Our semi-interesting weekend

Yesterday we decided to go into the city, and in the spirit of seeing new places, we decided to tour the Lower East Side. Hit up wikipedia for a synopsis of this area, but in a nutshell, this largely Jewish area has historically been a working class neighborhood and up until 20 - 30 years ago, an area typically not visited due to the crime and rough edges. Like everywhere in Manhattan, it has been smoothed over and soaring real estate prices have pushed out many of the blue-collar people that once lived there. Home to Katz's deli, arguably the best pastrami in the nation, and we had actually been down in the area before, at night, to visit a burlesque club some months ago.

Anyways, as some of these pictures show, much of the streets probably haven't changed for a long time:



Kris told me this is Lil Kim:





The boys entertaining themselves as we walked down the sidewalk:


Thought this was funny:


So as you can tell, this is clearly a "different" sort of neighborhood than Greenwich Village or Midtown. While fascinating, this isn't the sort of place a family tends to take a leisurely stroll. Most of the folks we encountered were clearly locals. We had some incredible Greek gyro's though.

After that we drove around the city looking for something interesting (and celebrities), up 2nd from LES up into the Upper East Side (East 80's and 90's) then over the Fifth Avenue and drove down Fifth. Figured it was probably time to get home, so we booked it back through the Lincoln Tunnel and into Hoboken. We pretty much laid low the rest of the day.

Today we were productive for the first half of the day. Kris and I both hit the gym, made a great (late) brunch, took the dog for walks, etc. But all that came to a screeching halt around 2 when the thunder storms rolled in and it started raining like crazy. So we made another pot of coffee and spent most of the afternoon reading.

Rained so much today that areas of Hoboken, as usual, flooded:


Click on the above pic for more "Hoboken is flooded" pictures from the local blog.

Around 7 the fire alarm started going off in the building, so we all hurry to the front door, nearly rush out when we realized that Miles wasn't wearing any clothes under his little Kimono he was wearing! So I rushed him back into the room for some clothes, then we busted down the stairs and congregated with others exiting the building. FOUR fire trucks pull up, and no less than 12 guys in full gear enter the building to do the sweep. Turns out the garage was too hot. Go figure! I forgot my phone or else would have been twittering the hell out of that.

Pretty much entered our nightly "shower, brush teeth, read for 30 minutes, go to sleep" routine after that.

I have a back log of pictures that I have been meaning to blog, just haven't had the chance. I'll do an 'update' post before too long. I'm in the city tomorrow and in Greenwich, CT on Wednesday, so can probably find some time in there to post them.

Take care all!

Some NY news

Reading through the Gothamist tonight, here's a sampling of some news clips in the area:

# Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a pedestrian was struck on 41st St. and 8th Ave. in Manhattan, someone found a grenade on Pitkin Ave. in Brooklyn, and a hostage situation on Oval Terrace in the Bronx.

# An 11-year-old boy was arrested after he stabbed a 13-year-old in Mt. Vernon, north of the city.

# A 26-year-old man from the Bronx ran up and down Park Ave. on the Upper East Side yesterday afternoon groping the breasts of almost ten women.

Regarding that last headline, I like how the New York Post described the assailant:

A serial fondler terrorized the Upper East Side last week...

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And here is a Maybach 62s which I think runs about $450k. Not a bad car day so far!

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This rolls royce phantom is parked outside Zegna with rap music cranked and couple of dudes in the back seat. Gotta be somebody famous.

Twitter Updates

I setup twitter updates on the blog over to the right. Can everybody see them? The last one should be "Just made it half way through....."

Post in the comments if you see five twitter updates or if you just see the header Twitter Updates, then Follow me on Twitter, then into my del.icio.us bookmarks.

Thanks!

Trailer

Here's a trailer I put together to tease you for what should be coming soon -- the full movie. It's a little belated, but I just now found the footage of our trip out so am starting to put some stuff together. Enjoy!

Test from blackberry

Testing

A test post from Gmail.

First Recital

Today the boy's had their first piano recital. We made a YouTube video of it, which you can see here. But first, a couple of pictures you don't see in the video (and a couple you do!):

Getting ready:





We all wore our new shoes today:





Pre-recital pics:





At the recital:



Miles was exhausted after his performance! He slept through most of the rest!



Hope you like the video!

When peacocks attack...

Here's an article that had Kristal and I laughing tonight. You might have to sign up for an account to read it, unfortunately. Apparently a free-roaming peacock at the Oregon Zoo "attacked" a toddler. While the child did suffer some pretty brutal scratches, I wonder how much of this was prompted by some kid getting up in the peacock's grill...

Apparently this is not the first time it has happened. This was from an incident in 2006:

“We were next to the tigers when the peacock came up… it goes down to get a piece of purple candy and my son stepped towards the peacock and it jumped up on him and grabbed my son on both shoulders with its talons and stuck its beak into his chest,” said Shane Woodward.

Talons... :-)

Anyways, Zoo Director Tony Vecchio knows what to do:

"I've told the staff to round this peacock up and we'll put him in a time-out for a while until we figure out what to do next."

Yes, a time out for the peacock. That should do the trick!