leona helmsley cut out her 2 grandkids from the will....they shouldn't feel bad, she didn't leave me anything either.

the gorgeous eagle sculpture (albeit without head) from the old penn station....

it now lives, chained to the sidewalk, near my apartment on 125th street between 2nd and 3rd avenues. it's got to be 9 feet tall before the missing head....i can just imagine the old penn station with 20 columns surrounding the ticket area, each topped with one of these beauts!

phrase of the day for 29 august 2007

• Entre acqui para resguardarme del sol

Ehn-TRAY ah-KEE PAH-rah ress-GWARD-ahr-may del sol

I came in here to get out of the sun.

phrase of the day for tuesday, august 28, 2007

• amigo, usted esta mal de la cabeza.

Ah-MEE-goh, oos-TED ehs-TAH mahl day la cah-BAY-sah.

my friend, you are a sick man

i love to do laundry...there's something calming and theraputic about washing and folding for me...now i've replaced the oily, city blackened line....

outside my window with a new super-duper clean and bright-white clothesline.....i hung all my underwear up so they could dry in the sun....

and wouldn't you know it, minutes later, i was back in the kitchen and standing near the sink, i kept hearing odd little pops and snaps coming from outside....i thought maybe it was the neighbor doing something with her garden shears below my fire escape...

nope, a few hours later when i went to pull my undies off the line, i found it was the clothespins from the dollar store...seems i bought a bright white line that was too thick to stick. luckily, all the formerly bright and clean unmentionnables landed in the grime of my fire escape and didn't fall thru to the escape under mine...if Angela thought she had a problem with my cutting hair on my escape, or painting, how would she have handled my tossing of underwear down there? she could have felt like a rock star but that's doubtable, since she's established that she's a white witch in a vodoo culture, i'm sure she'd have sacrificed a chicken at me or vexed my home or worse -- hexed my calvins....oh life in the big city isn't always easy.

i've begun to refresh some of my foreign language skills now that i'm living in el barrio.

the majority of the restaurants up here are mexican, which suits me to a capital T. it's my favorite food EVER. out of respect for where i live and the people i'll be encountering, i've decided to refresh my spanish language skills....it's been 16 years since i've used a word of it though, so you'll be able to suffer along with me as i reacquaint myself with some useful if not off the beaten path phrases that may be useful in the city....

a very wise woman once said "just the right shoe will change your life".

but cinderella had inside help - she had a fairy godmother.

i don't even have a godmother.

all i have is a mother. she's great. but she's just a normal, extraordinary person with no magical powers what-so-ever.

i do have great shoes though. so far haven't found the one that will change my life though...i'll keep looking.

i am finally catching on to some things in life that must be obvious to most of you....

tonight's example: when you finally have a picture worth framing, yet alone printing, you'll be out of ink atleast halfway thru printing it.

and in the same vein, last night i learned that no matter how much you like your family picture, which you've never managed to get for the last 25 years, and did finally snag at brunch...as soon as you print out and mail a copy to all the people in the picture, you'll realize you printed it wrong and cut off peoples' heads on one side of the photo (sorry jim, sorry clark....oops.....i'd send a new one in the mail, but i'm out of ink and can't finish what i was already trying to do here.)

everything works out in the end....if it hasn't worked out, it isn't the end....

i love words of wisdom from random places, this was a bit of insight about life that made me laugh when i overheard it on the subway today....very smart little kid who didn't look educated or well off, but someone who obviously believes in things working out, i'm routing for that kid!

here's some of that infamous neighborhood "pirate corn" i mentionned before -- you know, it's a buck an ear....and grows anywhere someone isn't parked

and then there is my love life....talk about filthy, unhealthy and co-dependant....this relationship has it all....

the empire state building reflected in the sidewalk to sky ceilings along 42nd street

my old office, atleast when i was in new york city between trips to europe and asia for work was in this fabled and foibled building...notice the gargoyles on the corners just below the art deco triangles start arching up to the spire...my office was an upper corner and the gargoyles were amazing when it rained! on occasion i was told they could be seen struck by lightening in a storm. i never was in that office for lightening, thankfully. i do recall that when it rained, because we were so high up there was nothing to be seen, sometimes even on an overcast day, the view was totally whited (or grayed) out.

