New York City
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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.
Remember that 35mm lens I was selling? I also listed it on Craigslist. There were a few queries, but none of them seemed serious.
On Friday, I received an email asking if the lens was still available. I wrote back saying that it was, and I then received this reply:
From Jose Dave (eastalbel04@gmail.com):
Hi, Thanks for the mail.i was introduced to this site by a friend at
work and I’m seriously interested in buying the item on your posting
on CL for my cousin ‘Richie’ who is out of the state and has been
requesting for this exact item.I’m okay with your selling price i will
add $150 for the shipping charges to him.i would have loved to come
for a face to face transaction but due to my work, as a Petroleum
Engineer and currently offshore. i really want this as a surprise gift
for him so i won’t let him know anything about this until it get
delivered to him there because he is in need of it as a matter of
urgency and due to my work i don’t have time to handle the shipping..i
will want you to help me handle the shipping very well to him..Get
back to me with your confirmed PayPal email address for the payment
asap…
As you can tell, it’s a scam. There’s no way I am sending my lens to anyone through Craig’s List I cannot meet in person. That’s rule number one.
Meanwhile, my lens sold on Amazon!
The above link to Amazon is an affiliate link. If you buy something that link, I will earn a commission fee.
Tempted, but I had cereal instead.
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.
Today from Gilt City:
An exclusive, VIP tour for two of the “Piers Morgan Tonight” set.
I’m a cheapskate so I’d never buy something like this. However, if I’m paying $2,500 I would like, at the very least, a lesson on phone hacking.
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!
Part of the Extra Mooga package from this weekend’s crap fest included seeing Marc Maron brew coffee (Pow!) with the Third Rail Coffee crowd (Wow!) and a live WTF Podcast.
But since it cost $250 to get an Extra Mooga ticket, we couldn’t afford to go. And I’m glad we didn’t pony up.
Today, Marc Maron addressed the listeners of his WTF Podcast:
I can honestly say with complete confidence: I will not do that to you again. I will not alienate the WTF people by being part of a situation where it’s really too expensive for you to get in because, quite frankly, I could have used you there. That’s all I am gonna say on that.
Sorry, you too had a bad time, and thanks for thinking of your fans!
Since Gothamist devoted multiple posts about the food and music festival, I figured I would devote a second post to list some more complaints, other than how under estimating capacity worked against our giving them money.
- There were no activities. If I wasn’t waiting for a musical performance to start or waiting in a line for food, I would have liked something to do. Could I play a game (other than bocce)? Could there have been a Skeeball parlor or something similar?
- Why do I have to buy tickets to taste beer or wine?
- Why did I have to pay $250 to watch Marc Maron do his podcast or at least cup some coffee. (Pow!)
- Speaking of the $250 Extra Mooga ticket, why did those poor people have to wait in the general admission food lines? I sympathize for those who wasted that amount of money and didn’t get to eat much because they had to wait in hour-long lines.
- I remember when I downloaded the app and noticed that it had to connect to the Internet to work, I abandoned it. I knew that 20,000 people in Prospect Park would spell mobile phone shut down. That’s exactly what happened.
- The crazy thing about New Yorkers is that we’re so paranoid about standing in line that we will spend all of our time “standing on line.” Maybe people in Tennessee will only look for food when they’re hungry. But not New Yorkers. New York is not just about scale: it’s about panic. We will stand in a line because we’re worried about standing in a line. And we’ll complain about it the entire time.
- The whole point about going to a festival like this is about tasting a variety of food in the same day. But the lines were so long that we basically had to choose one or two places to eat. Doing so forced us to eat somewhere we could have visited on any given day. Rather than bike to Prospect Park and wait 90 minutes for a lobster roll, we should have gone to Red Hook and had one there. There would not have been a line. And it would have been just as good.
At least it was free admission, and there was a very efficient bike valet.
It was a good thing that we had a house warming party and a birthday party to attend because spending the day at GoogaMooga would have been an absolute waste of a day.
David Rockwell, Collaborative Designer & Festival Designer, told us not to worry about lines: “Festivals are what we do…The people running some of the other festivals that have line troubles dont have as much experience as we do.”1
The lines were indeed the problem. Not only did we wait for an hour and a half for a Lobster roll that we could have bought at East Seventh Street in Manhattan, we also found every other line so prohibitively long that we basically left after only two and a half hours. I had budgeted $80 for all the food and drink that was available at the festival. However the lines were so long that we gave up and stopped spending after eating “only” a bland chicken sandwich and a lobster roll. Total damage $25.
What do Nashvillians know that we don’t?
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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