas money, no begging parents to give you rides. You just click a button and a while later you’re playing.
I’d rather have a video game than a 700 stuffed animal too. I’d also rather have a video game than 45 dollar doll house furniture. Walking into the top floor of FAO, thinking about business models and changing economies, I couldn’t help but look at the stuff they were selling and wonder what they were thinking. Are there really that many kids clambering to build model train sets these days? Isn’t there a 3D simulation for that now? I suppose toy stores are going the way of Blockbuster and Books-A-Million. Everything is going digital. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Things change, often for the better, and companies have to keep up with those changes to remain relevant. You can’t force people’s preferences to stay locked into a certain decade.
I suppose things won’t be the same anymore, not seeing FAO open when we walk by. I’m reminded of how much Union Square on 14th Street has changed since I was a teenager in the 90s. New York keeps changing. I’m already wondering where I’m going to get sacks of gummy candies from here on out.
Last weekend, my wife and I walked around downtown quite a bit. Saturday afternoon we decided to have dinner at Veselka’s on 2nd Avenue and since we were right there next to it, we walked across the street to have a look at the site of the gas explosion from last March. It was all over the news for a few weeks, but not so much now. The day the explosion happened, I saw it on the news before leaving to go to a graduate history class at City College. I had a classmate that lived in the area so I sent him a message to ask him how he was doing. He told me he was ok and that his building was not affected, but that it was crazy downtown.
Oddly enough, my wife and I had already made plans to meet my dad in that neighborhood that evening. He was visiting from out of town. We’d thought about going to Veselka’s but he was in the mood for Thai food, so we decided to go to Thai Terminal. I think it’s over on 1st and 11th or 12th, one block up from Veneiro’s. Anyway, the moment I got off the train at Union Square I could smell smoke in the air. It made me wonder how the city must have smelled in the days and weeks after the Trade Towers collapsed. My wife, dad and I all walked down 2nd Ave to try to get a look at what was going on but we couldn’t get any closer than 12th street, I think it was. There was a barricade and emergency services personnel everywhere.
So, Saturday, my wife and I went to satisfy our curiosity. It was a thoroughly depressing experience. There were signs attached to the fence and also to a blue plywood barricade set up inside the fence on the now empty lot. When I walked to one side, I could look around the blue barricade and see two graves outlined in stones. One had a cross made of rusted metal pipe stuck in the ground behind it, surrounded by deflated balloons. There were pictures of the two guys that died in the explosion on the fence surrounded by wilted flowers, links, political messages, and accusations of greed and stupidity needlessly resulting in death.
Maybe their deaths weren’t completely meaningless though. A week or so ago I saw a news report about a Dallas BBQ restaurant in the same neighborhood being closed temporarily after someone reported smelling gas. ConEd performed an inspection and found gas leaks and shut the restaurant down while repairs are made. Would that have happened without the tragedy at 2nd Ave. being so fresh in everyone’s minds? Maybe, maybe not.
A screenshot of the Ingress Scanner on iOS after an hour of testing things out.
I recently came across the blog post of a friend in Rome who has been playing Ingress consistently for about a year and recently reached level 16. I remembered trying to play Ingress when it was first released but I didn’t have a phone that was capable of it, and my tablet at the time was wifi only, so I gave up. After reading my friend’s blog post, I checked to see if Ingress had been released on iOS and found that it had, last year. So, I got it right away.
The app is kind of buggy. Using the Comm often causes the app to lock up entirely, which is bizarre, since that doesn’t happen with a 3rd party app that accesses the web-based version of the Intel map and Comm. Maybe Google wants people to get interested in Ingress and then go buy an Android phone that it will work better on? I don’t know, but I’ll just wait and hope the bugs are ironed out.
Anyway, figuring things out was a little difficult, but that’s mostly my own fault. There are training modules that you can use to get a sense of what you’re supposed to do be doing, but I just threw myself into it. I was lucky enough to find a few neutral portals in my area that I could take over, surprisingly on my own street. When my name started popping up on the map, players from both factions welcomed me to the game and the neighborhood and started sending me tips on how to improve my level and gameplay. I quickly found out about portal keys, fields and Mind Units.
My mission? Turn the neighborhood blue by capturing and maintaining portals (the things that look like sun flares on the scanner image above) and fight off the green team, which is working for aliens who want to destroy human society as we know it, which may not be a completely bad thing, given people’s propensity for violence and stupidity, but what about art and culture? What about self-determination and the preservation of a uniquely human history? What about beer? So, yeah, I’m working for the Resistance.
A few photos I took of a typical evening on 181st Street in Washington Heights a few days ago.
We live on the edge of the Dominican area of Washington Heights. That might sound an odd thing to say, because Washington Heights has been mostly Dominican for decades, but that is slowly starting to change as rents go up. When we walk further north towards 181st Street, the look and feel of the streets changes. My wife says it reminds her of the Philippines, which isn’t surprising, given the heavy Spanish influence on her home country. Many Filipino customs are derived and adapted from Spanish customs.
This last image is on Amsterdam Avenue, facing downtown.
New York City has great graffiti. A lot of it is found on the side of trucks. We spotted this example on 14th Street between 1st and 2nd Avenues in Manhattan.
I think it was about two years ago when I first saw a hawk in Manhattan. It was in Washington Square park, the one where I Am Legend was filmed. There are NYU buildings surrounding the park and two hawks had turned a window sill on one of those buildings into a nest. The NYU administration did a good thing by leaving the nest in place and then went one step further by sharing the hatching and growing-up process with the world via a web cam live feed.
Life is busy and I didn’t keep up with the hawks and I’d all but forgotten about them until last week. I was walking through Tompkins Square park, which is a few blocks away from Washington Square, when I saw a hawk land on a railing nearby. After a few minutes I realized there were two hawks in the park. They were hanging out together, generally. We watched one try to catch a squirrel, but the squirrel fought back and the hawk dropped him. I was amused to see the squirrel proudly stand on the end of a branch, as if he was daring the hawk to come back and try again.
It’s really neat to see wildlife in the city. Anything to get a little green in the middle of all this concrete. Hopefully the birds don’t start taking and eating rich people’s small dogs, though.
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