That's not my city

I have to admit, I also had a real struggle with the above ground train in the NYC of the new Spiderman movie. At first I thought it was a straight Chicago splice. Then I thought maybe they did some kind of computer trick with the high line. But I couldn't figure out the buildings. I'll eventually have to get a look at the DVD and see if they explain it in the "making of" part. Probably the entire thing was CGI.

By the time I figured out that the train was running downtown into the financial district, I was distracted by a bit of trivia some folks in other neighborhoods may not know. When they were shooting parts of the movie down here, there were notes in the building letting us know that there'd be low flying helicopters shooting the movie on that Saturday (presumably so that the PTSD 9/11 crew wouldn't freak out at the sound of it).

So as soon as I saw where the train was I moved on to looking for my building or anything familiar, figuring that's what they were shooting that day. My ultimate opinion of the above ground Manhattan train is that the movie does a great job of creating a comic-book style New York City, and it does so using parts of actual NYC, so I give them credit for a cool idea. It's at least as cool as the design competitions for the Ground Zero rebuild or the Memorial, or the High Line, or the sports stadiums (stadia?). I know a good blogger should have links to all of those things, but it's late. The point is, there's a precedent for the coolness of dreaming up new things to add to NYC, so adding this train qualifies in this regard.

RELATED: Just to show how much of a geek I am about spotting recognizable neighborhoods in the media, I actually wrote this note to myself earlier this evening:

The TV is running that ridiculous commercial where the guy walks around the city telling people to eat fiber. At one point he offers to trade a biker a bowl of cereal for his chopper. That scene is shot on 14th street in front on Model Driving School. I learned to ride there. :)

I have no idea why at the time, I thought it was important to report that.