Snow Day

On Saturday afternoon I gave a Bagels, Dumplings, Pizza, and Tacos tour to a lovely pair or women from the British Isles. They didn't know each other. One was from Oxford. The other from Dublin. We met at First Park and wandered down through the LES and across Chinatown during the height of the New Year's celebration, drinking in the dragon dances, the confetti, and the crowds.

These are all photos of the day.

Saw this at Economy Candy. Alexander Hamilton was not a man of the people. He married into the top of New York society and worked to protect his position and the privileges of the people he partied with. Like Tom in Succession, only smarter. I don't know what this card says on the inside but I hope it's something like "he wanted to do worse to others."

Also on display at Post Times, In Your Head by Roxanne Jackson. Better than rainsocks!

The work on the right is Dry Reeds by Ever Baldwin. And this beautiful door is by many decades of regular use by myriad New Yorkers. Great show at Post Times. If you're in the city go check it out. Closes on March 9th.

I can't quite do it justice on film but during the New Year's Celebration Chinatown's streets are filled with this blanket of color. A few hours later it was all covered with snow, but I wasn't around to capture it. (Don't think about where this stuff comes from or where it goes next.)

There is a lot of wisdom in performing ceremonies that invite luck and prosperity into the new year.

Mott Street.

King Baby still getting out there.

After the tour I went up to Midtown and met my friend Marie at a Lamp Club Event in the POPS at 875 3rd Avenue. I'm not going to explain this event because any attempted description will say too much and too little.

We were separated into two groups, stockbrokers and CEOs. I was handed an envelope that said oligarchs on it and inside scrawled on a scrap of paper was the word Disinformation. I tried to suggest that vaccines made people taller and that we should invest heavily in the emerging blood boy market, but nobody bought it.

Nobody makes a mockery of the financial industry better than the financial industry. Right next to our event was this completely empty office of this 'bank'. This address is listed as their primary NYC address. This is their New York set up. Their other office is in PR. They say they help UNHI move money into The United States.

At the end of the event we gathered for a pep talk and a thank you for making the CEOs so much money on the new product Air 3.0.

Then we all got fired. No severance.

It started snowing a few minutes after this picture was taken.

Again, nobody mocks capitalism as well as capitalism. 875 is a ridiculous, grotesque banality of a building, with no sense of flow or humanity or practicality. It turns everything into interstitial space. Even its preposterous skinny flying escalators are a let down because you have to walk a quarter mile to go back down. But it's POPS does provide a public service. People without anywhere else to go were scattered around the tables, reading, eating, sleeping and passing the time while the weather worsened outside.

Steam system popped a rivet and is waiting to be fixed. Looks extra cool with the snow.

'89 Batmobile about to blast by.

Mediocre pizza but a nice case.

The sound of walking on snow takes me back to my snow suit and clip-on mittens days in AK.

When I was in high school I had a legitimate wizard as a teacher and I remember him coming into school one day and telling us about how he slipped on the ice on his way to the bus and when he realized he was going down, he just let go, and he was ok. Just got back up and got on the bus.

Lurching towards abstraction.

We tried for a minute to get into the mindset of the person who put this up, but couldn't figure it out. Look again.

When Marie and I walked back to 875 to catch the E train below, everybody was gone, except the girl who had sat undisturbed for an hour studying as 30 weirdos buzzed around her, often within a foot. We thanked the security guard for putting up with us. Compared to some of the other LC events, these security people were super chill.

Marie went to Queens and I went downtown, hoping to switch to the D. I'm a dipshit and I got off the train one stop too early, so I had to stand there for ten minutes until the next train came through.

The station explains the development of the Subway map and signage between 1965 and 1979. If you're that kinda nerd go check it out. (Or maybe you already have.)

Finally I got off the A at 155 and walked south on St. Nick. This stretch of the road dates back to the Lenape days, when this was the main North-South trail used by the Wecquaesgeek, before the hostile takeover in the 1600s. So many snowfalls. So many footfalls.

Looking west into Trinity Uptown from 154.

Ed Koch is buried there on the right.

They painted a lot of this fence last summer, but I guess they didn't get to this bit yet.

Do the dead get cold?

Yes, this is in Manhattan.

That's it!