Satin Island

Or rather Staten Island. Damn. I should've taken my camera -- the view of the Statue of Liberty from the ferry. Ellis Island. The funky waterfront baseball stadium. Cozy homes on suburban streets. Perkins Family restaurants (didn't know they made it out this far east). Willowbrook Park's tame ducks and geese -- you could almost reach down and pick 'em up. The carousel therein that opened its motorized shutters in time to reveal itself. Bagel Time convenience store. The wildlife refuge on Travis Road that isn't open on the weekends (what's the point of that?). I ran through a nice cloud of gnats, too. The Staten Island mall, in all its standardized 1980s americana glory -- chain store after chain store secluded along a rapid near-highway. Long stretches of nondescript road that led to Blue Heron Pond park -- a lovely little oasis of greenery on the Island. No herons, though, today. Some dragonflies. Back along Hylan avenue (until it turned into a hellish, pothole ridden strip mall). Right turn onto some random street that opened up into the classically named "New Dorp High School" (not New Dork, as I'm sure they are constantly called). New Dorp High School has -- I'm quite sure -- the largest soccer field in the greater New York City area. It looks like you could fit 20 or 30 simultaneous soccer games on the single field. This nice field turns into a recreation area, which turns into a boardwalk on one of the most uninhabited beaches (today was in the upper 80s, and humid, and a handful of people were hanging around in beach chairs). Further down the boardwalk, more people were clustered, though, so at least some people make it out on a hot day. From the boardwalk, down to Bay St. and back to the Ferry terminal. Altogether a good outing. But the jury's still out on Staten Island.

New Employment opportunities for retired superheroes

I find it reassuring to know that even when you're done with a good run of your exploits on television, there's still a chance to retrain and find your calling at an educational school, as I do so hope one particular vampire slayer has done -- as evidenced by this calendar entry.

Pay particular note to September 24th.

Coming tomorrow: The wilds of Staten Island -- revealed!

I know. Hard to believe that they'll even let me post it, it's so controversial.

Florida -- Third World country or just bane of our existence?

From a report on lost elections information via touchscreen computer crashes, comes this gem:

In December, officials began backing up the data daily, to help avoid similar data wipeouts in the future, said Seth Kaplan, spokesman for the county's elections supervisor, Constance Kaplan.

Two issues:

1. They started backing up the data a month after getting it?
2. Oh my god, you're having an election in Florida?! Why do we insist on trying this!? It doesn't work. Florida should just do old fashioned hay bale chicken fights (two contestants sit on the shoulders of one another and throw hay bales at each other -- aka, a "straw vote" (okay, so I got that from an Asterix & Obelix book...) -- it would be infinitely more fair and entertaining.

And I'll admit I'm curious as to the similarity in last name between the "spokesman" and the "elections supervisor." It makes it sound like they called her at home and her husband fielded the call. But I can't confirm or deny that rumor.

Wishing I had a camera

I happened upon a truck idling outside a deli on my way back from the park today. On the side it said in large type, "Flushing Meats." Now, of course, this is the name of a food purveyor presumably located in Flushing, NY. However, in the days of Soylent Green or Delicatessen, someone might be convinced that this was a specialty sausage eradication service. Or some kind of plumber. Still, wish I had a camera to get that one. Ah well.

Recipe #2

Wow, all the way up to my second recipe. How exciting.

Okay, this is something that I discovered as I opened up my vegetable drawer and found two lonesome red beets. They weren't the hard as a rock kind of beets that I'm used to dealing with (and roasting to great effect), but rather, they had been hiding out in the back of the drawer for a week or two and had developed a bit of softness. This, I suppose, is the key. They were as soft as some potatoes I found lurking in there as well. Add an onion, some pepper, coriander or whatever other spices you'd like (a little rosemary might've been interesting) and you're on your way to making what I'd like to call "Bloody Hash Browns." Basically, chop the beet into smallish chunks and follow by cutting up 2 potatoes of roughly equivalent size to match. Add half the onion (or a whole small one), diced slightly finer than the potatoes. Put a tablespoon of canola or olive oil in a pan and set it to high. Throw in the beets. Add the potatoes. Toss in the onion. Stir to keep from sticking too much. Cover. Stir every 2 or 3 minutes to keep the oil circulated and the various parts of it "browning" properly. Takes about 10 minutes. Add the seasonings and that's about it. The beets add a nice earthy taste to the sweetness of the onion and the relative flavorlessness of the potato. And all of the pieces get that lovely blood red hue from the beet as it meshes with everything, so it looks, well, bloody.

