Harleys, Cars, Girls & Guitars

Farmer's Market in Union Square

I walked up to Union Square yesterday to buy a jQuery manual at Barnes and Noble. Technical books and manuals... that's all I read. That's been true for the past 15 years. I walked right into the weekly farmer's market. 

This is a big farmer's market. Prices are high, but what can you expect in Manhattan? New Green City (there's that green stuff again) operates markets all over the city. Here's their spiel:

Our markets are as diverse as the city itself and vary in size, from a one day a week commuter market with a few producers to Union Square open 4 days a week with as many as 80 producers. No matter where you are, whether in Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens or Staten Island, you can find a bustling space filled with neighbors, families, office workers and chefs all shopping side-by-side for the freshest and most diverse variety of products you’ll find anywhere.  Regardless of their size, each market strives to be an anchor to their community providing not only fresh, locally-grown food, but a safe and fun gathering place were neighbors can come together to talk to farmers, share recipes, watch a cooking demonstration, take a tour with a chef and learn about local agriculture.

My garden was an enormous success this year. I harvested about 100 pounds of tomatoes. The Karaoke Queen cooked up a big kettle of tomato soup. Outrageously good! I've got a huge container of tomato sauce in the freezer. The peppers are drying on the porch... habaneros, Chinese spears and jalapenoes. The lettuce came in a week after Memorial Day and lasted until July 4th. All in all, one of my best years.

So, I appreciate organic, fresh produce.

I checked the roster to see if any sellers from the Woodstock area were present. Sure enough, Bread Alone, the Boiceville bakery, had a big booth. I bought a mini-baguette and dunked it in the Karaoke Queen's fresh tomato soup. Great lunch.

And then, I walked back along University Avenue with my brand new jQuery manual. Got to learn yet another programming language. I'm an old man, but I'm still struggling to learn new things.

College Commies... Some Things Never Change

Even Fidel has given up.  The Soviet Union is only a memory. China encourages free markets. Communism is dead and buried, right?

On my way home from work last night, I passed by this young woman who was stringing up leaflets from a light pole. She was standing across the street from Washington Square Park. I stopped for a moment to listen to her spiel.

“This is not the best of all possible Worlds,” she announced. “And we do not have to live this way.”

“No shit,” I thought. “What in the hell do you know? You're just a dumb kid.”

The speaker's comrade, standing in front of her in the picture above, handed me a leaflet. The leaflet didn't have a title, but I stuck it in my briefcase, saving it for the ride home on New Jersey Transit.

All was explained as soon as I read the leaflet. The Revolutionary Communist Party, USA!  Bob Avakian!  Just like old times. Avakian has been around, well, forever. But, he can still find some groupies among the students at NYU. The old bastard must be in his 70s.  The language of the leaflet was exactly the same you'd have read back in the 1960s.  Nothing has changed.  Here's a screen shot of the commie website.

We'll be seeing that young woman orator in Woodstock one day. I can promise you that. When I passed by, I was almost tempted to stop to argue with her. You know, ask her about the GULAGs and the 100 million murdered by communism.  

But, I just kept on walking to the train. I'm not interested in arguing about politics any more. What's the use? I can barely remember what it is like to be young and idealistic and determined to change the world. I'm just trying to figure out how to work for a few more years and how to continue paying my mortgage.

The circle keeps on turning. Another generation of kids who want to live in a perfect world. They haven't been beaten up enough yet to plead for a life of compromise. And, the lessons of the past are lost on them. The wildest among them refuse to hear that the Utopian dream failed and collapsed into a murderous nightmare.

Another Working Smart Car and a Yamaha Ruckus

I keep running into them. This time, I was out for my lunchtime walk. This Smart Car pulled up to make a delivery of, apparently, cookies.

The Milk & Cookies Bakery is located on Bleecker and Seventh Avenue, and I guess that they deliver.  The Smart Car has to be a great choice for a delivery vehicle in Manhattan. The car is cheap to buy and operate, and you can park it easily.

I'm going to have to check out the chocolate chip cookies at The Milk & Cookies Bakery. Individual cookies: $1.95! That's outrageous! 12 oz. glass of organic milk (whatever that is): $2.25! $4.20 plus tax for a cookie and milk! Only in Manhattan. The bakery should delivery their cookies in a Rolls Royce.

