Week 22
June 6, 2016
East Village
Columbus Circle
Train In/Out: Fairfield, CT
Miles walked: 9.7
Camera: Olympus OM-D E-M1, m.Zuiko 17mm f1.8, m.Zuiko 12-40mm PRO
A lot of cats and dogs (and even a special pigeon) this week and that's a hard thing to see (the way I'm seeing them).
Explored the East Village for most of the day, and then up to Columbus Circle which is at the southwest corner of Central Park. My friend Kim joined me this week. Thought we might stay for some night photography but after 9 miles of walking, around 8pm we were both really tired and had a 1.5 hour train ride plus car time ahead of us so we called it a night and headed back to Grand Central. I'm soooo not a night owl so I'm thinking I will save most of my night shots for the fall when sunset happens earlier in the evening. But I certainly don't want to wish the summer away!
Onward.
First animals of the day. I do not know if this "homeless / I have animals" thing is new or not. It's new to me since I never frequented a city until this year. I'm a huge animal lover and have always had rescue animals live with me. I don't want to be too critical here, but I can't imagine this is easy for all beings involved.
Making our way down to the East Village we took the subway to Union Square. First time seeing the Hare Krisha's there. They were chanting.
The woman on the right was giving a psychic reading to the woman on the left.
They had these water stations setup near the Farmer's Market at Union Square. But they were hooked to a hydrant. I don't know, that didn't sound refreshing to me?
Another (small) farmer's market going on. These are Ostrich eggs. Wowza, big! And I tapped on the shell, solid.
Started walking east towards the East Village. This playground looked...pointy?
Stuyvesant Park. A small local park in the East Village.
I'm feeling a bit ripped off on fountains in the city. I suppose they are expensive to run. So far I've not run into many that are running, outside the Met is I think the only one thus far.
I bet the parks department employees are feeling ripped off on the quality of seating on their equipment.
Loved his shirt. :)
The name of this jewelry boutique threw me off. I Googled it when I got home. The jewelry designer, Vera, is actually very fun, a jewelry designer with a great blog. And her jewelry has nothing to do with meat, in case you were wondering.
To the left of this scene was an Asian man. My feeling was he opened up the Amazon box and was having his own "book sale". Were the contents of the box his to sell? Hmmm...
Destination #1 of the day, Enchantments. My friend, Kim, suggested we check out this store. We both enjoy spiritual books, etc...
...however, store was not our cup of tea but did have some cool stuff, just not what we were interested in. They didn't want us taking pictures so this is the only one I snuck in. They were selling a ton of herbs to be used for "spells" (!).
Next door was a cute place, Ellie's. Seemed to be a cat rescue of some kind. Interesting because later in the day I saw 2 cats I felt could use serious rescuing (you'll see).
Kitty sleeping on the far right (place wasn't open today).
A place that specializes in short hair cuts for women!
Came across a place selling used bikes. Surprised how much that green bike was worth...
Stepped into this church. It's truly amazing the ornate churches in all the neighborhoods. From the outside they look like nothing special. I'm not a church person, but I do respect all the planning, design, architecture and effort that went into building these structures, especially since most were built before the days of computers, fancy calculators, etc.
This was a really unusual door!
Dear Dog... :)
Hey, that's me & Kim! And we're supposed to curb our ego. Noted. :) If you read any meta-physical material at all, this was kinda ironic.
What's that? Yes, another green bike like the one from earlier! So apparently that's $225 of bike chained to the scaffolding.
We've headed pretty far east in the East Village. I haven't seen old gumball machines like this in years.
My husband does a decent amount of car repair on his own. This made me think how fortunate we are to have a 2 car garage to work in.
This street vendor was selling drinks that, frankly, looked like he was making in his own kitchen. Even the cart was a home brew.
The sign said "Pitbull on Duty" and then handwritten below I thought it said "He will kill you", but it actually says "He will KISS you". xo
I'm not sure Apple Music has their target market quite right for the neighborhood?? But maybe Blake Shelton goes over well here. I have no idea.
Table for three. :)
1961 Ford F100.
In case you were interested in making an offer!
For the "Napoleon Dynamite" fans.
This is, perhaps, a new favorite journalistic image for me. I think it speaks to the fact that these are the choices this young girl has in her neighborhood. A sign of the times.
...as is this.
She was sewing buttons on a wedding dress. She saw us after I took the shot, smiled and waved.
I heard about this place in my NYC research. Stumbled upon it as we were headed out of the East Village.
Didn't venture past these doors. Figured they didn't want someone with a camera photographing in there.
As I stood at the Bath's doorway and looked down to the left, this person was fussing in the garbage. Didn't quite understand what was going on.
"We're all lost in a dream". Are we?
A review area for something filming kitty-korner to the right (didn't bother shooting it). There are a lot of movies, etc, going on in the city all the time. I'm not sure what celebrity I would swoon over right now to drop everything and try to get a pic.
Destination #2 of the day. Casey's Rubber Stamp Store. Another place I read about during my NYC research, we were in the area so we popped in. Kinda reminded me of the button store I visited on Week 12.
