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Even Bill DiBlasio and Andrew Cuomo Can’t Ruin This
All the bad things about waking up while it’s still dark to commute to NYC are every bit as bad as you’d expect. But sometimes the morning commute is just spectacular. The pics don’t do this morning justice. Have a great day!
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Glory glory! Excelsior!
and Thanks for sharing. May your whole day be blessed by these moments.
My daughter will be living in Manhattan for the next three years. She and her husband and her dog River and her two cats are really enjoying it. She loves mornings the best. As does her dog River:
be very careful posting those pics. If DiBlasio sees them, he will institute a “pretty vista viewing tax”.
Too true. As soon they find out you are having fun they either ban that activity outright or unleash the tax man.
There was a once-in-a-while, minor character on the old TV show MASH – Sgt Zale. He had a line I carry with me that explains a lot …
”As long as you’re miserable, they’re happy.”
I’m glad you enjoy NYC. Somebody has to. The place has always scared the crap out of me.
I was born and raised in the Niagara region of NY, and now through a series of happy coincidences I am living in my ancestral home. My commute takes me over the Erie Canal, and a traffic jam consists of getting stuck behind an Amish buggy. I give thanks for it every day.
What the mayor can ruin — as mayors between the mid-1960s and early 1990s did — was the ability to take some of those shots in safety.
When I was in New York last month, we did a seven mile walk from the Barnes & Noble mothership store at Union Square to the CCNY campus at 137th Street (which included 2 1/2-plus miles meandering through Central Park). When we lived in New York back in the 1970s dad tried to walk to Columbia from the Cathedral Parkway station on the NW corner of Central Park and got robbed at gunpoint in Morningside Park (twice — the robber ran back and held him up again because he forgot to steal his credit cards). We bypassed Morningside Park, but did the walk through St. Andrew’s Park north of 125th Street with no problems at all, because the crime rate under Guiliani and Bloomberg cratered.
Now you see de Blasio trying to keep the crime rate stats low by decriminalizing quality-of-life crimes, when it was ignoring those incidents 60 years ago that led to the explosion in the violent crime rate 50 years ago. So in the future you might be able to still take beautiful vistas and images from some locations, but others may again become areas where people are worried about walking or displaying a cell phone camera.
As for the governor, he’s got control of the MTA, and the subways are also returning to the bad old days because of mis-spent funding leading to new problems with deferred maintenance, just like in the 1960s, 70s and early 80s (when Andrew’s dad actually did fix up the subways, because that’s what Mario ran on to get elected governor in the first place).
(Also, here’s a shot of a bridge over the pond at the NW end of the park. Doesn’t look anything like Manhattan, but the area would have been a no-go zone for tourists until 25 years ago):
Back in the early 80’s I and a colleague from Texas had to present a seminar in the ivory towers of Amoco. Neither of us had been to NYC prior to this experience. We decided to tour around. Whoa. Times Square was like the The Mos Eisley Cantina. A very dangerous place. We actually hired a homeless guy who offered “protection” from the other vagrants. We also went to Penn Station and were carefully stepping over the
bumsurban outdoorspeople sleeping wall to wall there. We heard a loud Thwack, Thwack, Thwack walking towards us. It was a police man thumping his night stick into his gloved hand. He saw us and asked what we were doing there. “touristing”. “Get the H..l out of here now, or you will be dead before morning.” We got the H..ll out of there. It was a swamp. I didn’t go back for nearly 30 years. By then it had been cleaned up, and it was a very different and pleasant experience. I gave credit to Giuliani. He saved the city.And the change is already apparent.
A coupl’a years ago my lovely bride and I got suckered into trying to find some one-day-only pop-up sneaker store to get something unique for our sneaker-head son. To even find the place you had to go on a scavenger hunt through the Lower East Side. Some pretty gritty neighborhoods. But we did it without a problem. It was fun. The streets were more or less clean, the people were friendly. Pre-Giuliani I wouldn’t have dreamed of going down there for any reason, forget about going with my wife. Last year we did something similar. The streets were dirty. Lots of homeless people. Open drug use. The vague smell of urine. I can’t say I ever felt unsafe, but it wasn’t a fun experience either.
