where else but NYC can you get that yelled at you as part of a bank promotion on the sidewalk for free hot dogs and bottled water. anyone who said the conventional was immediately drowned out in that nasalese bellow. it's fun to say: free frankies and wadda. i might be losing my british dialects in favour for some of the best that the port authority can offer, although it'll miles away from steph's.

the heat of southern ontario, coupled with a few latenight phonecalls from nameless man meant that i had maybe 3 hours sleep before my early morning flight to laguardia. first time flying any u.s.-based carrier, but american airlines did fine by me (nice to hear a good yankee drawl from the pilot sometimes), although i can't be thrown into much analysis on an 8.20 flight. sat beside gabby, an 11 year old who had been up in t.o. for 2 weeks, visiting her nan and checking out carnival (formerly known as caribana), who was great fun to talk with, although the landing at laguardia still confuses me to no end. perfect flying weather meaning that i could see all of new york state from the sky, but rounding manhattan and the low altitude turn over yankee stadium before seemingly landing on the water right as the runway pops underneath can still be unnerving.

light day thus far, but already i wandered about for a bit and found that walking 41st west from 1st brings up some great surprises:

• art deco is god amongst the towers of manhattan. the chanin building sits at lexington and 42nd and has a beautiful mosaic work patched into its side. the building beside it, the socony-mobil building, has a striking metal pattern that snakes across the entire facade.
• the chrysler building is one freaky skyscraper. it stalks you as you walk around, peeking behind other buildings, but up close, it's a masterpiece and at the same time, it can be completely monstrous and twisted. but you still can't go up top, ever since 1945, which is a complete shame.
• walking by grand central station involves going under park avenue under 42nd and the south side has the most tucked-away café i've seen. one day, though, i'll actually go inside. one day, as well, when i take the pictures, i'll provide them at post time.
• right across from the dylan hotel on 41st (although the dylan is getting more notoriety as being the home to britney spear's restaurant is the faboo library hotel, where the theme is a (duh) library and the rooms are numbered and themed based on the dewey decimal system.
• to the west of the majestic new york public library on 40th and 5th is bryant park, one of those wonderful little places that the natives know about, but isn't heavily populated. a restored park where those faded english spade trees border a simple grass plain, where hundreds of little green pavilion chairs are available to move around to sit and read or just look at the world around it. there are chess tables and a merry-go-round, little kiosks and the bistros behind the library that provide a perfect shelter from the august heat.

that's it for now. just recovered from a brief nap and now thinking what can be done in 2 hours before sex and the city.

isn't it a coincidence?

the entire time i'm in new york is the same time that the pope's in toronto for world youth day. i either timed it this way (no) or we just can't be in the same airspace at the same time (secret identity stuff, shhh).

other than hearing friends complaining about the crowded transit and the traffic mayhem, the only evidence i saw were the latin newsbroadcasts on the american stations, the odd sidebar in the new york times and the big mess called downsview the evening after the big pope powwow from my descending airplane (it's called a mass; you'd figure that watching father ted would actually make me remember core parts of catholicism, but no). like a tornado found a paper mill, or my bottom drawer at work. popestock or lolla-pope-looza, i guess, based on all the weird minutia left behind. what did the globe and mail say?

"The two-day Roman Catholic festival in northwest Toronto left behind discarded socks, broken umbrellas, orange peel, melon rind, fragments of candle holders, plastic sheeting, water bottles, religious pamphlets, empty tubes of sunscreen and arthritis cream, and vast expanses of wet cardboard trodden to a pulp."

an aerial photo would've been smart, but my camera was safely stowed in the outofway overhead compartment, and my window to the world was tiny since i managed to get the emergency escape door. oddly enough, with all the times i've flown, this is the first time i've won the seating lottery and got the leggy emergency exit seat. also odd is that i received no instructions on how the door worked from the flight attendant, leaving me to wonder during the occasional bouts of turbulence felt during the laguardia to pearson quick flight how the door actually worked and what armed meant. it was disarmed on landing (or unarmed, the buttons weren't clear) by one of the crew, but couldn't that explosive capability be manipulated by a passenger? and why did my seat smell like pine trees twice? did santa get sucked into the engine?

other than that, i fly well. sure, the children have their belief systems shattered (like my usual "i know elvis is dead; saw him get hit by a car last week" schtick), but i read my paper, screw up the crossword and re-encrypt the cryptograms like i do whilst actively tracking each passing metre in the air. i guess i'm lucky to have missed all the papal excitement, but i like the idea that a shared faith, especially amongst the youth, would have them converge where i live.

well, since i'm back in the big smoke, i guess it's not much of a travelogue after all, is it? i went and became all busy actually walking around doing stuff rather than update this meagre space. central park, guggenheim, fao schwartz, united nations. bah! who has time? especially idiotman who walked the entire time.

i'll regale details and the damn photos later. needless to say, it's humid and hot in both cities, albeit there's more greenspace here, and no billboards on every possible vertically capable square centimetre of wallspace, but where are the buildings?

i'll get my head straightend at work tomorrow then. but, i may be going back shortly. i'll keep y'all informed. okay, whoever finds this message.

TOP FIVE things i missed about toronto

1. level roads and sidewalks with no craters or weird bumps on them (although, once i hit spadina, i'll find my share again).
2. multicoloured money and change people actually accept.
3. those fully grown tree things that grow everywhere and not just one big space.
4. good dairy products, and a few other raw ingredients, like [i like it when i leave my thoughts unfinished. --gak] vegetables and chicken (yeah, raw chicken just isn't the same between canada and the u.s., but it tastes fatter stateside).
5. my humble bicycle. or, maybe based on all the walking i did, my feet. whatever.

