Morning View - Provincetown

Morning View - Provincetown T-Shirt

Advertised in the window of a Commercial Street shop.

Morning View - From MacMillan Pier

Cool, grey, and wet for the second day. At this time last year, the northeast was baking in a triple-digit heat wave. Right now it's in the low 60s.

Morning View

Morning View - P-Town From The Pier

Morning View - Eighth Fairway

I'll be spending the rest of the week blogging from the Fort Lauderdale lanai of my ex and his partner, who live in a golf course condo complex just west of Wilton Manors.  Usually I stay with Father Tony over on the beach, but he's busy with the papal conclave.  The weather is gorgeous, so suck it, snowquester.

Morning View

Seen in the window of an Eaton Street shop.

Morning View - Doggupy Union Square

Morning View - Pier 17

Pier 17 is tourist trap mall in the South Street Seaport historic district near downtown's financial district. You know San Franciscans pride themselves on never going to Pier 39? Same deal for New Yorkers and Pier 17.

Morning View - Midtown West

There's a number of new highrise apartment buildings going up on the already cluttered W.42nd Street.

Morning View - Mercury

I've posted a pic or two of Mercury atop Grand Central in the past, but yesterday's bright skies made this one irresistible. It's hard to tell from the ground, but Mercury is almost 30 feet tall. The clock alone is 13 feet across. Embiggens nicely.

Morning View - Bees Danish

OK, so after the first couple of days of being bothered by dive-bombing bees in Berlin, I was thinking I'd come home and blog something like, "Now I know where all our bees have gone. They're in Berlin." Then on Sunday we were wandering around Alexanderplatz and decided to stop at a quite lovely looking bakery for something sweet. I walked up to to the display case and stopped in horror. "Wait! We are SO not eating here. There's bugs all over the food!" BEES, actually. (Only a few of the dots in this picture are raisins. Embiggen.)

The bees were flying all around in and out of the case and the staff was completely cool with it. Patrons were nonchalantly picking out their selections and the counter person would reach in, shake off the bees, and hand it over. Uh, WTF? An equally freaked out American woman muttered to me, "I can't handle this," and scooted out past us. We left without inquiring, not wishing to be laughed at. I've tried Googling "bees on food Germany Berlin" and other things, but have found no answer. I'm sure somebody here can explain this.

Morning View - The Ritz Tower

If you're blue and you don't know where to go to, why don't you go where fashion sits? Built in 1925, the 41-story Ritz Tower was designed by famed Gotham architect Emory Roth as the city's first high-rise residential building and for a time it was the world's tallest. As an "apartment hotel" the units originally had no kitchens; food was delivered via electrically heated dumbwaiters and was served by hotel staff.

Morning View - 10th & 44th

Morning View - Lever House

Built in 1951, the Lever House is considered the "quintessential and seminal glass box International Style" skyscraper. So says Wikipedia. While I understand its historical place in architecture, I find the Lever House just as deadly dull as the bazillion copies that followed. After falling into disrepair towards the end of the last century, there was a major renovation beginning in 1998. Since then there have been sculptures from superstar artists on display in its courtyard (Koons, Haring), but right now the featured piece is a 15 foot Hello Kitty by Tom Sachs. For realz.

Morning View - Cornelius Vanderbilt

One of the neatest things about last week's Summer Streets event was finding previously unnoticed items like this statue of Cornelius Vanderbilt on the Grand Central Viaduct, which I've surely passed in a cab more than 500 times.

Vanderbilt bought the New York Central Railroad in 1867 and built the Grand Central Depot on 42nd Street in 1871. That station was later demolished and rebuilt as Grand Central Terminal, which is where this statue still stands.

Forbes calculates that in adjusted 2008 dollars, Cornelius Vanderbilt (who is Anderson Cooper's great-great-great-grandfather) is the tenth-wealthiest person who has ever lived in the world, with a peak wealth of $167 billion, putting him right behind Caesar Basil II of the Roman (Byzantine) Empire. (If you buy that such things can be calculated a thousand years later.) Another study places Vanderbilt at #3, behind John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie, and just ahead of Bill Gates.

Morning View - Madison & 69th

Dr. Jeff snapped this on our way back from Central Park last Saturday afternoon. This town can sure feel empty on summer weekends.

Morning View - Hansom Cab

Hansom cabs line up along Central Park South for rides through the park and around midtown. Most of the colorful carriages are made in Amish Country. The movement to ban horse carriages in Manhattan gained steam in 2006 when a spooked horse ran headfirst into a parked car, critically injuring the carriage driver. The horse had to be euthanized. While the hansom cabs do provide what many consider a quintessential Gotham experience, between the poo smell (horrendous on hot days) and the issue of animal cruelty, I wouldn't mind seeing them go.

Morning View - Sylvia Rivera Way

In 2005 the corner of Christopher and Hudson was renamed after Sylvia Rivera, the late transgender activist who helped found the Gay Liberation Front shortly after the Stonewall Riots. The following year Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson cofounded the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries, the world's first transgender political organization. Rivera died from liver cancer in 2002.

Morning View - The Cubbyhole

Opened in 1994, last year the tiny Cubbyhole was voted the best lesbian bar in NYC. Perhaps that's faint praise for a town that has less than a handful of such establishments, but the few times I've been inside I found a generous and friendly staff and a welcoming clientele. The Cubbyhole is on W.12th Street in the West Village. I'm told there used to be a different Cubbyhole at another location, but maybe one of y'all can fill us in about that.