Frank's Place

Given the renewed buzz over the Frank Gehry building downtown, I went and took some before pictures of the site. The first two below are actually from the winter when I first heard the building was coming. I went looking for 200 Beekman and all I could find was this parking lot and that didn't seem right, so I didn't post the photos. Now I'm pretty sure that parking lot is where the building will be.

T-Rex on Broadway

I've seen these at Bike Week in Daytona, but it seems pretty bold to take on city streets. One cabbie stopped and asked how much it costs but the only answer the guy gave was "a lot."

Grace Church construction

Celebrities

The tourists were literally climbing over each other to photograph the firemen. They were almost falling out of the double decker tour buses.

Dog day in Soho

Cell phone law

Department of health requires that everyone talk on a cell phone.

Call on the wall

Bus stop

Hoop surprise

I feel like I've seen this before.
Williamsburg, closer to the river.

Swoon spotting

I think I've snapped 4 or 5 of hers in the wild now.

Back lot

Also Williamsburg, but pretty far east.

No, the other right

A funny scene with every guy on that wooden platform trying to tell the kid up top how far to pull the rope so that the poster is level.
Williamsburg

The El

JMZ @ Marcy

Replacing Coast

Though this is taken through the back window on Cedar Street, the front of this space is on Liberty facing Ground Zero. Just when it seemed all the questions had been answered about what would be filling the few storefronts that face the hole, Coast goes out and now there's a lot of activity in there.
I'd been to Shore a few times but I never went to Coast, so I can't really mourn its loss.

Perched

I would have liked to have been a little farther back to get more of the long row of newspaper boxes, but I was nearly run over as it is.
14th Street.

Smoke signal

Spider Man returns to Lower Manhattan

You'll recall they shot downtown for Spider Man 2 as well. What's worth noting is that there's no parking on all those streets, which means cars won't be in the way of facades, sidewalks and street scenes. I don't have any specific shots in mind, but it'll be worth a walk or two over there.

Liberty Park comes out ahead

Can it be possible that a project promised for Summer 2006 is actually finished before the first day of summer? And at Ground Zero no less?

Dylan Prime

Cleared

The lot at 23 Thames.

Yaffa's

New 9/11 memorial, sneak peek

On the Greenwich Street side of 10 House there's a long plywood strip. It used to be red, then it peeled, then they painted it brown, then they pointed security cameras at it, and earlier this week they installed what looked like light fixtures over it. Here it is last winter:

Today the plywood was pulled away as work was done at one end. At the other end I took the picture below. Looks like the plywood has been a placeholder for a long bronze relief memorial to the firefighters lost on 9/11. Safe bet the unveiling will be Memorial Day.

Balloon Flower

You can see 7WTC reflected in the top. I didn't try all the angles, but I bet there's a good shot in there of the building's grid stretched across the sculpture's round surface.

Break from the boss

I don't actually know this to be the case, but it looked like the boss was the guy on the phone downstairs while the workers lounged in the windows upstairs.

By the way, did you notice they took the scaffolding off? Looks like it's going to be a pretty building.

Memorial Day Rehearsal

Ground Zero