of course, one of the most beautiful buildings to walk around, inside or out has to be grand central station. most people will never know her secrets, but i used to work across the street when i was at LaSalle Partners (now Jones Lang LaSalle), the 3rd largest corporate real estate company on the planet. the group i worked in (tenant representation, or t.r.g.) refurbished the interior of grand central, which included the removal of old guilt leaf on the ceiling and the revelation of the original gold leafed night sky with all the constellations outlined. during this time, we would do regular walk throughs of the space just to make sure work was going as expected, and that meant walking between the windows -- every giant arched windown all the way around is 4 stories tall which you can't tell, you can just see they're huge. when you're privy to the back office and have access, there are iron catwalks all the way around the interior of the building and you can literally walk right across the top, middle and lower quarter of the window. often you'll see a tourist catch a glimpse of you walking thru, and they always do a double take because you obviously can't really be walking up there....or can you?

and this is the view i'm talking about...if you look closely, you can make out the catwalks here....

sometimes playing possum is way less fun than being a possum!

this little guy is a chatterbox! but boy oh boy, does he ever love his big brothers...i can tell he's going to be more of a monkey see, monkey do kind of a fella....or is that a sea monkey kind of fella? between the hamster and the hermit crab, the cat, the dog and a house full o'possums, i'm going to hedge bets here and go with the sea monkey!

now which of these two little monkeys, i mean possums, is which? i do believe that would be possum william the webkin wizard on the left and connor the webkin collector on the right. i can't remember who told me what today, but i think it was william that found the hidden gem of the day today....needless to say, they were amused, amazed and possibly all for me knowing, no being involved with, webkins of my own....note to self, go to webkins.com and create a fish called william and a raccoon named connor!

some moments couldn't be more perfect or feel more right...this is one of those special moments.

if you haven't asked your question to my magic 8 ball (right) please be sure to do so, and come back often to ask it more....

i made the world's best fudge brownies last night...

i had been painting out on the fire escape for several hours last night, not intentionally gold leafing the great outdoors, but hey, it happens. it was such a beautiful twilight in the city after the humidity had started to be noticeable again yesterday with the return of sunshine in the city. as the day wore out and started to fade, the humidity broke again, and it got downright chilly out there. i painted on.

my project for the fire escape was terra cotta planters for my yuccas and diffenbachias. i found that for less than an additional dollar per planter (home depot) i could buy plain terra cotta planters that had already been glazed externally in great colors like chartreuse green, royal blue, white, puss yellow and an orange-red that matches nothing red i've got. so, instead of buying plain orange terra cotta in need of doctoring, i bought the pre-glazed ones for doctoring. i thought gold leafing and/or silver leafing the unglazed rim would be a great color contrast against the blue and the white pots that i'd bought. i also leafed the top edges of the drip catchers to put under the pots. what a project. it started out simple enough - a small bottle of leafing agent in silver and another in gold, an empty pudding container with clean water in it, and a couple of empty pudding containers for the leafing agent, and of course, the kitchen sponge that i cut up after i finished the dishes. turns out that dipping and dripping is messy, and my climbing in and out of the kitchen window is work, so having forgotten my workshop towels under the sink, i found myself totally coated in flecks of gold and silver....then there was the danger of flying sponges....angela, downstairs, never did catch on to my escapade with the black enamel (1/2 a quart poured very quickly between the slats of my fire escape and coated her pepper and basil plants.) maybe she her plants had very LARGE scale....anyway, now her plants have flecks of gold and/or silver on them and somewhere in the mess that is her fire escape, are my golden and silvered sponges. boy those are slippery suckers once it gets a little too dark to see your target....i know they hit her fire escape because they left a trail where they had hit and bounced, but no sign of where they landed....i did manage to grab another chunk o'sponge from inside without doing the window climb again, so i finished the planters, and i think they look great. i had extra gold in the bottom of my pudding cup so i of course gold leafed my handrail outside the kitchen window. i think it will give a nice shimmer in the sun and will definitely be different from anyone else's in the barrio!

having worked up my appetite for as long as i did out there, i was craving chocolate. i have been cooking proper meals lately, so chocolate wasn't really something i've had around. sure, i've got an eggplant, and yellow and green squash, vidalia onions, red onions, red, green and yellow peppers and tomatoes too boot, but not a pirate to be seen here -- after all, the corn is a buck-an-ear!

i scrubbed down and then scrubbed up again, then for good measure, i soft scrubbed myself as well as my bath tub. turns out that leafing stuff is harder to get off than i remembered. the mildew in the tub, a breeze to get rid of, but finger nails and cuticles coated in silver and gold? not so much....