If you are following my journey, I hope you all picked up on my funny thing about Bravo Pizza from last week and appreciate this picture above even more. I did not move any stamps on the shelves, they were sitting exactly as they are pictured.
It wasn't that last week's image had an "A" inspection rating (even though there was a mousetrap (!) on the counter). If you looked at the signage out front, it said "We Cater Corprat". CORPRAT
Can't make this stuff up! :)
WE CATER CORPRAT! (from last week)
Reminded me of the Christmas Story Leg Lamp.
Also in the stamp store...and yeah, it seems cramped to have a bike in the stamp store, along with a vacuum cleaner...anyway, I truly believe I had this yellow bike when I was in middle school! It brought back memories, the color, the tag under the seat. Amazing to see it again.
We've made our way over to St. Mark's Place in the East Village. This is an interesting street, to say the least.
This was a memorable store. A very "not me" store, but I'm here to observe, not to judge. From the outside it looks kinda fun with all the dolls, but it's far from a doll store.
This was Andy Warhol's nightclub back in the day. At least according to a guy we met on the street who seemed to be reminiscing about when he used to come here to party. I did a quick Google search, couldn't confirm what he said, but he seemed legit.
The next few images are not for the faint of heart. Nothing horrible, but things you may not be used to seeing (or maybe you own the stuff! to each his own...).
Think "50 Shades of Gray".
And we're done in here!
Won't you take me to...
Making our way to the subway I saw this gentleman with a very old camera. Of course I had to stop and take a look. (forgive the quality of these images, my camere was in the wrong mode...it happens)
He was using a Deardorff 4 x 5 camera. Never seen one before. He had other fancy stuff on tripods as you can see behind him. And the people by the camera equipment are students in his class. He was taking their picture. He recruited me and Kim to help him for a few minutes!
Ugh, the quality of this photo is awful, but at least it shows you the camera. The orange cable is the shutter release. I got to pull the trigger once he was ready setup to take the photo. I was honored. Of course no crazy flash bulb exploding but it was still special.
You don't see people setting up to shoot like this very often.
Look at this photo carefully. Of course you see my reflection...but in the center on the glass you can make out the images of 4 people UPSIDE DOWN. That's how this camera is showing the photographer the scene. And it's why he was under the red hood, he was looking at that image and focusing.
Here I flipped the image over so you could see the people easier.
Kim was asked to cast a shadow over the lens. And right after we took the shot and our job was done. I gave the professor a 52 Magic Mondays card so hopefully he'll take a look at this web page.
An Interesting Things qualifier...
For a while I was spending too much on Starbucks..tempting to sit like this hoping people throw money in your Starbucks fund. (notice the venti cup to the left)
We're up by Central Park now, making our way over to Columbus Circle. License Plate of the day. If the 8 was at the end, it could read "Fortunate". And 8 is like an infinity sign, so maybe this person has infinite fortune.
We stopped in the Todd English foodcourt which is in the basement of The Plaza Hotel...this guy walked past me with white gloves on. I don't see that everyday. (if ever?)
New on top of old? The modern structure was sitting on top of the brick structure.
Destination #3 of the day, Turn-Style. I heard about this new shopping/food plaza opening underground in the subway area near Columbus Circle.
It was basically just a hallway with shops on either side. We were starving and disappointed that there were not more food options. There were a few, but most wanted you to stand and eat. We had walking probabably 8 miles by now and were desperate to sit down. Didn't stay long.
After a lot of walking around looking at restaurants we settled on Whole Foods which I would say is a SECRET Whole Foods. There was no sign anywhere that this was in the basement of the Warner building. The only reason I thought to look for Whole Foods is that I saw someone with a Whole Foods grocery bag in the area which made me think one was nearby. It was huge and super busy!
I've never bought pizza by the pound before!
Hoverboard in the grocery cart.
Heading up the escalator in Whole Foods. This is a favorite image of the day.
There is a restaurant about 3/4 of the way up - you can see people sitting at tables, must be quite the view.
This is my favorite shot of the day!
Fooling with Live Composite on my camera. This is a (handheld) shot with a person walking by and a subway zooming by done with a several second exposure a few times.
Saddest moment of the day. We took the subway to Times Square and then walked to Grand Central. Once you get past the guy's butt, you'll see that there are two cats sleeping on a carpet mat. They were harnessed. This has to be a horrible existence for them. Cats are so senstive to noise and stimuli and this was in the middle of Times Square at 8:30pm.
Here is another angle. I woke up Tuesday morning thinking about these kitties. :(
Nice sunset.
Weird because I saw this same woman last week, different day of the week, different location and different time of day.
Sunset continued to be beautiful.
It was 79 degrees.
The Pigeon. I heard there was a pigeon stuck in Grand Central this week. Sure enough I ran into him. I felt bad, I don't know how he will get out. I bought a bagle for the train ride home so I shared some with him.
Until the next Magic Monday! Leave me a quick note with your thoughts on this week below. Thanks for taking the time to look through the images!
xo,
~MC
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