It seems like time to post another photo, as I haven’t posted anything for a few weeks, or so it seems.
Today, we have one from the archives: I took it last summer when Jannine and I were in Michigan visiting my parents. We went to the Horticulture Garden at Michigan State University (my alma mater). While there, I took a bunch of pictures.
This is one of my favorites.
I realize that it’s Wednesday night, which is slightly late for a weekend update. Strangely, I feel that as I am less busy at work, I post less. It might be because my days are much shorter, and I spend a lot more time talking to my coworkers instead of sitting in front of the computer.
The title is appropriate because not only do I have a few pictures to recap the weekend’s highlights, but much of this weekend was spent in pictures of one type or another.
What is probably our last big snowstorm of the year started on Friday morning and extended until Friday night. It was pretty messy, with at least as many ice pellets as snowflakes. But Saturday morning dawned clear and sunny. On the way to church, I got a snapshot of the snowy sidewalks of the East Village. Wait, who’s the hot girl in the red coat?
Sunday morning, Jannine and I joined Jeremy and Erica for brunch at Alias. As I have written here before, Alias has great dinner food, particularly for their Sunday Supper, which is one of the better restaurant values it the city. The brunch had received similar high reviews.
The brunch received mixed reviews from our panel of foodies. First, the positives. The service was prompt. My cheese grits and collard greens were delicious. And the fruit compote that came with Jannine’s waffles were great.
However, overall, the food seemed fairly average. Jeremy didn’t give rave reviews to the eggs benedict. The Alias brunch has a nice southern twist, but it certainly isn’t on the level of Clinton Street, 9th Street Market or Sarabeth’s.
After brunch, we headed over to Brooklyn’s Stay Gold Gallery for a show called Blowup, featuring photos from Holga, Lomo and other “toy cameras.” It was such a great show — I highly recommend you stop by before the show closes this coming Saturday (March 24). We ended up so entranced by some of the photos that we ended up buying two. We were excited because it was our first gallery purchase.
On the way back, I took this picture out the window of the J, which is elevated in Brooklyn. Yeah, I know, still not ready for a gallery.
From Stay Gold, we went up to the MoMA to see the Jeff Wall photography exhibit they have right now. Wall is largely known for his huge (wall-sized) gelatin-on-glass prints which he puts in light boxes, which really makes them come to life. One of Jannine’s coworkers had recommended the show, and we were glad we went, because there were some great photos. We also decided to join the MoMA. A dual membership is only $120, and at $20 per person admission, we’d only have to go three times over the course of the year to recoup our money. Plus, we can buy up to five $5 guest tickets every time we go, so if any one wants to go see the MoMA with us, just let us know.
After we finished with the Jeff Wall exhibit, we went down to the fifth floor to see the Van Goghs and the Monets. I love the water lilies so much — I could sit and look at the three panels for hours. Here’s a shot of the center panel, which doesn’t even begin to do justice to the scope and the depth of the painting.
Finally, we ended our day with a lovely dinner. But that, dear readers, is a topic for another post.
I realize that this blog is basically becoming “Nathan’s Pic of the Day” (if day = week, that is). That’s mostly because if I wrote about my day-to-day life, no one would want to read this blog, and I’d come across as a whining baby, desperate for sympathy. So instead I give you my photos.
Oh well. At least I post more frequently than than my brother posts on his supposed photo blog, Jason’s Photo Blog. That comment probably wasn’t necessary. But somehow I’m still not hitting the backspace key.
Here’s a photo I took while we were out in LA over Christmas. While waiting to meet a photographer, I saw this cool view out the window of the Hollywood Hills and the buildings around us.
(Note: this picture is supposed to prove that I can be “cool” and “arty” with my photos. Notice the security sticker and window frame, making it obvious that this was shot through glass. More importantly, the roof of the building in the middle distance is key. How artistic must one be to sense the deep meaning of a desolate rooftop adorned with stark HVAC pipes? Pretty freaking artistic, it says here.)
As mentioned earlier, I spent most of last week at the printers. Literally. Anyway, every day I would walk from 53rd and Lex to 53rd and Madison, which takes you through a great collection of modernist skyscrapers (the Seagram Building, the Citigroup Center, the Lipstick Building, the Chippendale Building, and so many others). On the corner of 53rd and Park is the Lever House, which is notable particularly because it was one of the first buildings to use a large plaza to avoid set-backs imposed by zoning requirements (in the case of the Lever House, it is an elevated plaza).
