On the Island Where I Was Born

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A long day in Manhattan, that unique island where I arrived into the world, with my wife, my nephew Michael and the incomparable Ming the Merciless of NYC City Daily Photoblog. We started the day at South Street Seaport for a half-hour boat tour of the New York City Waterfalls Project, more about which later.

Then a hike past City Hall and the NYC Municipal Building into Chinatown for dim sum brunch at the huge, crazy and delicious Jing Fong Restaurant. More walking up Mulberry Street into through Little Italy, NoLiTa, SoHo and into the East Village. We walked through the Union Square Greenmarket where we met Joseph Ades, pictured above, who sits at the northwest corner of the square selling stainless steel, Swiss-made vegetable peelers. This English gentlemen slices and dices with more aplomb than Ron Popeil could ever manage. He's a New York institution.

From there we took the subway uptown to Central Park after visiting the Apple Cube at 59th Street and Fifth Avenue. The striking entrance leads to a cavernous underground store. The young man in the second photo, standing outside the entrance, may be examining his new iPhone. The group trekked through the park to Bethesda Fountain and on to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where we nearly collapsed with exhaustion. It was a wonderful day plunging back into the places I loved as a boy and adolescent. Ming could not have been more generous with his time.

TOMORROW: One last picture from New York - the other side