Tuesday, August 11, 2009

hot, hazy & humid: summer at last in NYC

This week we got the first day in the 90's (30C), and with the humidity it feels closer to 35C. Sunday afternoon we went for a walk down in Chinatown and it was not only hot & humid but very crowded with tourists, noisy and chaotic, as this photo shows.

it is much more pleasnat going for a walk along the Mall in Central Park

On saturday mornings in August they close off Park Ave from 8 till 1 for joggers and cyclists, all the way down to Brooklyn Bridge. we did it last saturday, then kept going for a 40 km ride through Brooklyn

there is a cinema on E 62nd st, whihc we look down onto from our rooftop terrace. Summer movies are second only to the holiday season ones and this was the queue one evening for GI Joe, based on the Transformers character, which is smashing all the all-time box office records (like taking >$50M at the box office in the first week). we saw Julie and Julia instead: great movie about blogging (and also cooking). Not sure why the queue veers off the footpath onto the roadway.I guess people really are like sheep!

Finally this picture was taken from the High Line on Sunday, overlooking the Hudson River by W.14th st. On the water to the left is a tug-like Coast Guard vessel at the search site looking for the wreckage of the plane and helicopter that crashed on Saturday, killing 5 italian tourists (yes heard about the terrible plane crash in PNG today). Coincidentally, the brown semi-circular arch in the right foreground is the rusted remanants of the Pier 54, where the Titianic was supposed to dock in 1912; if you look closely when you are there you can see the faded paint of the"Cunard-White Star Line" sign (& interesting juxtaposition of a modern cruise ship behind it).
no doubt you also heard about the terrible car accident on the Tacoma Parkway (like the F3) just north of NYC two weeks ago, when a woman drove the wrong way on the freeway for 10 minutes before having a head on killing herself and her 4 children plus 3 adults in the other car. What you may not have heard was the post mortem results...turns out she was pissed and stoned and had drunk 1/2 a bottle of vodka before the 1 pm accident (blood alcohol 0.19)and she had been smoking a joint while she was driving!!!! he husband denies she had a problem but is likely to be in big trouble himself, for allowing her to drive in that state

2 comments:

  1. Yes people really are like sheep. Man, don't they know they're on the road.

    ReplyDelete
  2. yes, whether it's queuing for the cinema or going to MacDonalds!

    ReplyDelete