STL DPB ON THE ROAD - LA GUARDIA AIRPORT AND A RARE VIDEO

I've been flying through New York's La Guardia airport since I started college in St. Louis in 1967. It used to be a dump (https://tinyurl.com/mvbs69fh). Over the last several years it has been transformed with new, flashy terminals. It is much more spacious and the amenities are better, but one glowing store after restaurant after bar packed next to one another make them almost indistinguishable. Terminal B with our usual airline, American, has this waterfall-cum-light show. The display seemed to form letters going by too fast to read, but I think it has something to do with the World Cup.                     

STL DPB ON THE ROAD - THE TRIP THAT WENT WRONG

 

So, okay, Mrs. C and I were going to have a long weekend in my much-loved home town. Some good dinners, theater, a special art show, maybe some touristy stuff. As mentioned, hot new restaurant on Thursday, the first night. Food poisoning, up much of the night with bi-directional GI eruptions. Exhausted, in bed asleep most of Friday. Managed to get out to dinner Friday to a favorite place and couldn’t finish an appetizer. We had theater tickets Saturday and did get out to a very funny show called The Play That Went Wrong, although I wasn’t always following it well.  Dinner at a little Italian place, where I made it into the second course before giving up.

Then things got worse. Our flight home Sunday wasn’t until 6 so we got to the Metropolitan Museum for the show we wanted to see. It was raining when we went to La Guardia and, as the day ended, a heavy fog settled over the airport. Close to half of the AA flights were canceled, including ours. Got online looking for alternatives. No non-stop seats the next day. Got an airport hotel and booked us through Chicago with a 5.5 hour layover. But La Guardia had high winds Tuesday morning and only one runway was in use. We sat on a taxiway for more than an hour before leaving on a two hour flight. Few seats had been available, so 6’ 3”/ 190 cm me was stuck in a middle seat for 3+ hours. When we got to Chicago our STL flight was running 90 minutes late just because. It turned out to be 3.5 hours late, with a change of aircraft because there was a pressure leak in a cockpit window of the original plane.  

So we got home 30 hours late, but we’re here. First world problems, right?                          

WHY WE CAME HERE

Mrs. C and I subscribe to the digital edition of the New York Times. One morning in early January she read an article and passed it to me, https://tinyurl.com/4s5amvuy (I hope it’s not behind a paywall). "Ï’d really like to see that!” she told me. I asked her what she had on in the middle of February. Nothing special, so I opened my laptop and here we are.

Armia Khalil is an Egyptian immigrant, a sculptor and a guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for 13 years. How he became acquainted with a Met curator who took an interest in his work and ended up placing this in a current exhibition is much too long a story for here. I commend the Times article to you. The sculpture is titled “Hope — I Am a Morning Scarab.” The scarab beetle was a symbol of hope for the ancient Egyptians and one appears on the top of the head.  

Other than that, I still can’t eat much and am pretty weak thanks to Thursday’s restaurant. La Guardia Airport was socked with fog yesterday and our flight was canceled. We’ll get home today through inconvenient routes and times, but we’ll get there.              

STL DPB ON THE ROAD - OUTREACH

 

This has turned out to be a disappointing visit to my favorite place in the world for street photography due to Thursday night’s restaurant disaster. Still, there are opportunities. We saw this on 42nd Street, under the viaduct where Park Avenue goes up and around Grand Central Terminal. The person was still there when we came back the other way a couple of hours later. Sadly common in America and likely to get worse.              

STL DPB ON THE ROAD - TAXI!

 

Yesterday was the rare day with no post. On Thursday night, we went out to a hot new restaurant, shown in Friday’s post. I got food poisoning. Bad. Up much of the night blowing stuff out of both ends. In bed asleep most of yesterday but better today, fortunately. Really blew a hole in a three day trip. This was the scene as we exited Grand Central Terminal onto 42nd Street after the infamous meal.                

STL DPB ON THE ROAD - DINNER IN MANHATTAN

 

Well, we’re back in the place I love the best and like to pay for the least. We just got here and so many images! We went to dinner at a new restaurant in Grand Central Terminal, the Grand Brasserie. I thought it might resemble Le Train Bleu at the Gare d’ Ést in Paris. No. A lot louder. This is NYC. The food was pretty good, at New York prices.           

CITY DAILY PHOTO JANUARY THEME - PICTURE OF THE YEAR

 

New Year’s Day, and time for City Daily Photo members to give us their best shot, so to speak. This isn’t St. Louis but it is my home town, so that’s good enough. Taken from a taxi window somewhere in midtown Manhattan last summer in the haze of late afternoon. It’s a real piece of New York. Will you dine with me? 

City Daily members from around the world show us their very best stuff today  https://citydailyphoto.org/category/theme-days/ .                