Okay, so it's not haute cuisine. But it could serve as a nice base to put a piece of fish on or something else. I dunno. Go wild. Or ignore this recipe. I can't always have a great cycling adventure -- it was raining like crazy tonight.

The Manchurian Candidate?

I've mostly been giving this movie (and its related hype) a giant miss -- simply because I've seen the original, which is fantastic and still -- today -- holds up almost too well. But, in reading a brief synopsis on a website, I was struck by how completely misnamed the remake is. They've updated the action to the Iraq/Kuwaiti War, it seems...which would make it strange to consider the victim of a brainwashing in the middle east to be a "manchurian" candidate. American geography is woeful enough as is -- and wouldn't it have saved some of the obvious jabs from naysayers to completely update it, name and all and call it something like the Arabian Candidate? Or Kuwaiti Candidate? I guess I'm just splitting hairs, but that's what I do sometimes. It also mentioned that the Liev Schreiber character was "campaigning" to be a VP candidate...last I checked, no one campaigns to be a Vice-President. I'm betting it's a misinterpretation via synopsis. I hate when that happens.

Manhattan Bridge Remixed

I had the opportunity to cross the Manhattan Bridge tonight...and wow, is the new segment amazing! They opened the opposite side to bike-only traffic. It's complete with streetlights, freshly paved and has an easier on and off ramp (either side). I gotta hand it to whomever put that into motion. It's far and away my favorite bridge now. Though, the view from the opposite side isn't nearly as nice.

Found in Translation

I was biking home and saw, for the first time, an ad for Suntory scotch. You may remember (if you saw the movie) that this was the product that Bill Murray was pimping in Lost in Translation. Did the product exist before? Did some perceptive exec at Suntory decide that they had a million dollar commercial running in America non-stop for several months and it was time to parlay that exposure into some cash? Probably. Or is Sofia Coppola just a shill beneath all of the longing glances and ennui?

You make the call...

TV time

I don't watch television very often, but I had the chance on the airplane to catch a bit of the Tour de France...and I have to say...oh my god! What the hell are all of those spectators doing? That's insane! It's hard enough to ride up the mountains at the rate that those guys are doing it, but to have some insane person carrying a 7' flag and wearing a pair of antlers on his head running right next to you...that's not a spectator, it's a freaking landmine! Do people practice for the Tour by riding in rush hour midtown traffic? They ought to! Or flying at 40mph through Chinatown at noon. That would work, too.

Anyway, very impressive that no one was felled by all the well-wishers or attention-seekers or whatever the hell they were.

red sky at night

I haven't been taking many pictures lately. Which has definitely gotten me to a pondering sort of mode. I wonder whether it goes in cycles -- the feeling or need to acquire images. Maybe, when your brain is feeling like it can't remember anything, it compensates with the requisite need for documentation. I know that this is poppycock, of course, because I find that it mostly ends up being an energy distribution issue. When I have lots more time and energy, I find taking pictures to be thoroughly possible. This has been a particularly hard energy time, what with the myriad of deadlines that seem to have cropped up in my world. If I knew they were all going to come during the same 2 months, I would've hibernated much more efficiently earlier. Ah well.

