Tenement

I was in Brooklyn last weekend, Coney Island to be more specific, and ended up walking through "the projects" to reach the basketball courts for my son's tournament. It's dismaying to walk through the playgrounds and courtyards that link these towers of public assistance housing and find piles of garbage - trash that includes the tiny ziplock bags that are the evidence of the previous night's drug deals. While we felt entirely safe in the light of day, I wouldn't want to walk through late at night. Of course, if I had to live my life in a concrete slab like this, I'd probably turn to unhealthy vices too! These high-rise blocks of apartments would have made a city planner in Stalin's Soviet Union proud, because they remind the observer of the worst sins of Russia's postwar architects. Perhaps they provide more light and air than the classic Lower East Side tenement, but they're hardly less depressing.

 

Amtrak, Part 3

All photos taken from the train. (The graffiti was overwhelming in some areas.)

Otis

Our favorite English bulldog - Otis. He looks fierce, but he's really just a baby, obsessed with balls and children. He just wants to play, and regularly pauses during his walks to observe the fun at Bleecker Playground. Sometimes he's so reluctant to leave, his owner has to pick him - all 65 lbs. - and carry him away!

Crane

Amtrak, Part 2: Richmond

Richmond offered some of the most interesting scenery from the train, mainly because the route took us through the Shockoe Bottom district, one of the city's oldest neighborhoods. Located along the James River, this area is full of old warehouses and buildings associated with the city's tobacco industry. The Lucky Strike complex was particularly impressive. Constructed in two phases - 1912 and 1929 - these buildings housed the headquarters of the American Tobacco Company, but until recently have stood vacant for decades. Over the last 25 years Shockoe Bottom has been transformed from blighted to reborn, as investment and restoration have made the area a hot spot for restaurants and shops. Now the Lucky Strike buildings will join the renaissance as they are converted to luxury residential units, a far better fate than the wrecking ball, which has claimed much of Richmond's riverfront building stock thanks to flooding and neglect.

Amtrak, Part 1

The boys and I traveled down to Virginia on Amtrak last Monday, returning Saturday over the same route with major stops in Richmond, Washington, Baltimore, and Philadelphia (with a host of smaller, shorter stops as well). I was struck by several things during these eight-hour journeys. First, Amtrak was a perfectly pleasant experience. I didn't have to drive, making periodic stops for snacks and bathroom breaks. Second, the cost was reasonable - and far, far cheaper than flying. And third, the scenery was interesting, offering up a view of the country one wouldn't see on a highway or from the air. (In the year 20 years following World War II, the railroads trumpeted this very asset - scenery - in their attempts to combat decreasing ridership and compete with the legions of new car owners who were taking advantage of cheap gas and interstate highways.) Our route took us through bits of the old industrial heart of the northeast corridor and upper South. Richmond and Baltimore in particular presented poignant images of blighted industry and decaying residential sections far removed from the auto-fed suburbs. I've never seen so many empty warehouses, rusting, grass-filled rail spurs, and quiet factories. Seeing the back side of Washington's southeast section, with the Capitol dome and other government buildings rising in the background, reminded me of the city's older, more southern qualities, while giving those of us on the train a picture of the stark poverty missed by the armies of tourists. Of course, most people on the train were probably less enamored with the industrial scenery and more appreciative of the nice views around the Rappahanock, Potomac, and Delaware Rivers. But for a historian long interested in the contrast between rural and urban, pastoral and industrial, the trip offered views well worth the ticket price.

I'm breaking these photos into several groups, from these sepia-toned images, to color in later posts, for example.

St. John's Church Cemetery

After over a week away from home and this blog, I'm back with camera full of photos that includes cemeteries, views from an Amtrak train speeding south to Virginia and back to New York City, as well as views of Brooklyn shot from an elevated subway line. Although the trip was nice, it's always a relief to get back to New York City. For those of you who don't appreciate urban living, it might be hard to understand the appeal of Manhattan as a permanent resident. But having grown to enjoy the city after a decade in Greenwich Village, I can take pleasure in its vibrancy and diversity - as well as the convenience of walking to whatever I need.

These photos are from one of my favorite destinations near my parents' home - St. John's Episcopal Church, which I've previously featured on the blog. Although the parish was founded in 1643, this building, the second on the site, was constructed in 1755 and is now on the National Register.

I had glanced at the headstones before but hadn't really taken note of their inscriptions, having usually been in a hurry to photograph the building itself while anxious kids waited in the car. Look closely at the second photo below and you'll see the reference to a Confederate "patriot" who died in the Civil War "to save his country's honour." The third and fourth photos tell a different story. With three members of the same family, including a five-month-old son, dying over an eight-day span in 1836, one suspects they were victims of some sort of illness, in a scenario so typical of the period. (The top left photo I selected because of its Masonic symbol, not something often seen on local stones from this period. If you click on this image and view the larger version, notice the detail in the carving, as well as the small spots of lichen starting to grow on the stone. The second photo (above right) stands out because it's the marker for a three-year-old, a detail my younger son noticed while marching through the rows of stones. He's now accustomed to seeing the graves of small children in our cemetery travels and I've tried to explain that childhood mortality was a common thing in previous centuries. One has to wonder if this child's death was caused by illness - or was a result of the war.)

