A quick shot looking up and unfocused into the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree. This is a more ethereal view of Christmas, in a way how I remember waking up all sleepy eyed, making my way all too early to the tree to see what Santa brought. Happy Christmas Everyone!
I am working this weekend in New York, and I figured I would bring you something a bit “different” from the Big Apple. What do you thing….hmmmmmm?
Happy Christmas (more exactly Happy Boxing Day!).
I haven’t been as many places this year as usual. This “lighter” travel schedule will very likely continue into 2017. It seems the airlines and hotel chains aren’t quite as excited as before to have me. Regardless I think posting semi-regularly some of my favorite Instagram posts is fun so here we go!
The first time you visit New York City, I think you can’t help but feel like you are in a television show (or movie). So much of film and television history is set in The Big Apple, it’s a bit like a world that is only in the fantasy box called the television is somehow magically brought to life. Spending most of the early 90’s watching SNL, I am always excited going to Rockefeller Center. First because of the amazing Art Deco archatecture and second because its the home of NBC studios! On one trip, the street was shutdown and Tracy Jordan was outside filming a scene for 30 Rock. Again, NYC is at time EXACTLY like a television show…because it is!
Merry Christmas Eve to be exact. I just visited NYC a few weeks ago for business and I had never been at Christmas time. I visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and walked down the east side of the Park by Bergdorf Goodman’s Window Displays, but one stop was really in my head…The Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree! I of course have mixed feelings about this New York tradition. I hate to see such an old being killed, but perhaps as my wife said, its purpose is to bring millions of people joy this season.
The crowd was maddening, but not as bad as I had expected, and truth be told…you can’t help but smile. It’s raw size makes you feel like a tiny child staring up in awe of perhaps the biggest and brightest tree you will ever in your life see. Not because of its size, but because of your smallness in a crazy big world. You are again a child standing under an enormous beautiful and bright beacon of hope, brought to life by sacrifice. Merry Christmas everyone!
I visited New York last week for work and had a bit of time one day to go into the city to see a few sights. I have been to NYC a number of times in the past, but this was my first visit during the Christmas season. I have long known large city’s stores, New York City’s in particular, have HUGE competition in window displays…I grew up watching Mannequin after all! I was ill prepared for what that really meant.
This was but one of the super elaborate crystal encrusted window displays at Bergdorf Goodman. The first one I gaped at was a monkey fortune teller in a swami wrap, gazing into his crystal ball to foretell some damsel’s future! If you are in Midtown Manhattan before the end of the year, do yourself a favor and stop by to see the window art these fantastic sculptors have created this year!
I took a trip to New York City last week. It was a busy week and I didn’t have much time to photograph (despite lugging my camera everywhere I went). Business took me though Chinatown many times during my four day visit and one the last day I was struck by this scene. I probably walked by five or six times, but only after 4 days did I actually SEE this great street art. Why do we let the busyness of life keep us from seeing the beauty of life?
I sometimes think I am drawn to odd places. When I travel these days, I usually like to do only a bare amount of research. I of course have to make it to the BIG sights, but I leave a huge portion of my adventures entirely to serendipity. This was the case with today’s photo location. We were staying in NYC down by Battery Park and within is a 1/2 acre site dedicated to the remembrance of the Great Irish Famine. Outside of Ireland, we know this as the Irish Potato Famine and OF COURSE there is a memorial in NYC dedicated to this tragedy of the mid-1800’s! This is actually a very cool site and Pamela and I stopped by during the day and night to see it’s different sides. This is a close-up of one of the outer walls of the structure. The whole memorial is something to see…if you happen to be milling around lower Manhattan.
I have to admit that I really love taking photos of odd things, and these oddities do occasionally make it onto the blog. From street art in Buenos Aires, to The Post Alley Gum Wall in Seattle, oddities that make me stop and go…hmmmm I wonder why someone did this…are some of my favorite travel finds. Technically, these street art masterpieces are graffiti or considered defacement by many. Enter this little sign…Curb Your Dog. I don’t know if this New York City sign is standard (it’s the only one I saw) around NYC, but someone had a clever idea to deface it.
Oh Times Square. I visited in the early 90’s with my Mother and a friend…it was a much different place then. Mayor Giuliani in the mid-90’s decided to clean up all the adult novelty shops and strip clubs. When walked through we had previously visited Saks Fifth Avenue. We each had purchased something from the iconic store to say we had. A man in Time Square started yelling and following us.
“Ain’t nobody sleeping up on Fifth Avenue is they ladies!”
The whole time I was thinking…hey I’m not a lady! Anyway, Times Square is a very nice place to go at night these days as it’s almost as bright as day with all the signs. I tried to get some grit into the scene though as NYC seems like it should be a bit gritty.
