NYC Day 2 - Post #4 Times Square at Night

Times Square at night kinda speaks for itself. It is advertising on the most grand, and garish, scale. But it just mesmerizes you while you are there, in it.

This one is sobering - a running ticker of the mounting national debt....

NYC Day 2 - Post #3 The Central Park Zoo

When we came out of FAO Schwartz, it was raining. It has cooled down quite a bit, and the rain was really nice. We walked a few blocks and then were offered a ride by a jitney driver. He just finished up his business degree and has a part time, summer unpaid internship at Citi. Interesting. I told him about a book I just read, House of Cards. Anyway, he took us over to the zoo. We felt bad having this "human powered" ride, but he said he does it for the money and the exercise.

The zoo at Central Park is really beautiful. Quite small, but lush with plants, poetry, and some really lovely little animal displays. We imagined that if the animals got out, they would be parading up 5th Avenue and migrating into the business districts, because they are literally only a few blocks away.

We saw a snow leopard:

A polar bear, who was pacing back and forth because I think they must feed him at 5 pm:

A bunch of turtles (for Kati):

A swan:

A show with the sea lions:

And a whole family of snow monkeys, including a very small and comical baby who was carried up and down the rocks by various family members. Here he is with mom and dad.

NYC Day 2 - Post #2 Getting Around and The Subway

Today it seemed like everywhere we looked there were cabs and only cabs on the street. They were up and down this street as far as the eye could see. I just couldn't get in a good spot to get a long shot, without stepping out into traffic, which would have been inadvisable.

I liked this rust/graffiti combination I saw as we were entering the subway to get over to Madison Avenue:


And I was surprised to see this large ad for Atripla (Gilead and BMS' triple combo HIV treatment drug). Thanks to how well Atripla did, I was able to pay for part of this trip!

NYC Day 2 - Post #1 FAO Schwartz & Barbie

Yesterday from the bus tour, a Barbie sign caught my eye on Madison Avenue. Today, we went in search of the Barbie Museum. Ha! We didn't find a museum, but we did find a large and unique display on the second floor of FAO Schwartz. There were dolls modeling the latest fashions:

A display of Barbies dating from 1958 to present:

And a scary I Love Lucy Barbie. What were they thinking there?


There were also many, many cute toys and a dress up area, where Claire found some cool things to wear:

NYC Day 2 Postcard

Today's activities in NYC involved the toys, the subway, the zoo, and Times Square at night.

1. FAO Schwartz and Barbie
2. Subway
3. Zoo at Central Park
4. Times Square at Night

NYC Day 1 - Post #4 - Pizza! Pizza!

LOMBARDI'S PIZZA
32 Spring Street
Soho/Manhattan NYC
Aug 11 2009

Come on, admit it! You've been slogging through today's other three posts, anticipating this one. You recommended we go for pizza at Lombardi's, or you heard me talking about it. Well, here it is. The photos, our review, and a brief detour to another famous food eatery that was....well....virtual. Maybe it is only really there in Second Life.

First, apologies to Dave, my Facebook buddy, because we were admonished this week to talk about things other than food. But this is my blog, not Facebook, and honestly, how can you go all the way to NYC, and then not talk about food a little bit?

Our day began with naps because we arrived at our acommodations at 7 am, after an all nighter on Virgin Atlantic. The problem with Virgin is it is too nice! The clubby lighting, the really nice flight attendants, the food and drink, and the on-board internet and TV/movies/etc. really deter you from sleeping. We got about 90 min of sleep in the 4.5 hour flight. We were surprisingly rested when we arrived at JFK, and found our luggage, got on the Sky Train, and got all the way to the Jamaica station from Brooklyn/JFK without incident. Then, we got on the right subway and got off and to our brownstone without getting lost. No repeats of the "three chocolate croissants" incident in Paris three years ago, and no rain, thankfully, though at 6:30 am it was already plenty warm.

So, we took a long nap, and when we got up at noon (9 am our time!), our singular goal was to get back on the subway and find the vending machine restaurant, Bamn! (Their exclamation point, not mine). We found the location, cleverly obscured in Google street view by a big Ryder truck. Perhaps that would have been our first clue, had the truck been in a different location.

Their website boasts amazing automat (vended) food, at low prices. Reviews on Google abound, and somehow, my eye skipped right over the entries that said "closed." So, when we finally found the address, it was a T-shirt shop/Vietnamese sandwich shop :(

We headed across the street to a nice Italian restaurant and had some air conditioning with our spaghetti bolognese and margherita pizza. This pizza was very good, though I would have preferred more basil. Thankfully, no fresh slices of tomato on it, and a nice firm, but thin, crust.

