So many Boston Fashion Files!!!!!!

Well, this one isn’t technically a Boston one, rather more of a New England one, since these photos are from Vermont.

On Saturday it was 60 degrees in Stowe.  I still wore my normal skiing gear, minus the eight layers of cold protection.  Other people had other ideas.  Really interesting ones.

I saw a guy dressed as a bear with his chest exposed.  Another guy was skiing in the smallest pair of booty cutters I’ve seen this side of a Hooters.  Unfortunately I didn’t get a photo of the young man in the small pants.  You’ll have to use your imagination for that one.

Why the weird attire?  It was 80s weekend at Stowe, where people wore neon, spandex and looked the way I imagined skiers looking when I was a kid.  I mean that’s how they looked when I was a kid, but I was a kid so I thought neon wearing skiers were normal or whatever.  That sentence doesn’t make sense, does it??

Who cares??  Onward to the photos!!!!!

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Since I started going skiing, I’ve tried to convince friends to go with me.  I’ve had a few people go with me but that’s tapered off.  Now that my skiing skills are higher than they used to be, I’m out there alone most of the time.  I mean the mountain of course keeps me company, but I’m there alone, which actually suits me just fine.  Most of the time….

Being there alone affords the chance to go silent for the day mostly, which is a thing I love.  I’m famous for my capacity for constant, excited loud talking and here I am extolling the virtues of going silent.  But I like that in skiing, the silent aspect of it, the wind howling in your ears, the sound of snow under your skis.  Ok, ok, ok stop that already.

Of course being alone also gives me the opportunity to do a lot of people watching.  The people at the resorts are super friendly, so most of the time I sit, mixed in with other people quietly eating my midday break meal, listening to their conversations.

I’ve always loved listening to other people’s conversations.  Long ago, as a kid in elementary school, our school decided to teach us creative writing.  I’m not exactly sure why, but we had classes in creative writing and one of the teachers told us to listen to other people’s conversations I guess for creativity.  I’m not exactly sure why.

Ever since then, I’ve always done that.  I try to be subtle about it.  Listening to people’s conversations does give you a lot of clues as to where you are and what kind of people are around you.  I went to Stowe this past Saturday.  Stowe is known as this kind of chi chi Vail type of skiing place.  It kind of is, when you consider the price of the average meal over there tops out at $15 and I’m talking standard lodge fair.  Nothing fancy.  I sat in the ski lodge eating my $10 bowl of soup next to two middle aged married couples.  They were discussing the ski trips of their mutual friends, a trip taken by one of the children to the Bahamas and the drug addiction of a mutual friend.  It was an interesting mix of topics.  No, I didn’t actually record them.

Ski season is soon drawing to a close through Mother Nature’s handy work.  Let’s enjoy some views before it all melts down:

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Boston has been taking on a sort of an abyss quality lately.  I’m not exactly sure why.  Maybe its the crazy weather, maybe the world is ending.  Either way, it makes for some really great photos:

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The light and the shadows line up so perfectly sometimes in downtown.  I’ve posted hundreds of these kinds of photos over the six years I’ve worked in downtown and I bet they look similar.

The people always look like zombies walking silently with the kind of rhythm to them, walking towards some kind of abyss when in fact they are just regular people like me walking to work.  Downtown never ceased to amaze:

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As an aside, I’d like to take this moment to thank mother nature for taking a colossal dump all over ski season.

Let’s enjoy the fun before the heatwave starts.  Next week.

Flakes of snow.  Giant flakes of snow.

Boom baby:

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The public school students of Boston walked out of their classrooms and took to the streets protesting budget cuts.  I guess I should say the DTX is full of that kind of thing and it is, but the protest showed something that I’ve always admired in people — the need to stand up and fight for or take the rights that you see are yours.

On a side note, I now know what it is like to be pushed around by an angry mob.  Just another day in the DTX though:

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During my sojourn in upstate New York, I had several feelings of deja-vu.  First, we drove by where I went to college in Albany, a place I never went back to again after I graduated.  Then we drove by SUNY Geneseo, where a bunch of my friends went back in the dark ages before blogs, digital cameras, Snap Chat and electricity.  Just kidding about that last one.

On my trip, I also visited Fort Niagara, a completely beautiful military type thing on the water near Niagara Falls.  I walked around, happily exploring and had the strangest feeling I had been there before.  Low and behold, I had.  At age five.  Sometimes our intuitions turn out to be correct.  Hmmm….

Let’s celebrate with some photos:

By some twist of fate, I have a job where I am a professional museum goer.  Yes, it is an interesting line of work and description of a job.  I do not evaluate the museums per se.  I just go to a lot of them.

People write off museums a lot of the for being boring, but nowadays they have to compete against smartphones and things like Candy Crush — what is that I still have yet to figure out, not to mention Instagrams full of semi-nude selfies and artfully composed shots of people’s macaroons, so museums have a sort of an uphill battle in that department.  They gotta make stuff interesting or that person is going back to their Instagram patrolling.

I gotta give the Corning Glass Museum that I visited last weekend credit for its interestingness (that is a word, isn’t it?)  Sure there was a display of Corning wear, but also a ton of interesting glass sculptures and fun, interactive displays about how glass is made.

This professional museum goer likes your museum, Corning Museum of Glass:

I shot out of the window of a van.  Thank me later:

Well, as usual, when I take a trip, I photograph the souvenirs people sell in the place I visit.

Niagara Falls offered, some well, how do I put this, um, interesting souvenirs to be had.

Shield your eyes church ladies of the world.  Oh and a Buffalo puns, a coming: