Celebrating Solstice Among the City
Urban Shaman Mama Donna celebrates the solstice, marking the first day of Northern summer at Socrates Sculpture Park in Long Island City.
Long Island City
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The Scene after Taste of LIC
Last night, Sarah and I went to Taste of LIC which is always a major highlight for me in this neighborhood. It amounts to basically eating and drinking at every restaurant in this neighborhood.
Let the Fasting Begin: “Taste of LIC” is Tomorrow
The seventh-annual Taste of LIC is tomorrow. As a testament to how much I like this event, I’m missing an evening softball game because of it. Sarah and I have gone every year since 2008, and it’s almost always one of the best evenings of the year.
Clouds Obscure May Manhattanhenge
I tried to catch this year’s Manhattanhenge after having pretty good success last July. However, on Tuesday night, there was a big storm that obscured the entire sun, making it impossible to get any good photos.
The sky was a lot clearer on Wednesday, but trying to get photos from Long Island City proved difficult. There was a large cloud cover that obscured the sun it approached the horizon. I was pretty disappointed, as was Frank who accompanied me for the trip this time. Maybe we’ll have better luck in July.
I was impressed by the popularity of the event. Manhattanhenge in Long Island City had a fair amount of fans watching, including a bunch of photographers and a bunch of kayakers who watched the sunset from the East River.
Robots Love Brunch
Tempted, but I had cereal instead.
Moon over Manhattan
Last night, on my way back to Long Island City, there was a big moon hanging over the Manhattan skyline. It was a beautiful sight, and one that I had to capture. I almost expected there to be a woman hanging off the lower part of the crescent.
By the time, I went upstairs to get my camera, the moon had already dropped about 30°. I would have rushed to the Gantry State Park to get less light noise, but I was afraid that the moon would set below the skyline by the time I reached the waterfront. And I think the park was closed anyway.
Sadly this was the best photo I got, even with a tripod and remote switch, and it does not do justice to the beauty of the moment.
Verizon FiOS Speeds are Back!
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Over the last month, we in Long Island City have experienced some very poor upload speeds over Verizon FiOS. My earlier post on this subject has roused some interest among the geekier among us here in north Brooklyn and Western Queens.
Stephen Mike in Greenpoint posted on this site on Tuesday that our FiOS upload problems have been fixed. He’s right! My upload speeds, according to SamKnows, have indeed improved since yesterday.
| Date | Average (Mbps) |
|---|---|
| May 15, 2012 | 3.98 |
| May 16, 2012 | 7.36 |
| May 17, 2012 | 7.00 |
| May 18, 2012 | 6.87 |
| May 19, 2012 | 5.50 |
| May 20, 2012 | 7.01 |
| May 21, 2012 | 5.30 |
| May 22, 2012 | 31.14 |
As you can see, I am now getting above the advertised 25 Mbps symmetrical downstream and upstream rates.
One troubling sign is that Packet Loss still remains consistent, although I might have to wait until the monthly report to get a sense of its condition.
| Date | Failure Rate (%) |
|---|---|
| May 15, 2012 | 3.74 |
| May 16, 2012 | 2.48 |
| May 17, 2012 | 1.99 |
| May 18, 2012 | 2.30 |
| May 19, 2012 | 2.99 |
| May 20, 2012 | 1.91 |
| May 21, 2012 | 2.58 |
| May 22, 2012 | 3.33 |
Thanks, StephenMike in Greenpoint!
Reductive: A Show at Jeffrey Leder Gallery
As part of this year’s LIC Arts Open, a week devoted to showcasing the numerous art institutions in Long Island City, the Jeffrey Leder Gallery staged an opening of recent paintings and drawings converging on the theme of minimalist techniques. Dina Muenzfeld curated this show, titled Reductive.
Dina saw me shoot photos of Ellen Schneiderman’s opening in February at the same gallery. She must have liked my snapshots because she asked me to shoot the opening. Either that, or she liked that I worked for free.
I was pretty happy with the photographic quality of the shots. There were for the most part very sharp and crisp. Shooting in a gallery is a little tricky because of the competing light sources and their various temperatures
But since I bought a WhiBal card last summer, I have been able to mitigate the light noise. Also I can get pretty true colors, which I did in the photos from the Reductive opening and last July’s Staff Show at Philips DuPury.
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Obscura Day
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Saturday was my first Obscura Day. This year’s lineup didn’t seem as exotic as past last year’s events around the New York area. Sarah, for instance, went to the Vanderbilt Museum on Long Island, a place that I never would have visited on my own. I didn’t go in 2011 2010 because I didn’t want to miss a softball game, but this year, I was ready to make an early-season sacrifice.
The one event that caught my attention was Thirteen Steps Around Dutch Kills, a walking tour of Newtown Creek. It was led by a true expert of the area, so I was excited to take the tour. It was an eye-opening perspective. It’s not like I haven’t been around the industrial zones of Long Island City and Greenpoint. I have either biked or driven past those spots over the last several years. It’s just that one tends to overlook the industrial blight around Newtown Creek. Perhaps the best part was finally taking the ironically named Nature Walk path around Whale Creek, behind the new sanitation plant.
In the evening, I sacrificed yet another softball game for a tour of nineteenth-century drinking establishments. It was basically a tour of watering holes in Lower Manhattan that have been around for a long time, such as Fraunces Tavern, Delmonico’s, and the Paris Café. Despite having lived in New York for over a decade, I had never been in these spots since I never went below Chambers Street unless someone was in town or I had to report for jury duty. I felt a little under-prepared as there were people there in costume. I really appreciated that because it made the experience a little more authentic.
Our Verizon FiOS and Poor Upload Speeds in April
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We have Verizon FiOS in Long Island City, and in April 2012, our connection significantly worsened on the upstream.
In March, our Verizon FiOS broadband had significantly improved, not in terms of upload and download speed, but the latency and packet loss had improved dramatically. I had posited that Verizon technicians had done some work to improve our connection. I was very happy.
The monthly SamKnows report arrived today, and it looks like it reverted back to a pretty poor connection. SamKnows performs hourly tests for download, upload, latency, and packet loss. In April, our download speed remained robust at a little over the advertised 25 Mbps rate. However, around April 18th, the upload speed plunged to about 7 Mbps, less than a third of the advertised 25 Mbps rate.
At the same time, the packet loss climbed dramatically suggesting that there was a compromised connection on the upstream causing this problem. This is unacceptable. The reason I came to Verizon was for the robust upstream. I upload a lot of files, as is the joy of being a media scholar and shutterbug, and I need a zippy symmetrical connection.
If anyone in the neighborhood finds this and wants to report their results, please share in the comments.
