Yeah. I changed the layout of my blog. Honestly, I should probably care more about how my blog looks, but I have other things to do.
So why’d I change anything when I, of all people, know damn well that change is bad?
Because I wanted to make the text column wider. It was (for me) annoyingly narrow. It didn’t hold much text, and I had to manually re-size almost every video I embedded. But to make the text column wider, I had to pick a different template. I went with… simple.
November 1922. Washington, D.C. “Woman’s Bureau, Metropolitan Police Dep’t. Telephone calls bring prompt attention.”
From Shorpy.com.
I’m not posting much here because I’m finishing my book. But I’ll be back in full force after November 8.
It’s 5AM. Time for bed.
The human drama of survival in closed spaces, the utter boredom and brief moments of joy, the gathered crowd — why, there’s nothing like the minute-to-minute Twitter updates of my wife’s jury duty.
Any moment now the doors of the metal lift will open and she’ll be sprung into the open air of Queens County and Camp Jamaica. I hope there’s no mistress waiting for her at the Sutphin Ave. subway stop. Maybe I should have gotten my hair done.
“Washington policeman Bill Norton measuring the distance between knee and suit at the Tidal Basin bathing beach after Col. Sherrill, Superintendent of Public Buildings and Grounds, issued an order that suits not be over six inches above the knee.” June 30, 1922.
From Shorpy.
Of all the places for heaven on earth, people rarely think of Queens.
I was just about to get to work when a friend called and said to meet him in the park for a picnic. So off we went to meet him and his son. My friend, a restaurant owner from Egypt (he’s been featured on all the big TV-Chef shows with Bourdain, Zimmern, Jamie Oliver, Bobby Flay) is a well traveled man. And his favorite place in the world? “Astoria is heaven,” he said. “Where else do you find the whole world in a few blocks? And everybody getting along.”
He may have a point.
We got left-wing art:
Right-wing art:
And then in the park, a man approached looking suspiciously like Buzz Lightyear on a bike.
Turns out the man wascarrying a plane. A small plane, but one that indeed flies. A model plane? Well, yes, but cooler. FPV-flying, I learned, means first-person-view flying. There’s a camera on front and he puts on goggles and flies from the plane’s perspective.
There’s also a second camera to record. He was trying out a new hi-def camera. Hopefully there will be a video of it soon.
“Like a predator drone?” I asked.
“No,” he said, “Because they can fly on their own. Without me, this crashes.”
Contact! (For take off, there are no wheels)
I’ll be damned if it didn’t fly around Roosevelt Island, buzz a tug boat, and make a soft and successful landing (especially when you consider there are no wheels).
Then on the way home we passed a Jersey farm stand on the most un-rural of streets (21st Street) and bought some peaches, corn, and tomatoes.
And this was just today. Last week we even our very own alligator on the loose just two short blocks from my home.
I really should leave the house more.
I probably would if it weren’t for the gators on the loose!
[Update:Turns out it’s horrible here.]
Incredible car crash caught on police dash-cam.
But I’m really posting this because it’s the same car I had in Baltimore.
Like the Bandit. But my car was white. And I was more Smokey than the Bandit. It was the last of Detroit’s metal cars. And I never crashed it.
Yes, I too was more surprised that a bunch of priceless paintings are housed in a Cairo museum that the fact that a Van Gogh was stolen.
But get this: they didn’t steal the real one!
According to an Egyptian source of mine, the real one was stolen a decade ago when corrupt American-supported dictator/pharaoh Hosni Mubarak’s mysterious “business tycoon” son, Alaa Mubarak, sold the painting in Kuwait (not related to its first theft, but to an exhibition in Kuwait in the 1990s) and replaced it with a good fake.
And this “theft” is simply a way to cover for the real theft years ago. Clever.
Did I mention my friend was no idea? But if it’s true, it means that the fake that was taken from the museum will not be recovered, since the the people who ordered the theft, who have the original (or work for those who do), would simply destroy it.
We went on a “hidden harbor” tour Tuesday evening that went through NY Harbor and down to Port Elizabeth (by Newark Airport). Industrial decay… working harbor… good stuff! It was a beautiful evening. But as a harbor, compared to Rotterdam, it looks like Single-A. The guide said the biggest six harbors in the world are now all in China.
Everybody thank the French for the Statue of Liberty. And for french fries.
Afterward, because it was so close to the boat–like I said, everything is close in lower Manhattan)–we decided to walk past the World Trade Center and mosque sites. The World Trade Center site is still an embarrassing lack of actual building. But hey, it’s only been nine years. On the plus side, at least there are more cranes there actually lifting things.
A few block away is the site of the mosque and center. Of course there’s a TV truck outside.
The site already is used as a mosque, by the way. But now they pray in the basement.
The building in question, next door.
More interesting is the graffiti on the ground. I wasn’t expecting this. Not even in New York.
Pro-mosque, pro-tolerance, and pro-Obama graffiti. And some lefty-fliers and a few books.
It turns out that what kills at the location is not Islam, it’s dog feces and urine! I suspected that all along.
Meanwhile, a few doors down, the AT&T sign made me think of the Constitution (a bit hokey, I know, but that’s what I thought of!)
Walking back to the subway, another shot of the WTC site. The figures on the construction wall in front of the church are walk signs from cities around the world.
And the gas lights and fountain at City Hall Park at night, one of New York City’s not so secret gems.
Finally two candid shots of the subway, just in case you’ve never seen it. This is what New Yorkers look like when they are no TV or movie cameras around.
It’s crab feast time of year. I’m off to Baltimore. Crabs will get ate. Beer will get drunk.