2011 Fashion

Showing posts with label madison square park. Show all posts

echo: "what is art?"

"art should be an echo...a feeling of your heart...a mirror, a container of memory."

--jaume plensa, via joel henning/the wsj

newly installed echo, made of fiberglass resin, is 44 ft high...

mr. plensa's echo, in madison square park, looks eerie on a cloudy afternoon...

perhaps i will have a different feeling, when i see it in the full sunshine, and when the park is full of strollers and gazers.

you can see it too, through mid-august.

before the firestorm

i personally cannot complain about the christmas weekend blizzard.

i don't have a car.

i don't need the subway or bus to get to work.

i wasn't stranded anywhere.

and: we have the best team at our condo--by 10am on monday they'd shoveled clean the widest swath of sidewalk in all of murray hill.

but it's hard not to be outraged after reading and hearing about conditions in other parts of the city, as a result of misjudgment and inaction at the local level.

(meanwhile, jersey knew what to do.)

***

here are a few shots from the very first afternoon, before the city got all stomped on and sloppy, and well before the effect of bloomberg & co's snafu was fully evident.

it was pretty, especially in madison square park...

all photos from december 27, 2010.

mad (square) color

april 22, 2010. all photos © anita aguilar

on march 26, antony gormley's "event horizon" will make its official debut in madison square park and the surrounding blocks. but the first of 31 life-size, cast-iron figures (of mr. gormley himself) was installed today on the roof of 204 fifth avenue, where the new york office of pentagram design lives.

i was happy to meet photographer pearl gabel who offered some kind advice--and let me shadow her for a few minutes.
a photo she took of me may make it into the daily news tomorrow...
check out her work at pearlgabel.com

pretty city: madison square monday

shortly after i took these photos, as i waited to cross the street on the north side of the park, a black and white butterfly came to rest on my shoulder.
i wish i had a picture of that.

pretty city: the sun is up (part 2)

a little further downtown...i tried to catch more in the sunshine...i was a just a bit late, but kept snapping...

this little girl was so over getting her picture taken by her dad. and then she caught me...

oh the glare. the color version was unbearable.

but his color is fab.

hers is, too.

he could stop traffic with this amazing jacket...

the metlife tower in madison square park. a puddle shot! i can usually never find a clean one, so this felt lucky.

fuzzy rams jacket+ silver cowboy ankle boots + topshop bag= a real statement

in front of the new york public library...

and behind the new york public library...

photos © anita aguilar

pretty city: meet gary

i've been reading lately about the merits of a 50mm lens--i have a good one, but really haven't explored its use outside of...well, i haven't used it outside. i rely on my tamron zoom when i'm outdoors. i like that it allows me to get up-close to something or someone (somewhat) unobtrusively (it's sort of long, and hard to miss). but the 50mm is a lens that was standard back in the day. (henri cartier-bresson? he used a 50mm on a small format camera. clearly the thing works). so this is what i'll be taking out with me for the next several weeks. we'll see what i can learn.

it's a whole different world with the 50 mm--you have to really move around and do a lot of recomposing to get a shot. but i kinda like it.

today, i hit the madison square park area (on my way to home depot). if you stand on the northwest corner of the park, you'll have one of the best views of the empire state building. i've yet to come up with a better than ordinary shot of that landmark, but i wanted to give it a try today.

i saw this instead. a rad bike. just waiting for me to take its picture.

was this a piece of art?

detail shot, of the wheel...this is for my friend, nicholas. crazy? crazy generous, crazy cute, girl crazy...which is part of why we all love him.

tried to get the flatiron in there somehow. i took many from this angle.

and then finally the bike's owner popped up and asked if he could get in the photo.
meet gary...photogenic gary. i thanked him for his modeling...

and that encounter, my friends, made my day.
more with the 50 mm to come.

shadows and tall trees

i don't know about this one, but it's what madison square park looked like today, at the noon(ish) hour. so i'm posting it.
hooray for the weekend.

blue...

am i?
not so (anymore).

mad square adventure

finally. a single shackburger, a double shackburger, fries and 2 black and white hand-spun shakes.

in recent weeks, i have walked through madison square park nearly every day, sometimes twice a day, and i've marvelled that the shake shack has managed to sustain such a devoted and patient patronage. the line that snakes long around the seating area on the south side of the park has been a deterrent for me, yet it makes me smile quietly--it's a sign of spring, joyous congregation around...meat and milkshakes. i think it's sweet that people are still so enthusiastic about it. but i also wonder if they aren't the biggest suckers in town. friends have offered mixed reviews, from "meh" to "awesome" --it just hasn't been enough to inspire me to endure the wait.

but yesterday, my friend stephen proposed it as our "lunch adventure." he too has never wanted or had time to wait out the line, but it was a gorgeous day, since we haven't hung out since i was laid off, we could fuel our anticipation with some good catching up. and in that hour, we shared all kinds of good gossip (i mean, news) from the office. i think i even got a bit of color...

and then there was the food.

the shackburger is a bit more modest then i anticipated--it's small, but the single is probably a smart size for a mid-day meal. it's a handsomely assembled little burger (pretty tomatoes). the meat was tender, but a bit too done and lacking flavor. i am a ketchup fiend--fiend, i say--and my burger test is "how long can i go before i need some ketchup?" i have been to a few places recently--fatty crab, resto, 5 napkin burger--where the meat was so savory that ketchup would have only been a distraction. not so here. three bites into it, and it felt like the shackburger needed something to elevate it. the shack sauce was runny and indistinguishable. and american cheese is wonderful for adding smoothness, but something sharper could have helped here.

it seemed to be the overriding theme, as the fries were handsome and crisp, but missing flavor and salt.

but the shake redeemed everything. not that any of the food was bad, it was fine and good. one wonders, though, if it's enough payoff for the wait?

the shake makes it so.