NYC Adventures
Monday, April 11
I walked 23,165 steps today, which is about 9 Diane Miles. I qualify the mileage because no matter how hard I try to calibrate my watch, it believes I have gone farther than anyone else who happens to be walking with me. Thank you, watch, for being my cheerleader.
My hotel, The Ridge, had some very nice street art painted on it.
I wish I could say I had taken 23,165 photos. In the end, it is a numbers game for me. If I take 100 photos, maybe I will get a couple of good ones. I did stop and talk to a couple of people and take their picture with permission. Both of them had dogs. Why is it that people with dogs are more approachable? The beauty in the basket is 15 years old. I hope someone will tote me in my old, old age.
The puppy is a mix of a pit bull and a husky. I could not believe he had blue eyes. One odd little transaction occurred when Marty, the owner, picked up some dog poop. The older man on the left offered to take the bag. Believe me, I was trying to get a handle on that transaction. It turns out that they are father and son. Moms and dads always step in to help.
Tuesday, April 12
Okay, this was a big adventure. Do you remember when Instagram was a smaller, community kind of place? I spent a lot of time and built my community. It continues on, even in the face of influencers and video clips. It is always my hope that I will be able to meet these virtual friends in person and there has been some success in places as far as Portugal and as close to home as Nashville, on one very serendipitous day. But most of the people I have met are photographers in NYC. My NYC son is a little proud of me when I come to town to meet friends. He and his wife have gone to many dinners, one bar and a jazz club, so that some of my friends are now their acquaintances.
On this day, I was going out to Brooklyn to meet Jonathan. This was our second meet up. We could pin done the last time we had lunch because his oldest daughter was getting ready to go off to college. Five years have passed and she has now graduated and launched. In the good old days, Jonathan posted the best series of portraits taken in NYC subways that I have ever seen. Over lunch, he talked with me about how he accomplished this stealth photography. He is a very smart man, and used this gift to get the incredible shots. His real creativity was attaching some wonderful, fanciful stories to the pictures. I remember when he told me he had gotten some pushback about using real portraits to illustrate fiction stories. This was pushback was from friends, not the people whose candid pictures he was using. The stories stopped as did the portraits. I guess this is on the continuum of ethical decisions that street photographers have to make. I was personally not just okay with the practice of attaching a dear story to a real picture, but I was enriched by it. I guess the expression is, “Different stokes for different folks.”
Now there can be many reasons that going out to Brooklyn on a subway could be a big adventure for me. However, I had conquered the F train journey during the Coney Island commute debacle. I like to mention pro tips. Pro tip for commuters using the subway: Always look at the line letter that is on the front of the subway and on every car. If you are intending to catch the F train, getting in the A train is not going to serve you well. Having internalized that lesson, the challenge was not catching the train. The challenge was that two hours earlier there had been a terrorist act on an N train going from Brooklyn to Manhattan. I was going to pass through that area. My dear son, who is quite risk averse with people that he loves, just like his dad, was texting me a little frantically. He can geo locate me, which is somewhat weird, but okay. I do feel a little safer knowing someone knows and cares where I am in this world.
Not surprisingly, there was some delay on the train. While I sat in the relatively empty car, with both doors open, a fellow in a fluorescent work vest walked in one door, looked around, and walked out the other. Since the-not-as-yet-apprehended terrorist also wore a worker’s vest, I alerted up. The terrorist and the worker who passed through my car only shared a similar vest. I did not consider passing through the car to be especially strange behavior. It seemed reasonable to me that subway workers of all sorts had been sent out to check the cars on trains, particularly those going to Brooklyn. Nope, the strange thing was three other fellows then walked in and out of the car, one by one, after the first guy. Is this regular subway behavior?
I made it to Brooklyn, through the 4th Avenue station that was of such interest, and got off in a delightful community, Park Slope. My son, meanwhile, realized I was 7 blocks from the manhunt. There was a helicopter hovering overhead. I think he thought the prudent thing was to get back on the train and head home. Is this payback for his teenage years when I worried?
I wondered, and my son wondered, too, if some of the injured people were brought to this hospital.
My friend and I had delightful long lunch in an outside patio of a Greek restaurant. Now, that is my idea of the good life.
Park Slope was a charming little community. I hope to visit it again.
I will wrap up the story of the trip next week, with a little anecdote about a fairly bizarre visit with my new friend, Dave. I am 75 and alive, folks.