No matter how crazy this city gets, it’s never worth leaving else you’ll miss scenes like this! I didn’t notice until I dumped these photos onto my computer that the two sets of window lights went on in the second frame while they were off in the first (I normally take at least two or three shots of the same photo to get one that is most-steady and framed the way I like, but in this case they make a wonderful GIF) – which also makes one realize that behind each of those windows, in every building, someone lives or works there.
Jeff Koons sculpture Green Diamond (2004) was bought for a reported $12 million recently, and now it adorns the penthouse terrace of an Upper East Side building:
While I always love my time in St. Louis, my people there, and having a deep familiarity with a city that is no longer mine, these shots from my return flight from St. Louis’s Lambert to New York’s LaGuardia help illuminate why I am so in love with the grandeur of New York City, a city of unimaginable size and scale:
For starters there was the actual takeoff out of St. Louis. Now, first thing to note is that the airport is in the County, not the City (limits). Still, it’s all part of the St. Louis “region”. However it’s a distinguishing fact to keep in mind that when you land at LaGuardia you’re landing in Queens County, one of the five counties that constitute the boroughs of New York City. Also, look at how green this place is:
So here’s a shot flying east over the Mississippi. That’s downtown St. Louis in the background, the most-distinguishing building being the TWA Dome/Edward Jones Dome, the white hump of a building that the Rams play in:
We dropped below the clouds just in time to catch the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, connecting Brooklyn to the north with Staten Island in the corner:
One thing you’ll recognize immediately is how much closer you feel. And what I really love is having a relational proximity to this city that I’ve really only experienced elsewhere in London. You live here for so long and you really start to develop a memory-map of the city based on prior experiences, in ways that I never could in St. Louis. Like the week before I was underneath the same bridge I was now 3,000 feet above:
(Staten Island in the background)
Or take the Rockaways, here pictured in the background behind Coney Island/Brighton Beach, I was at a beach on the left top-middle edge also just a week prior:
And to give you a sense of scale, it took an hour to travel from Lower Manhattan to said beach by ferry – that’s how huge and expansive this city is!
A shot of Brooklyn, this time a view of that building at the intersection of 4th Avenue, Flatbush Avenue and Atlantic Avenue (which I’ve got a shot of from below as well!):
Here’s a view of Governor’s Island in the lower-right seen over the right wing. I was at Governor’s Island just a couple weeks prior for the Tangent public art festival!
Continuing on.
Here’s a great shot of the AT&T building near Canal and Broadway, which can be seen just above the AT&T building (see detail):
it ain’t called Empire State for nothing
Madison Square Garden, the round building in the lower-right, much more impressive than the Edward Jones Dome highlighted near the top of this post.
Yankee Stadiums new and old (left and right, respectively) – I have yet to visit the new stadium.
A view of Co-Op City in the Bronx, the largest cooperative housing development in the United States.
And then suddenly you’ve landed.
This flight was incredibly short for some reason. We departed about 30 minutes late it seemed, so they must have made up for it in the skies because we landed 2-3 minutes early! Nice.
Oh yeah, this was an American Airlines flight, and given their flight path if you want these remarkable views from St. Louis get a window seat on the right side of the plane! I sat in 18F, so a few numbers less (17, 16, 15, etc.) would probably remove the wing from your view. Yippee!
if NYC were the male glands, little planes would land on the prostate, ferries would depart from the urethra, even as one external gland travel between north brooklyn and western queens would still be difficult (is the G train really the vas deferens of the testes?), and the MTA would charge you $2.50 per masturbatory session. Not much different than life today really.
and poor Staten Island, what body fluid must it be composed of to make it on the map?
I’m thinking a lot lately about green roofs (not only green in terms of sustainability and renewal but simply color also!) and I’ve always been confused by how parts of Manhattan have always been considered ‘undesireable’ simply because they’re more than two whole blocks from a subway or aren’t pre-existing dense residential neighborhoods like Greenwich Village or Murray Hill. Sure it would suck having to hunt for food and you’d always have to go ‘back there’ to get home but you’d still be on the island and it’s all within walking distance from my experiences (I used to walk from SoHo to Bryant Park from spring to fall because the walk was pleasant, the weather nice, and I preferred taking the 7 train to the R or V to get to where I used to live in Queens, and the lost time walking was worth the reward of sights, people and adventures). Those days will one day be over and the west side of Manhattan completely redone, rezoned and re-bought, thanks to impressive architectural projects like Clinton Park designed by TenArquitectos slated for construction in Hell’s Kitchen. More impressive than their inclusion of a uniformed southpaw baseball player in their render is of course the green stepped roof atop a zig-zag building. I’d love to know what’s going in the courtyard areas below too but the roof itself is pretty genius. Lots of space there for catching and running water to feed the garden, and to absorb and convert solar heat. I hope they do it right.
[from TenArquitectos - I hate flash popup websites though!]
