Quick post here, as I’ve got to get up at 4:30 tomorrow morning for a flight to Seattle for work.

Last weekend I audio toured lower Manhattan:

Sandy recovery work is still underway down there:

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25 years ago, I used to mess around with rudimentary music composition software on my family’s Atari 800 XL computer. I don’t remember what the software was called, but basically it allowed me to plug notes onto a musical staff. I remember using it to work on a song — for weeks and weeks I slaved away, and after all that work, I had come up with nothing but an unimpressive, one-dimensional midi file.

Things are different today. You can download a few apps and tinker about on an iPad for a few hours, and — voila, you can compose a fairly interesting chunk of music. This is what I’ve been up to over the past few days. I’ve been using Addictive Synth to produce basic sound structures — the app enables endless manipulation of sonic components (note all the knobs).

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Busy week; I just started a new job that had me down for a training meeting in Atlanta. Well, not Atlanta, but whatever you call the amalgamation of hotels, restaurants, and convention centers around the airport. I’ve been reading a few books by contemporary urbanists that describe the shift towards development around airports — we always build cities around transportation hubs, and airports today play the role that marine ports played in previous centuries. What you see sprouting up around the Atlanta airport is not sustainable and depends on cars. I’d be curious to see an example of high-density, walkable mixed-use development around an airport. There is the noise issue, however…hm. A broader question: how long will airports be the primary transportation hub — what will replace them? Continue reading →

I was walking back from breakfast just now when a grizzled, non-sober old fellow, maybe 80 years old, smiled at me broadly, pointed at my jacket and then at his, and said “they’re the same.”  The jackets are vaguely similar — well, they’re both black. He reached out to shake my hand and I told him “we’re twins!”  (I am an old man at heart.)  He kept hold of my hand and suddenly started dancing with me, doing a sort of twirl around me. This just lasted a couple of seconds, and then he gave me a salute and we were both on our way.

I went on good long walk through the city on this grey and misty autumn day, and here’s what I encountered:

• South along the High Line: thousands of slow-walking tourists stopping and puzzling over fold-out maps. Autumn leaves, autumn smells. A few stray patches of residual snow from the recent nor’easter.
• South from there along Greenwich St: cobblestone streets, beautiful architecture.
• Hudson Square area: I’ve heard a bit about new commercial real estate projects here. It has a feel of things to come — construction and billboards with marketing messages from realtors. At this point, it’s not a very interesting place to walk through.
• East to Soho: I stopped off at Souen, a restaurant that describes itself as “organic and macrobiotic” and consumed an insanely healthy lunch: sautéed brussel sprouts with peanut sauce (topped with walnuts), and wakame soup. Continue reading →

The other evening, a nor’easter bore down upon NYC with sudden sleety volleys of wet snow. I decided to visit my neighborhood diner to take in the view from a warm place with big windows. I joined a group of local folk at the bar, some of whom I’d seen in there before, and we traded Sandy tales. Continue reading →

I wasn’t able to pick up my mail last week; my local post office branch was closed with no power. Fortunately when I stopped by there on Monday this week, my voter registration card had arrived — right down to the wire!

Along with it, I received a “Voter Report Card” from the League of Conservation Voters. Although I definitely *have* voted in all general elections for the past twenty years (just not here in NYC), I still found myself immediately feeling self-conscious, standing there in the post office with this indicting report.

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I went to a neighborhood barbershop this afternoon to get a haircut. The barber quickly intuited that I was a new customer, and as he got started, he asked me, in a strong Russian accent, about other places I had gone to get a haircut. Do they offer an online appointment system? He was curious because he had just launched this service for his shop. “Did you receive a confirmation email?” he asked me intently. I told him yes, I did. “And did it provide the correct time?” he asked. I said that it had. Apparently other customers have had issues; the recent daylight savings time changeover has caused a bit of a bug. He interrupted the haircut to call someone to complain about this, in Russian. Continue reading →

Walking through the East Village and Alphabet City today, I spotted a-frame signage sporting a variety of post-Sandy messages. Here are a few examples.

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Just returned home and all is well. Sounds like power was restored to my neighborhood right after I left on Friday. 

As I traveled through New Jersey on the Bolt Bus this afternoon, I saw an incredibly long line of vehicles at a gas station. And I wasn’t able to take the subway to my area from 34th St — looks like my local subway stations (14th st, 8th st) are still closed.

Other than that, what I encountered in my trip home today looked basically like it did before. It was good to see my neighborhood businesses with their lights on again, and the typical evening bustle of folks here.