an epochal achievement, I believe this may be the culminating accomplishment of years of painstaking programming skills, scientific inquiry, and dare I say it an epochal achievement for humanity?
judge for yourself.
p.s. let me know if you can beat a 340.
Aaron, our architect-in-residence here at Ish, writes:
I went down to see the new AIA New York chapter building when it opened to the public this morning since it's on my walk to work. Maybe you'll to see it soon if you haven't already, although it's quite unlikely to be published in anything beyond AIA's own publications.
Personally, I am pretty depressed about it. Not that I would particularly look to the AIA for leadership in, let's say, the field of architecture -- it's just that this time there are clearly no excuses for a carefully constructed mediocrity. Maybe the architect or the AIA (in a nice reversal of roles as client) would complain that the budget was limited. I think that's what i heard. But clearly money was generously sunk into some aspects of it, such as the high-end light fixtures, some of the storefront details, and if the budget had a limit that constrained the design, it makes even less sense that money was poured into those things.
Aaron wrote in with another New York story:
So I'm walking to work up sixth avenue today, and there's a small crowd gathered around the intersection of sixth and Christopher street with a fire truck, ambulance, two police cars, and nearby NYPD waving the traffic past the site. I stopped to look, a little apprehensively since the scene was oddly quiet. What some minutes before had been a car was now burning metal crushed around street light pole. The front end was wrapped clear around the pole from the impact, and the front windshield was sprayed across the street in bloody chunks. Grey smoke drifted from what remained of the car.I had the opposite happen to me when I worked in East Harlem. I used to see camera crews up there frequently, shooting for "New York Undercover". I was walking down 110th Street and saw they were shooting another scene -- guy up against the wall, cops frisking him, a cop across the street with her gun drawn but hidden behind her leg. Then I realized -- where the hell are the cameras? That's when I decided I should perhaps move on. Quickly.
I was struck by how the angle of impact was completely wrong. Christopher Street is one way, this car was heading the other direction and had hit the pole at an extreme speed. What the hell had happened? But then I also notice something equally unbelievable -- there were two very bloody bodies lying on the street, and the EMS people were standing around them just chatting. Just like that, chatting like they were discussing Yankees box scores. Unbelievable. Nobody was lifting a finger to help the two people on the ground. I was thinking to myself, geez could people around here be any more callous?
I was getting more and more indignant about the situation. Then one of the bodies on the ground lifts himself up on an elbow, and one of the EMS medics pops a cigarette into his mouth and lights it for him. The bloody body takes a long drag and then thanks the medic. A guy with a film camera walks over and says "hey nice work guys" and the bodies stand up and dust themselves off. And I'm thinking then, don't they have a law around here about giving people heart attacks?
Aaron writes:
Okay, now we all know that celebrity sightings here in manhattan are a dime a dozen and not generally worth getting excited about but this is an exception. I was thinking that the high point of my brush with fame on friday would have been holding the door open for Gwennie Paltrow at my local coffee shop, and since she was a little rude I considered letting the door slam on the (admittedly world-class) Paltrow-heinie.
But -- late that night I was hanging out with some friends at Chumley's, a former speak-easy in the west village, when this curly haired old english dude sat down next to me with two of his friends. I was kind of thinking the guy must be Sammy Hagar or something, because he had this artiste-rock-star aura. So I started chatting with him a bit, something along the lines of recommending the burgers or the shepherds pie, and we started talking about the struggles that artists go through or something along those lines. He went into a long discussion of how important it is to love your work, to really look forward to it at the beginning of the day and all that sort of thing. It was a little bit cliche but the guy was entertaining enough that I was pitching in too. To emphasize the point he toasted to our whole table "so here's to the best thing in the world --- to wake up bright and early and be given a chance to fuck everything up in an entirely new and different way."
So we swapped blackout stories, he and his friends got up, shook our hands, and said goodbye see ya round mates.
The waitress comes up to me totally breathlessly with "ohmygod how do you know Robert Plant?" Not being savvy or fast or sober enough to say "well if you're lucky darling one day I'll introduce you," I smoothly replied instead with a "huh?" (or maybe it was "wha..?") and looked around to see the guy leave and you know what she was right. Holy cats! I was drinkin' frosties with Robert Plant and didn't even know it!
Thank god I didn't say I thought he was Sammy Hagar.
| Greenwich Village | New York City | Robert Plant
Here are the photos of my college roommate Johnny Liew's BMW. Parked it a block away from the WTC. This is something we are laughing about at this point. Actually, he told me that it took a couple of days for him to laugh about it but that I understand.
| Cars | Ground Zero | New York City
