Blog, Blog, Blog
The driver of this Hyundai tried to run me over today on East 62nd St and Lexington Ave in Manhattan. He honked at me as I was at the intersection in the shoulder and lunged his car towards me. Then in a bout of blind but irrational rage, he ran his car into this minivan. Not shown here was how he almost pinned the woman (pictured) between his car and the van.
Much like we did last year, Sarah and I spent an entire Saturday searching for icons of modern architecture around New York City. The hunt was pretty simple. There were about forty clues. We had to solve each clue by going to each building and snapping a photo of ourselves in front of it. To ensure we didn’t submit snapshots of ourselves either before or after the hunt, we had to sport a very specific “ONHY” button.
We learned from last year’s that there’s a lot of traveling involved. While we used a 7-day unlimited ride Metrocard to get around last year, we brought our bikes for this year’s hunt. We found that we could get around a lot faster, especially going crosstown, but it didn’t see like we covered much more ground than we did in 2012. Go figure.
Because we were getting around by bicycle, I saw a lot of places I haven’t in years. For instance, there were reminders of when friends would come to visit, the hotels they stayed in, and the places we visited. We also spotted a few potential candidates for future contests.
Highlights of this year’s contest included Paley Park, a little courtyard with a waterfall right in the middle of midtown, the Synagogue for the Arts in TriBeCa, and the Kelly and Gruzen–designed branch of the New York Public Library at 10 Jersey Street. While most of the photography was pretty basic, there were some difficult shots. Perhaps the most difficult was getting a shot of the AT&T Building (now the Sony Building…but not for much longer) and the Rockefeller Apartments in the same shot. The only way we could get that shot was by going inside of the Museum of Modern Art and snapping a photo just past the museum’s entrance.
I uploaded the photos to Flickr just before the Sunday 2:00 PM deadline, and you can see the spots we visited on a lovely day in early March.
As a co-commissioner of the McCarren Saturday Softball League, I get a few requests a year about teams wanting to join our league. The sad truth is that we cannot add any more teams because our permits grant us four hours of access to two fields each week. I would love to have some new “blood” in the league, but that’s impossible at the moment. As a way to tell people about our league, I wrote up a primer on joining the McCarren Saturday Softball league. I’m reproducing it here because I wrote it and want it on my website, too.
Welcome to the McCarren Saturday Softball league. I have some good news and bad news for you.
First, the good news. If you found this page because you really want to play co-ed softball in McCarren Park on Saturdays or Sundays and searched the Internet, congratulations. Your search is over.
Now for the bad news. As you might have noticed, McCarren Park is on the border of Greenpoint and Williamsburg, in the borough of Brooklyn, and in the city of New York. This last tidbit is important because if you want to do something in New York City, there’s probably a thousand other people that want to do the same thing. In theory, that’s great because it allows you participate in a variety of enriching experiences with a critical mass of really interesting people. But in practice, it sucks because there are nine-hundred ninety-nine people ahead of you in line, and you probably won’t get to do as many awesome things a city like New York has to offer. So you may as well go home, crawl to your neighborhood bar, and drink away your sorrows.
You might say, “Wait, but I do plenty of awesome things here in the city…thank you, very much.” And I’m sure you do. But I would ask you, fine sir or madame, how many of those things are either over-priced, over-crowded or both ?
Our league is unique in that we don’t run it to make a profit. We don’t charge an exorbitant fee to play. We don’t pretend to donate a tiny percentage of your fees to a charitable cause. Any money we take is used to cover our costs and, maybe, buy a few beers with what little is left over. We’re also not very crowded. We only have nine teams in our league, and every team plays each other twice. Our small size makes for a great community. Through this careful planning and management, we’ve maintained a league that has avoided the all-too-common trap of being over-priced and over-crowed.
If this sounds great to you. Here’s how to sign up.
Great. Have you ever tried to find a rent-controlled apartment in Manhattan? That’s what this league is like. We have only four hours of permit time each week on two fields. The way our games work, we can schedule only four games each week. It is ideal for an eight-team league since every teams gets to play every week, and it is workable for a nine-team league since each team gets two “bye” weeks throughout the summer. But it will not work for a ten-team league because each team would then get four “bye” weeks. If we did that, we may as well not even play.
The only way we can add a new team is if an existing team drops out. The last time a team dropped out was in 2005. I’m not saying it won’t happen, but you should know that there’s already a very long waiting list.