sometimes when you have worked so hard on your home, you just have to break down and have something chocolate. so i made scratch fudge brownies. i measured and i poured and i put it all into my largest bowl only to find before i added the eggs that my largest bowl wasn't big enough to mix it....where the heck are my revereware mixing bowls with the snap on lids? they must be at mom and jim's house - note to self, find them this weekend....well, i'd already put the dry ingrediants together and there's no saving them here....so i did what needed to be done. i got out my 20 gallon stock pot out of the cabinet (if only i could find the regular sized soup pot that i know i own...ed.) dumped all the goods in and added my egg. mix, mix, mix and the i realize i don't have an 8x8, 9x10 or 9x12 baking dish here. what the heck, i normally have the best equipped kitchen of anyone i know! luckily, i saved the entemman's tin tray last time i bought something at the store (they used to have all entemman's 2 for $5.00 which is a great deal, suddenly since i got back from wyoming, they've gone back to retailing all of their items for actual price...entemman's, it was good knowing you!) i had been using the re-washed disposible tray in my toaster over to make bacon, since i like to do my bacon in the oven - it doesn't splash or get grease all over that way. unfortunately, the oven is too hot lately, but the toaster oven doesn't heat up the place and i think it cooks the bacon quicker somehow.

as i was almost ready to bake the brownies in the regular oven (which i also leveled last night, finally!) i realized i could make them better than my regular extraordinary brownies, as i've got a bunch of raspberries and blackberries in the fridge. i found them for two pints for $2.00 the other night. that's such a deal, i bought a lot, thinking i might freeze them, but then forgot to get the containers or bags to put them in. that said, they turn really quickly so i've been making myself eat them by the handful. so i tossed a handful of raspberries into the batter and folded them under. they baked to perfection and what a sweet treat with all this heat! now they're in the freezer, they're going to toast up nicely in the future. add a scoop of rockyroad ice cream to the top of a hot toasted brownied and you've got the perfect reward for finishing the laundry!

ah, the fifth day in a row of weather perfection slowly dwindles down to a close....

have i mentioned how much i love new york city, particularly in the rain, especially when it's summer and the temperature drops from 90+ and high humidity to a mere 59 and breezy...in case i forgot to say so before, consider it said outloud now.

i am so happy with myself this week. i've managed to lift myself out of my funk a bit and i've thrown myself into the long avoided, no dreaded, task of decorating my apartment and making it into a home instead of a place i'll be staying temporarily. it's amazing the difference a rug makes on a room and how much a mirror on the wall or a chair in the bedroom can change the entire feel of a place, not to mention your own perception of it. i guess i'd been avoiding this chore since i hate shopping and i'm generally so broke that i can often times barely even pay attention.

with that said, i'm an excellent bargain shopper, if i do say so myself. due to the consistency with my flea infestation (which i now seem to have subdued, thank goodness!), i had to get rid of the deep pile snow white 8x10 carpet that the landlord put in for showing the place. i think the fleas started in there and just kept on going. sorry mom, but tensor light, schmensor light. chemicals are the only way to go when the fleas have been eating your flesh!

having had so little for so long now, after having had so much for so briefly in the past (ok, who am i kidding, i have it all and i know it....at least i have all that i need and everything i have that is of any value is right here, dead center of my chest under the sternum, the heart, and that is the possession of importance that can't be taken by anyone but it is the possession i frequently give away freely). with that said, i know how to do without. i've been doing it for years. i live without good health. i forgo sanity at times and on occasion, i've figured out some mighty ok meals without the means to grocery shop for staples. now though, i'm very much getting my feet back under myself, and i'm really happy about it, no, more, i'm proud of myself. so this week, in honor of good things going on, i've allowed myself to spend my entire allowance for the month to make this pile of SpaHa bricks into a happening home.

i found a 5x8 rug that i fell in love with at pier1. it was on sale for $97. an odd amount, i know. but yee-gads! original price? $495. i couldn't commit to spending $105 on a rug right now (the 8+ % sales tax in this city KILLS me!) i hesitated, but i knew i wanted it. the rug is sage green wool with a beautiful pattern of cream roses carved into it. i could totally understand how they would have gotten so much for it originally. i thought about it. and i went home and dreamed about it. then i went to mom's and forgot about it. then the other night, i was walking past pier1 imports after they'd closed and i decided i just had to have it. no, i didn't smash and dash....good thing too....after all, the next day, when i went back to get it (they had 2 on sale when i was there, how many can they possibly sell?), all the rugs were gone. GONE i tell you! now if that doesn't beat all.