And the downside to biking -- maintenance. If anyone knows a good bike repair class, I am in desperate need of good skill and knowledge. A bike co-op would be a thing of beauty. Maybe that's an "only in San Francisco" arrangement. I changed a flat on my bike and replaced my tire as well and seemed to manage to do it correctly...except that now my bike makes a weird metal-flexing noise. My lack of trust in my own fix-it skill has kept me off my bike for 3 days now, for fear of having my front hub explode and shoot in all directions whilst pitching me headlong into a central nervous trauma ward. I suppose that may be a little dramatic (tuck and roll, screams the inner voices, tuck and roll), but it is definitely a legitimate fear. I will be longer off a bike, too, as I head to the sunny shores of California for an extended remix of days gone by. I will, I feel, miss New York, but moreover, I will miss having a semblance of continuity to my life. I have yet to experience this "settled in" feeling that I had been hearing so much about. I don't think I've made an entire month (or contiguous 4 weeks) without traveling somewhere. How do business travelers do it? It's near driving me to distraction. Or at least small apoplectic conniptions, like tremors or something.

I think I will have all of August to myself, though. And judging from what I've heard, I might have all of NYC all to myself for August, too. Just me and the skeeters.

pink lightning

I do like summer thunderstorms. Yesterday, I rode through a nice NY drizzle in Prospect Park and decided I like that, too. I think growing up in a city that had its fair share of summer/fall thunderstorms and gushing rivulets of draining water dotting the landscape definitely predisposed me to feeling somewhat nostalgic for all of the downpouring that has been transpiring over the past few days. People told me before I moved here that the weather in NY was terrible. Not terrible, Chicago terrible, but terrible, not as good as SF terrible. So far, they have been proven to be prejudiced by their own view of what makes for good weather and what doesn't. I know, I know... there is still August. Looming, like a swear word, over it all. I have heard that August sends men screaming to their deaths. So far, June and July have been rather nice -- June, in fact, was deliriously gorgeous for the most part. I had no idea. I know from previous experiences that September and October have some definite highlights, too. This August thing, though. Well, it's definitely like waiting for a blockbuster sequel to arrive.

Speaking of: Spiderman 2 -- good sequel, as sequels go. And a halfway decent comic book movie, though definitely more on the chin scratching introspective side of things than on the out of control action side of things. It reminded me, strangely, of the curious turn of events diagrammed in Superman 2, wherein Superman decides that he needs to become normal for Lois Lane. I don't know the Spiderman comic book storyline well-enough to know if this thread was pilfered so directly or if -- maybe -- this is just a phase that all superheroes go through. Heck, I even contemplated giving up my superpowers for the love of a good woman. If only I could find one. Or get superpowers to start with. I have a feeling if I were gifted with them, they'd be totally useless ones, like being able to color coordinate or transmogrify metals into Spam or something.

And I read the most amusing thing on someone else's blog the other day -- maybe I'll find the URL again...but, it essentially visually compared Dick Cheney to Dr. Bunson Honeydew (of the Muppet Show)...and they do look surprisingly similar. It might explain a lot of things...like, how GWB looks very similar to Beaker...though, if he spoke like Beaker, I think the world would be in a far better state of things. Pity. Beaker/Honeydew for Prez ticket might be worth something. Hell, all they ever did was blow up Beaker. And Muppets have outstanding regenerative powers. Maybe GWB has confused actual people with Muppets. It wouldn't surprise me -- I think the grasp one has on reality slips in direct relationship to how long one sits in the oval office. There's something about the negative ionization field that the Lectroids from Planet Ten created over it...

Queens?

Yes, Queens. This weekend featured a rollicking bike tour of some of the lesser seen parts of the boroughs -- a jaunt through parts of Brooklyn, such as East Williamsburg (bumpy roads) and Bushwick (really bumpy roads). Featuring a bit of a trip underneath the overhead rail structure above Myrtle avenue. It reminded me a lot of parts of the Mission in San Francisco...if the Mission were covered by a metal canopy and seemed like a tight, claustrophobic closet. Still, wandering about through parts of Bushwick, I had to wonder if this was where people once were thinking that gentrification would be heading I'm thinking that may be the case, but certainly not in the next few years -- neighborhood folks can feel safe in that regard, though, I'm not sure if a little gentrification might not be a bad thing. On this sociological phenomenon, I'm resolutely torn. I understand the need for keeping neighborhoods intact, but adding some needed services (like, say, a grocery store) in some of the outlying streets might not be a bad thing. I'd be happy to hear arguments pro or con in that arena as I'm sure that would make for a lovely and lively discussion.