Thats Bill DiBlasio’s NYC.
John Lindsay gets the lion’s share of the blame — deservedly so — for being the mayor who allowed crime to soar while city services plummeted at the same time union worker pay and benefits soared faster than the crime rate. But he was simply the guy who let the building collapse after the previous mayor, Robert Wagner, had weakened the foundations during his 12 years in office — the Kitty Genovese murder in Kew Gardens happened under Wagner’s watch, not John Lindsay.
And that’s likely what’s going to happen here. De Blasio’s term-limited, so like Wagner, he’ll probably get out of office before the rot becomes undeniable. But 25 years down the line from Guliaini’s election, lots of New Yorkers don’t remember the rot, and are just going to replace de Blasio with another progressive mayor in 2021.
Oooo, were you in Hoboken too!? Make sure to get the special at Fiore’s on Thursdays and Saturdays for the best sandwich of your life.
Beautiful photos, @ekosj. Thanks.
Fiore’s. For roast beef and sc’mutz? I wish. But no. Jersey City. For some reason I rarely get to Hoboken. But I’ll put Milano’s in JC in the discussion with Fiore’s.
Never been there. I’ll have to make it a point to go there now. Thanks!
I avoid downtown Houston like the plague except for the rare trip to a museum or zoo. But I had to be there for jury duty yesterday. Some of the courthouse buildings actually look nice, framed by old oak trees. I considered stopping to take some pictures with my phone. But between post-Katrina crime and post-9/11 worries about surveillance of government buildings, I kept moving.
From a highway outside the city, Houston and New York look similar. From a downtown street looking up, it’s like night and day. New York is another world with all those gigantic skyscrapers.
I am a country guy not a city guy. Been to NYC twice, once would have been better.
Now that’s funny! Hey. Sometimes less is more!
Nice photos.
Even Detroit looks nice on a sunny day when you’re at the Institute of Art or the main library on Woodward Avenue, looking toward downtown. Unfortunately, I don’t have any photos like yours to prove it.
Are you in Brooklyn? Trying to get a sense of the shots. Love ’em.
You had to be very careful which streets you walked, especially on the west side. 40th St. was generally quiet, although you still had to step over the rivers that came from the doorways. Especially fragrant on humid mornings. Of course nothing beat the bouquet from the subways. You had to avoid more solid items down there.
I work in Brooklyn. Right near the Barclays Center. I live in NJ. The first two pics are from the drive in. Driving right into the sunrise. The last is from outside the train station in Jersey City.
Gotta’ love the Post. That’s the quintessential N.Y. Post headline.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dP1sJEh6ndI
I’m sorry to have to inform you that a spokesperson for the Southern District of NewYork advises it is investigating whether you may have illegally used your cell-phone camera while driving.
If you were a passenger in a vehicle, it will be necessary to interview all other occupants o that vehicle to confirm this and to determine whether, even if you were not the driver when the incriminating photos were taken, you may have created a situation where that driver contemplated illegal,use of his/her cellphone.
If it is discovered that you have had any contact with any other occupants of that vehicle during the pending investigation, you will be held in solitary confinement awaiting trial.
Whew. Good thing they were taken by the passenger. You can always tell a picture I’ve taken because it includes my thumb.
Isn’t that just what a guilty person would say?
Seriously, try taking a photo anywhere on the PATH subway system that connects Manhattan to New Jersey. Since 9/11 the Port Authority police have been draconian about banning that.
Every morning I go water skiing at sunrise. About half way down the lake, I round a point where I can see east down the rest of the lake. At that point, the sun hits me, and the sky is lit up in color. It never, fails to make me smile, and just plain feel good. It is by far the best part of the day, and it is a great way to start the day. If it is raining, or foggy and I can’t go, it is a big let down.
A lot of people look forward to vacations, where they can enjoy the sunrise or sunset on beach, or in the mountains, yet they don’t enjoy the same thing that happens every day at home. It is much more important to find daily things to enjoy, than things you do once or twice a year on vacation. If a sunrise doesn’t make you feel good, at least for a few minutes, its time to shed the baggage that is stressing you out.
And that’s a fact.