Tag Archives: Travel

City of Angels

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Los Angeles has always occupied a weird place in my consciousness. Having spent the bulk of my adult life in Chicago, Philadelphia, and New York City, my mental image of LA consisted primarily of east coast stereotypes and whatever I had seen on movies and television. That said, the city certainly has a mystique to it. Given that many of my favorite movies (Pulp Fiction, Blade Runner, Mulholland Drive, The Big Lebowski, and L.A. Confidential, among others) are set in LA and prominently feature the city itself as a major character, I figured there was something out there worth checking out.

That opportunity came this past week when my employer sent me and some others out to LA to take field measurements at a Macy’s store in Orange County. Most of the week was spent counting light fixtures and floor tiles inside the store, but at the end of the week I finally had a free evening before flying back to Cincinnati.

The skyline of downtown Los Angeles is somewhere off in the distance. Throughout the week I kept seeing this bright thing in the sky that Californians apparently call the "sun".

I met up with an old high school friend who has a small post-production company in Hollywood (www.5thwall.tv), and he gave me a quick driving tour of Los Angeles. Two of my favorite activities in the world are catching up with old friends and exploring new cities, and this evening offered the opportunity for both. Unfortunately we ran out of daylight before I could take many photos, but here are a few of them anyway.

My first impressions of Los Angeles: Dorothy Parker supposedly described LA as “72 suburbs in search of a city”, and the description seems apt. But among that vast patchwork of sprawl are some surprisingly fascinating urban places. And of course, the weather didn’t suck at all. It was nice to be in a place where I didn’t find myself living in fear of the outdoors. A few days after returning home to Cincinnati, I think I finally realized what I liked so much about Southern California: It had most of the things I miss about living in Florida (palm trees and the casual semi-tropical beach culture), minus most of the things I don’t miss about living in Florida (stifling humidity, boring topography, the post-Confederate collective chip on the shoulder, and the right-wing political/religious culture).

Large swaths of Los Angeles apparently look like this. (In fairness, so do large parts of New York and Chicago, minus the palm trees.) But the nice weather makes up for a lot of the LA cityscape's shortcomings. And like New York and Chicago, the scenery improves drastically once you get off the commercial avenues and start exploring the side streets.

I was barely able to scratch the surface on this trip, but I was there long enough to see the appeal LA holds in the popular imagination, and I’m sure I’ll find a reason to make a return trip out there at some point. Would I actually consider moving out there? Maybe. In a couple years I’ll finish up my M.Arch. degree in Cincinnati, and where I end up after that will largely depend on where I can find a job. My primary passion is transportation and infrastructure design, and there simply isn’t much of that type of work here in Cincinnati. But despite being the poster child for automobile-oriented sprawl, Los Angeles has actually been taking some aggressive steps to expand its public transit system. Before this trip I probably would have ruled out applying for positions in Los Angeles, but now I’d be willing to consider LA is a possible destination if the right opportunity came along.

The fact that you can buy liquor at your local CVS or Walgreen's is almost reason alone to move out there.

The full photo gallery from my Los Angeles trip can be found here.

‘Nati Weekend

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Time for another trip back to base camp. The official reason for the trip was to attend the M.Arch. open house at the University of Cincinnati. Just as importantly, it was an excuse to get the hell away from the NYC pressure cooker and spend a much-needed few days back on my home turf, and look at things that aren’t made of asphalt or concrete.

I arrived in Cincinnati late Thursday morning, and promptly checked into the hotel, took a shower, and crashed for a couple hours. I had overslept that morning, and woke up about ten minutes before I was supposed to be leaving for the airport. The next few hours were a blur, but I made my flight and landed at CVG without incident.

That evening, I attended a debate at UC about Cincinnati’s streetcar project and Issue 9. I met up with Sherman Cahal and Gordon Bombay at the event. Long story made short, later that evening Sherman and I found ourselves having beers with Mark Miller and Chris Finney, the two people most responsible for getting this stupid referendum issue on the ballot. Talk about awkward. Mark Miller turned out to be a nice guy and I found myself agreeing with him on more things than I thought I would. Chris Finney? No comment.

The next day was spent almost entirely at the M.Arch. open house at UC. I didn’t learn much that I didn’t already know, but it was still nice to be on campus and meet people in the architecture program there. UC was my first choice of architecture schools when I was in high school, but I didn’t get accepted there, and I ended up at a few other places instead. Now I’m hoping to go there for grad school. I’m trying not to get my hopes up too high and jinx myself, but I think I already crossed that bridge a long time ago.

