subway

A second first

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Wait, who is this?:

OK, another chance to show my complete and total self absorption and vanity by posting a glamorous photo of myself. Well, and it also gives me a chance to introduce the newest member of my arsenal, the Canon Digital XSI. I have decided that in the 5 days I’ve had this camera that it is the greatest camera, SLR, digital or not ever invented in the history of the world. Or something.

But anyway, you, my viewing public can decide if the recent production from my new acquisition are good. Or not. Here goes:

In this picture above, this guy noticed I was taking his picture and decided not to run away. Believe me, after 10+ years of taking pictures, this is huge. More? OK:

I love these beams in the subway and I always try to photograph them. Usually looks like a blurry mess. I kind of like this photo. I’m not in love with it.

These however I do like, though they are from my usual bag of tricks. Boy, I do love the time exposure:

Time exposure of Grand Central, that is:

These were shot as 6 second exposures. The lens only goes to 22, so any exposures shot at a exposure time above 6 were blown out. Darn.

I took this shot:

And thought of all of my times, sitting in Sweden, watching Gossip Girl, homesick. I am indeed a weird creature.

I saw this and loved how the people looked, with the little coming in through the back:

Smith’s Bar:

To me, this had this kind of movie made in 2008 about the 1940’s production design model kind of thing going for it. Except it was the real place.

To close it out, some random people in Times’ Square:

Check out the slack jawed expression of the guy to the extreme left.

An edgy cafe in Central Stockholm

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Look at these hipsters at this edgy Stockholm cafe:

Wait, something is a little different about this cafe. Actually, there is a lot different.

Baby carrots? BABY CARROTS? I’m from America, Stockholm McDonalds employees with your perfect English. We’re lucky they don’t give us a deep fried block of fat with our meal. Oh, wait, the fries. My Swedish Big Mac, tasted like the Big Mac I had a couple of weeks ago in South Street Seaport, but the carrots, were, kind of, um, unbelievable. And, I got a Ramlosa to drink with it, aka a spring water.

The Golden Arches, there where you need them.

Of course, there is always the suck nearby:

But this I thought just looked really Swedish. Or, as my friend put it “yeah, Europe.” Yeah, I guess it is Europe, after all.

My detente with the NYC subway

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Call it my Ostpolitik with the subway. I no longer want to fly into a rage when I enter the thing. I do not hate the people on the subway. They experience all the same joys along with me, but somehow I’ve managed to get over it.

I no longer find this kind of thing confusing:

Where are we? What station is this? Where is the train coming from? Is this an uptown or a downtown train? I got to where I needed to be, so my rage subsided, a little.

For every good ride, there is always the interior of the subway. Check out this slice of the city so nice, they named it twice:

Absolutely disgusting. This is actually the platform for the next train to Hades:

And believe me, it smelled just as good as it looked. This is actually these are the passageways to the train to Hades:

But, here’s where my detente, ostpolitik comes in:

Yes, ladies and gentlemen your eyes do not deceive you. Color. In this vast gray expanse. Color! You have to get people used to these things, so you can’t just splash tons of color at people, but those do appear to actually be colors.

This next little photo series involves no color, but is really clever. This reminds me a little of the Borf character who was wandering Washington, injecting life and personality into that dried up expanse of boredom. Here is some Borf. Alas, I did not take this picture:

But I took these and they are this daily reminder of the drudgery of going to work. You have to look in the upper left hand corner to see the signs on the beams:

Someone else has a sense of humor on the subway:

Ok, subway, you don’t drive me into a rage anymore. But I don’t now and will never love you.

This was just super sweet.

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No, this is not a girl in a costume. She’s a Mennonite, a religious sect that is similar to the Amish, except they seem to be a little more liberal. The Amish avoid technology, but I’ve seen Mennonites at the Air and Space museum in Washington. My guess is that they take a little bit of a liberal view on things.

But this has to be super liberal if this is where this girl is performing:

And handing out literature here:

and here:

Here are some more photos of the girls:

Here’s them in a group:

Here are some views of them with the jaded New Yorkers walking by:

I could have thought “oh, look at their dresses, they are so unflattering” or “ah, globalization, look at it here,” but that would be stupid. I just looked at this and thought — this is super sweet. These people are trying to spread the word of god in Times Square and you have to admire that.
They are putting themselves out there for what they believe and I think that is something a lot of people could or would do.

Now for the sarcastic part of the entry. They have to endure being in the Times Square subway station, place of unbelievable array of smells, all of them terrible. Not to mention people who are kind of agitated because the bastard subway system didn’t get them where they needed to go. By this I mean delivering them to 14th street when they wanted to go 125. Ok, rant over.

There was a bearded man, dressed very simply also, who was kind of the leader of this group. He said he’d lived in New York in the 1960s for two years. Because Mennonites are pacifists, they do not go to war, so he came to live in New York to work at NYU Medical Center. Just as an aside, I’ve met people all over the place who say they lived in New York for a time. If I ever go to Mongolia, I bet I’ll find a goat herder who will say he lived in New York for a year.