of course, being a bargain shopper, i'd previously decided to allow a purchase at t.j. maxx downtown to replace the infested pile of white synthetic (did i mention how badly that rug had reeked of plastic and rubber?) i had a problem lifting the rug i'd disposed of, so i knew i didn't want to carry one back to spaha from downtown and if i had to pay a lot for it, i certainly couldn't pay for delivery service too boot....then i priced the rugs down there...they were all around $200 for 5x9 or 8x10. unacceptable. yet, i hate to walk on the floor here barefoot, as they put down deceptive woodgrain flooring made out of 12" vinyl tiles. gross. an entire apartment, 20 feet wide by nearly 100 feet long, wall to wall of plastic woodgrain flooring....ick. feels nasty on the barefeet and gets grimy as hell given the city's pollution thanks to the buses going up the avenue and the bobs going up the fire escape! it had to be covered with rug, atleast in the living room. back to pier1 imports, i'm sure someone would buy a rug and return it....no one ever waits to make sure the purchase is the right one...that is, except me....

score! ok, so it wasn't the sage green with the carved roses, and it wasn't $97 down from almost $500, but it was the right price, the right size, about the right color combination and it was right there....smash and grab? nah....debit and get it. they even carried it out and put it into a cab for me. it's a nice rug, i'm glad i got it, even though the pattern is a bit much for my personal taste...i like old fashioned, classic and tastefully done decor, i tend to avoid modern art, modern furniture and modern fads in general....i guess it's just one of the pitfalls of being born with exceptional taste and an ability to discern the real from the bogus.

subsequently, there is a major paint job in my very near future. i think i should rush out immediately and find what i need, tonight will be ideal for any painting, given the temperature and the lack of humidity. tomorrow would be ideal for further painting for the same reason. i'll be at mom and jim's for the weekend, so can't paint then, and the humidity will be back to stifling, but maybe it wouldn't be so bad to have painted before i leave on saturday so it has a day or two to dry without me being in the fumes. only trouble with that is, i have no idea what i'm painting yet. oh dear.....

ok, so i know what i want to paint....i'm going to splash the square tin frame mirror that p.j. made me (photo left) as well as the two flanking squares of art tin that i found on clearance sale at marshalls....they were $88 each when they were originally on sale elsewhere...what a crock! i paid $15 total for the pair. luckily they're light since very hollow and cut out, but when i saw them tucked behind some other clearance junk, i just knew they were about the same size as that mirror and that i had to have them to make a wall accent in the new place....i didn't know that when i put up the one on the left it would be a snap to match it with the mirror, or that when i put up the one on the right, i would miss the nail and smash my thumb with the hammer, or worse, that when i did get the nail in finally, i would create a 3" hole in the plaster wall where i couldn't get the nail in (it bent in half in the end) and i had to disguise the hole with the surgical tape from the last time i was admitted to the hospital for a headwound. more on creative use of post-surgical supplies at another time though....

i'm thinking that i want to glaze the wall in the bedroom behind my bed. maybe red with a gold over glaze. that's what i did last time and it was the most beautiful thing i've ever done with art paints. but the wall was a lot smaller that time and the ceiling about 6 or 5 feet lower...i have no idea how i'll paint here to the ceiling...it's 14' tall!!!

i also am going to glaze the living room, but again, i think a single accent wall. since i have the brownish/green rug on the floor and the accent chair in chocolate brown and my throw pillows are brown and gold striped silk as well as french blue and gold striped silk with cream pencil stripes on them....i'm going to see if maybe i can find a matching base paint of that blue tone, it's so pretty and very calming. but i'm not a huge fan of blue, so i don't know if it's the best choice of color since i might be hating it in less than a year and it's very expensive to do the paint this way...i knowthey make a bronze that i can use in here instead of gold, which might be pretty, but what is the right undertone? i originall thought of using chocolate brown, but i have a feeling that's far too fattening, i mean dark, but it would certainly cut down on the evil glare caused by all the natural light in this place...i'll put up a picture once i get that far....first, i must decide what is safe to stand on for such a time consuming and attention demanding bit of effort....

all the pictures i posted on here from exploring harlem today are just random buildings but it's to show you how beautifully maintained it is, whether they're rebuilt, or original, the people up here have done a bang up job trying to take harlem back from the bad reputation that it had earned. 200 years ago, harlem was all farmlands and was a full day's ride by horse or carriage to the walled enclave that was nyc (it's fascinating, the city grew in 20 block increments, starting with the original village which was wall street to the water south of it - wall street is called such because originally there was a wall built there to protect city inhabitants from indians and the british and french). then the city grew from wall street up to spring street (modern day soho - south of houston). i worked at the manhattan bistro on spring street for a while. they have the original well for which spring street is named, it is walled in, in the basement. they also have a famous resident in the same space - she's a young girl, very, very famous, who was murdered in the well. she haunts the place still and they actually did a special on it for the history channel. i never saw her, but the well wall is next to the desk where the manager did the books in the basement office. he used to come upstairs all the time to tell us that we needed to stop something or other...usually something we were doing...he was being haunted. you can read about this factoid in "weird new york" which is a great book of oddities dealing with nyc and state. thanks to p.j., he gave me a copy for christmas a few years back, amazing how many links i've got to the stories in there on many levels....i'll tell you sometime.

moving north, the city soon ended on 14th street. near my old apartment. that's when the astors and gettys and the others with fur trade and railroad or oil money started cultivating mansions along fifth avenue....before the city got to 14th street, there was no fifth avenue.

in fact, fifth avenue truncates at washington square park now, which is on 8th street to the north and 6th street (?) to the south....this was the public gallows back in the day. and it was the potter field where they planted the indigents after cutting down their corpses from swinging repose. now it's the center of life at new york university where i did my m.b.a. there are a lot of young folks who probably feel like they're swinging in the wind down there at all times. that's another haunted place according to city lore. i think it's just haunted by the jamaican weed dealers near the public restrooms in the corner of the park (by my old dog run, and my psychiatrist's office!)

soon enough, the wealthy had each built a tidy little 20 or 30 room manse along fifth avenue and the city ever so slowly crept up to surprise them. so the rich, in their fifth avenue digs, began to crave country life, and began with summer homes along the harlaam meer. so, harlem, former farm, and long time bastion of drownings in the east river due to very severe confluxes of tide between 3 converging bodies of water (thanks be to the spirit of new york boat tour around nyc, best 3 hours ever spent in a boat with a non-english speaking friend who stayed 2 weeks too long with me to be entertained any more!) harlem became the country home and summer estate place to the wealthy...much like jersey city a hundred years before. thus the relatively similar architecture in the jersey city and harlem neighborhoods i've lived in.

the big difference is that harlem, built by the rich, was inherited by the poor and what the rich once coveted, they divorced themselves from and disengaged from. the poor, the hungry, the needy, the willing, the able and the occasional malcontent, all converged to make harlem what it is becoming today....i'm once again living in an area on the edge of tremendous explosive growth and rebirth. i love to people watch and walk the streets in these types of places...i also like to be able to say i was here....or there....i lived in chelsea before the gays and the galleries moved in and made it so fabulous that only one of the two could survive there....i lived in jeresey city when people didn't care how gorgeous the view was - if you didn't have a gun, you weren't going to look away from your purse to check the view. now i'm in spaha and i think it's going to be an easier revolution than the last ones i experienced. after today, i'm feeling good with life, and i'm hoping i'll be around to see what happens.

exploring the new 'hood....from spaha to morningside heights....

technically, NYC consists of Manhattan Island (in order to be considered a resident of nyc, those of us in the know snobbishly delineate between our beloved apple and the outer boroughs), Staten Island, the Bronx, Queens and Brooklyn. The five boroughs house a combined population of about 8 million people (the last time i heard a census count at least). another 4 million people arrive in nyc by train, plane, auto or other means every business day. pretty impressive when you consider the size of manhattan - she's a tiny, no, petite, little place...yet she has wide shoulders and tiny feet if you check a map!

i live on first avenue between 118th and 119th street now. i moved here in over the course of 3 agonizing weeks in may of this year. i brought a single rolling suitcase of possessions at a time. in order to economize, i walked from my old place in chelsea, all the way on the west side of nyc between 10th and 11th avenues, over to first avenue where i caught an uptown bus in front of bellvue hospital. the walk across from this old place to first avenue is about 2 miles. then the bus would crawl up the east side, oh so slowly...thanks to the united nations and all the bridges that leave nyc for long island, queens, brooklyn and the bronx being on the far east side near the river.