That evening I met up with Eighth and State, Maximillian, testell, Caseyc, thomasbw, Kevin LeMaster, and a few others (my apologies if I left anybody out) at Grammers in Over-the-Rhine, and ran into Michael Moore. Not Michael Moore of “Bowling for Columbine” fame, but Michael Moore, the City Architect for the City of Cincinnati. He’s the one working to build a streetcar line through OTR, and he’s got some other good ideas as well. Nice guy, and I wish him the best in making Cincinnati a better city.

The following day was spent driving around the city and checking out routes and locations for my thesis project, a rapid transit system for Cincinnati. I got as far west as Lawrenceburg and as far east as Milford. Google Earth is great, but nothing beats going out and seeing a place in real life. One thing that struck me was how badly aerial photos are at depicting topography.

That evening was spent at my cousin’s place in Silver Grove, eating chili, drinking beer, and engaging in good conversation. I think I had more of a social life in three days in Cincinnati than I’ve had in the past two years in New York.

On Sunday I checked out of the hotel, drove around for a bit, and headed back to the airport. In what’s becoming somewhat of an unfortunate tradition, my return flight from Cincinnati to NYC was yet another clusterfuck.

My flights to Cincinnati from NYC have invariably been on-time and incident-free. My return flights back to New York are another story. A year ago, Delta forgot to load the baggage onto the plane, resulting in 150 angry people about to start a riot at the baggage claim office at Newark Airport. Last June, after a series of delays and mechanical failures, my flight was ultimately canceled and I arrived in New York 26 hours after first checking in at CVG — enough time to drive or take Amtrak from Cincy to New York and back.

This time, the flight was two hours late, there were a half-dozen hyperactive brats in the back of the tiny plane, a screaming infant in the row behind me, and the landing was so hard I thought the pilot was trying to put a crater in LaGuardia’s runway. And of course, arriving in Queens from almost anywhere is like arriving in Tijuana after a weekend in Lake Tahoe. I’ve reached the conclusion that God really doesn’t want me to return to New York from Cincinnati, and I’m inclined to agree with him.

Well, if I get accepted to UC and things go the way I hope they will, my next trip to Cincinnati will be sometime in May, and the purpose of that trip will be to look for an apartment. Wish me luck.

Issue 9 debate at UC:

Main Street on the University of Cincinnati campus:

The old quad at the University of Cincinnati:

Main Street @ UC:

Grammer’s in Over-the-Rhine:

I love beer steins. My grandfather used to have a few, but I have no idea whatever happened to them.

Grammer’s. Some neighborhood thug threw a cinder block through the leaded glass window on the right a few months ago, but it has since been restored.

A name from Cincinnati’s rich brewing history.

Beer steins on display at Grammer’s.

More beer steins. Grammer’s has been around in one form or another since 1872.

The bar at Grammer’s. Lately the hipsters have discovered Grammer’s, but tonight it wasn’t too obnoxious.

Old railroad tracks on the Oasis line. In my thesis project, this right-of-way carries the Blue Line rapid transit route.

An old church along River Road on Cincinnati’s west side. The steeple reminds me a lot of St. Michael’s in Chicago’s Old Town neighborhood.

Northside. I had a great sandwich at Melt.

No visit to Cincy is complete without stopping at Fountain Square and paying homage to the Genius of Water.

The so-called “Short Vine” business district near the UC campus.

Cincinnati’s hills offer great vistas of the downtown skyline from all directions. This one is from a steep street in the Prospect Hill neighborhood.

Prospect Hill:

Cincinnati’s Pendleton neighborhood. Many parts of Cincinnati wouldn’t feel out of place in Brooklyn or Philadelphia.

My survival kit for the winter:

Rediscovering Cincinnati

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This past week I took a much-needed vacation back home to Cincinnati, my first real vacation (other than short weekend trips) since my 2001 trip to London. I had been hoping to take a 2-week trip to the UK later this summer, but that was looking increasingly unrealistic from a fiscal point of view, so I decided another trip to Cincinnati was in order. This was the longest trip I’ve taken to Cincy in quite a while, and it felt good to be back home without having to rush around to cram everything into a couple short days.

Most of my time was spent meeting up with friends and family, and wondering around town and taking lots of photos. A couple highlights included:

  • Meeting local bloggers Randy Simes, the Provost of Cincinnati, Sherman Cahal, and a few others for drinks on Fountain Square. Randy was also kind enough to meet up for drinks and give me a brief driving tour of the city the day before. It’s nice to meet up with people who share a passion for the city and who are doing what they can to make it a better place.
  • I had a meeting with a longtime professor at the University of Cincinnati’s school of architecture to talk about the program and have him look over my portfolio. The meeting went well, and I came away cautiously optimistic that, if all goes well, I’ll be starting my M.Arch. degree at UC around this time next year. I’m trying not to jinx myself by getting my hopes up too high before anything is official, but it’s hard not to be excited about the idea.
  • I was able to visit the Cincinnati Zoo, Union Terminal, and a few other spots around town that I haven’t had a chance to visit in far too long.

