let sleeping dogs lie

dogs can be funny creatures.  milford the dog likes to sleep on our hardwood floor in the hot summer weather, rather than on the bed as he normally does.  this is welcome relief for both of us - he gets the coolness of the floor and i get a place to put my legs - nice!  one of the funny side effects of his summer sleeping habit is that when he dreams, he sometimes moves his legs, or when he is having a particularly lovely dream, wag his tail.  so every once in a while i'll be sitting in bed and all of a sudden i'll hear a persistent thumping sound - milford's tail pounding the hard wood as he dreams of . . . . running circles round the dog park, me coming home (yeah, right!), shanna coming home (more likely), the lovely ladypooches (politically correct term) of manhattan, breakfast . . . 

p.s. i think he just cut one . . . it's pretty bad

promenade plantee

i can't remember if i first heard about the promenade plantee in the early push for the high line project in nyc, or if it was from watching or hearing about before sunset (which was, i and the village voice would argue, the best movie of 2004).

the grand entrance to the 4.5 km long park

the welcome mat:

the park slices through buildings:

the promenade at ground level:

unfortunately, we didn't get many pictures after this.  the park continued through a dugout corridor which was lush with vegetation and really beautiful.  we eventually met up with the metro and rode back into the center.

as a ps.  marcos - i know i have your before sunset dvd - thanks! and sorry for having it so long!!!  and to everyone else, i just want you to know that one of the reasons i regret leaving nyc when i am is that i won't be around for the opening of the high line.  get to it for me, will ya!!?

market in paris

this is a bit of a sequel to the market in nice blog post series, which are found here and here.  we came across a sunday market in paris taking place under an elevated metro line starting at the lamotte piquet metro stop.  this, was a truly amazing market, which just about every imaginable kind of vegetable, fruit, flower, dairy, meat and fish product.  we managed to get sample of cheeses, purchased some pastries, and were rejected in our efforts to purchase a single oyster - evidently that is not acceptable practice.  here are some pics:

the scene:

the cheese monger:

shanna and some big cheese:

poulpe:

and flowers:

no pics of oysters or the delicious pastries . . . maybe milford the dog ate those?!

market in nice, ps

so, one thing i don't know if i have mentioned on this blog is that one day i went to an epic opera.  (how, you may ask, is that related to the market in nice?  well, we'll get there, bare with me).  this epic opera came on a work day, and at a time when shanna was out of town for a few days - at a wedding in florida if i remember correctly.  so the dog was home alone all day, with the exception of a midday walk.  i had taken him out to the dog park in the morning, and did so quickly again before heading off to this opera.  i figured he had gotten enough exercise in to be well behaved that night. 

the opera was great, and long.  jeff had the foresight to pick up the tickets months earlier when it was announced.  it started at 7pm or so, and went until almost 1am.  it was the first time deborah voight and ben keppner sang the roles of tristan and isolde together at the met, and while i don't know my opera, i am told that this is a big deal.  it was impressive.  and long.  

so i get home and the dog evidently had gotten bored.  i found little pieces of remote control and digital camera scattered about the floor.  a memory card containing pictures from the second half of our trip to france was also in pieces on the floor - we had not yet gotten around to putting the pictures on the computer.  alas, the cutoff in our photographic record of our french journey comes just after the market at nice photos.  in fact, after walking through the market, we walked up the hill overlooking nice.  i changed memory cards up on the hill, and then we came down the hill.  upon getting back down, i decided i needed an ice cream, and the first shop we came across happened to have some of the most bizarre flavours i'd ever seen, including olive oil, rosemary, dried tomato, olive, and others.  i diligently documented the moment, but after the dog/camera incident it seemed as if the moment might be lost for all time.  

however, in my obsession with all things food related, i happened to come across a photograph not much later that could have been an exact replica of the one i took - it can be found here.  a comment on that page indicates that the ice cream store in question was fenocchio.

major league eating!?

i haven't been much into video games since i gave my super nintendo to my former next door neighbor round about 1998. and most of the time i don't regret that decision. however, with the introduction of the recent gotham-inspired grand theft auto IV, i felt a pull to get back into the video game world, if only to explore the hidden foodie destinations spattered around the city (by the way, that interest is still there if anyone has the game and wants to get together for a session). however, the recent news that there is a major league eating video game for wii (video trailer here) has got me intrigued.  i wonder if video game five-star dining may be the next step.

as an aside, i should note that the only time i've ever really watched any competitive eating, other than the occasional hot-dog eating contest (most memorably joey chestnut’s defeat of kobayashi at last years coney island hot dog eating competition), was in my senior year of college, watching the super bowl of eating contests - the Glutton Bowl, wherein the competitors faced off in various rounds with various edibles. some of the most disturbing were sticks of butter (seven sticks), bowls of mayonnaise (4 bowls, or 8 pounds), and cow brains (over 10 pounds, or around 30 brains - i'm assuming they had not heard of mad cow disease).

changing harlem

as most of you know, i moved into harlem just over a year ago and will soon be leaving. in that short amount of time i have seen a lot of change, and from having lived in the adjacent neighborhoods of morningside heights and washington heights for much of the past 10 years, i know how much change had already occurred before i arrived.

oddly, while the neighborhood is starting to look more like me (i.e. young, white, professional) and is starting to cater more to the kinds of things i like (i.e. coffee shops, restaurants, doggy day care) and other things that i am supposed to but don't (more banks!), i am starting to feel less comfortable there. there is discomfort with being a glaring example of gentrification. there is some further discomfort with seeing more and more people like me arrive - the more young couples with dogs or new babies that move into the neighborhood, the more i feel like an unoriginal part of a problematic change and the less i feel like an enlightened pioneer in a place to which many still don't want to venture.

the changing face of harlem has been a topic of a number of articles of late, some of which offer some insight. here a few i found:

Should housing prices be held in check or be allowed to rocket ever higher?

New Residents bring new expectations (and complaints)

NY Times on the Rezoning of 125th street

Mixed reactions to changing times

market in nice

shanna and i were in france for a week in march, staying with friends in paris and on the cote d'azur. one of our favorite stops was the farmer's market in nice, where we came across countless treasures, some of the most colorful of which are found below:










our amazing hosts in cote d'azur, pam and dominique, with shanna in the middle

thats us in front of the market!

the market (center of the image) and setting, from the hill in the middle of nice