One on 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.
If I can make it there, I'll make it anywhere
It's up to you, New York, New York
I want to wake up in a city that never sleeps
And find I'm A Number One, top of the list
King of the hill, A Number One.
Nice to be back in my home town, particularly with granddaughter Ellie, who is having a blast. She thinks she is almost a subway riding expert because she can stand in a moving car without holding the pole (mostly). Still needs some guidance about where to go. I was riding the subway by myself at 12 or 13. It was normal.
This is the view to the south from the 91st floor observation area at The Summit, the newish super-tall building over Grand Central Station.
Sunday evening's patio party included entertainment from three members of the music ensemble Moon Valley, https://moonvalleymusic.net/ . Founder and native Scotsman Gavin Duffy plays guitar, mandolin and sings the many songs he has written. Two other members of the group joined him, whom we will soon see. I'll run with this for a bit. Back in New York Saturday with our granddaughter, so more Big Apple images but from a kid's eye view.
We might set a record high temperature for the date today. What else is new.
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.
The family arrives in New York this afternoon and Ellie is pumped. This is a picture I took two years ago at the observation floor of The Summit, one of the city’s newer mega-tall towers, this one next to Grand Central Station. The special thing is that the walls, floors and ceilings are all mirrored. You have to wear special booties over your shoes so you don’t scratch the floor. We are booked for a visit on Monday.
We’ll be a little low on material until we get to New York on Saturday but this will do for now.
Sunday evening's patio party included entertainment from three members of the music ensemble Moon Valley, https://moonvalleymusic.net/ . Founder and native Scotsman Gavin Duffy plays guitar, mandolin and sings the many songs he has written. Two other members of the group joined him, whom we will soon see. I'll run with this for a bit. Back in New York Saturday with our granddaughter, so more Big Apple images but from a kid's eye view.
We might set a record high temperature for the date today. What else is new.
Sunday evening get-together, pot luck dinner and chance to meet interesting people at the home of our friends, Lohr and Carrie, the moving force behind our Artica festival, https://articastl.com/ . I do some images for them. https://tinyurl.com/yc7fn7aj . The musicians, part of a group called Moon Valley, were wonderful. More about them to come.
The same fake ruins and fountain in Tower Grove Park, seen from across the pond. One of the things I like about this place is the feeling of calm and quiet, unless a festival being held there. Much in contrast to its bigger and better-known competitor, Forest Park, which can be just packed.
An odd feature in Tower Grove Park: there is an area of fake ruins beside a pond, sort of a Romantic fantasy dropped down in the Midwest. It’s not like the park is set on a foggy moor. This was built in the 19th Century and seems pretty strange today. Still, people like it. You often see wedding parties being photographed here.
It’s not like anyone here needs a news bulletin that summer has arrived. No need to rehash the common complaints about the heat. I’ll just say that I didn’t spend a lot of time out of my car when I visited Tower Grove Park. I gave this picture a bit of an old color postcard look, thinging about what used to be normal.
The equestrians are back. Run the horse around the ring, stretch a rope across a radius and, well, let it fly. This is hard for me to understand. How do you train for it? How do you accommodate mistakes?
I really need to get back out on the street and find some new material. However, as you may have heard, the northeastern quarter of the U.S. is in the oven this week. Maybe there is something interesting indoors.
There is another circus organization in St. Louis. Circus Harmony has trained children and teens to perform gymnastics and circus acts, with performances around the world. One of the things they learn is reliance on their teammates. This may be what they call a leap of faith.
There is another circus organization in St. Louis. Circus Harmony has trained children and teens to perform gymnastics and circus acts, with performances around the world. One of the things they learn is reliance on their teammates. This may be what they call a leap of faith.
I’m at least mildly afraid of horses. After all, they are a lot bigger than I am and, if things went the wrong, way they could do you some real harm. The only horses around when I was young were under New York policemen. I certainly don’t know how to ride them. So I have great admiration for artists like Caleb Carinci-Asch and Leah Innocenti, who do things that could do them some real harm, and carry it off with aplomb.
I don’t have a lot going for me in the eye-hand coordination department. Can’t juggle two objects, let alone three or more. We usually think of these artists throwing things in the air. However, Tersit Asefa Dersu, a native of Ethiopia, turns it upside down. She calls herself a bounce juggler. When you throw a ball in the air, you have some leeway to work the parabola on the way down. When you bounce one off a hard surface, geometry is unforgiving. I got this image at a high shutter speed but it can’t give the feeling of the frantic, precise pace at which she was working.
Peru native Carlos Morales began performing circuses at age 12. After mastering more and more complex feats, he began touring with the so-called Wheel of Death. These two photos can only hint at its complexity and daring. Walking in or outside the bigger wheel causes the whole thing to rotate. We are staggered to think the source of the idea, its design, testing, maintenance and transportation.
Circus Flora productions always have a thread of a story, a thin frame from which to hang comedy and spectacular circus acts. The current show is called Marooned, some fluff about pirates stuck on a tropical island and looking for treasure. There is always a ring mistress/narrator, Cecil MacKinnon, and a principal character, here pirate chief Brett Alters.
Circus Flora productions always have a thread of a story, a thin frame from which to hang comedy and spectacular circus acts. The current show is called Marooned, some fluff about pirates stuck on a tropical island and looking for treasure. There is always a ring mistress/narrator, Cecil MacKinnon, and a principal character, here pirate chief Brett Alters.
One of the nice things about this town is that it it has its own resident circus company, Circus Flora, and the company has its own permanent big top tent. Their main production is in June. We take Ellie and I post pictures every year. They can be full of action but nothing unexpected. I think this one is different. What muscles.
One of the nice things about this town is that it it has its own resident circus company, Circus Flora, and the company has its own permanent big top tent. Their main production is in June. We take Ellie and I post pictures every year. They can be full of action but nothing unexpected. I think this one is different. What muscles.
Ah, American cuisine. This is one of the odds and ends in the City Museum’s collection. Big Boy (originally Bob’s Big Boy in Southern California - no relation) is a fast food burger chain whose fortunes have waxed and waned. I’ve seen a few in Los Angeles. There is apparently one left around here, open limited hours. The sandwich and the waistline says it all.
More Spiderman stuff? More mirrors. Ellie and her precious cloth lambies are not leaping through the air. They are lying on the floor off the bottom of the frame. The camera is facing the back mirror wall.
Granddaughter Ellie doing her Spiderman act. Another feature at the Museum of Illusions, of course. Easy to figure out how it’s done but you need Photoshop or something similar to flip vertically and horizontally.
The subject of this picture came up with the caption. I think it looks like a beehive. This was a big kaleidoscope at the Museum of Illusions. One of Ellie is usually enough. My friend and I are going to the City Museum today so we will have something new to show tomorrow.
More Spiderman stuff? More mirrors. Ellie and her precious cloth lambies are not leaping through the air. They are lying on the floor off the bottom of the frame. The camera is facing the back mirror wall.
Granddaughter Ellie doing her Spiderman act. Another feature at the Museum of Illusions, of course. Easy to figure out how it’s done but you need Photoshop or something similar to flip vertically and horizontally.
Mirror, mirror, on the wall, or in front of the wall, or on the side wall, all precisely positioned. The right side of this image is a mirror set closer to the viewer than the wall on the left. There is a small ladder behind the front-facing mirror for Ellie to hang from, dangling just a bit of her body in direct view.
Another from the Museums of Illusions. One of my sometimes rambunctious granddaughter is quite enough.
A new amusement in town, something called the Museum of Illusions. It's not a new idea, however. The place is a franchise, with 40-plus locations around the world. Ours opened a couple of weeks ago. It is well done and Ellie had a good time. On the other hand, it takes about an hour to go through and is overpriced. More to come.
.jpg)
I have a problem with this month's theme. We don't dine al fresco much, generally preferring the comfort and, in the city, quiet of an indoor dining room. A search of my archives turned up nothing appropriate from the local scene. We regularly dine outdoors, however, during our frequent trips to Costa Rica. In fact, there are few opportunities to eat indoors in the beach town of Tamarindo that we usually visit. This will have to do. BTW, I wouldn't be caught dead in that shirt.
Midtown St. Louis is having a rebound. The anchors are St. Louis University’s main campus and medical center (about a mile apart), the Washington University medical center, the Grand Centre arts district and the Cortex research and innovation area, where the human genome was finally sequenced. An other feature is City Foundry, centered on an old ironworks that now holds a very diverse food hall, a brewery-cinema, retail and many new apartments. One popular space is City Winery, both a wine bar and entertainment venue. I agree with its mission statement.
The reason I went is a new kid entertainment space that Ellie loved. We will return to that after City Daily Photo theme day.
That’s the name (not including the question mark) of one of the new sculptures in Citygarden. It was made by the Swiss sculptor Ugo Rondinone. It strikes me as strange and disconcerting, a happy child’s face emerging from a monster’s mouth. You may see something different.
Downtown St. Louis' Citygarden, https://citygardenstl.org/, has been seen often in these pages. It is two square blocks of sculpture and plantings that reflect the ecosystems of the region. Although it opened in 2009, the city street between the two blocks remained, although it was blocked to traffic. With additional funding, the park space is now continuous and new artwork has been added.
This is one of the new additions, White Ghost, by Yoshitomo Nara. It has an anime feeling in the style of Spirited Away, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0245429/.
There were lots of other children playing in Citygarden's splash fountains while Ellie was there. The water jets go some distance back from the focal distance of this photo. They dance, they are choreographed, their rise and fall follow unpredictable patterns. Mrs. C and I wondered how someone gets the job of water choreographer or fluid engineer. If you have ever been to Las Vegas and seen the fountains in front of The Bellagio, you know what I mean.
Travel over for a while, we're back to local themes. Citygarden, our two-block downtown sculpture park, had a "reopening" on Saturday, featuring new sculptures and street arrangements. There are fountains and splash pools for kids, and Ellie couldn't get enough. With our Memorial Day weekend, summer season is officially here.
It's not to everyone's taste, but last night was a big deal to me and Mrs. C, and one of the jewels of this town - opening night of Opera Theatre of Saint Louis. It runs in May and June with four productions in repertory, always getting national attention. We started with an old chestnut, Rossini's The Barber of Seville. I've been going to operas for a long time, seen a lot of Figaros, but I've never been to a production as good as this. Just sparkling, surrealistic, brilliantly sung and staged. It was like Rossini set sail on the Yellow Submarine.
Okay, last post from New York. I have an interesting event in STL to shoot today. This picture was taken by another member of the group (thanks, Martin) before we descended into a basement restaurant in Chinatown. I look pretty cheerful for someone whose spine felt like it was going to crumble, but I don't give up easily.
Time to look around the home town. But I'll be back in New York in just over a month with Ellie and Mrs. C.
A few more pictures from New York before I come back home. This is another shot from the Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Divine. A member of my group gives a sense of scale while photographing Anne Patterson's installation, Divine Pathways. It's only there through June if you are interested in seeing it.
I need to find some new material back here in The Lou. My mobility is somewhat limited by my back issues (new medical consultation soon) but I should be able to find something.
Some people don't want to have their picture taken. Some just love is. When a group of photographers peeked into this Washington Heights barber shop, the crew just loved to show off. Look at the scissor action! You gotta look good in this city.
New York's catacombs are, of course, the subway system. The public knows little about its secrets. This station is 181st Street and Broadway in Washington Heights. You might want to enlarge the image, noting the three semi-hidden men with their backs to the camera and the one lounging on the bench.
At least for me, one of the most gut-wrenching features of the current World Trade Center is the pair of memorial pools in the precise shape and location of the Twin Towers. They fall down from sidewalk level with waterfalls on all sides into a shallow basin, which then empties into a smaller and seemingly bottomless central pit. Around the edges, black marble is engraved with the names of those who died on 9/11, the recesses colored gold. Here and there, the living tucked paper flowers bound with twist ties into the spaces.