Most importantly, though, the trip was a chance to remind myself how comfortable Cincinnati feels to me, and I’m looking forward to the opportunity to finally move back there.

The only real black mark on the whole trip was the return flight to New York. I showed up at Cincinnati / Northern Kentucky Airport (CVG) at around 6 PM for an 8 PM flight. But the flight kept getting delayed because they were waiting for a crew member to arrive on an inbound flight from JFK, and when they finally loaded us onto the plane at 11 PM, we taxied out to the runway only to be informed that the plane had some mechanical issues. We sat there for an hour while some mechanics tinkered around with the hydraulic system, before finally sending us back to the gate and canceling the flight. They put us up in a hotel, and then I was finally able to catch a 4:30 PM flight the next day. I landed at JFK at around 7:00 Saturday evening, 25 hours after first arriving at CVG for my departure. And people wonder why I hate flying so much…

Here are lots of photos. Click on the title to view the full album.

Fort Thomas, Kentucky

I was born in Cincinnati near Mariemont, but I spent most of my childhood just across the river in Fort Thomas, Kentucky. “Cake Town” is about as middle-America as you can possibly get, a cozy bedroom community strung along the top of a steep ridge overlooking the Ohio River, best known for its excellent public schools and its streets of tidy, well-kept houses. The type of place where you want to wake up on Christmas morning.

For me, it’s always refreshing going back there. Almost every spot in the city has some sort of childhood memory associated with it. No matter where I’ve been and what kinds of sordid ordeals I’ve been going through in my life, I feel like I can always go back and find Fort Thomas pretty much just as I had left it.

Most of my extended family and a few old friends in the Cincinnati area still live either in or near Fort Thomas, so the town typically serves as the hub of my activities during my periodic visits back home.

Prior to my most recent visit, though, it occurred to me that I hardly had any photos of the city, so I made a special point to remedy that oversight with my new digital camera. (63 photos)

Downtown Cincinnati and the Riverfront

While growing up in the Cincinnati area, downtown was like the nerve center of my universe. I was always begging my parents to take me over there. Until I visited Atlanta for the first time in high school, Cincinnati was the largest city I had ever been in. Later in my life I found myself living in places like Chicago and New York City, so downtown Cincy no longer really impresses me with its bigness.

That said, downtown Cincy is no slouch, and there are some much larger American cities that would kill to have a central business district as strong as Cincinnati’s. Many fine old buildings have been preserved and restored, the streets are generally clean and well-kept, and things are looking up. Downtown went through some rough periods through the 90’s and 2000’s, but the mood seems much more optimistic now that vacant storefronts are being filled and more people are choosing to actually live downtown. (108 photos)

Over-the-Rhine

To the north of downtown lies Cincinnati’s famed (and infamous) Over-the-Rhine neighborhood, a spectacular collection of 19th Century Italianate buildings that was once the most densely-populated American neighborhood outside of New York City. OTR spent much of the post-war period as a burned-out ghetto, but is now finally being rediscovered and redeveloped. Think of it as Cincinnati’s answer to the Lower East Side. (32 photos)

Union Terminal

Have you ever been given a priceless family heirloom or antique that, despite its incredible beauty and functionality, never seems to really fit anywhere in your home? That seems to be the dilemma Cincinnati has faced with its magnificent Union Terminal complex over the years. Completed in 1933, Union Terminal was not only one of the finest examples of art deco architecture in the world, but it was also one of the best-planned transportation facilities of its age. A large concourse spanned the tracks at the rear of the building and provided stairs to each train platform. At the front, dedicated ramps for taxis, busses, and streetcars funneled passengers to their ultimate destinations in an efficient manner. The central hub of activity was the massive half-domed rotunda.

Unfortunately, Union Terminal opened just as passenger rail in the US was beginning its long decline. Despite an upsurge in rail travel during the Second World War, the building soon found itself empty and obsolete. In 1974, the Southern Railway demolished the concourse to make room for an expanded yard for its freight operations. As if to add insult to injury, all but one of the concourse’s famous murals were relocated to the new airport across the river in Boone County, Kentucky.

In 1990, Union Terminal re-opened as a home to the Cincinnati History Museum, the Museum of Natural History & Science, an Ominmax theater, and a children’s museum. The following year, Amtrak resurrected the building’s original function as a passenger rail station in a limited way, with its Cardinal train calling at the station three times a week in each direction.

