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New York, New York
When the sun goes down, the night explodes in their eyes
When I started this slideshow archive site way back during the pandemic, there was a certain logic to it all. Most of the slideshows originally started as emails with pictures and stories sent to unsuspecting family and friends, and those emails were the content that I started with. But as I combed through my generally well kept archives, I started to see a lot of short trips that were only a page or less, and with that I started putting together yearly “weekend trip” slideshows. I was never too strict about what went in these, and over time I started to add things like local art exhibits, local events and local building tours that seemed interesting enough to share but that were a day trip (or less) at best. The end result of that lax attitude is this year’s weekend trips slideshows, which includes an awful lot of local pictures and no actual weekend trips.
One of the reasons that I have so many local pictures this year is that I really went out of my way to push myself to get out more. An inescapable problem with working from home is that the work is never done and it can be easy to defer anything that is not work, even on holidays or weekends. This year was thankfully different and, as you’ll soon see as you start to go through this slideshow, I managed to get out and see a hell of a lot this year.
We’re already on the third paragraph of this slideshow and now, finally, it’s time to start to talk about the some pictures. These four are from Illumination NYC, a weekend exhibit that included a setup by the ferry terminal at Battery Park City and, more interestingly, the promise to project images of a face on the face of Santiago Calatrava’s Oculus at the World Trade Center, which ended up looking just about like I thought it might.
I tried to divide each page of this five page slideshow into different, easy to guess themes. If you haven’t guessed already, this page focuses on night pictures and started with an early January visit to Little Island, then went to Illumination NYC and now we’re here. This is Bloomtanica at the Genesis House, a free and fun instagram ready walkthrough attraction celebrating Korean gardens. The Korean gardens part makes sense once you realize that the Genesis part of Genesis House is the electric car company owned by Hyundai and not the first book of the bible, or that band with Phil Collins, or even that doomsday device from that good Star Trek movie.
In the past, the big empty site a block or two south of the United Nations was known as the ConEd site, this makes sense since because before it was a big empty site it was the home to a ConEd generating station. In the future, the big empty site a block or two south of the United Nations may be known as the site of a casino, although we won’t know who actually ends up with casino licenses until late next year. In the interim, the potential casino developers are calling this empty site Freedom Plaza, and it currently hosts a free walk through art installation called Field of Light by Bruce Munro. This is not the first installation of Field of Light, it was first displayed in 2008 at the Eden Project in Cornwall, England and since has been in Nashville, Mexico City, Atlanta and Phoenix, among many other places. What all those places saw in Field of Light was a field of light just like this one, which admittedly photographs just a bit nicer than how it looks in person.
I don’t do this every year, although I’m not sure why not. Every anniversary of 9/11 includes the especially moving Tribute in Light, two light towers over the parking garage by the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel that are on from dusk to dawn. The best way to experience this is to first enjoy the sunset on the river (which always looks great from Battery Park City), then loiter a bit at Battery Park until it gets just a bit darker. They turn the lights on before it’s dark enough to actually see them, which means that when you finally see them it feels like they’re always there. Then start walking up West Street (avoiding any stray tv reporters) for the best views, and end up at the memorial, specifically at the south pool, with a view looking back to the light towers in the distance.
Every time I do this, it always makes me wish the actual light towers were somehow built into the actual memorial. They’re now in the wrong place and much smaller (though obviously far taller) than the actual towers. When I think of the World Trade Center towers I remember seeing them from different parts of the city- looking down Sixth Avenue or looking up outside the Winter Garden or how one tower seemed to be dead center on Fulton Street- and I think of how even more powerful Tribute in Light would be if it was exactly where I remembered it.
There were Aurora Borealis sightings all across the mainland United States this year. The first chance was in May, but it was raining here and all you could see were clouds. My second chance in October was much better- here is a kind of blurry picture looking straight up standing outside in the street in front of my sister’s house- with a purple streak that was visible and hard to miss. Both times I started to research just enough that I started to feel a little like an aurora expert, following forecasts and looking for dark places with northern views and water reflections, trying to time the perfect picture which, of course, never happened. But this picture of that first time I ever really saw the northern lights is probably as good as I’m ever going to get without going to extraordinary measures like, you know, actually heading north to see them instead of waiting for them to come see me.
The (real) Aurora Borealis nightscape sky may have been spectacular, but the (fake) Starscape sky at the Genesis House was pretty damn spectacular too. Of course a well done fake night sky should always be more spectacular, and Genesis House (the same venue where Bloomtanica was) has the advantage of an immersive space and controlled environment. Like Bloomtanica, Starscape was free but, unlike Bloomtanica, it was a not a leisurely walk through event but instead a short presentation with a start and an end, designed to move large crowds through a Starscape that may feel like infinite space but one that, in reality, is pretty small.
This year Open House New York started offering a special ticketed night program; calling itself OHNY at Night, it featured building tours that focused on lighting. I was lucky enough to get tickets to two of the events, and the first one was Leading, a skyspace by James Turrell at the Friends Seminary School, a private K-12 school which costs about $65k a year more than public schools. This skyspace has a sliding roof that closes up at night for an intense 20 minute light show, one that my iPhone 16 Pro tried its hardest to capture but also one that didn’t quite get the real feel of being there.
Our next to last stop for this first page is the Experience After Dark, um, experience, at Mercer Labs, an instagram friendly attraction in the old downtown Century 21 building with installations designed by Roy Nachum. Of course the advantage of going to visit an instagram friendly attraction is that there is a good chance that you’ll walk out with some great pictures, and a good chance that you’ll spend your time there enjoying taking those great pictures which, of course, I did.
Our last stop on this first page of the slideshow is inside the Transit Museum inside Grand Central Terminal in New York, where we have a rare unobstructed view of their annual holiday train display. There are a lot of landmarks here but we’ll start with Grand Central itself, a representation of the very building that we’re standing in that, if truly accurate, would also contain an even smaller model of Grand Central inside it. I would normally not expect such accuracy in a model, but then I see what they did for CBGBs. When it was still open, I used to say that CBGBs lived on whatever level of hell had no fire codes (if you know me personally, chances are you heard me say that at some point), and this little tiny CBGBs lives up to that with the placement of a possible dead guy out front. And while I can not claim to have ever seen an actual dead guy lying in front of CBGBs, it is definitely on brand for that part of the Bowery when CBGBs was still there. Bravo Transit Museum Model Train Makers, Bravo.
