very simple

Up until my most current job, I have always worked in “modern” new york city office buildings (i.e., built in the 1960s or later) that were generally variations on the monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey. But now I work in a a classic, historically significant building – The Helmsley Building, formerly known as the New York Central Building. If you’ve ever been in NYC, you know this building. It’s the one that sits directly in the middle of Park Avenue (that is NOT the Metlife building), and that you drive “through” when you’re driving up or down Park. Being a historic building, the lobby is generally an overwrought sight to behold, with its pink marble and chandeliers, and the security guards spend a good portion of their time explaining to tourists why they’re not allowed to just come in and take a look around. One would think that the natural ornate-ness of the lobby would be sufficient for the holidays, but one would be wrong. Our building totally steers into that curve.

Merry Christmas all! I’m looking forward to the traditional jewish christmas of movies and chinese food. (hey, we all have traditions!).

Last night my group at work had our “summer fun” event, which involved sailing around lower manhattan and seeing the statue of liberty up close. Good timing, as it was lovely last night, and we’re expecting thunderstorms all day today. Last night also marked the last day of my engagement, and now I’m officially unemployed for the month. In September, I start back up as a permanent employee at the same company I’ve been contractor-ing at since last year. Right now I’m set to enjoy a full month off, with my brother coming home on Friday night for two weeks, and then I head off to the Galapagos mid-month. Yay!

Pics get a bit repetitive, but I couldn’t choose just one!

Picked up a new wide angle lens yesterday, to supplement my mid-range 35-70 lens and my 70-300 telephoto. today I took it out to play around a little bit. These are actually pretty cropped from the originals, meaning I get a nice amount of range in the images, something I’ve been lacking with my otherwise awesome mid-range. Did some shopping and wandering around the union square/flatiron area in what was completely ridiculous heat and humidity, and then had to trek over to 8th to catch the bus home (thanks to a street fair on 6th).

In anticipation of my trip to the Galapagos in August, I went to B&H today and picked up a new wide angle (11-16) camera lens. Anyone who knows photography knows B&H, as it’s pretty much the biggest photography supply retailer in the country. It’s always an experience to go there, with the controlled chaos, and the tourists, and the crowds, and the fact that it’s in kind of a no-man’s-land on 9th avenue in Manhattan. As a bonus, it’s owned and almost entirely operated by members of the Orthodox/Hasidic Jewish community, so they’re closed on Saturdays and all major and minor jewish holidays, making it incredibly convenient for anyone who has a Monday thru Friday job. But I totally love it and pretty much won’t shop anywhere else for photo equipment (bonus tip – if you actually need to know when some obscure jewish holiday is, the calendar on their website is very handy!).

In any event, one of the upsides of visiting a store in the somewhat dodgy neighborhood near madison square garden is the plethora of older buildings and signs. Nothing glossy to see here!

I missed a bunch of days in here. Had a bit of family craziness, with my dad needing an angiogram and some stenting after a bad stress test a few weeks ago. He’s recuperating at home now (and thankfully they caught it before the problem was worse), but there’s nothing like spending the day at the emergency room at one hospital with your dad, while your stepmom is recovering from back surgery in another hospital across town, to make a week really stressful.

Anyway, here’s a smattering of the pictures I remembered to take during the last few weeks. got 6/14 days.

The twin towers were never considered an aesthetic gem, and it was primarily the means of their absence that caused most people to miss the architecture of their isolating, monolithic frames that sat in a windswept (wind tunnel) plaza that cut off that section of the city from what would otherwise be actual street life. The new one world trade center is, in many ways, an architectural mess as well, a bastardization of what was, at one point, a beautiful form by Daniel Liebskind that was morphed by corporate interests into another generic facade.

Before 9/11, you could always orient yourself in the maze that was “below 34th street” Manhattan by looking up and seeing the towers and knowing they were at the end of the island. I always loved seeing them when driving back from school through New Jersey, because it meant I could know precisely where the vast wasteland of the New Jersey Turnpike ended and the island of Manhattan began. I have a visceral memory of the first trip I took through Jersey (to visit a client in PA) after 9/11, and on the way back just not being able to tell where New York, my home, began, and being so immensely sad at the thought. But I was moved today, sitting in the union square barnes & noble, when i realized that we once again had a signpost to southern manhattan. And it made me extremely grateful that they did build again.

Came up to the Berkshires on Friday, and my stepmom and I immediately headed out to the Memorial Day sample sales. Which are always in tents, and which it always seems to be raining for.

We headed up to pine cone hill in Pittsfield (after an accidental detour to their old location in Lenox), which is now located in this fabulous old factory.

muji guggenheim. Rescued from the cat.

The O’Neill building. They spend years renovating/refurbishing this thing, and a few months ago a giant piece of masonry fell off the front of the building into the street. Doesn’t make me want to live in one of the turrets any less though.

For a change of pace, and because there’s still no construction progress on Easter Sunday, I thought I’d venture back outside for a photo. This is a really old sign on Columbus, which has no actual correlation to the shops and restaurants that sit below it.