With plans underway to develop a regional high-speed rail system, Union Terminal may once again see its place restored as a magnificent gateway to the city. (25 photos)

University of Cincinnati

My earliest memories of the UC campus are from some sort of grade school field trip to Nippert Stadium. Since then, many parts of the campus have been completely rebuilt, and the campus now includes new structures by some of the most prominent architects currently practicing. (46 photos)

Maysville, Kentucky

One of the most frustrating things about living in NYC without a car is that I don’t often get the chance to take a nice long drive on country highways. So, this past week I decided to take a break from Cincinnati and head down Kentucky 8 towards the historic river town of Maysville. The town’s history dates back to before the American Revolution, and it was an important waypoint for travelers navigating the Ohio River. (10 photos)

Mount Adams, Eden Park, and the Krohn Conservatory

The Cincinnati neighborhood of Mount Adams and adjacent Eden Park have always been one of my favorite parts of the city. Mount Adams is a vibrant urban neighborhood that consists of steep, narrow streets that wouldn’t be out of place in San Francisco, and densely-spaced row houses that cling to the hillside for dear life.

Eden Park, although not the city’s largest public park, is arguably the best-known and most popular. The park features the Cincinnati Art Museum, the Krohn Conservatory, and incredible views overlooking the Ohio River. (66 photos)

Cincinnati Zoo

It had been ages since the last time I visited the Cincinnati Zoo, so I decided to stop by and check the place out. It’s the second-oldest zoo in the US (opened in 1875, only 14 months after the Philadelphia Zoo) and is consistently ranked as one of the best zoos in America. (59 photos)

Village of Mariemont

Mariemont was founded as a planned community in 1923, and modeled after an idyllic English village. I was born nearby, so I guess you could say my Anglophile streak goes back a long way. My maternal grandmother, now 86 years old and still sharp as a tack, still lives a few blocks away. (20 photos)

Around Town

Here are a few neighborhood shots and various other photos that don’t neatly fit into albums of their own. This album includes Columbia-Tusculum, Hyde Park, Mount Lookout, Spring Grove Cemetery, and an unplanned late night at CVG Airport. (41 photos)

Escape from New York

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This past Saturday, with clear skies and temps in the 70’s, I decided that it was the perfect day to take a long-overdue break from the concrete canyons of Manhattan.

I picked up the rental car at around noon, and took the Saw Mill River Parkway and Taconic Parkway up the east side of the Hudson River to the Kingston-Rhinecliff Bridge. After crossing over, I made my way through Saugarties and Palenville to Catskills State Park. Highway 23A is a steep, windy road that heads up through a dramatic gorge that wouldn’t be out of place in the Oregon Cascades.

I pulled over at the trailhead to Kaaterskill Falls and hiked the half-mile trail to the base of the falls. While fairly short, the steepness of the trail and the rocky terrain made it one of the more brutal hikes I’ve taken on either coast. (I’ve noticed that many Northeastern hiking trails tend to be fairly trashy and head straight up the side of a steep hill, while the trails I hiked in the Northwest tend to ease you up a hill through a series of switchbacks.) Probably doesn’t help that I’m completely out of shape and that it’s been months since I’ve walked on something that isn’t made of asphalt or concrete.

Once I made it back to the car, I drove the long way around through the Catskills, passing through a series of some quaint and not-so-quaint small towns and hamlets. Woodstock was particularly interesting; the whole town is like one giant head shop, and I saw a couple people wandering around who appeared to have been “wandering” around town since 1969. It’s sort of like a hyper-condensed version of Eugene, Oregon. (I later learned that the 1969 Woodstock music festival took place about 40-some miles from the actual town of Woodstock.)

On the way back toward the city, I came back down the west side of the Hudson on Highways 32 and 17, passing through Kingston, New Paltz, etc. before eventually finding myself driving through the suburban wastelands of northern New Jersey. I was able to stop in IKEA and pick up a new dresser as planned, and then came back into the city via the George Washington Bridge.

I need to make a point to do something like this much more often. The scenery north of NYC is quite beautiful, and (at least depending on which route you take) it’s amazing how it transitions from urban to almost-rural within a very short distance. Compare to Chicagoland, where you have to drive through almost 40 miles of suburban sprawl before you get anywhere that even resembles “rural”, and even then you’re out in the middle of cornfields rather than mountains and forests.

Return of the Prodigal Son

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As I mentioned on an earlier posting in September, I had planned on taking a weekend trip back to Cincinnati this month. Well, I just got back from that trip, so here’s my report.

I had to wake up at the ungodly hour of 4:00 AM on Thursday to catch my flight out of Newark Airport. Somebody remind me never to book a 7:45 AM flight again, especially when it takes over an hour just to get to the airport from my apartment. Fortunately, once we got airborne, the flight to Cincinnati was uneventful. I absolutely hate flying with a passion that passes all human understanding, and I’ll do anything I can to avoid it, but sometimes there’s no viable alternative and you just have to bend over and take it like a man.