I love chocolate chip cookies. Although, I'm not fond of the glass of milk.

What in the world is this thing?

It's a Yamaha Ruckus, a sort of minimalist scooter. The thing costs about $2,150. Ugly as hell, isn't it?

I don't know what to think of this scooter. Its lines are all square and the look is industrial. No decorations. I certainly wouldn't buy one. I'm surprised anybody did.

But, there's no accounting for taste.

UPDATE: September 24, 2010

So, on my way home last night, I stopped by Milk & Cookies Bakery to try out their chocolate chip cookie.

I cleverly snapped this picture of the bakery and two kids who were making out on the bench in front without revealing their identities. Only when I downloaded the picture did I discover my reflection on the front door. No problem!

The cookies turned out to be a complete botch! Two bucks for a cookie, and the cookie stinks! They've got it all wrong. The cookie dough has the texture and taste of an oatmeal cookie, and that completely overpowers the chocolate chips. The fact that the cookie is the size of a hockey puck doesn't make up for its flaws.

Not at all recommended. Overpriced and badly conceived to boot.

I'll tell you where to find the perfect chocolate chip cookie over the weekend. This is important.

Chinatown Oddities

Took a walk to Chinatown today because I had to mail a package. The only post office within walking distance from my office is on Canal Street.

I encountered this cheesecake mural in a parking lot on the corner of Canal and Greene Streets. The artist (and perhaps the parking lot owner) has a strange sense of humor. The girl's butt is up in the air and to the right (you can't see it all) is the word “T-OOOH!”

I'll leave it to your imagination to figure out what that's all about. What is she leaning on? Clouds? A pillow?

Right across Greene Street, I found this crocheted bicycle in front of Acne Studioes,  a clothing store for men and women. Made me wonder... don't the owners know what acne means? Like pimples?

Acne Studios primarily does business in Northern Europe and Scandinavia.

The Chinatown store is fairly new. Acne threw a launch party on June 4th.

Evolution in Soho

Soho is one of the most expensive and fashionable shopping districts in the world. Competition for shoppers' eyeballs is fierce. So the storefronts and windows are carefully composed to grab the attention of passersby. This one certainly caught my eye.

Evolution's website is equally eye-catching. The Flash rollovers on the splash page quickly take the viewer to the store's major products: medical models, skulls, animal skeletons, fossils, taxidermy, minerals, insects and seashells. No, the skulls aren't real.

The picture below is a close up of the store's window display.

Soho is 34 square blocks or so, bounded by Houston Street on the north, Canal Street on the south, Broadway on the east and Sixth Avenue on the west. Trendy shops and restaurants line the streets.

There's something a little ghoulish about Evolution. (But, nowhere near as ghoulish as some of the gay fetish shops over on Christopher Street.) The replica skulls and skeletons are actually made out of plastic resin. Cost of a replica gorilla skull: $279!

The store sells anatomical models for medical study. Somehow, a Condom Training Model fits within this category. 

Apparently everything in inventory is available for rental as a movie prop.  Movies are big business as Soho is a favorite site for filming.

For a cheap gift, I recommend the real alligator head for only 39 bucks. 

Giggles... Stuff for Hipster Babies

Eventually, even hipsters have babies. Hipster women in the Village probably will only have one baby, at most two. (If they do have two babies, those babies will likely have different fathers.)

Hipster women wait until they're 35 or 40 to have their baby. So, they have to make those babies count. Everything must be just so... green, organic and innovative.

Giggles is a national chain. I passed by their shop in the Village on Friday. The other Giggles locations are all hip... Boston, LA, San Francisco, etc. I was attracted to the shop by the big baby display in the window. Competition among window dressers is intense in the Village and Soho. You've got to make a big bold statement if you want to be noticed. Giggles caught my eye.

Giggles has a pretty extensive website that features a number of blogs: Green Nursery, Child Development, Best Birth, Picture Perfect, Nursery Design and Healthy Eating. Of course, hipster babies must go green. And, just raising your kid the traditional way that your parents raised you is not quite enough. Everything must be studied and approved by a board of experts.

Each product line features a question and answer box where the prospective hipster parent can get detailed advice from “experts.” For instance, you can ask the expert when your baby should make the transition from cradle to bed. You might think that the answer to this is obvious, or that it would become obvious in practice. Apparently not.