This particular part of Brooklyn (un-gentrified) abuts the very suburban section of Queens called "Glendale." I'll assume that this is Queens, though, it may also be Brooklyn. The crease in my well-worn map makes it hard to distinguish at times. The stark contrast between the areas is...well, stark. Tree lined streets, perfectly paved roads, steak houses and people wandering the streets with their kids manifest this nestled neighborhood tucked against Forest Park and a cemetery. When people hear Queens, they probably have thoughts of the freeways and desolate dilapidated industry of Long Island City. I've found the other side -- a veritable New Jersey-ian suburb tacked on in complete glory, almost in the geographic center of the borough. Swirling about Forest Park (possibly the most underrated park, perhaps unheard of park? in the city) which features a golf course, greenway (well-paved) and roads that are closed off on weekends, as well as trails, wooded areas, picnicking sections, and even horse trails, this part of Queens indeed surprises. I found myself marveling -- once again -- at the sheer versimilitude of New York City, as it turns from gritty urban blight landscape to everywhere suburbiatown in the blink of a ten minute bike ride. Traversing the opposite end of Forest Park is Kew Gardens, another tony suburb stand-in. Big houses, big lawns, what appears to be the start of a freeway all remind me of sections of West Los Angeles. It's even a bit hilly, as if in a topographical nod to the left coast.

Flowing north from Kew Gardens, is the expansive Flushing Meadows/Corona Park section. This is the area of the legendary USTA pavillion, Shea Stadium, and most notably those little balsa wood-like flying saucers of the old World's Fair structures. I didn't get to explore it too thoroughly, but it's as creepy and leftover futuristic up close as it felt like it was in Men In Black. Additionally, there's a botanical garden in there somewhere, an art museum, and a lot of parkland space for soccer and such. I raced a heron as it glided above a creek. I also managed to get up to the Flushing Bay promenade for a gander at LaGuardia. This is, by far, the smelliest bay in NY that I've encountered. Toxic run-off from the airport, no doubt, does not bode well for any sort of natural preservation.

Swooping back through Queens took me through Jackson Heights (nice paved bike lane, lots of condos and co-ops apparently for sale) and a glimpse at a game of cricket being played on a concrete playground. Again, diversity and New York City seem to run together, particularly when it comes to recreational activities (I spotted a bagpiper earlier in Forest Park). Jackson Heights descends through Woodside (reminiscent of Ravenswood, Chicago area), Sunnyside and back into Long Island City (industrial, industrial, industrial). And back across the Pulaski Bridge into Brooklyn, Greenpoint, Williamsburg(h), Fort Greene, and back home. An enjoyable trip, and another step closer to experiencing the whole of New York before my eyes.

Stupid Bumper Stickers

This will no doubt enrage certain people, but it's my damn blog. So pfft.

I'm sure there are more dumb ones than clever ones out there -- bumper stickers. Yesterday on a bike ride through various parts of Brooklyn (which I would be unable to name, exactly), I followed behind a car that said in bumper sticker format: "The Bible says the Jews own Israel." Now, it seemed to me to be indicative of the level of insane discourse that some 2000+ years past it's possible first incarnation, people still live their lives (create their views) based on...words in a book. What I wouldn't give to go back in time and mistranslate the first edition of this particular froth inducing, crusade fomenting, inquisition inspiring tome and somehow work the eternal worshipping of tapioca pudding and spatulas whilst wearing colanders on one's head into the edition. It might liven up the discussion a bit. And add some levity to the process. Though, then, I suppose everyone would have serious conversations about what exactly the significance of the tapioca is and why not banana pudding with nilla wafers? Why not??

I guess my point was that it's just a bunch of words. And words ain't what they're all cracked up to be. Seems like it might be a useful exercise to use something besides someone else's words (whether you believe them to be god's, dog's, or a talking pog's) to justify your position in the world. There, I said it. Okay, now I can safely go to hell. Good thing in my rewrite, hell is filled with longish, happy, pretty bicycle trails, and plenty of yummy smoothies at the end of the trail. And dancing penguins. There's always a dancing penguin in hell.