after 3 weeks, and one all nighter with a rental s.u.v. where i moved 3 truck loads on my own, i finished and was a true resident of "el barrio". you've heard of el barrio. there are barrio boys (i think they're thugs, but not sure honestly), boriquas (those who are from puerto rico originally, but now live in nyc, atleast part time - amazingly, 2/3 of the puerto ricans in nyc spend only part of the year living here, and they are somehow able to afford to stay in san juan or environs the rest of the time. that's so common that the hospitals, medicaid and medicare all offer something called "air bridge" where you register with your local medical staff before heading to puerto rico, and then, if you need medical help or prescriptions, you can go in puerto rico without being billed.) i find this to be amazing. and of course, i find it to be offensive, racist, anti-white and in very bad taste, especially since i went to visit my folks in nj, a mere 2 hour bus ride or 60 vehicular miles from here, and wound up in the e.r., and subsequently, the hospital for 11 days due to a staph infection on my face. i couldn't get a prescription filled without paying cash for it and i am still handling the bills from the hospital stay since medicaid doesn't cover expenses when you leave nyc. what a crock of bull if you ask me. if only i had flown to puerto rico instead, i'd be drugged and covered.

anyway, that's another issue...

now i'm in el barrio, spanish harlem, or as it's becoming known, SpaHa. it's an up and coming place for the hotties in the crowd who want more space for less money but want to maintain nyc residency without having to live in an outerborough. i'm one of those up and comers i guess. or maybe i'm just a snob about my address. but the former is more true than the latter, as i'm living in what most call the ghetto. i disagree.

today, finally, i was motivated and moved to explore and find more in the neighborhood than my grocery store and laundromat. what i've found has delighted, surprised and even excited me a bit today. it has been cool and overcast for the last 3 days, yesterday was torrential rains, my personal favorite weather other than anything autumnal. today was perfect. 58 degrees and overcast with showers earlier but just an on going light drizzle for most of the late afternoon and evening, as you can tell from the gray skies in these pictures and the lack of nyc skyline in the distance.

as i walked from my apartment, past the post office i discovered yesterday with the old glass windowed mailboxes and real customer service inside, i found myself suddenly at the foot of the Triborough Bridge. it's almost mythical really, it's like a unicorn, or maybe a doodlebug, you know, something you've heard of, read about or even heard others claim to have seen, but it's one of those new york urban legends that i hadn't personally seen. guess what? it's real! and it's simple, but large. i like it.

about 1,000 feet from the bridge is a 3-D piece of artwork that i've seen on tv and know to be quite famous for public works of art, but i had no idea where it was....it's called "day at the schorr" and it's a 3-D landscape mural that is about the size of 1/2 a city block, the fences are painted with greens like dune grass and of course waves like the ocean at one end. inside, there are walls painted with sand dunes and driftwood and the occasional portrait of someone laying on a beach towel sunning. then you see the over all whimsy of it....this fence and artwork are part of the morris park which is a city swimming pool. the water outside overlaps the real water inside and the tanning portraits mingle, albeit, quietly with the kids who line up for the high dive. this is all 3 minutes from my apartment. i fell in love with this place. it's part of the city's green streets initiative which includes a lot of reclaimed derelict lots that have been cleaned out by volunteers from the 'hood, then planted as community gardens. they are gorgeous. and i've now seen about 5 or 6 of them in my immediate vicinity since last week. next year, i'm going to get involved with one so i can be part of the fruit and vegetable exchange. why buy the tomatoes when i can grow them for free like all the others in the area?