TOP FIVE things i miss already about new york city

1. pizza and bagels and the cornerstores with delis and beer at your disposal. eat like a king for cheap.
2. skyscrapers or other things that seem to stalk you wherever you go.
3. red bull. man, that's like 3 ginseng teas to the wakeup motor. beats caffeine as a stimulant, but then again, they're not allowed in canada for some reason. (must search, but later).
4. girls who find it rude when you don't approach them, rather than toronto's general "rude that you exist" modus operandi.
5. a sense of identity, that what you stand on has brought you to this level and now it's time for you to shape things. the compelling architecture, the quest for newness, those damn bums in the next neighbourhood over ...all this adds up to a feeling of understanding your elders and keeping real to do something good.

meanwhile ...in less horsepucky land,
WHY HAS JOHNNY FORSAKEN ME??
(or, why was johnny's original charbroiled hambrugers closed this sunday evening? sure, i didn't look past the padlocked grate fence, but wtf? i have to wander by again, or however wandering 10 km away from me goes.)

since i'm starved for content, you're starved for amusement, my ears feel very warm and the manhattan sky is fighting against its overcastness, why don't i recycle some email i wrote? yeah? ye-- in time i'll get piccies up here, but the last thing i need to do is remind you that i can't hold onto anything specifically my digicam software but i'm not here to harp like a banshee about my failings as a human being.

wednesday, after work in the noho building by broadway and houston in the kicking manhattan region, i walked for four long hours, but it had some import. down broadway, passing by the toronto queen west type stores but in the bad bad buildings and the uneven roads with metal plates all over.

and came across the pit.
formerly ground zero.
formerly the world trade centre.
and man, it's heavy.

if you haven't been there, i'll fill in some blanks. those that have may find this opportunistic, but i am a sincere touchy-feely kinda guy and i want to understand the context of the area it was and how life was and now is.

before you get there, there's this one church along the way and around it is a monstrous fence of makeshift memorials: letters, photos, dead flowers, grungy stuffed animals, fading printouts, written fabric. then, a large two tarp fence with security personnel around the entrances armed with a barcode scanner to read plastic badges. already at this point, you stop hearing the oppressive din of traffic, even though some of the roads right beside it are open, at least partially. signs saying DON'T CLIMB THE FENCE are ignored as people strain to see and the signs include little messages, prayers of sorts alongside invictive against the sideshow. then on the south side, liberty street, a viewing area.

it looks like a construction site,
it looks like an archaeological dig,
it looks like an open mine,
but it looks ghastly.

the east half is on street level with parts of concrete lying around, giving it a rundown parking lot feel, except with parts of metal sticking up in places, one of which was welded into a cross and lots of dusty sand. the west half is about seven or eight stories lower and you can see the remains of the parking garage, some pipes, maybe even part of the subway line. a long straight ramp goes down and there are ten trucks down there, orange plastic fencing wrapped around the garage levels. you can see little nubs along the vertical side, like parts of a pine cone, showing how the support weight was distributed. workers doing shiftwork punchclock stuff but with very little jest. very sombre.

the surrounding buildings remain, including two of the smaller parts of the world trade complex (one and two world financial place), but there are huge scars abound. two of the skyscrapers are covered in a dark mesh net with supports to the ground, like they were giftwrapped. one older governmental looking building has red and white patches over its surface and one building lost all its windows and looks condemned. the trailer offices all have messages about their lost brethren, from the firemen to the k9 units, the nypd and the port authority police. there's a jonathan richman song called lonely financial zone with its haunting backbeat and minimal melody and it makes for an eerie aural equivalent. it is with a combination of luck and good engineering that no other buildings were levelled.

debate is running high on what to build next. the key argument is "revitalizing the neighbourhood" vs. "honouring the fallen" vs. "ensuring this can never happen again". one recurring thread is linking up the space to the park along the hudson river, which has its own memorials. however, the skyline won't be restored to its former shape, leaving a big empty space in the sky.

other than that, it was a walk down to battery park, along the piers and the view to staen island, the statue of liberty and new jersey, watching people fish from the hudson (and catch some bigguns) back up broadway, drifting away eastwards through parts of city hall, the secluded and beefed secure government buildings, with raising barriers for the courthouses and traffic thwarters for the justice buildings. then it was chinatown as dusk hit and it's then you realize that manhattan doesn't have great street lighting. back to broadway then, stop off at a music store close to work, a pharmacy to buy shaving equipment and an attempt to look at a park avenue restaurant, but they're all closed, expensive or full. modest deli food, although i worm up to 42nd before going back to the club, with swollen feet and all.

hmmm.

this eggnog eggblog is now linked from mystery mr. t toilet funtime hour, otherwise known (incorrectly) as the toilet in front of the spider, which is quite popular with the entire greater toronto area blogging scene that graig is a superstar of. this was always a work in progress, but i assumed that if i lay low until there is actual progress, then i can dance publicly and throw small bags of candy from the roofs.

but now, i am busted. much like the stylesheets from this computer.

hello new strange readers.

well, i'll keep the misleading bits to a minimum. i haven't updated in days, since i've been a recipe:

1. 1 teaspoon busy
2. 2 tablespoons preoccupied
3. half cup aimless
4. 0 millilitres of the required metric system that i should be using, so i'm switching
5. 300 mL out
6. 2 L sleepy
   

   place 500 kilometres from home, debase existing currency by about 10%, wake up 2 hours earlier than usual and provide city guides and maps that keep getting left behind. avoid the temptation of buying too much, but then again, when you don't, make sure it's "useful". avoid all major landmarks until the last possible minute, never ask for directions, don't look up too frequently at the buildings, look part of the crowd, mull about which places to eat at, look at the crowd you aren't really a part of.

   1 serving.
   will repeat in another week.