Upon arriving at CVG, I picked up the rental car and grabbed a bite to eat at the Frisch’s in the Cincinnati suburb of Fort Thomas, just a couple blocks away from the house I grew up in. Afterwards, I drove around Fort Thomas a bit to see what, if anything, had changed. To nobody’s surprise, the town has hardly changed a bit in decades. They built an addition to the high school, and there’s been some streetscape improvements in the little downtown business district. That’s about it. Fort Thomas is about as middle-America as you can possibly get, a cozy bedroom community strung along the top of a high ridge overlooking the Ohio River, best known for its excellent public schools and its streets of tidy, well-kept houses. The type of place where you want to wake up on Christmas morning.

For me, it’s always weird going back there. Almost every spot in the city has some sort of childhood memory associated with it. No matter where I’ve been and what kinds of sordid ordeals I’ve been going through in my life, I feel like I can always go back and find Fort Thomas just as I had left it. For better or worse, the town feels like it’s stuck in some sort of time warp where the calendar never got past 1984. In many ways it’s nice to have a place like that to go back to, but I can’t help but wonder if I’d ever be able to live there again without going nuts.

My hometown of Fort Thomas may not have changed much since I moved away in 1984 at the ripe old age of nine, but my friends and family there aren’t getting any younger, and it always comes as a jolt to my senses when I realize how fast the years are passing. I’m now about the same age as my parents, aunts, and uncles were when I was a kid in Fort Thomas. My parents and their siblings are now rapidly approaching the same age my grandparents where at the time I most remember them. My cousin Austin and I were inseparable as kids in Fort Thomas; now he’s married and has a kid of his own. My best friend April is about the same age as me, and we spent countless hours playing together down in the woods behind our houses. She’s been married for a few years now, and has three kids. Her oldest kid is now as old as I was when I moved away in 1984.

I have no regrets about moving around as much as I have, even the moves during my childhood when I had no choice in the matter. I think being exposed to so many places has made me a more well-rounded and open-minded person than I probably would have been otherwise, and I’ve met some great people and made some great friends along the way. But I can’t help but mourn all the things I’ve missed out on while I’ve been away from my hometown, and it’s during these periodic visits when those feelings always come rushing back up to the surface.

For that reason, I made a special point during this trip to touch base with some friends and family members who I haven’t seen in a long time, to rekindle some of those relationships. I visited my aunt Ellen on Thursday, soon after my arrival in town. Saturday evening I was able to get together with Austin, his wife and kid, his sister Emily and brother Eliot, and his mother (my aunt) Lisa down at his place in Silver Grove. We all goofed around a bit while kicking back pizza and cold beers, and Austin and I still hit it off like old times. A lot of things have changed, but people’s personalities seem to stay fairly constant.

Earlier that day, I had met up with April at her place. This was especially emotional for me, as I hadn’t seen her in ages. There’s been more than one occasion where I’d become convinced that we had lost touch for so long that our friendship had become just an old memory, but we always seem to get back in touch. We were such close friends back in grade school that, at the time, I just assumed that we’d eventually get married. But I moved away and now she’s grown into a beautiful woman, happily married to her husband for about ten years now, with three kids and a nice house. I can’t help but think about the “what-if’s” that might have played out if we had been allowed to continue growing up together.

All but one of my grandparents have long since passed away, but Grandma Hillerich, now well into her 80’s, is still more healthy, more mentally sharp, and more active than most people half her age. The Energizer Bunny has nothing on her. She’s actually my mother’s stepmother, but I never knew my biological grandmother on that side of the family, so she’s always been my “real” grandmother as far as I’m concerned. As active and healthy as she is, she’s not getting any younger, and I couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that I should really make an effort to visit her while I’m in town. I made a couple attempts to call her, but wasn’t able to connect. So this morning, after checking out of the hotel and with a few hours to kill before I had to be at the airport, I decided to take a drive around her part of town. She lives near Mariemont, a picturesque village made up of Tudor-style buildings clustered around a central village sqaure. Up the hill not far away is the site of the hospital I was born in, now converted to a nursing home. Fort Thomas is my hometown, but Mariemont is where I was born. During my drive I happened across a familiar-looking little gray church on Plainville Road, and I realized that it was my grandmother’s church, where she’s been active for decades. I kept on driving, but looking at my watch, I figured she was probably in there getting ready for the worship service. I took a deep breath, turned the car around, pulled into the church parking lot, and went inside. How long since the last time I’d been inside that church? At least 25 years. I soon found her, and she gave me a huge hug and was proud to introduce me to her friends there. I stuck around for the service, and then we grabbed a bite to eat together afterwards. It was nice seeing her again, and for once I’m glad I listened to the little nagging voice that told me to turn the car around.