when i finally got to 125th street, which is a very short 6 blocks from my home, i was mesmerized by the sights and the sounds on offer. now i've been to 125th street many times in the past, but never for the sheer experience offered by walking and watching, i was always leery of the area since it's reputation preceded me by a long, long time. the shopping on 125th street is destination shopping at it's best. that says a lot about the area! on my end of 125th street, there are amazing antique emporiums. by amazing, i mean, 1/2 a city block that used to be a bank and is now the demolition depot...outfront of this one building, they have an actual eagle which was the top of a column in the original penn station of the 1800's. the original penn station was torn down in the 60s to build madison square garden and the gorgeous, ornate and very old fashionned carved masonary was carted off, sunk in the river, broke into rubble or just abandoned who knows where. but there are a few important historical remnants that are being ecked out now that they're building a new penn station across from the garden (conversion of the farley post office annex, which looks like the parthenon in athens - it's a fantastic building, but lacks the character or historic charm of what was destroyed across 8th avenue for the garden). anyway, they have this eagle, he's taller than me and about 10 or 15 feet wide. he's missing his head. but seeing it up close, i was moved. in fact, i get emotional when i think about how much they've just thrown away in this city in the name of improvement and modernization. they've turned what was gorgeous and historic into a mass of never ending similarity and most of it is just atrocious to look at, that's why so many people covet big buildings with a higher floor being desirable - it's so you don't have to look at the architectural vomit that has become the city. they also have the original gas lamps that used to line nyc streets....a pair on either side of the front door really tells you where you are. the building is from 1891. i'll put up pictures next time i'm walking by there!

then i found clinton's office building. not impressed. wasn't looking. couldn't care less. but still, it's there. around the corner and across the street.

oh, i can take the train here. ...and i mean the TRAIN! i can get into or out of manhattan thanks to the 125th street station. it's an old time elevated train trestle and waiting room. it's still used, and i've been on trains (metronorth) in and out of the city that stopped there, but i could never figure out who'd use that stop. now i realize, i will! i can drag a bag 7 blocks from my apartment, climb the steps and 5 minutes after boarding any train, i will be on 34th street and 8th avenue at penn station. which is PERFECT for going home to see mom and jim by train, it's no bus, and no subway with 3 transfers, it's one train into penn and then on to the midtown direct! better, when mom comes to visit, if she comes by train, we'll take the 5 minute ride up to harlem and dismount on 125th so we can walk and enjoy the sites between there and my home....i am stoked for her to visit. then again, i'm really excited to have anyone visit now that i feel like this is home.

let's see....what else did i find....oh, coolness...in the 1800's nyc had turkish baths in each area of the city. now they're gone. except in the east village, where bette midler and barry manilow found fame in the 70's thanks to the gays in the baths....if you've never seen it, i highly recommend viewing the movie "the ritz" with chita rivera and an all star cast - it's campy at best but pee yourself funny overall. it takes place in the east village baths which had a fire not many years ago and are since then condemned and closed down...but, up here, in mount morris, there is a men only turkish bathhouse that i have read about in magazines and seen on the news when they do historical insterest segments. i just didn't know where mt. morris was. turns out it wasn't, but still is...and it's a few blocks from me. it's another phenomenal piece of architecture that has been beautifully maintained or refurbished on the outside. i didn't go in, but eventually i might....after all, i can always use a bath...but maybe i'll have them hold the part where they beat me with the birch branches....

the last thing i found was the apollo theater. turns out it wasn't missing. i didn't go inside, but it's close to marshall's which is my favorite store. there is only one marhall's in all of nyc and it's walking distance to my apartment. does this make me the happiest boy in spaha? you betcha! i found a bathhouse, the apollo, the body shop, the former president and the eagle i always wanted to meet, all while walking from el barrio...but the one place that welcomed me and my debit card was marshalls...2 escalators up to heaven on 125th street...it's an entire floor of mens' stuff mixed with furniture and other treasures....i spent my month's allowance in there over the course of two days....but look at how much more my apartment is looking like a home for it....

HAPPY 25th WEDDING ANNIVERSARY JIM & MOM!!!!!!

I LOVE YOU BOTH.

Looking forward to the Silver Anniversary Brunch with you, P.J., Clark and the Possums this Sunday.

xoxo
wadeo

look really closely at the flowers here -- can you see the vase?

for those of you who love your fish, and you know who you are....this is my much coveted pet fish. his name is bob. also bob. i'm sensing a theme here....i forgot i'd bought this vase a few years ago in a little gift shop that had all hand blown glass things. i was going to use it to put fish in when i got around to it, but it's been tucked away in my storage locker downtown and i found it yesterday in a drawer - can you believe that all that time and all those moves to and fro, and i managed to have it survive intact! when i opened it up to see what i had in the box, i was disappointed to see my zeal at being creative with my aquarium idea was all for naught - the opening on the top of the fish is barely large enough for the stalk of flowers and the sprig of greens i put in it tonight....jokes on me, right? i'll get over it, it's still the best 8.99 handblown glass i've got, and i've got a bit of good hand blown glass....