So as I was walking by, I liked the view, especially with the reflections from the surrounding buildings.
Although it is now the 16th of February, Valentine’s Day is still close in the rearview mirror. To celebrate, Jannine and made the trek through snow and ice (Wednesday morning brought our first major snow storm of the year, complete with freezing rain, high winds and heavy accumulation) to our new favorite restaurant, Alias.
When I hear “Alias,” I think of Jennifer Garner flying around the world, taking down the bad guys with prejudice. So the name of the restaurant has it off to a good start in my mind. Alias had a great value for a Valentine’s Day five-course pre fixe menu, which is something of a rarity in New York, a city where it seems to be a sport of restaurants to see how much they can jack up their prices for special holiday meals. The food, as expected, was outstanding. Alias specializes in using fresh market ingredients for their food. The combinations are creative, and the dishes are generally seasoned so that the individual tastes of the components can stand out. The highlight was probably a baked acorn squash with wild rice, wild mushrooms, leeks and thin slices of cheese (I want to say it was pecorino, but I don’t really remember).
The one negative of the dinner was the atmosphere. The restaurant wasn’t particularly busy, and the heater didn’t seem able to keep up with the cold winds outside. So we felt too exposed as our extremities slowly froze. Also, Alias didn’t seem prepared to serve a multi-course meal successfully, and kept us waiting for far too long between courses. However, given the quality of the food and the great price, it still comes out as an extremely good value.
As we were walking through the Lower East Side to the restaurant, we passed Clinton Street Baking Company, our favorite brunch place. In celebration of the holiday, they had made a beautiful light display on their front fence.
Around New Years, Gary, Erica, Kevin, and David all came out to NYC for the weekend. We were wandering through the East Village and the Lower East Side when we saw this dog sitting in a chair at the salon. (I think it was one of the ones on Ave. A around St. Marks, but I don’t remember exactly, since it was like six weeks ago.) So we stopped to snap some pictures (me + four tourists = a lot of cameras suddenly going off). Unfortunately, the picture came out a little bit blurry, due to the hurried nature of the situation and the twilight conditions. This is why I wish I had an SLR with a 1.4 prime that would allow me to effectively shoot hand-held in low light. Anyway, it’s still a pretty cute dog (but you have to think he knows how cute he is.
A couple weeks ago (could be longer — I don’t have a particularly good sense of time anymore), my sister Rachel came into NYC for a quick trip. It was actually part of a much longer trip, as she had been in Arizona and Colorado and Connecticut and was headed back home to Maryland via LaGuardia.
Since she was getting to the airport early, Jannine and I got a Zipcar (a mini!) and drove out there to meet her. We took her to Chinatown in Queens and had a very yummy lunch at a vegetarian Chinese restaurant. Rachel even came bearing Christmas gifts from my family.
Here are some pics.
It’s 12:30 am on Sunday morning, aka prime party time in New York. Or at least, that’s the rumor I’ve heard. Seeing as I’m old (at least in my mind) and rather uncool, I don’t get invited to parties and I don’t try to find parties to get invited to. So my Saturday nights are often somewhat “quiet” by the standards of many. Of course, many would say that blogging late on a Saturday night is automatic proof of being lame. But when you find out that I’m blogging to take a break from work (currently marking up a Description of Notes for an i-bank that wants to pitch a refinancing deal to a perspective client next Thursday), well….I have pretty much proven beyond a doubt that I am not the most “fun” person living in New York City.
Anyway (in addition to providing an oblique way to complain about working on a Saturday night), I felt like posting some pics. Today’s selection was actually taken over a month ago, when J9 and I were out in LA over Christmas. We stopped by the Frank Gherey-designed Disney Concert Hall and I spent time taking some pictures. (In my case, some = 53 pictures in about an hour.) Unfortunately, I was rather disappointed by the results. It was getting dusky while we were there, and so hand-shake contributed to a lot of blurry pics. Also, looking through my pics is like a textbook with examples of mediocre composition and poor use of space.
Here are a few of the better results:
I’d like to say that this one has that whole “cool edgy blur effect” going on, but most people would probably recognize that as a lie and write it off as low-quality camera shake. You be the judge.
Last Friday, we finally had the first snow of the winter. Pretty crazy that it took until January 19 to finally start acting like winter. This whole weekend has been pretty cold and windy.
Here’s a snapshot that I took on the way to work. As you can see, it’s just a light dusting of snow. Better than nothing, I suppose.