Eventually we had to say our goodbyes, and I made my way out to the airport to turn in the rental car and get checked in. Unlike the flight out there, the flight back was a living hell, the type of flight that reminds me why I hate flying so much. Two rows in front of me were three spoiled-rotten toddlers, who screamed non-stop the entire three hours I was on board that plane. It was with a huge sense of relief that I finally stepped off the plane, even if I was in Newark. My relief turned to dismay, though, when my baggage never showed up on the carousel, and I was informed that it was apparently never loaded onto the plane at CVG. About half the people on the flight had the same problem. Supposedly the baggage was put on a later flight and they’ll deliver my suitcase to my apartment sometime late tonight, but I’ll believe it when I see it. They said midnight, and it’s now 1:00 AM as I type this. Somebody remind me never to fly anywhere again, ever.

The obstensible reason for this trip was to attend the M.Arch. open house at the University of Cincinnati on Friday. Even aside from the chance to catch up with friends and family and to get my Skyline Chili fix, the event at UC was well worth the trip. I came away with lots of questions answered, and with UC now ranking among my top picks for grad school. Unfortunately, it looks like I’ll be delaying my application for another year while I finish my BA degree and get some money saved up, but I’m looking forward to sending them my application around this time next year. Assuming I get accepted and decide to enroll there, I’ll be moving back to Cincinnati around June of 2010, about 20 months from now.

I just hope New York City doesn’t drive me crazy in the meantime. Don’t get me wrong; I still love NYC with a passion. But it takes a certain type of person to live here for an extended period of time, and sometimes I question whether I’m that type of person or not. I’m rapidly reaching the point in my life where I need to pick a spot to settle down and sink some roots, and right now it’s looking like that place will either be New York or Cincinnati. Cincinnati has plenty of its own issues and problems, so I guess my task for the next 12 months is to decide which city is least likely to drive me crazy.

Post-Thanksgiving Friday

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Thanksgiving is one of those holidays that I’m never quite sure what to do with. Of course the four-day weekend and the food are nice, but I always end up feeling like a failure if I don’t do some sort of Norman Rockwell feast with friends and/or family.

I typically do my holiday traveling over Christmas, seldom leaving me with any money and/or vacation time to go anywhere for Thanksgiving. My closest family is several hundred miles away, and although I have a few friends here in NYC, they’re either out of town themselves, or they’re not close enough friends that I can simply invite myself to whatever they have going on.

So, I ended up going to Niko’s, a Mediterranean restaurant I really like at 76th and Broadway on the Upper West Side. I’ve been to this restaurant several times before and have never been disappointed. I got their Thanksgiving special, which included: salad, bread, roasted leg of lamb, potatoes, stuffing, dressing, veggies, cranberries, pumpkin pie, half a carafe of wine, and coffee. It was a nice meal, but it would have been nice to not be eating alone. Better luck next year, I guess.

Speaking of holiday travels, I’ll be visiting my parents in Raleigh, North Carolina for Christmas. I normally dread going down there (once you’ve seen one Wal-Mart store, you’ve pretty much seen them all), but it’s been a few years since I’ve been there, and it should be a nice change of pace from New York City for a few days.

Hopefully I’ll be able to survive the 9-hour train ride on Amtrak each way. Normally I love trains, but my last few experiences with Amtrak have been less than pleasant; more often than not it feels like a Greyhound bus on rails.

Other than that, I’ve been busy getting this new blog and website put together. I’m pretty happy with the way the blog looks and works, but I’m still trying to figure out what to do with the Photo Galleries. Right now I’ve got them set up as a separate blog with a WordPress plug-in, but I’m mulling the idea of incorporating them into this blog so that people don’t have to register twice to leave comments. And I haven’t even begun thinking about how to do the Portfolio section yet… Stay tuned.

New Haven Road Trip

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Well, I just got back from an exciting road trip to New Haven, where I was hoping to sell my car at the CarMax store up there (which, it turns out, is the closest one to NYC). Their offer for my car: $750. This is a car that is worth over $5000 according to NADA and Kelly Blue Book, and CarMax told me with a straight face that it’s worth $750. I not-so-politely declined their offer and walked out.

In an effort to ensure that my 120-mile round trip wasn’t a complete waste of time and gas money, I decided to head over to Yale and check out the area. I had never been anywhere near the Yale campus before, and it’s one of the schools I’ll most likely be re-applying to for my M.Arch. at some point.