Go home

I went back to my "growing up" place over the past weekend and came to the distinct realization that it is technically impossible to return home. Not physically, so much as the wake of memory always will come in stark contrast with the rippling water of the current day. Firstly, memories are always fragments, shards of a distortionary mirror. This means that, though I'm fairly certain that I indeed did go to that birthday party in that large looming apartment building on the hill next to the tunnel, my recollection of it is foggy at best and distorted at worst. And I also experienced the further effect of that distortion over time, by reliving a series of memory chunks at the time when I would pass semi-familiar locales. These are not ordered linearly or even ordered at all. But the memories that did manage to surface were all very crystalline in recollection. Often times, the memory was only a millisecond or two (like the birthday party in the larger building) or longer, like sitting on a porch talking with a friend. Though, mostly the images remain much more cemented and easier to recall. I wonder if sound is harder to recall than image? I imagine that there are studies about this somewhere.

I also realized that I was very glad to leave the home city. It never felt like a fit to me and in returning, I had this imprint further reinforced. Though, I do miss the quirky, odd, safe haven of my childhood home. It was a tan stucco ex-barn building nestled off and inaccessible from the street in the middle of the city. I have never seen a home quite like it and may never see it again.

Trifecta

As is the case with these things, Marlon Brando completed the trio of famous people deaths today. He was 80 and didn't cause the homeless crisis or bring supply side voodoo economics to the world. Instead, he made countless important and dramatic movies. And didn't get upstaged by a monkey named Bonzo.

A moment of silence. Or, just watch On the Waterfront again, in memoriam.

------

Oh, and I hear that the FBI thinks we should be aware of a possible terrorist attack on the fourth of July. If you can discern the difference between it and the other fireworks going off, of course. Why does it strike me as odd that we celebrate our "freedom" by blowing up things, when we seem to be most on edge of things blowing up?

Have an ironic 4th of July!

The Manhattan Bridge

For some odd reason, NYCDOT or whatever organization is responsible for such things, decided that a wrought iron fence was the perfect beautification piece to add to the sidewalk around the Manhattan Bridge. Sure, it looks all right, but it makes actually getting to the Manhattan Bridge bike lane an arduous process of crossing traffic, dodging right hand turning cars and banking 90 degrees to hit a sidewalk ramp. Instead of just waiting for a hole to open up in the traffic pattern and then going for it.

Additionally, they saw fit to remove the "bike ramp" addition that used to adorn the set of stairs that led up to the Manhattan Bridge bike lane. I remarked on several occasions that I seemed to be the only person using it, and mostly out of novelty's sake, rather than any practicality of it. So, needless to say I was beginning to wonder if the Manhattan Bridge bike/pedestrian lanes days were numbered. This misgiving was not dissuaded in any way by the number of scissor lifts (4) that were rolling around, hoisting workmen in the air to hang protective cloths on the edge of the fence that separates the pedestrian lanes from the subway. These fine fellows had the added experience of nearly disemboweling one another while trying to maneuver the scissor lift through a rather tight corner. Fortunately (at the time of squeezing by), no one was maimed. Though, I'm not certain how long that condition might last.

I just wanted to note for the record that I firmly believe that the Manhattan Bridge is one of the finest biking bridges in New York. It covers a smaller stretch (seemingly) of the East River, thus making it a quicker trek. It is almost imperceptibly trafficked -- few pedestrians and cyclists competing for a smaller footprint of space. And it ends in Brooklyn two blocks shy of the Brooklyn Bridge on/off ramp, which makes it almost the same starting point (ending point?). And if you're heading up the east side, it's definitely the way to go. A quick jaunt down Bowery to Allen and then you're on First. Or you can sneak down to the greenway to take a more leisurely and pleasant route. Plus, the view isn't half bad, though I think there are other bridges with better views.

In any case, I would be quite saddened to learn that this thoroughfare might be closed in the future -- that was what it seemed like the workers might've been preparing to unleash. I might have to learn to build a raft and float across.