The window display is great. The prices are sky high. You wouldn't be caught dead at WalMart, would you? That would be so square.

Matt Umanov Vintage Guitars

I pass by this shop twice a day. Umanov's specializes in vintage acoustic guitars, primarily Martins and Gibsons. I've never bought a vintage guitar, always preferring a new guitar without the wear and tear already built in from another player.

I've done business with Umanov's, usually accessories and repairs. Since the web stores came into existence, I buy almost all of my strings and accessors online. The folks at Umanov's really do know what they are doing when it comes to re-fretting, fixing cracks and installing new bridges on guitars. (You can see one of their repair guys working on the second floor.)

They're right on Bleecker Street in the heart of the Village, so they're hip. Leftist politics for sure.

Did you know that it's possible to spend $100,000 on a vintage guitar? Sounds crazy, huh? But here it is:

I'd be afraid to play the damned thing. Then again, there are people who don't consider $100,000 a lot of money. Wish I was one of them. I'm going to have to start buying lottery tickets again.

Most expensive guitar in the world? A $2.7 million Fender Stratocaster autographed by a Who's Who of famous rock musicians. Most expensive production model guitar? The Gibson J-250 Monarch Acoustic Guitar, starting at about $20,000. 

I think that my guitar buying days are over.  Can't think of a guitar I really need.  But, when I pass by Umanov's and take a look at that puke green Gretsch Country Gentleman with the Bigsby whammy bar... well, who knows?

Maybe I'll be in the money again one day. You know: "Once I lived the life of a millionaire."

Yet Another Working Smart Car

A couple of days ago, I blogged about working Smart Cars. Here's another one, this time carrying the ladders of a window cleaner on its roof.

Note the green leaf on the side of the car. This is Greenwich Village, after all, so you've got to profess green values. What could possibly be the green angle of window washing? God alone knows.

I wonder who installed the rack for the ladders on the top of the car? And, what's the reach of the ladders? The car must impose some limits on this. Can the window washer guy reach the third floor?

The Gene Frankel Theater and Its Golden Pixies

As I was taking my afternoon walk through the Cooper Union area about a week ago, I noticed this odd glint of gold reflecting off a building on Bond Street. Check out the upper left corner of the picture below.

What is this all about? The tents for an upcoming flea market or street fair obscured the fronts of the buildings.

Up close, I discovered that the building in question houses the Gene Frankel Theater.  Who is Gene Frankel? Damned if I know, but if you read his website, you can discover his credits. His bio on the website displays a nice bit of errant Javascript code. Currently playing at the Theater is “The Diva.”

What really interested me was the golden pixies frolicking on the balcony of the building. The website doesn't say anything about the artist who created the pixies.

This is an Off-Broadway theater so, of course, the pixies are nude. I passed by the same theater a few weeks before and some sort of “penis” themed performance was taking place.

I think I can guarantee you that sexual outrage and homosexuality dominate the fare at the Frankel Theater. That's the usual in the East Village. Shocking the rubes is practically the purpose of life in the East Village.

Smart Cop Car at NYU

I did a double take the first time I saw this... the teenie Smart Car dressed up like a police cruiser. Absurd!

I guess it does the job of winding its way through the crowded streets of Greenwich Village. But, when I first saw this car, at about 7 a.m. one morning, the lady cop inside was taking a nap.

My car, a 2006 Ford Escape is nearing the end of its life. Soon, I will hit 140,000 miles. I don't want to buy another car. In fact, there's no way I can afford another car. But, I had good luck with my Escape. Started every time and never broke down. That's the bottom line of what I want in a car. My only complaint... the interior is noisy.

The Smart Car starts at about $17,000. A Ford Escape starts at about $21,000. In a web search, the cheapest I found comes in at $26,000.

No way I can fit two keyboards, two guitars and amplifiers and accessories in a Smart Car. The Escape is barely big enough to get me to a gig.

Here's another Smart Car I wandered past in the Village. It's doing it's job, which is to squeeze into very tight spaces.

I guess that it's appropriate for this Smart Car to be a billboard for the American Cellulite Reduction Center.  All the fat has been removed from this little vehicle.