I parked near the architecture building (which is currently ripped to shreds as it undergoes a gut renovation), and poked around a bit at Louis Kahn’s building nearby. Very cool building, but unfortunately it was closed when I was there, so I was limited to looking around the exterior. I have no idea where Yale’s architecture studios are being held in the interim, or else I would have checked them out. I’m sure I’ll be back up there at some point in the fall, though.

I had a burger at Loui’s Lunch Spot, which claims to be the place that invented the hamburger. Tiny restaurant, and decent burger cooked in a weird cast iron contraption and served on toast, but hardly the best burger I’ve ever had. I guess it’s one of those places you go once just for the novelty of it.

After that, I did some walking around the Yale campus, which is very large and very beautiful. Lots of old gothic buildings, traditional campus quads, big trees, etc… It actually reminded me a bit of the University of Chicago campus. The surrounding streets have your typical college business district array of pizza places, bars, head shops, etc. Pretty cool overall… I could certainly think of worse places to spend three years of my life. New Haven has somewhat of a reputation for being a crime-ridden hellhole, but the area immediately near the campus seems pretty nice.

So my car is parked back in Newark, and I’m in a bit of a dilemma as how to pay the first month’s rent and security deposit for a slightly more permanent housing situation next month. I’ve already given up on the idea of getting my own apartment right away (that idea will most likely have to wait a few months), so I’ll be looking to move in with roommates for a while. True, my new job is paying me good money, but it will be a while until I’m working full-time and the paychecks start rolling in.

NYC Trip

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Just thought I’d give a quick rundown of when I spent yesterday in NYC. With a nice long holiday weekend, it was only natural that I spend a day in the city.

I drove up the NJ Turnpike to Jersey City, where I parked in a garage next to the Pavonia/Newport PATH station and took PATH the rest of the way into Manhattan. Arriving at 33rd Street, I walked down Seventh Avenue to around 14th Street to look around in some furniture stores in that area. I then walked east until I found myself at Union Square, where I browsed around the farmer’s market and some of the holiday-themed booths that are set up near the subway entrance.

Feeling a few raindrops on my head, I decided to head into the subway, and took the (R) train up to 5th Avenue/59th Street and check out the holiday shopping crowds. I walked around a bit up there, poking my head into St. Thomas Church and St. Patrick’s Cathedral before crossing the street and checking out the ice skating rink and Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center. Down in the concourse level of the RCA Building, I was very pleased to find one of those cool Pret A Manger shops that I saw all over London. Here’s hoping that more of those open up in the US.

From Rockefeller Center, I boarded a (D) train of R-68’s up to Columbus Circle, where I transferred to a northbound (1) train of R-62’s. I got off at 110th Street and grabbed a burger at The West End before heading over to the Cathedral of St. John the Divine for Evening Prayer. St. John the Divine, of course, was as magnificent as always, and it was hard for me to pull myself away from there. But I couldn’t stick around forever, and being in a somewhat ponderous and brooding mood at the moment, decided to take a walk down Broadway.

How far down Broadway from 111th Street? Well, at first I decided to try to make it down to my old high school friend’s neighborhood around 86th Street, which would make a nice healthy walk. Once there, I decided to continue on to Columbus Circle. Once at Columbus Circle, I figured Times Square wasn’t too far away, so what the hell…

About two hours later, I finally found myself down at Canal Street with two very sore feet. That’s right, a non-stop walk down Broadway from 111th to Canal Street. I parted Broadway and walked east on Canal over into Chinatown, and walked around some of the narrow side steets of Chinatown for a while. What a cool neighborhood at night, with all the shops facing the sidewalk and all the neon and colors… It was like something straight out of the movie Blade Runner. The coolest thing about New York City, I’ve found, is that no matter how many times I go there, on each visit I always come across something new and interesting.

By this point, as you can imagine, my feet are killing me, and I decided I wouldn’t mind riding around on the subway for a while before I head back home. I realized that I had still never seen the infamous Chambers Street station on the BMT, so I naturally headed down in that direction.

Finally, in front of City Hall and nearly at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge, I ducked into the subway station and ended one incredibly long walk: From the Cathedral of St. John the Divine to City Hall, with only one stop at a Starbucks in SoHo to use the restroom and grab a latte. This was probably at least as long as the walk I took on my first-ever visit to NYC, from the High Street station in Brooklyn across the Brooklyn Bridge, to the World Trade Center, and then up the East Side of Manhattan to around 86th Street and across Central Park to my friend’s place on Amsterdam Avenue. Damn, there have certainly been a ton of changes since there: The WTC is gone, my friend now lives back in Florida, and I’ve been through about a million changes in my own life.

