Post #431,314
10/18/19 2:46:33 PM
10/18/19 2:46:33 PM
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Big Apple observations
1. Manhattan drivers and pedestrians alike are assholes. If a driver permits a pedestrian to walk in front of him against the signal, twenty more pedestrians will follow. If he allows another car to merge, a dozen other drivers will force their way into that wedge. Most drivers do not, accordingly, behave sentimentally. Traffic is sufficiently congested that it actually seems safer to be on foot here than in downtown SF, where itr is not uncommon to see drivers run red lights at comparatively high speed.
2. In London two months ago I marveled at the abundance of attractive women on the streets. In this equally bustling burg, not remotely so much.
3. If bucket lists had been a thing when I was a nipper, going to the observation platform at the top of the Empire State Building might have been an entry thereupon. However, the tariff appeared, when I looked in over the heads of the waiting crowd, to be $73, which seems a little steep for an elevator ride (and who knows, perhaps they wait until you reach the top to inform you that you ought to have sprung for the discounted round-trip fare), and which would buy a lot of buckets. Perhaps there’s a senior discount.
****
Somehow, life has contrived to bring me to Gotham just four times: at eight, for a day, at thirty, for a couple of weeks, at sixty for an afternoon and at sixty-seven for three days (today had scheduled for a day trip to Mystic CN, but my friend there had a professional schedule conflict, so I’ve been wandering around midtown instead). It’s a lively place, and I like the energy—San Francisco seems miniature and provincial by comparison; Oakland barely a hamlet—but, and not merely for the handsomer women, I prefer London on the whole.
cordially,
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Post #431,315
10/18/19 4:08:50 PM
10/18/19 4:08:50 PM
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London didn't do it for me. Except for the Chelsea match at the Bridge.
I preferred Streatley-on-Thames and Goring. If you're ever in that area again, I highly recommend The Swan at Streatley and across the bridge in Goring, The John Barleycorn. bcnu,
Mikem
It's mourning in America again.
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Post #431,317
10/18/19 4:35:03 PM
10/18/19 4:35:03 PM
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{{hic..}}
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Post #431,326
10/19/19 1:34:05 PM
10/19/19 1:34:05 PM
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Re: London didn't do it for me. Except for the Chelsea match at the Bridge.
I find that whole swathe of southern England (the Chilterns and the South Downs) to be a bit too chocolate-box twee, for me. It's also crushingly expensive and very crowded, when you're used to the wide open spaces up here. It's very nice, and I think that that is the problem. Also, I don't like being so far from the coast. I've come to value the ability to see all the way to the horizon. I guess I'm too used to this being 250 metres from my house. 
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Post #431,328
10/19/19 3:44:35 PM
10/19/19 3:48:06 PM
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Another perfectly framed sea-scape. (and ..Sad)
(cf. Greta Thunberg et al) Moi hopes that your oeuvre--distributed to far places--can gestate what is {obvious} thus societally-Useful in these times of the omnipresent mis- dis-Information Warz: continue the Ostrich-position {both vulgar and vulnerable} and THIS portrait, just a few years down the road is retitled, What Might Have Been. Doesn't even need words. But one of your opera/ a Poster on a stick? at any now-old Wake-up rally with this across it..  ..retains the wordless message well-enough, I wot. Cheers. Carrion!
Edited by Ashton
Oct. 19, 2019, 03:48:06 PM EDT
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Post #431,339
10/21/19 8:13:15 AM
10/21/19 8:13:15 AM
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Just curious. What was the temperature on the day you took that?
The clouds remind me of what the sky looks like here most of the time, unfortunately. bcnu,
Mikem
It's mourning in America again.
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Post #431,343
10/21/19 1:01:46 PM
10/21/19 1:01:46 PM
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Probably 10-12C
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Post #431,316
10/18/19 4:34:18 PM
10/18/19 4:38:14 PM
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A couple sojourns there.. plus brief couple days enroute elsewhere
At age 9 also 13 spent entire--oft *broiling--summers there, the first via train from the Oakland (Knoll?) the second via aeroplane. Walked all over (from Queens, a stone's throw) via the IND underground tram. The enviro was then "safe-enough" that both times I could make it to Central Park for the FREE Goldman band concerts--sometimes unto darkness, as well as wander about NYC. IIRC the tab for the Empire State vista was ~a couple bucks (which I saved for other follies), * recall sitting in bathtub some afternoons; A/C--what's That? My domicile in Queens, on Union Turnpike was a dagger's-toss from the site of Kitty Genovese's later horrific denouement: and marking of the first stone-cold-Evidence of the feckless inhumanity of ... 100% of a large population who failed-to-a-weasel: even to just lift the phone and call the fucking COPS.
