27-VIII-2004.
Leaving on the chinese bus. Bunch of good shots, nothing more.
Walking from work to the subway. The whole area, I'd say fifth avenue and one more that I saw, are full of such displays. One even says „redefeat“, because the mumbo jumbo work of four years ago was surely suspect. The evidence will resurface and be buried again in the following years.
Notice the water tower on top of the next building. I've seen many of them. Actually, from the 15th floor terrace at UniJewel I can see at least six of them.
On another shot from the same spot, just facing left, up the street (oops... up the avenue), there's some construction work, I guess they were erecting a terrace above the sidewalk. The terrace was fenced with just planks so far, but on top of the planks there were thick bundles of razor wire. Just in case someone gets the bright idea to use that to access some 2nd floor windows.
One of these buses is mine. This is the bridge in Forsyth street, near Canal street, the Chinatown. One of these days I learned (from Lorder) what Tribeca means - triangle below (on a map) Canal street (facepalm). These Amers are crazy.
The rest of the shots I made from the bus.
This is a shoe shop... in the basement. The only visible part of the shop is this wall, so the guy uses this as shop window.
On the next shot, a hefty black girl is using a street phone. Not the one between his door and the next - there's another one to the right. So the cell phones still haven't found their way to the lower echelons of the society here. They were pretty much still a novelty, there were many places where they didn't work - one specially boring ad campaign had a „can you hear me now?“ as the punchline - because they still haven't put enough towers. People were complaining about disconnections, specially in tunnels or even under bridges.
Typical Chinatown. The architectural jumble of clumped up buildings, fitting one in every possible corner and as high as possible (well, nothing is impossible, but can be cost-prohibitive). This is just above the shoemaker. Notice the same barbed wire and other deterrents around the terrace, against more bright ideas coming over the wall.
And yes, there's a lot of engrish - „deploymet agency“, „moter repair“ etc. Not among those famous examples, but not bad either.
At the door of the New York law school a board says „no smoking within 10 feet of entranced. Nice legal touch, I wonder whether they have any jurisdiction whatsoever over the sidewalk. But it always feels good to be useful to the society, on the right side of the spit line, may the negative phenomena be smeared at will.
Most Newyorkers have no cars. The parking is over 120$ a day - you can get a decent car for two weeks' parking fee. The traffic moves at no faster than 40 kmh. There are cabs everywhere, and you can hail them, and their rates are rather low. So why have a car?
There's a scene in Lorder, where a cops asks for a guy's driver's licence, and the guy has none, „why should I have one? I'm third generation Newyorker.“.
And this guy got a bright idea - got parking meters and these car lifts, so he can put there twice as many cars in the space available. Okay, the guy whose car is on the shelf may have to wait for the lower guy to leave, or there may be a valet who'd maneuver them around. Still, this guy is probably paying a lot to the city to rent the space, and earning a bundle at that.
The bus has nice new leds for internal lights, somehow milky white but still bright and clear. And around NYC all traffic lights are now leds, better visible, lasting much longer, and the city saves millions a month on power alone. I tried to find these bulbs for our own enlightnment, them milky whites, but no. They won't appear for years to come, and once they do, they'll be hell expensive (and for the bus and traffic lights they weren't, eh?) and will shine pee yellow, because the (merchants imagine) the caveman feels warmer that way.
The passengers this time were half Chineses, half blacks, few soldiers. That is, soldiers travel in their civvies, but one can recognize them, even when their hair is not mowed navy style. As for chatter, none of that, I'm the last to fall asleep, even on return, when it leaves NY at 18:00. Sitting aisle side, across the aisle there's a black girl with bleached 3mm long hair, a very interesting effect, can not not stare, having trouble with her laptop, can't get it to work. I figured out what was the problem and told her what to do. She did so, it worked, she thanked me, and we started talking. Found common ground in music, but then I understood how superficially I understand the squarely american kind of music (what is such thing as a Billy Joel, know the name but not much behind it) and how little she knows of everything else. Then the lights were off and everyone dozed away, even though it was only 20:30. Because we were on a bus, and it's a long trip.
Around midnight I'm in VB. I have the presence of mind to tell a guy at the desk in the station (which is a station only for that one hour around midnight, at other times it's a laundry) to hail me a cab. I get home and all is fine. Another 20$ on UniJewel's tab.
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* it's not a garden at all, and I think it's not square either.
Mentions: UniJewel, in serbian