Taco oasis

The tiny taco stand that cooks out of the back of the kitchen of Monsigneurs Italian restaurant does a pretty good business for something that is almost literally a hole in the wall. I haven't tried it yet, so I'm not sure if it's the food or the prices that draw the crowd.
In the top photo the camera exaggerated the circle of light cast by the street light, but who am I to argue with the camera?
Nassau ave betw. Guernsey & Lorimer

Light at the end

Driggs & Lorimer

Baseball serenade

Working to solve the awkward re-size problem I have on this blog, I tried resizing before uploading instead of allowing the upload to do the resizing. I'm not sure it made a difference.

Berry St. Lofts get a neighbor

As the commenter on this post points out, the view from the brand new lofts there on the right is going to be pretty much ruined by whatever is going in here. It doesn't look like they left room for a garden or anything between the two buildings.
Anyway, N11th near Berry, "before."

Note to self: Try Columbine

This is the tiniest place and it always has a billion delivery bikes out front, prompting me to wonder if the quality of a restaurant could be judged by the number of delivery bikes it employs. The other day I passed by at lunchtime.
West Broadway @ White

Union Pacific

The person in the lower one is one of the delivery guys I think. I liked how his stripes point out all the verticals and horizontals.
Union Pacific is on Union Ave near N10th. Is this place related to Chat n Chew?

69 Grolsch

Wythe near N6th.

Motor Grrl Garage

Metropolitan Ave.

Love note

"Oh my god, you should keep that forever."

Random girls at the Seattle airport.

Tall Grass Bakery

Seattle

McCarren Pool, Bloc Party

Best seat in the house...

Actually, that's not entirely a joke. The music sounded remarkably good from all the way across the park (depending on how close you're standing to one of those salsa-blasting minivans).

Highlights from my new commute

In no particular order, sites that I pass daily and watch for progress.

I don't actually know what the plans are for the parking lot here on West Broadway. Just the other day this one got the fence. A few days later they put in the trailers. You might have to look twice, but yes, the trailers are on top of the scaffolding.

There's a lot going on on Clinton, but this one is getting close to having its face put on so I always keep an eye on it.

If I'm not mistaken, they call the building below (under construction in the background) the Jay building, presumably because it's on Jay St. in DUMBO. I cross the Brooklyn Bridge and then take surface streets through Vinegar Hill. When I pass this I usually check out the scene in front of that little coffee house. It wasn't until I read about the "Jay Building" and development of DUMBO that I realized what it was.

Gotcha

Before living here I wondered how often new writing showed up on the walls. In just a few weeks I already see things changing. The other one of these that I posted earlier already has magic marker all over it so I decided to grab these two before they are also lost to time.

I predict big windows

N11 between Bedford and Driggs.
This is the one that overlooks the big lot below the park. I was trying to show the two guys at the top shooting a plume of dust into the sky but it's too far. Still worth having a "before" picture for this one anyway.

The yard at Relish

This view is from Metropolitan Ave.

A tree falls in Brooklyn

Berry St.

Hot

Leonard St.

Vinotherapy?

I forget where this was. Franklin Street I think. Near Hudson.


How is vinotherapy not the same as... well... getting drunk? I looked it up. Looks like you sit in it instead.

Green shadow

West Broadway

Golden Somethingorother Beach

Above: A fresh water stream runs from the hill into the ocean. Kids build dams and castles with moats. The water's freezing.
Below: There's some debate about whether this is a picture of anything. I say it tells the story of a day at the beach with the dogs. The counter opinion is that it's a shot of some guy's butt.

Basses in the window

Pickin' and Strummin'

Looking at them now, I'm wishing I'd taken one while crouched down so the photo isn't looking down on them, just to see what the difference is.

Farmers' market

Under the tree

Where I stayed the last couple of days.
Update: black and white by request...

I re-tweaked the contrast and cropped it just a little bit tighter. Even when you click it to make it bigger there's an awful lot of texture in those leaves.

Layers deep

Ever go to a really picturesque place and every other person is taking a photo of every square inch of the place and suddenly you lose your urge to take a picture of anything?

Format tweak

July 4th was the second anniversary of A Test of Will so I've been thinking of changes and improvements I'd like to make. The two things that bother me the most are the blog's load time and the awkward resizing of the photos.

To help with the blog's load time, I've reduced the number of displayed days to three. That means fewer photos will load when you arrive at the front. I've also tweaked the archives to show weekly instead of monthly, so if you want to go farther back than the last three days you don't have to load an entire month's worth of photos.

I'm still working on the sizing issue. Right now I take them big, upload them smaller, and then resize their display on the font page. That makes for two ugly size changes by the time it makes it to the blog. That's why sometimes the photos look a little choppy. As soon as I find the right host I hope to fix this problem as well.