On last peripatetic wanderings I espied in a bookshop downtown a huge pile of Mr. Rhodes' first magnum-opus, "The Making of the Atomic Bomb"; this while enroute to Connecticut re recently deceased relatives. (Saw nothing during train ride there), except some of the best science-scribbling since Newton (arguably).
Oh/and: second tour had brought moi into nuclear physics when THAT first atomic bomb opened [oblivion] as a real-possibility ... next ... via this same species' soulless treatment of the doomed-via-ennui Kitty G. ('Course it needed maturing to make this equivalence) ..as I gathered information about the Real-murica (with no truthiness-assistance from any 'History'-courses-via-'schoolz').
tl;dr Wherever you go --->There You are.
oTpy
Edited by Ashton
Oct. 18, 2019, 04:38:14 PM EDT
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Post #431,318
10/18/19 4:41:13 PM
10/18/19 4:41:13 PM
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Did quite a few work trips there
Best by far was the week before Christmas. Got to see the tree at Rockefeller Plaza in person. Once again confirmed that everything in Manhattan is either way bigger or way smaller than you would expect, often both at the same time.
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Post #431,322
10/18/19 8:38:25 PM
10/18/19 8:38:25 PM
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drove by the dam thing multiple times on my way to the bronx
village was different in the mid 70's or so I am told. havnt been there since "Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts" – Richard Feynman
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Post #431,323
10/18/19 11:25:28 PM
10/18/19 11:25:28 PM
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LRPD: "If I'm going to visit an exotic foreign land with L. Ron Hubbard or Jim Jones, I'll opt...
for the Scientology tour." :)
My parents lived in Manhattan from 1951 till they died, my mother in 2002. Both my sisters still live there. I lived in Manhattan in the 1950's and last visited in 2016.
The culture has not changed much. It is the anus of the universe.
But, as a visitor, I visited the Empire State Building when the price was unnoticeable. Alex
"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."
-- Isaac Asimov
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Post #431,325
10/19/19 1:04:51 PM
10/19/19 1:04:51 PM
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Re: Big Apple observations
I thought it was dirty and smelly, by comparison with London and other European cities.
The concrete canyons - 5th ave in particular - are mighty impressive, though, and I liked Central Park and a visit to the Met.
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Post #431,327
10/19/19 1:40:39 PM
10/19/19 1:40:39 PM
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Very smelly.
Every large city I've been in over has smelled of sewage or cheese, and when the steam coming out of the sewer grates smells like cheese there's something wrong. Regards,
-scott
Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson.
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Post #431,355
10/21/19 10:17:30 PM
10/21/19 10:17:30 PM
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Upon returning to Oakland last night
“WTF? The streets are empty! Where are all the people? What the fuck have you done with all the people??”
I have never seen an agglomeration of humanity in San Francisco—or London, for that matter—to compare with the crush I encountered attempting to traverse Times Square on foot Saturday afternoon. It’s been seventeen years, but I don’t think even Beijing was that dense back then.
But I enjoyed the hell out of my visit.
cordially,
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Post #431,357
10/21/19 11:22:13 PM
10/21/19 11:22:13 PM
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Re: traverse Times Square on foot
I got accustomed to that. There's a mental mode switch to turn on.
Much like that are the evening streets of old Cartagena, Colombia. My wife and I were on a walking tour (from a cruise ship stop) and it totally panicked her!
The only thing to be wary of is the potential of pickpockets. Alex
"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."
-- Isaac Asimov
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Post #431,362
10/22/19 8:33:14 AM
10/22/19 8:33:14 AM
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The most common question asked by visiting Soviets to our house in SoCal in the 60's was ...
"Where are all the Americans?" bcnu,
Mikem
It's mourning in America again.
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Post #431,369
10/22/19 2:18:33 PM
10/22/19 2:18:33 PM
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..how devastatingly Incisive! er, ¡ колкий !
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