Supposed to rain all day. Sometimes that’s not a bad thing, right?

[Photo Via Tig Tag]

I went to the Statue of Liberty once when I was a kid. Was it with school or did my mom take us? Dag, I don’t remember which is reason enough to go again.

[Photo Credit: Juan Pablo Cambariere via This Isn’t Happiness; Gnarly3 via The Absolute Best Photography Posts]

Over at Retronaut, dig NYC circa 1900: In Living Colorization.

My twin sister loved Marilyn when we were growing up. As much as I loved David Bowie or the Stones or Woody or anyone else I ever loved.

Sam had Marilyn posters on her wall, had Marilyn books, and of course, saw all of her movies, or at least the ones we could find on videotape. I remember going with her to a double feature of Gentleman Prefer Blondes and How to Marry a Millionaire  at the old Regency Theater on 67th Street and Broadway. This must have been in the mid-80s sometime. I pretended not to care about Marilyn or worse, put her down because Sam dug her, but I remember that day, sitting in the balcony watching those two movies and enjoying Marilyn just fine.

Yesterday was the 50th anniversary of Monroe’s death.

Spencer Tunick’s Everyday Peoples…

[Photo Gallery via The Atlantic]

I’ve talked a lot about The Ginger Man, my old man’s bar of cherce when I was a kid. Well, one of the coolest things about that block, 64th Street just off of Broadway, was this:

I found this picture at The Time Machine, a cool, though defunct site by Neil J. Murphy. Worth poking around.

Thanks to the consistently stellar Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York for the tip.

Sometimes I’d just rather be at the MET. Hanging out here.

Or maybe looking at this:

[Photo Credit: Retro New York]

There used to be a cop that stood on the corner of 103rd Street and West End Avenue when I was a kid. Early 1970s. His name was Wallace. He had a nightstick. We stopped and said hello to him every time we saw him. He always had a smile and it never dawned on me that cops were just cops, men without names, because of Wallace.

[Photo Credit: Dick Leonhardt]

Baseball and the city via Ephemeral New York.

[Photo Credit: New York Times]

Over at Capital New York, check out this documentary about the final days of Bleecker Bob’s.

Sigh.

Rain Pryor and Kelly Carlin talk about comedy and growing up funny.

[Photo Credit: Kelly Carlin]

Last night I sat in a barber’s chair in the Bronx. The rain had stopped. There was one customer in the place, the sound of an electric razor buzzing filled the room. So did the voice of one of the barbers. He sat in his chair, feet propped and talked into his cell phone.

My barber smiled and looked at me in the mirror. Maybe he thought I understood Spanish better than I do but I didn’t need to know what was being said to understand he was arguing with a woman.

“His girlfriend?” I said?

“Maybe,” my barber said. “Maybe her boyfriend.”

We both grinned.

While the buzzing and the arguing continued to the right of me, I heard Vin Scully’s voice coming from the television set to the left of me. The Dodgers and Phillies were in extra innings and the game was on the MLB Network. Vin sounded tired. So did the crowd. I remembered The Simpsons episode when Homer goes to a game and doesn’t drink: “I never knew baseball was so boring.”

But it was boring in a soothing way. Soon, the buzzing stopped and so did the arguing. The room felt still in that heightened way of quiet that occurs sometimes just before you fall into a deep sleep. The only sound was Vin’s voice. I felt calm and happy.

[Photo Credit: Flick River]

From the Atlantic...

Last night I saw two adorable girls on the bus. They wore orange sandals, had orange flowers in their hair and drank some kind of orange drink. They held their plastic cups with both hands. I kept waiting for one of them to spill their drink. Sticky orange disaster on the BX7. Ah, summer.

At least there’s a breeze out in Cony Island. Swell day for ice cream, huh?

Picture by Bags.

Cheap Eats: the place to be.

[Photo Credit: Hilary Bergantine; Bags]

Sunset in Manhattan. I remember walking up Broadway during the summer as a teenager. As I crossed each block, I’d look down past West End Avenue and chart the sun lowering in the sky until it had disappeared beyond the Hudson River and the sky was pink and orange. It was like a walking flip book. Then the lights from the stores and traffic signs and cars popped on the city street. Magic hour, that surreal moment between night and day when everything seemed like it was out of a movie.

[Photo Credit: Atenacius via This Isn’t Happiness ]

The people ride in a hole in the ground… Oh, for the love of Julie Munshin.

From Charles Simic:

No city displays its mixture of beauty and ugliness as brazenly as New York does. It’s one thing to see a city with cathedrals and other church towers from an approaching train as one does in Europe and another to see Manhattan with buildings of every size thrown together more or less haphazardly and its streets packed with humanity all coming into view simultaneously. I still can’t believe my eyes every time I see it.

[Photo Credit: A crowd watching the news line on the Times building at Times Square, NYC, on D-day, June 6, 1944. Large-format nitrate negative by Howard Hollem or Edward Meyer, Office of War Information…via New York History]

In the summer, in the city, in the summer, in the city…

[Picture by Leonard Freed via Adam Marelli Photo]

Summer in New York is sweet because the town thins out some. People go on vacation, or at least they often vamoose for the weekend. The trains are less crowded cause kids are out of school.  The Farmer’s market has incredible fruit and veggies.

There’s plenty of flesh to enjoy.

So long as the power doesn’t go out–thank the heavens for ice cubes and air conditioning–life is good.

[Photo Via Bags and the most incredible, This Isn’t Happiness]