Anything Except First Place Is...

I had a high school classmate that was a runner of the mile. And he won. Everything. He was a regional champion. It was rumored that his father said he would buy him a car if he broke the 4-minute mile. I often saw him running. He was always training.

I attended virtually no sports competitions in high school, but on one occasion I stopped in briefly for a track meet. My classmate had won his event, of course, but our team's win was in doubt. I tried to console him by telling him that it looked good for a third place in a cross-country running event and there was hope. He looked at me and said, "Anything except first place is shit." Harsh words. The mantra of the overachiever. But I understood, because this was the attitude I encountered growing up.

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In a Different Light

Generally, the terms shallow or lack of depth are not positive. However, in the world of photography, these words take on a very different meaning.

Technically, this site started as a photoblog with each posting featuring a photo. Ironically, I have never discussed photography per se or photographic techniques here, but the understanding of depth of field is so critical in photography that I have decided to feature it in today's post.

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Sleeping In Jeans

As I observed the body painting display of Mike Lee, a group of my friends became engaged in a very spirited discussion over the validity of Mike's homeless experiment. Mike is a senior at Dartmouth College and, as an adventure, decided to try living on the streets of New York City with no money and no shelter for 14 days, in the period between his commodities trading internship and the start of fall term. However, the self-imposed homelessness did not sit well at all with my friends, who had many issues with a boy of privilege, enrolled in an Ivy League college, asking for food and donations.

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Manhattan Address Locator

I've always had a love of numbers and have enjoyed studying the street and avenue numbering systems of New York City, specifically Manhattan. For the numerically inclined, there is no better place. Here, north of 14th Street, the borough is a numbered grid. The original design was created as the Commissioners' Plan of 1811.

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Nice Man on Death Row

There are no rules. Just because an acclaimed artist is messy does not mean that messiness confers artistry or that it is a necessary condition for such. Handmade is not always better than factory-made or mass-produced. And although generally speaking, I am not a huge fan of the encroachment of national retail chains in New York City, I am not going to buy into the idea that the quality of goods in every small mom and pop shop is superior to that in the chain store.

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Transgendered Jesus

I don't relish the job of creating a name for a rock group. In the world of naming, much like the perennial complaint of women about available men, it often feels like "all the good ones are taken." Some group names are enigmatic. Others, such as Leftöver Crack and Transgendered Jesus, give a strong impression, and seeing them in person confirms any preconceived notions that WYTIWYG - what you thought is what you get. Why do I say that?

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The Agony and the Ecstasy

The first in the family of the city daily photo blogs was Paris Daily Photo, created by Eric Tenin. His vision was to show a slice of daily life in Paris via photos. Inspired by the idea, a friend and I created New York Daily Photo in 2006. Since then, this site has evolved and become an altogether different entity, sharing all manner of people, places, and things through my eyes, not always necessarily to simply show a "slice of everyday life" in New York City. The postings have become much more story-driven.

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Not Under the Gowanus, Part 2

I have driven the roadways around this metropolis for decades and, like anyone else who drives highways repeatedly, there are a myriad of familiar structures, most of which one has never actually visited. Over the years, a number of buildings have intrigued me, such as the enigmatic property with illuminated triangular trusses as seen from the Manhattan Bridge. This rooftop haunted me for decades until if finally occurred to me: why not get off the roadway one day, investigate and see what this landmark actually is about? You can find the mystery solved here.

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One Tree at a Time

I have an uncle who was a Roman Catholic missionary priest. Eventually, he left the priesthood, entering academia and consulting work. On one occasion, he asked me if I was into politics and was disappointed when I told him no. He said that at that point in his life going forward, he no longer wanted to help individuals one by one, rather to help people en masse via sweeping political change. This seemed to be a noble aspiration but too disconnected to me. As a self-directed entrepreneur, I never had the stomach for long political process or decision by committee. So, be it perhaps ineffectual from a global perspective, my efforts to make a difference in the world are limited to infrequent isolated acts of charity.

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212 and 2:12

Many non-residents cannot fathom why New Yorkers tolerate so many extreme hardships, while life outside the city is in many ways so much easier and less expensive. I have created a category for some of my stories called Slings and Arrows, which illuminates many of these day-to-day dramas. In Dwanna, I told of how one new resident (who hailed from Tennessee) left nearly as quickly as she got here, even though she was ambitious, hard-working, and successful in finding a good job and housing. Her reason for leaving? Life was just too hard.

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Not Under the Gowanus

There's romance to the classic song Under the Boardwalk - the lyrics describe a tryst under the boardwalk in beloved Coney Island. But not every hiding place under an elevated structure is so romantic, particularly in New York City. I certainly would not want to meet anyone under the Gowanus Expressway, a highway elevated above 3rd Avenue in Brooklyn.