UPDATE: OK, all changing the archive did was break the archive links. I think it may be too late to try to change that.

Vera's

No, the chairs aren't always empty.

Brunch.

Motorcycar

Pretty simple idea when you look at it. (Funky reflection is because the picture was taken through a window.)

Crane

We stayed at the Sheraton for a few days, 26th floor.

Planning

This is really a picture of the two guys in the window. In the lower shot you can see it's a hostel, so they're probably planning out their day's exploration of the city. (This is still Seattle.)

Stylin' Leroy

That is surely Leroy himself.

Columbia Tower, evening

After wrestling with how much water and sky to put in the frame, this is how far I narrowed it down before I lost my sanity.

Columbia Tower, Sunset

Red Sox at Mariners

Columbia Tower, Dusk

One again, too many photos, not enough posting means I have a backlog. I'm going to try to post in piece all the photos I took from Seattle's highest building. Of particular appeal to me in this series is the water texture.

Dangerous corner

Look out behind you Mr. Fire Alarm Box!!
I believe the person putting up those stick figures is called Goya. There are a few around this particular block. The other day on the way to work I saw someone walk in front of one and it looked like the stick figure was going to jump off the building and grab them. If I'm not able to get a candid shot of it I may make a friend go stand in front of one just so I can get the picture.

Green trim

Metropolitan Ave.
As soon as I can get out with the big camera I'd like to do some details of this building. I like that color.

Back seat passenger

Berry & N 3rd-ish

New arrival

Manhattan Ave.

Rehearsals

Cedar St.

On the road again

Might be staying long enough to take some pictures this time.

McCarren Pool Party

An honest neighbor...

... reflects well on us all.

The Kiosk

Everything at the McCarren pool looks like it's from a destitute former Soviet republic. This kiosk in the entrance is the coolest, but the rotted-out high dive is also neat (I'll get a shot of that next time).

Tree lined

Guernsey

Learning lightning

I'm trying to learn how to take photos of lightning. This top one is the best I've managed so far.

This would have been a good one but I had the white balance all screwy.

Most of the lightning was flashes that turn the sky blue anyway, not good bolts or chains.

This last one is closer to the actual color of the sky with no lightning. It's the street lights that make it orange.

King of the Hill

N7@Berry

Park Luncheonette

Not exactly a luncheonette anymore. Still, the salmon omlette with dill/black peppe cream cheese and asparagus was really good.

Greenmarket at McCarren Park

Old Dutch Mustard

Planning ahead

Cash in hand on the Mr. Softee line.

Pushcart

Awkward lighting but good figure form.

'68 Thunderbolt

Hey Brew, only 3 grand. Kickstart, no mufflers.

Manhattanhenge '06

Naturally, the idea. shot is down 34th street with some inclusion of the Empire State Building. But I happened to be on 14th Street and I wasn't going to miss it again sitting on the subway. These are all between 6th and 8th ave.

Manhattanhenge shadows

There's so much emphasis on the idea of the sun setting along the street grid that I hand't really thought about the resulting long shadows. Usually if you want to play with long shadows in the city you have to do it in the dead of winter on the avenues.

Passing audience

What you can't see is that with one foot he's stomping on a tambourine and under the other is a drum pedal facing backward, thumping a suitcase.

Skyline tanker

If I wasn't holding the camera up over my head to shoot over the fence and through the barbed wire, I would have liked to shoot this at a little lower angle so the reflection in the truck lined up with the skyline. Still, I like how they go together.

Williamsburg Bridge down Kent

Cool sky Thursday

Catching up on the week's photos, Thursday had a crazy sky. It's going to take me a while got get over this view, so you're just going to have to deal with it. I was, however, relieved to see this, so I'm not the only one. Plus, now I know it's called the Bushwick Inlet.

Park-to-be

If you check out today's Curbed entry on the East River State Park, this is the lower part of the green area. The "inlet" photos from the other day are from the area under the words "big stink here" on that graphic.



I read recently that a landscape photo shouldn't be 50/50 with the horizon in the middle. In that case, for this photo I go for more sky.

End of the road

This is the very end of N 7th St. Given the rezoning of this area, this is definitely a "before" picture.

Two tone

I framed the original shots poorly, so these aren't cropped quite how I'd like, but I do like how the lady in black and white goes with the sign, and how the car goes with its background and the lady goes with her background in the lower photo.

Spider-Spectator Silhouettes

More on that silhouette theme.

Not quite full

It's becoming clear that what's striking me most about living in Brooklyn so far is being able to see so much of the sky. The moon was big and clear on my way home but by the time I got out with the camera it was behind a haze of clouds. I don't think I've got a lens that can do more than a glowing dot anyway.
This is Lorimer St. That's Bedford at the end.

W Hotel, midtown

Sidewalk garden

There's no storefront or residences in front of these trees. Could these flowers have grown here wild?
Withers Street.

Swirl

The kid of this lady down the bottom corner is on the ride.

Looks a little like they're reading the instruction manual. Look under "S" for "Stop."

Rachel's

I like all the people in the bottom shot.

The Waldorf

Moon over Brooklyn

Silhouettes and 'braciole'

Ghost lot

I like the empty windows in the back.

Alia?

I thought the above pictures meant that North 6th St. is adding some Mediterranean to the menu, but this makes it look like they were expected in Fall of '05, so maybe "coming soon" is a relative expression.

East River inlet

Summer night

Part of my silhouette series. The people there are just hanging out. I think they did some barbequing earlier in the day, but now someone just has the car radio up loud and everyone's hanging out.

Giglio Sunday

Feast of St. Paulinus and Our Lady of Mount Carmel
The tall thing in the background that looks a little like a totem pole is a massive statue that is carried by a group of men as part of a ceremonial procession. Then everyone eats zepoli.

HBO shooting in the nabe

Roebling and N 11th, that's the southeast corner of McCarren Park. Looks like a Queen Latifa project. I didn't see her anywhere though.

North8

This is on Kent, which means there's nothing between this building and the river other than the street. These'll be nice apartments. The building doesn't look too obnoxious, though I imagine the neighbors don't want it.

What's the deal with the birds?

I thought birds only did this when they're sick. So if I see three birds in Williamsburg sitting on the sidewalk and not moving when you walk really close to them, that's probably bad, right?

Green Bedding

Lots of good carless curbs on Manhattan Ave. I took this mostly for the crazy font in the sign.

Bike burst

This is my first time using the burst feature on my camera - which is when you hold the button and the camera just keeps snapping. Worked pretty well. This is also the first time I tried AutoStitch. The demo model is free. All you do is tell it what photos should be stitched and it figures out how to stitch them. Other than that one front tire disappearing and a tiny bit of cropping afterward, it worked really well I think.

Digging a hole

This was in the morning and by the evening on the way home, the hole was mostly filled back in. I look forward to being caught up on neighborhood developments so I might have some idea of what's going on on sites like this.

Entering SoHo

An old Swoon

Candy & Grocery

Manhattan ave.

Imagine living here

1600 Broadway is an apartment building under construction. But no, I can't imagine stepping out of my apartment into the madness that is Times Square. Getting stuck behind a 100-person tour group every time you want to pop out to the deli? Bleh.
Nice reflections though.

Behind the blue wall

This is the 101 Warren St. site.

Crane

Rooftop view

Light show before the light show

FYI, this is not the view from my new apartment. This is N 5th.

Night game

If you look close at the sky in the shot below, that's a fly ball streaking across. The outfielder didn't catch up.


I think the silhouette is a little more distinct in this last one.
McCarren Park

Snack Stop

Times Square

Sunshower

Sunshine + sunset + thunderstorm = cool light.
Upper left corner is the scaffolding I was hiding under from the rain. The spots in the sky look like drops on the lens or something but they're actually falling from the scaffolding.

The happiest umbrella salesman

Those bars on the bottom are the scaffolding I was trapped under waiting for this to pass. Eventually I gave up the wait and bought an umbrella like everyone else.

Shelter

So it's really going to look like that?

Stuck in traffic on the Williamsburg Bridge a few weeks ago I had enough time to pull out the camera for a shot of the LES skyline. The Jack-o-lantern tooth on the left is "Blue."

For some reason I thought the rendering was less literal than this. Is it even possible to see out the windows?

Above and below show progress as of Saturday.

I moved

After 5 years in the financial district, a combination of my building going condo and the fact that I need a second bedroom for my new baby means it's time for new digs.

Staying in this neighborhood (not to mention photoblogging it) has been the kind of challenge that requires a level of mental commitment that makes it hard to leave. I was home on 9/11 and from my window watched the second plane fly into the south tower at the end of the street. We moved back into the building as soon as we were able (two weeks later) and each development the neighborhood has made since then has felt like a strangely personal success.

As painful as that is to leave behind, I'm excited at the promise of gaining an intimate familiarity with a new New York City neighborhood. So I'm turning in my NoBat card (see? I told you there was such a thing!) and trading my 212 for the 11222.


Old view above, new view below (another one of those sun showers).

Naturally I'll still be taking pictures. You'll have to bear with me as I adjust to my new surroundings (and finish unpacking). There'll be Williamsburg/Greenpoint pictures now and probably more East Village photos since that's only a stop away now and will probably be my starting point for walking around. I still have to commute through Lower Manhattan, so those won't disappear entirely.