We did our day of sightseeing and then got ourselves back to Lombardi's on Spring Street for the real thing for dinner. There was a little bit of a wait (20 min), but well worth it. We had the caesar salad which had a really nice creamy dressing with a hint of anchovy. Claire had breadsticks, which we both rated 7 of 10. Okay, but I wouldn't order them again.

The pizza was fantastic! They deserve an exclamation point in their name.

I was going to just have plain cheese, so I could compare to my favorite NY pizza place in Berkeley, Arinell's. But I couldn't resist having my usual: pepperoni, sausage and mushroom. I am glad I went for the triumvarate of toppings. Claire was glad they had garlic powder and oregano shakers for the cheese pizza.

The crust was thin and baked to crispy perfection with blackened undertones on the bottom. The sauce was there, but not obtrusive either in flavor or quantity. The cheese was....well, it is cheese....on pizza. It appeared to be hand picked little pillows of cheesy goodness that made a nice cushion for the toppings. On the "cheese only" side of the pie, you could see the basil chiffonade mixed in with the mozzarella. Nice touch.

The toppings were really good. Very small diameter pepperoni, which allows for the edges to be all crispy and even a good part of the middle. The Italian sausage was sweet and tasty, and the mushrooms were there all co-mingled in, not falling off and dry.

I would give Lombardi's a 10 out of 10. Cash only and adequate service. They leave you alone with your pizza to just enjoy. And no refills on sodas, but they still charge $2. for a fountain coke.

NYC Day 1 - Post #3 - Architecture

Cheesy? Yes, but we took the Hop On/Hop Off double decker bus tour around NYC today on Gray Line. It was perfect because you can 1) sit; 2) get a bit of relief from the heat/humidity; and 3) get elevated a bit for some photos. You do have to be careful to sit though, because some of the traffic signs breeze the top of your head as you whisk past them. And, you do have to be a bit careful not to believe everything you hear. Click click!


In no particular order:

NYC Day 1 - Post #2 - Empire State Building

The first place you go in NYC has to be the Empire State Building, right? We'd just been to Disneyland (California Adventures) and been on the Tower of Terror, which is a much shorter elevator ride, compared to this real-life adventure which, among all it's other features (height, view, etc) is a stunning piece of art deco architecture. I'd been there 30 years ago and not much has changed, except that the World Trade Center is not there any more and that is a poignant reminder of what the world has been through in the past eight years.

The Empire State Building has 102 floors if you go all the way to the upper observatory. We only went to the 86th floor deck, but still stupendous views. One sad note - you could see to the south the entire Hudson River, including all the rescue equipment for the recent helicopter/plane crash.



My favorite photo of the day was from here too. On floor 80, while we were queuing around yet again (ESP has 73 elevators, and we swear there were about 73 lines too) we saw this series of windows with frosted glass on the bottom. I guess they want to be sure you pay for and go all the way to the deck for the E-ticket views. These windows were very Rene Magritte to me.

NYC Day 1 - Post #1 - Wrong Information

Don't believe everything someone tells you. The tour guide on our open air bus ride today said that this building is the tallest apartment building in the world without any windows.

Claire and I spent all day worried for the people who live there, and who presumably pay sky-high Manhattan rents to do so. No windows to see this beautiful city??

I was so intrigued I "googled" it, and turns out we were taken for a ride! The building is AT&T's server farm or phone switching center (not sure which). The floors are 18' tall and are used to house computer or phone equipment that not only doesn't need to enjoy the skyline, but also benefits from not having any sunshine in the building from a cooling perspective.

Okay - I hope they didn't dupe us on the ticket prices for the tour too!

NYC Day 1 Postcard

This trip to NYC is resulting in many photos, ideas, etc. so I'm going to post them separately, otherwise my post for today would be hellatiously long.

Here's an index of Day 1 posts:

1. Wrong Information from Tour Guides
2. Empire State Building
3. Architecture from Gray Lines Tour
4. Pizza! Pizza!

Go Go - Not a Fail

This is too cool. I'm on a Virgin America flight from SF to NYC and I am on the internet!

I took this photo using my MacBook Pro camera, then got on the internet and onto my blog here, and now created this post. How exciting!

Fail

I had some homework for the photo transfer class, since I will probably be at the Statue of Liberty on Saturday while class is taking place. The assignment was to get more photos onto the ProntoPlate substrate. This is a linotype material that is used to transfer images much the same as the gum arabic method on paper. So I figure - easy squeezy - since I'm feeling rather accomplished with gum arabic. With ProntoPlate - not so much.