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Moonrise Over Hernandez

It took a trip to Italy to learn that the desire for respite from city life and the countryside was not unique to our time or to New York City. Romans built villas millennia ago. These lavish homes were built by the wealthy elite and were used to escape the city and summer heat. In Florence, the Medicis built villas - country homes that served as alternate living spaces to their urban palazzo. Not so much is new under the sun, particularly in the realm of basic human desires, and I suppose it was rather foolish and ethnocentric of me as a New Yorker to expect that escape from the stresses of urban life and the desire for a more spacious country home with grounds, etc., would be limited to recent times.

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My Pleasure

One of the driving forces in New York City is that the bar is set higher for virtually every thing imaginable: products, services, culture, architecture, etc. Cream rises to the top, and New York City is where much of the cream of society lies.

I hate to make this read like "Why I Hate Bristol," but Bristol, Connecticut, where I grew up, became a metaphor, for many who lived there, for all things boring, unsophisticated, and closed-minded. A place where no one would think out of the box and where a person was made to feel foolish for aspirations, dreams, or anything that would dare take you away from that place or separate you from the pack.

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Roaches

I hate roaches.

My friend had been swindled by drug addicts. She had payed "key" money for a low-income housing apartment in a city-owned building. When she went to take occupancy, the door was padlocked. She contacted management, who told her that things did not work the way she planned - these apartments were for welfare recipients and the needy, not a woman who just needed a cheap apartment. Through a miracle of persuasion (which included crying), my friend obtained a lease for an apartment she was not qualified for at a very low, $125-per-month rent. The place was in a small tenement building, but it was in the heart of the West Village. It was the coup of the century.

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Vows of Remembrance

Sunday marked the 10th anniversary of September 11, 2001. Commemorations took place around the USA and in New York City "as America looked back upon a contagion of terrorism and war and renewed its vows of remembrance…"*

*From the New York Times

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Green-Wood

When you have mausoleums the size of trophy homes, you know you are not in an average cemetery. This National Historic Landmark is enormous - 600,000 graves spread out over 478 acres. It is the final resting place of many of New York City's illuminati: Leonard Bernstein, Boss Tweed, Charles Ebbets, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Louis Comfort Tiffany, Horace Greeley, et. al.

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Garish Glory

There's no reason to apologize if the offense is within the eye of the beholder.

There's just something about Spandex World that everyone in my office loves. It's a playground for the eye and hand. All that stretch. All that selection. For a riot of color, it's hard to beat an emporium of brightly covered fabrics like Spandex World.

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You Can't Outsource Plumbing

I recall once putting on Docker pants and a pair of topsider-styled shoes and feeling a bit too conservative. After all, I am a Village resident, not someone living in Greenwich, Connecticut. I asked a friend if my dress was too preppy. She replied, "I love preppy." This was rather surprising, coming from a young woman who was East Village edgy. I was intrigued.

At times, she would comment longingly on the light color of my skin. She would comment on the beauty of white women. Eventually I got to the bottom of it. She told me outright that she hated being Chinese and would love nothing better than to be a beautiful, white supermodel. Sad, really, because she really had no need whatsoever for that transformation other than the marketing of women. She was a New York City resident, intelligent, well-educated, had a great career, and was very popular, with a heart of gold and a great personality. And I knew a little about models.

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Movie Star

So many films and TV shows have portrayed New York City as the place where an individual can be discovered, get a big break into showbiz, and make it big, maybe even become a movie star. Of course it happens, but, like depictions of the wild West, the reality is far less glamorous, and shootouts on the streets of Laredo are rare. Making it in the performing arts is mostly a process of auditioning, waiting, and rejection. Who has the staying power for this lifestyle?

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Urban Hustle

I arrived in northern Italy very late one night with a companion. We were not in the best of moods. Our reservation for an inn south of Florence had been placed by mail and was never received. They were booked solid. We drove north to Florence in hopes of securing a place to sleep for the night. We were relegated to the only place in the city with a room: a very overpriced hotel.

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Caught in the Rain

One of the constants in New York City is the homeless. And one constant within that world is seeing the same homeless. Most are battling with drug addiction, clinical depression, and any other number of physical and/or mental disabilities, making it very difficult for those individuals to climb out of the hole into which they have fallen.

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Fatu Hiva

I have always had a fascination with and love of islands. At one time, I pursued that interest much more actively. My fascination was fulfilled with many trips to the West Indies, Fire Island, Martha's Vineyard, Nantucket, and Monhegan Island (Maine), as well as with readings on islands around the world.

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