Finding an affordable apartment anywhere in the city is tough. At one time or another, we all resorted to moving into an awesome place with a stranger or two. Some teams are pretty well established but could use new players. But like finding a roommate, there’s some nepotism involved. If you know people who play on a McCarren team, speak to them and find out what’s up. Buy them a beer, and regale them with stories about how great a player you are.
If you don’t know anyone, you might be able to walk on a team through an open practice in late March. That would be a great opportunity to connect orphaned players with needy teams. But that depends on whether teams need players, and that’s up to each team. Sorry to be such a downer, but I’d rather be straight with you now than have you bug me later about why you aren’t getting any playing time.
Finally! I can offer some unqualified good news. If you would like to sponsor a team or the league, we’d like to meet you. Most of our teams had sponsors last year, but that can change from year-to-year. We’d love to have your business name on our shirts and even come in a knock a few back, especially if you’re close to McCarren Park. I know summers can be lonely in a hot, sticky city such as ours, but we’re not going anywhere and would love to hang out with you. Let’s talk, why not?
Here are two storms: one in the summer and the other in the Winter
Because of the impending snow storm, which some are calling "Nemo," the MTA has some good news for those of us who are impacted by the shutdown of weekend 7 train service.
With weather forecasts calling for significant snowfall beginning Friday evening, all planned subway service changes this weekend are cancelled.
7 service operates in two sections:
1. Between Flushing-Main St and Queensboro Plaza
2. Between Queensboro Plaza and Vernon Blvd-Jackson Av
It’s probably too cold to go anywhere this weekend anyway.
Update: It turns out that because of the storm, all service changes on the 7 train are cancelled and that we would have service between Queens and Manhattan after all.
On Friday, February 1, in Grand Central Terminal, there will be a celebration for the station’s centennial.
Of immediate interest:
I suppose the Apple Store’s absence from these is due to the fact that it would not be around for another 63 years.
The consensus is clear. Helping a friend move from one apartment to another is one of the most generous things you can do. It always seems like one of the most unpleasant experiences in the world, even if most intracity moves only take a few hours. But since everyone recognizes the sheer unpleasantness of the moving-day experience, we’ve developed a few rules and truths about the process to make it more palatable.
Of course, these rules really only apply for moves you volunteer to help. A few times, I have helped move friends who have paid me. Ordinarily, it feels unseemly accepting cash, but there are a few factors for making it acceptable.
One reason is because a friend can’t participate in the move. One reason we all volunteer, other than to be of service to a friend, is reciprocity. I help move with the expectation that my friend will be there when I need to move. However, if a friend can’t lift things, because of a bad back or other ailments, then they wouldn’t be able to help with my move. In those limited cases, they have offered to pay me. One friend paid me to help them move for a different reason: neither she nor her boyfriend had a driver license. They needed me to rent and drive a truck for them. Although they didn’t expect me to do so, I helped load and unload.
Over the years, the frequency of helping friends move has been declining. As we get older, we hire movers.
Remember the “Freshmen Fifteen”? Someone once told me that it was a reference to the weight gained by new college students who spent their first year overindulging on dorm food. To me, that seemed like a plausible phenomenon with an implausible explanation: I think it is more likely due to these new co-eds discovering, among other things, the magical combination of pizza and beer. And after enough beer…more pizza. I don’t exactly remember whether I gained much weight during my freshman year, although it seems likely that I did because I remember eating a fair amount of pizza and burritos, although I didn’t drink back then.
The idea of the “Freshman Fifteen” was in the front of my mind when Sarah suggested that I not only try the many lunch specials in Long Island City but to also document them. Since I work from home on Fridays, I’m having lunch at various eateries in Long Island City over the next fifteen weeks of the spring semester. The challenging part of this project comes not from the quality of the food: the places in this neighborhood are actually pretty good, and there are some deals to be had. With some lunch specials starting as early as 11:00 AM and ending as late at 4:00, I will have to resist the temptation to eat at more than one place in a day. Doing so might force me to retitle this project the Friday Forty, after the number of pounds I’d gain.
I begin putting on the “Friday Fifteen” on January 25.
This is how Christmas tree stands in New York City get restocked. After living here for as long as I have, I’m surprised I’ve never seen our French-Canadian vendors get a delivery until now.