The image making in Photoshop, and printing with fewer lines per inch on the laser jet all went well. The images on the ProntoPlate material came out of the printer looking great. I mixed up the ink according to directions and also wetted the paper, as per the usual instructions. However, the image transfer was pretty yucky. I am probably not mixing the ink quite right, though I figured out that I should take some off the brayer before putting the brayer to the plate by using the phone book. Two images - no good transfers.

There is learning in failure, but I will have to rely upon my friend Nancy, who is also taking the class, to see where I went wrong with these.

Solar Plates

This Photo Transfer class I'm taking at the Pacific Art League, taught by Julia Nelson-Gal yesterday was really good. Thankfully, Julia was sympathetic to me not being there next week, so she shifted the things we will do around a bit. Instead of doing the xerox transfer, we did solar plates. We took our own photos and Julia first walked us step-by-step through the modifications needed to make a solar plate in Photoshop. Everyone had their laptop there and we all worked the steps together. That was fun and you know how I love Photoshop, so learning that set of skills was important.

Then, we printed our photos onto this stuff that looks like a transparency, but is a special material with emulsion on one side called Pictorico. You take that little image and trim it down to the plate size (we did 5x7s) and then go into a semi-darkroom. In there, Julia had this box she'd made with UV lights. You put the transparency on the plate which also has this emulsion stuff on it - a plastic layer that is light sensitive - and you expose it, like you would do a photo in a real darkroom. Once that plate has been exposed, which only takes about 90 sec, then you put it in water and rinse and gently brush the surface with a mushroom cleaning brush. The plastic that was not exposed rinses off, leaving this barely visible image of divits in the areas where your image was exposed. Those divits are where the ink will take later. Some of us with darker areas on our photos used an aquatint screen to lay in a very very slight (not visible to the naked eye) layer of dots that prevents the darker areas from "biting."

We had some challenges with what side had emulsion on it, but we figured it out. Then we went back upstairs to the print room and printed our plates. You take the same sort of ink we've been using at Aurobora, and mix it a little differently for what is basically etching. Julia showed us how the ink is supposed to look as far as the flow of the ink on the mix knife. You use a little hard plastic scraperto scrape in back and forth over the plate. Ink goes down into the tiny little places where the plastic was burned out and then you wipe the plate with that stiff tarletan (think stiff cheesecloth). I don't think cheesecloth would work here, unless its been stiffened by use with ink. All this has to be done carefully so as not to scratch that plastic plate, though the UV light has hardened it somewhat, but it is like any other plate - a heavy material or an accidental brush up against something sharp will leave a mark.

Here's my transparency:


Here's my solar plate:


And here's my final print:

Art with Seniors

I am volunteering to do art with seniors at a local senior daycare center. I have taught art classes with children in the past - at elementary school level in a program modeled after FAME, and also at the Hayward Area Park and Recreation District's Ashland Community Center. These prior experiences facilitating art-making were so enriching to me - seeing the amazing art kids will make and being in the midst of their enthusiasm too, which is infectious.

I had gone to the senior center a couple of weeks ago, just to meet the people, and see the area where we would be working. They are a delightful group of men and women who come to this facility from 10-2 daily to visit, have lunch, and do various activities. I realized after visiting with them, that art projects I'd done with the kids were probably going to require some modification. These seniors have varying levels of mobility, fine motor control, and some have mild demensia. So, I chose to have them make butterflies. I wanted a project that had some structure to it, was easy to do in less than the hour we had for the activity and that would have them take something home with them.

We used No. 4 coffee filters which I had cut notches out of to paint on and make the wings of butterflies using tempera paint. Some of the participants decided using two filters on each project would look good, and the results were some luscious insects. The filters were scrunched in the middle and hot glued to a clothespin I had spray painted black before class. We hot glued on some pipe cleaners for antennae too. Click in on the collaged image to see better detail.

Lots of fun! Here they all are with their creations.

Aurobora Workshop #3

Another great workshop at Aurobora over the weekend. We watched people streaming by to see the Giants play the Phillies, while munching on a beautiful ham quiche and a birthday brownie cake for one of the workshop participants. I continued to refine my xerox transfer technique, which I will post photos of tomorrow.

I started workshop #3 with the intent to spend the first day doing "warm ups." I was thinking about how we warm up to sing, play the piano, run, etc. but we don't really allow ourselves art warm up time. Instead, the pressure is on to create a masterpiece from the get go.

In printmaking and especially monotypes, there is even more pressure to create that amazing piece, and there is a lot of thought that really should go in to planning and executing the piece, especially if there are multiple layers to be pulled on the press. So, I worked on color, general composition and some technique for the first part of Day #1.

Here are some of the results: