Cloud Surround

The reflective surfaces on recent buildings in the vicinity of the World Trade Center can make it appear as if you are surrounded by fair weather clouds.

 

I made this belated discovery after catching the Beauford Delaney exhibit in Soho, where advertisers for the new Darren Aronofsky movie (poor Austin!) ignored the "no posting" signs.

Fall is just around the corner.  I walked south on West Broadway, a route seldom taken.

"Masters of the universe" play jenga at 76 Leonard Street. 

In Tribeca, a woman watered the community garden at Finn Square.

Many of the buildings look as they have for decades.

Jay McInerney's Bright Lights, Big City put this restaurant on the literary map in the 80s.  I wonder how much longer it can survive.

Change, baby, change.  That's what gives New York its vertical energy.

The glorious Municipal Building, designed by McKim, Mead & White as part of the City Beautiful movement, marked the consolidation of the New York City's five boroughs shortly before the turn of the 20th century.  

The weather was surprisingly cool for August.

This solid federal building--completed in 1938 and once described as "a boring limestone monolith that has trouble deciding between a heritage of stripped down neo-Classical and a new breath of Art Deco"--survived the collapse of the nearby Twin Towers.

Second millennial construction mostly looks a lot more vulnerable, although the cladding of the Perelman Center for the Performing Arts mixes things up a bit.

The novelty of the Oculus never diminishes.  Is it a stegosaurus? A porcupine?  No, it's a mall disguised as a commuter rail station.

A man relaxing with a book instead of a phone is a rare and encouraging sight, even if it does require three chairs.

The government officials, private organizations, businesses, developers and architects who re-imagined lower Manhattan after 2001 certainly had awesome, long-term vision.  It really is both breathtaking and heartbreaking, a peculiar combo to say the least.

When I visited the area in 2011 with the Mayor's Office as the World Trade Center Health Coordinator, it was still very much a construction site.  We had to wear hard hats.  Fun fact:  I'm kneeling below Scarlett Johansson's future mother-in-law!  And the young woman in the light blue dress is the niece of former Mayor Ed Koch.

Here I am with former New York City Health Commissioner Thomas Farley.  

Both of us were appointed by Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

New buildings, new hairstyle, older face what can I say?  My work life seems ages ago.  I've been retired for more than a decade just about as long as it has taken for lower Manhattan to fully re-blossom.

The rebuilt Saint Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church--the only house of worship to be destroyed in the 2001 terrorist attacks--was consecrated in July 2022.

There's an elevated plaza directly in front of it

. . . with spectacular views of the phoenix risen.

The Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel turned 75 in May.  I have a very dim memory of driving through it with my father sometime in the late 1950s, when the toll was just 35 cents.  Today, it will cost you $11.19 without an EZ Pass to get from the southern tip of Manhattan to Red Hook--a distance of nearly two miles-- beneath the East River.  If Robert Moses had had his way, the two-tube tunnel would have been a bridge but the land grab required for such a structure provoked a public outcry that forecast his diminished power.

I've added a ride through it to my bucket list, if only to get a clear view of the giant working clock that adorns the lower Manhattan entrance. I'd also love to see what I assume to be lights on the top illuminated at night.

Here's what the tunnel entrance looks like from the back.  Even though it was named after former Governor Hugh Carey shortly before Hurricane Sandy flooded it for the first time, you would never know it from the engraving on the facade.

Late afternoon sunlight bathed the non-reflective Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House, designed in the Beaux Arts style, on Bowling Green. A ten-minute stroll from the World Trade Center, it takes you back more than a century.

Battery Park had been my final destination under the misapprehension that it was home to the recently re-opened Wagner Park.  A ranger informed me that it's actually located in Battery Park City, a little farther uptown.  Next time--I'd seen more than enough for one day. 

On The Town

JoAnne and I, both only children, go way back, although we have never spent much time together.  We last saw each other in 1993, shortly before my 40th birthday.  She wouldn't become a grandmother for more than a decade.

It's funny how your mind works.  Her comment the first time I took off my shirt in the dune buggy, the year I graduated from high school, remains seared in my brain for the lingering trauma it caused: "Jesus Jeff, your tits are bigger than mine!"  Perhaps that accounts for my rude greeting, which popped out of nowhere as she stepped off the elevator in the Chelsea Savoy Hotel more than half a century later.  "Well, you haven't gotten any taller, have you!" The subconscious never forgets.

Williamsburg Pizzeria

JoAnne and Mia, her 17-year-old granddaughter, were in town for several days from Elbert County, Colorado, the red part of the state, less than a hundred miles north of where Cynthia, my other conservative friend, lives. They bought tickets to Hamilton upon arrival so I began our late-afternoon tour of Lower Manhattan with a walk along the Canyon of Heroes and a pilgrimage to the Founding Father's grave.  His wife Eliza is buried there, too. American coins cover her flat tombstone.

Trinity Church Cemetery

I warned JoAnne that we'd be doing a lot of walking when she inquired if it would be OK to pack open-toed shoes.  "Comfort should be your top priority," I advised.  Apparently, she and Mia got over their fear of dog poop and needles!  People have very peculiar notions about New York City streets.

"I can't remember when I've had my picture taken taken so often," she remarked at one point. "You obviously haven't been hanging around me much," I replied.  This is as close to a smile as JoAnne got.  She's also a woman of few words.

After grabbing a bite at Brookfield Place, we rested our dogs going to and from Staten Island on the ferry, one of New York City's few tourist bargains.  

It's free and you can't beat the views!

The sun was setting over Lady Liberty, both literally and figuratively.

We toured Central Park the following afternoon despite afternoon temperatures exceeding one-hundred degrees for the first time in nearly a decade.  They already had seen the Sea Glass Carousel in Battery Park, so I showed them a more traditional kind.

Unbelievably, some bros were playing pickle ball in the courts behind Mia and JoAnne.

When her i-Phone overheated, this hula hooper had to stop shooting her Tik Tok content.  I suggested she try Moynihan Train Hall instead, where young people can be found performing dance routines on the polished floors of the windowed corridor above the platforms.

I told Mia she looked as if she could have been painted by Velázquez.

"Lady with a Fan" (17th century)

"Is that a good thing?" she asked.  Our frames of reference differed considerably.

This turned out to be as close as she got to Hamilton.  At the last minute, Stub Hub failed to come through with the tickets JoAnne had purchased.  Fortunately they got a refund and were able to see The Lion King instead.

On Wednesday, we agreed that air conditioned activities like art appreciation at MoMA would be the way to go.

A stuffed animal installation by Mike Kelley seemed like the perfect backdrop for a photo op. Mia had made a special trip to F.A.O. Schwartz to look for a Jellycat.

"Deodorized Central Mass with Satellites" (1987) 

Next stop:  Tiffany's, where JoAnne and Mia declined refreshment in the cafe.  Imagine my surprise when I discovered they had brunched there the next day!  My itinerary clearly didn't include enough luxury shopping time.  Prada welcomed them, too.

The proximity of the sacred to the profane on Fifth Avenue remains scandalous.

St. Patrick's Cathedral

SKIMS

My visitors missed the Pride Parade by just a day.

In our quest for continued heat relief, JoAnne treated me to a fabulous tour of Radio City Music Hall.  It's not every day that you get to meet a Rockette.  Thanks again, JoAnne!

On Friday morning we took the New York Ferry to Williamsburg.  A thirty-degree drop in the temperature made sightseeing much more pleasant despite overcast skies.

Residents of Elbert County probably don't see a lot of samizdat.

I chose Haricot Vert Dreamworld as a random destination.  It specializes in charms.  I went a little overboard fashioning key chains for the D-Girls.

We people-watched on bustling Bedford Street. I taught JoAnne and Mia how to play "hipster or not" while they shared a slice of pizza.

"Maybe this guy loves New York a little too much."

Drew texted us when he finished assembling our purchases at Haricot Vert.  Mia's bracelet included the letters F, F & A.

Would you believe that she belongs to an organization that now goes by that acronym?  Back home, Mia currently operates a grazing operation with several other FFA members.

I don't think I took a more iconic shot during their visit.

We ended the day with even more walking, from Little Island to Hudson Yards on the High Line.

This was the last time they had to say "cheese."