One Times Square, Midtown Manhattan

The new Year’s Eve ball on top of One Times Square is now a year-round feature (see for example):

And before the ground floor finally became a Walgreen’s . . .

. . . it was vacant for some time. The best use for the space was the DEA’s traveling Target America: Drug Traffickers, Terrorists and You Exhibit. The exhibit is now called, “Target America: Opening Eyes to the Damage Drugs Cause.” I guess they had problems answering the smart ass in the back who kept insisting that the link between personal drug use and international terrorism was as good a reason as any to simply grow your own . . .

Bank Of America Tower, Midtown Manhattan

I can’t tell if they’re done with the Bank of America Tower or if that’s what it’s supposed to look like at the top:

It’s been like five years. There is still a bunch of scaffolding around the sidewalk:

Maybe it has something to do with all the falling glass.

11 West 42nd Street, Midtown Manhattan

I know someone who works there. You can get a good view of Bryant Park from the upper floors:

Acid-Based Graffiti

Some like to intellectualize their street art, but for me, I prefer my graffiti dumb and ugly:

There is a little “scratchiti” in there, too. I can’t tell which is worse — the acid cream graffiti that etches tags into the subway window or the furtive scribbling of scratchiti. Who knows? They are both beautiful. The MTA has been dealing with it for several years now, and it’s still around. If only Banksy could combine scratchti and acid etching in an aesthetically cool way then I might stop being such a fuddy duddy about it.

Flight 1549

It started when I read in the paper that you could basically walk up and see the US Airways Flight 1549 plane while it was moored against the seawall at Battery Park City:

Among the shocking images that this city can produce, it was certainly one of the strangest: the white left wing of an airplane jutting from the river like the dorsal fin of a shark.

It was clearly something to look at, and many did on Friday as, despite the bitter winds, a steady stream of the curious wandered by. They were as wide-eyed as they were various: dog-walkers, ironworkers, mothers pushing strollers, tourists bearing backpacks, professional camera crews and the inevitable joggers, most of whom seemed content to bounce a moment in their spandex before continuing on their way.

“We just wanted to come down and, you know, see it,” said Raney Kilgore, 41, a homemaker who arrived from Denver on Thursday night for a vacation. “You don’t usually get to be an eyewitness to something like this.”

“Something like this,” by Friday afternoon, had the look and feel of an enormous crime scene, with yellow police tape cordoning off River Terrace in Battery Park City and more than a dozen fire engines parked with lights flashing up and down the block.

That ubiquitous modern response to public events — the taking of cellphone pictures — was occurring nearly everywhere one looked. The police allowed people to approach the barricades briefly but then shooed them on their way.

So of course I wanted to see the plane that was part of one of the biggest “Whoa, Dude!” moments in history. On Saturday however, preparations were well underway to hoist the thing into the air and you couldn’t get near the edge of the water. A crowd was out — some people waiting there, they said, four hours already — so I figured I’d wait to see if it would come up. It didn’t come up in the almost two hours I waited there, but here are pictures of some very large cranes, in case anyone is a big crane enthusiast.

(A side note: This is why we started the Big Map Blog + RSS Feed — to apprise you of all the new content, and not just the “greatest hits” stuff that I link from the homepage. In this case, I wouldn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up by luring them in from the homepage with a provocative Flight 1549 link, but in case you’re a huge big crane enthusiast, well then who are we to decide how important the pictures are to you?)

So without further ado, some pictures of big cranes:

Alligator Lounge, Williamsburg

I’m not sure what the business model is for giving away free pizzas with every pint of beer, but it’s brilliant:

Another thing — when inanimate objects like bars give their “age” on their MySpace page as, say, 24 years old, is it a polite way of telling you that you’ve probably aged out of scarfing pizza there at 2:30 in the morning?

On Capturing God’s Great Creation

Such perfectly formed snowflakes falling late at night last weekend. You think, “Wow, wouldn’t it be neat to get a picture of one?” Meanwhile, God says, “Silly mortal, you believe you can reduce God’s Great Creation to a mere curiosity of winter? Who are you, mere moral, thinking you can simply point-and-shoot God’s Great Creation?” And the answer is, surely not I . . . neither with a flash:

Nor without a flash:

Sripraphai Menu

We updated the Sripraphai menu. The earlier one is still there (what happened to saute pork stomach and mudfish?); if memory serves, it’s from around 2003.

(I have no idea why the Sripraphai website isn’t the first Google hit but it’s not. I like New York Magazine as much as the next guy, but not only are their weekend hours for the restaurant wrong — they close at 9:30, not 10, which is why we had to get takeout — but if a restaurant has its own website, it seems odd that they’re not at the top of the Google hits, no?)

The restaurant has grown a lot since we first went there:

They added the storefront to the left (64-11 39th Avenue?) a few years back, and since then they added the storefront to the right in the picture (64-15 39th Avenue?). Yes, the Jungle Curry is still “Thai spicy.” The Sripraphai website also says that they’re opening a restaurant on Long Island soon.

Something that’s bothered me for a long time: If there can be an authentically cool Thai restaurant (or any authentic, accessible ethnic restaurant), why is there this brick wall when it comes to Chinese food? I hate, hate, hate the existence of a dual menu (or worse) and would be eternally grateful for a Chinese restaurant that not only welcomed adventuresome eaters but encouraged them. It’s especially striking that even in a place like New York there seems to be so few (maybe I’m wrong — if so, please email us!). You would think that they’d clean up. It’s not that there aren’t any great Chinese restaurants, just that more often than not you get the sense that there’s so much great stuff that you’re missing if you don’t read and/or speak Cantonese. Which is to say, I never got that from Sripraphai. Good stuff . . .

Jamaica Long Island Rail Road Station

Yup, it’s a train station. The first five pictures are from the summer months, in 2005 and 2006, on the way to Long Beach. The last three are from the other day. We happened to be on the train with Friday night Long Island-based revelers — they were pre-gaming it. I always found the idea of drinking on public transportation funny, which is not to say that I don’t enjoy a tall boy on the Staten Island Ferry — just that it doesn’t occur to me to brown bag on the M60. Some contend that drinking on the region’s commuter trains is a time-honored tradition. Others point to the “Vomit Comet” as proof that it’s a bad idea. Then there’s the Irish.

Our Lady Of Loreto

Many apologies to Our Lady of Loreto in Brooklyn . . . we mislabeled the church when we posted pictures back in 2005. Not sure how that happened — that was back before Google Street View — but we generally try to get it right!

That said, apparently parishioners and other interested parties are worried that the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn is thinking about letting the city demolish the church and have put together a petition to prevent that, in case you want to sign it.