Sunday, December 28, 2014

432 Park Avenue: Harry Macklowe flips off New York City

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432 Park Avenue (center in the photo above) claims the title of tallest residential building in the Western Hemisphere, and second tallest...
Wednesday, December 24, 2014

Lionel Train layout, New York City Transit Museum Annex, Grand Central Terminal 2014

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Every year from late November to early January there's an elaborate Lionel Train layout set up in the gallery space of the New York Ci...
Tuesday, December 23, 2014

Adeste Fideles ("O Come All Ye Faithful"), by Bing Crosby

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I first heard Adeste Fideles on my parents' phonograph, sung by Bing Crosby on the album the cover of which is pictured above. I was s...
Sunday, December 07, 2014

"The Plunge": Coney Island Brewing's winter seasonal.

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The Coney Island Brewing Company's winter seasonal offering is called "The Plunge", after the Polar Bear Club's winter...
Saturday, November 29, 2014

Give vs. gift: is the battle lost?

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When I saw this sign on Madison Avenue in midtown Manhattan, I was mightily discouraged. If you've been reading this blog for a while,...
Sunday, November 23, 2014

Cavalleria Rusticana in Brooklyn Heights

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My wife and I attended Saturday evening's performance of Pietro Mascagni's one act opera Cavalleria Rusticana at St. Ann and the ...
Thursday, November 20, 2014

Tom Rush in concert at First Unitarian Church, Brooklyn, presented by First Acoustics.

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Tom Rush is a singer whose art I've held especially dear. I first heard him in the spring of 1968, on the back half of my first year a...
Thursday, November 06, 2014

Sure 'n' begorrah, I'm more Irish than anything!

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And maybe a bit Spanish, too. Not at all what I was expecting when, at my wife's urging, I sent a sample of my saliva to the lab at ...
Sunday, October 19, 2014

Tampa's streetcars.

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On my way to the American Victory Museum I saw one of Tampa's streetcars (photo above). I was going on foot from the Riverwalk acro...
Saturday, October 18, 2014

iPod log: Brooklyn Heights; Brooklyn Bridge Park; Fulton Ferry; DUMBO; Cadman Plaza Park

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Haven't done one of these since January . The idea is: I take a walk, usually around my neighborhood, Brooklyn Heights, as well as throu...
Friday, October 17, 2014

So, baseball fans, it's down to this...

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...the Giants against the Royals in the World Series. Royals vs.  Giants; it has an almost legendary sound to it. It's not the Series ...
Saturday, October 11, 2014

The Tampa Bay Hotel, H.B. Plant, and Kate Jackson

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If you aren't familiar with Tampa, you might think this photo was taken somewhere in the Middle East or North Africa. It's the mai...
Saturday, October 04, 2014

An all-avian Series? It could be in the cards...

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...if the Cards keep winning--they're one up on the Dodgers in their NLDS as I write this, with game two tonight--and the Orioles, who...

Big dinos! Spinosaurus and Dreadnaughtus.

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When I first saw an image of Spinosaurus aegyptiacus  sometime way back when I was a kid crazy about dinosaurs--the image had no caption i...
Sunday, September 28, 2014

Mets finish second!

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Yes, only in a division as bad as this year's NL East could a team ending the season five games under .500 earn a second place finis...
Friday, September 26, 2014

Postscript to Picasso story: a bittersweet conclusion.

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Back in February I posted about a threat to La Tricorne  (image above), a Picasso curtain that has hung for over 55 years in the Four Sea...
Monday, September 22, 2014

Jo Stafford, "Autumn in New York."

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Jo Stafford was one of my parents' favorite singers. They owned several 78 RPM records of her songs, one of which was "Autumn in N...
Sunday, September 21, 2014

The American Victory floating museum in Tampa.

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American Victory is one of three surviving examples of the "victory" class of cargo ships built near the end of World War Two ...