Monty Python's "Travel Agent Sketch" and the West Village

This is one of my favorites of the classic Monty Python sketches. I've included it here because Eric Idle's lengthy monologue reflects the way I'm starting to feel about my neighborhood - the West Village - during tourist-crowded weekends. Between the fashionista wannabes and the "middle America" tourists on "Sex and the City" tours, disgorged from diesel-puffing buses, the sidewalks are overrun. Many of them will wait for an hour in the line at Magnolia Bakery just for cupcakes. Cupcakes (which are that great)! But, they're part of that "Sex and the City" mystique which draws people from all over the world to gawk at spots in the neighborhood. Sure, they pump money into the local economy - as well as the hotels and bus companies that run the tours - but they also leave mountains of trash in Bleecker Park, and, by shopping at the high-end boutiques of Ralph Lauren and Marc Jacobs, further erode the historic character of the West Village.

Staten Island Ferry

This year we bought a ticket package to seven Staten Island Yankees games. They're much cheaper than regular Mets or Yankees tickets, and the A-level minor league teams deliver fun baseball. The players are also young, without the inflated egos and salaries of major league stars, and are thus happy to talk with the kids and sign autographs. Although I love the games, my favorite part of these trips has been the ferry rides to and from Staten Island. First, it's free - one of the best tourist attractions in the city. Plus one gets a view of the harbor, the Manhattan skyline, the Brooklyn Bridge, Governor's Island, Ellis Island, and the Statue of Liberty. After a night game, the late-evening return trip is even better, with the spectacle of Manhattan lit up like a Christmas tree. When I ride the ferry I get a sense of an older New York, like the one I encountered as a teen reading The Stories of John Cheever:

“These stories seem at times to be stories of a long-lost world when the city of New York was still filled with river light, when you heard Benny Goodman quartets from a radio in the corner stationery store, and when almost everybody wore a hat. Here is the last of that generation of chain smokers who woke the world in the morning with their coughing, who used to get stoned at cocktail parties and perform obsolete dance steps like ‘the Cleveland Chicken,’ sail for Europe on ships, who were truly nostalgic for love and happiness, and whose gods were as ancient as yours and mine, whoever you are.”

This was the first New York I encountered - the postwar city with Cheever's fictionalized grittiness and nostalgia for a vanishing way of life. Sitting on one of the older ferries, chugging through the dark, oily waters of the harbor, one gets a sense of Cheever's "river light" - even if much of the city has now been "sanitized for your protection."

Ball Mason Jar

Here's my latest watercolor, finished just yesterday. Although I'm happy with the result - since glass is always a special challenge - I'm even more disappointed than usual in the quality of the scan. The scanner's light always seems to wash out the images, while color and saturation correction in photoshop doesn't do an acceptable job of compensation. So this is the best of three attempts. Does anyone have recommendations? (Even photographing it didn't prove acceptable!)

As for the subject, I think most people look at these old Ball Mason jars with a touch of nostalgia. I recall seeing them at both sets of grandparents' homes, while my mother would receive gifts of jams, jellies - and even green beans - from older family members who still used the jars for storing fruits and vegetables. I also remember my great-grandmother's house in which there were shelves lined with an assortment of fuit and veg. In fact, my maternal grandparents would "can" figs and fig preserves in these jars. (The fig tree still grows in my grandmother's back yard and usually yields a healthy crop which she and my mother sometimes harvest.) Unfortunately I also remember numerous "country"-themed restaurants like "The Black-Eyed Pea" that tried to enhance the "down home" atmosphere by serving their drinks - always iced tea for me! - in Mason jars.

As usual I took a different perspective on this image, not wanting simply to present it in its entirety, static, resting on a table or shelf. Here it's closely cropped, turned slightly, with light from rear left highlighting the raised lettering and imperfections in the glass. (Aren't the blue jars rarer and considered more collectible?) 9" x 12" on Fabriano paper

Four from the Weekend

The gargoyle stands guard outside a costume and "Goth" fashion store on Fourth Ave. in the East Village. If you're in the market for spiked leather clothing and equally scary accessories just to see that Black Sabbath tribute band you've been pining over, look no further. Teen vampires would feel right at home.

Another Shop Cat

This friendly feline lives at "Aphrodisia" on Bleecker Street. She's usually asleep in the window or perched on a pillow-covered stool farther back in the shop.