LIBERTY

 

I usually consider myself an even-tempered guy, getting through the ups and downs of life pretty smoothly. However, I can’t remember when I last felt as depressed as I have been the last couple of days. No motivation to go out and photograph something so I pulled out this image, taken earlier this year. It’s a iPhone shot using the TinType app.                

STL DPB IN NEW YORK - CHRYSLER BUILDING

 

One of my favorite pieces of American architecture, the Art Deco crown of the Chrysler Building. It was briefly the world’s tallest building until the Empire State surpassed it. Hard to believe it is 94 years old. The Wikipedia article suggests it isn’t doing so well.   

Oh, and in today’s New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/12/realestate/chrysler-building-manhattan.html           

STL DPB IN NEW YORK - INFINITE REGRESSION

 

Back at The Summit, the all-mirrored observation areas on the 91st to 93rd floors of One Vanderbilt, the newish mega-tall structure that blocks the afternoon light on the western side of Grand Central Station. The 92nd floor is something of a mezzanine, not reaching to the broad southern windows and overlooking the full-size floor below. The eastern and western side of the 92nd have mirrored circular tubes through the floor, with mirrors above, below and beside. As if there wasn’t enough vertigo.                       

STL DPB IN NEW YORK - ANOTHER PRETTY BUG

 

Another from the Butterfly Vivarium at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. The inhabitants can have a sense of drama.                   

STL DPB IN NEW YORK - STREET FOOD

 

Street photography in Manhattan. Food carts like these are ubiquitous and they have quite a varied menu. There is a trailer hitch on one side to tow them in and out. No nutrition labels.               

STL DPB IN NEW YORK - MADELEINE MONDAY

 

 She does. 42nd Street and Second Avenue. 

STL DPB IN NEW YORK - YOUR MOMENT OF ZEN

 

It seems like a hallucination. Maybe it is. A shipping container had been pulled into Luna Park in Coney Island. The doors were opened and workers threw a mountain of large plush dogs, wrapped in plastic bags, onto the pavement. Ellie calls them stuffies (she has her own mountain of them) and wanted one so badly. Won’t fit in the suitcases, kid.             

STL DPB IN NEW YORK - SCREAMIN’ EAGLE

 

One of Ellie’s favorite rides at Coney Island, which she went on over and over. This photo can only offer a hint at the high speed loops and curls to come after this spiral ascent. She thought it was great fun, in part because she is 64 years younger than me.               

STL DPB IN NEW YORK - NATHAN'S

 

On Tuesday, we took granddaughter Ellie to Coney Island, on the Atlantic shore of Brooklyn. (There is no island in sight.) It is home to a string of amusement areas that have been around since the early 20th Century. I loved our rare family visits when I was a kid. Ellie went on the wildest rides over and over, things that would twist my stomach and spine.

Coney Island is also home to another American institution, Nathan’s hot dogs. On the Fourth of July, our Independence Day, Nathan’s has a hot dog eating contest. How many sausages and buns can you cram down your throat in 10 minutes? It’s on national TV and is a bizarre spectacle. The men’s winner put away 54, which was nowhere near the record.  See https://tinyurl.com/587rxebs             

STL DPB IN NEW YORK - I’M FOREVER BLOWING BUBBLES

 

One of the spaces at The Summit, I think on the 92nd floor, is full of silver mylar balloons that - quite literally - reflect the mirrored interior surfaces. Blowers around the edges push them up to the cieling. Then they slowly, randomly settle. If I was younger, I’d think it was pretty trippy.             

STL DPB IN NEW YORK - KID HEAVEN

Elie had quite the day.  It started at the observation floors ot The Summit, one of New York’s mega-tall buildings, towering over Grand Central Terminal, more about which soon. Next stop was the Museum of Ice Cream in Soho, which she thought was as close to paradise as she was going to get. It’s all the sugar you can consume, and she made a mighty effort. This is one of the final rooms, sort of a ball pit but made up as candy sprinkles. She said she had a dream of doing something like this.             

STL DPB IN NEW YORK - MADELEINE MONDAY

Mandatory kid stop in NYC, F. A. O. Schwarz toy store, perhaps the most famous in the world. The doorpeople are made up like toy soldiers. Everybody who works there is VERY kid-friendly and engaging, which no doubt helps sales. Good thing for them, since the rent in Rockefeller Center is pretty high. Ellie made off with some cute souvenirs that only moderately dinged my credit card.              

BACK AGAIN

 

Returning once again to my home town, this time with Mrs. C and granddaughter Ellie. This is one of the many entrances to the Times Square subway station. Ellie liked the subway but not being out on these streets. She said it felt crowded, loud, confusing and a little scary. Welcome to New  York, kid.