Maine, October 8-10, 2010

A trip up to Freeport, Maine for a wedding . . .

Through West Rock Tunnel/Heroes Tunnel along the Wilbur Cross Parkway in Connecticut on our way up to Maine.

Then the 16.08 miles of I-95 in New Hampshire, lunch in Portsmouth, New Hampshire at Gilley’s PM Lunch.

I-95 in Maine to our destination in Freeport.

We stayed at the Hilton Garden Inn in Downtown Freeport, conveniently located near Memorial Park, the outlet stores along Main Street and of course the L.L. Bean Flagship Store, which is open 24 hours and which has a nifty Fish Dome that we explored around midnight:

We were tempted to purchase some doe urine, but thought the better of it after reading the scary disclaimers:

The purpose of the trip was a wedding, the ceremony for which was held at Bowdoin College. But we also got to have lobster — Michael joked that it was The Greatest Lobster of All Time after getting tired of our incessantly playing it up. We went to Harraseeket Lunch & Lobster in South Freeport for lobster roll:

And Chauncey Creek Lobster Pier in Kittery Point for straight up lobster:

Another Maine treat, in Freeport down by the J.L. Coombs outlet store and the Freeport Big Indian, is Classic Custard. Delicious, even on the chilly final weekend of their season.

Ridiculous traffic on I-95 in Connecticut gave us an opportunity to snap more pictures of the Pirelli Tire Building next to the IKEA in New Haven. Also, I never understood why traffic slows to a crawl between Exits 14 and 16 in Norwalk, but it does. Like always, and inevitably. Traffic For No Apparent Reason is one of the most frustrating forms of traffic. Would love to eventually figure this out, but for now I’ll stay thankful that we don’t have to drive much.

Labor Day Weekend, September 3-6, 2010

Labor Day Weekend in Monmouth County. We sleep and go to the beach in Ocean Grove and eat and drink in neighboring Asbury Park.

Hurricane Earl passed to the east on Friday:

But the rest of the weekend was as beautiful as we’ve ever seen it:

We watched the remnants of the storm during happy hour on Friday evening from a new place in the Asbury Park Convention Hall building:

Then we ate at Brickwall, which is always solid, then had ices at a new Ralph’s on Cookman Avenue and drinks at a new bar on Bond Street.

The boardwalk area in Asbury Park is getting more and more stuff, including another new restaurant. There were fireworks on Saturday.

You’d think that Asbury Park has been hit hard by the economic downturn, and it has, but only somewhat. Esperanza is/was a big project right off the boardwalk that was designed to replace a stalled development, but Esperanza itself stalled around 2008 or so. Today the site looks the same as it once did, just smaller. Here’s what was there in 2004:

Here’s what it looks like today:

And off of Cookman Avenue is something I’m labeling the Cookman Avenue Piling Field/Tree Farm:

Some artists have taken to decorating the pilings and using them for site-specific works. The “tree farm” tag comes from a frustrated resident of the neighboring development.

But even with those things, Asbury Park is as busy as we’ve ever seen it. The restaurants were all crowded and people were all over the boardwalk all weekend. I think the key isn’t to rely on large development but rather encourage a critical mass of small businesses. I don’t know if those failed projects were subsidized by taxpayers but if they were, it was a bad deal.

You forget how much Asbury Park has evolved. Here it was the first time I visited, which was only back in 2004 — keep in mind that this was on Saturday afternoon of the Labor Day Weekend:

And here was Monday afternoon of Labor Day weekend this year:

And that second set of images doesn’t even scratch the surface . . .

August 2010

A going-away dinner for a friend at Old Shanghai Deluxe in Manhattan’s Chinatown (by request — she was going to miss Chinese food like that).

New Long Island City items: Hook and Ladder 66, The Foundry, Metropolitan Building (funny story — I attended an art opening many years back and assumed for all this time that the people lived there and that this wasn’t actually an event space), Taxidepot (combines LIC’s two biggest industries — taxis and the film industry), Tom Cat Bakery (that’s where your bread comes from) and Z Hotel.

A page for the Queens-Midtown Tunnel compiles the ever-evolving billboards along Vernon Boulevard that are visible from the Manhattan-bound tunnel entrance (more to come as I get to them):

We already went over Washington, D.C.

Lucy the Elephant in Margate, New Jersey:

Laziza and Kabab Cafe in Astoria, Queens:

Tagging along with Jen on a work-related function at La Plaza Cultural in the East Village; never been inside there so I was excited about that:

Also, an aborted outing to the Prospect Park Bandshell.