Once inside the Chambers Street station, all I can say is: Wow. I was very impressed to find that it was all it’s been cracked up to be here on SubTalk. If Detroit had a real subway, I’m sure it would look something like Chambers. After a short wait, I grabbed a (J) train of R-40M’s headed toward Jamaica. This was my first time on this area of the NYC subway, so I decided to do some exploring, nevermind the fact that it was now pushing 10:00 PM.

We went through the Canal Street station, which I see is now the topic of discussion on another thread, and also the Essex Street Station. It was only this evening, after looking around on this site, that I found out what it was I saw off to the right-hand side of the train as we passed through: the old trolley terminal.

We then headed across the Williamsburg Bridge, which made the first time I had been across the Willy-B. It seems to have a very interesting configuration, with each of the two roadways divided down the middle by the bridge structure.

Once on the Brooklyn Side, we passed some cool old loft buildings as we slowly made our way down the line. At Myrtle Avenue, I saw a train of R-143’s for the first time ever, waiting on the other track as an (M) shuttle. I decided to take the (J) to Broadway Junction, where I would take the (L) back into Manhattan and transfer to PATH at 14th Street.

Out at Broadway Junction, I went upstairs to wait for the inbound (L) train, and was very pleased when a train of R-143’s pulled in. My impressions: This must have been a very new trainset, as it still had that “new car smell”. The interior didn’t seem as harsh as that on the R-142’s, and the sounds reminded me a lot of the M4’s on Philly’s Market-Frankfort Line. The only real negative was that stupid Mr. Ed voice that announces when the doors are closing. Somehere around Lorimer Street, I was cursed at by a drunken wino.

I got off at 6th Avenue and transferred to the PATH train, and drove home from Pavonia/Newport without incident.

This was hopefully the last major trip in my infamous 1986 Trans Am, as I’m currently shopping for a new car and hope to have one sometime this coming week. I’ll let everybody know what I end up with.

(originally posted on the SubTalk forum at nycsubway.org)

PATH / HBLR / Hoboken Trip Report

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Just thought I’d chime in with my own rundown of my Sunday in New York City…

I left Collingswood, NJ at about 8:30 AM in order to attend the 11:00 AM Eucharist at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in Morningside Heights. My original plan was to park at Pavonia/Newport on the PATH line and then take PATH and the subway to the cathedral, but since I was running a bit late, I decided to take my chances and drive all the way into Manhattan via the George Washington Bridge. Amazingly enough, I found plenty of street parking on Amsterdam Avenue just a few blocks north of the cathedral. Being a Sunday, I didn’t even have to feed the meter. Certainly something to keep in mind for future visits.

This is going a bit off-topic, but the worship service at the Cathedral was incredible. That’s two worship services I’ve attended there so far, and both of them were incredibly beautiful and sprit-filled. I’m not sure if it’s the building or the music or whatever, but the only other place I’ve felt the same “vibe” was at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. For you Episcopalians out there — or anybody else from any other faith tradition — I highly recommend it. The Cathedral takes very seriously its charter of being a “house of prayer for all people”… The liturgy included a passage in Hebrew — “Sh’ma Yisrael Adonai Elohaynu Adonai echad” (“Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord”) — and there’s a large Menorah on either side of the High Altar… Unusual for a Christian church, and very nice touches. If I lived just a little bit closer to NYC, I’d be at the Cathedral every Sunday morning in a heartbeat. (I’ve actually become somewhat involved with the Canterbury Club, the Episcopal student organization at UPenn, which meets at St. Mary’s Church on the UPenn campus.)

Anyway, back to my trip… After the service, I got back in my car, and attempted to find my was to the Holland Tunnel. I got over to Riverside Drive without any trouble, but I attempted to get onto Henry Hudson Parkway with no success. I actually found my on once, but I was going in the northbound direction. Not good. So I eventually circled around and simply took 11th Avenue all the way down to the tunnel. I had to stop for gas along the way, as running out of gas in the Holland Tunnel would have ruined my day very quickly. Full-service gasoline in Manhattan is almost as expensive as self-serve in Chicago.

I finally made my way to the Holland Tunnel, and it was stop-and-go traffic all the way to the New Jersey side. However, while in the tunnel, I saw something very interesting: There’s a little tram that goes along the left-hand side of the tunnel, presumably to transport PA employees from one end to the other. It actually runs on rails, and is just big enough for one person. I saw a guy using it to head back to NY as I was sitting in traffic. Very cool! Do any of the other NYC-area tunnels have similar features?

Once in New Jersey, I found the Pavonia/Newport PATH station without too much trouble, and parked my car in a nearby garage. This was the first time I’ve ever ridden PATH. My impressions? The stations were incredibly cramped and claustrophobic, and the trains were unremarkable. Not surprisingly, they’re very similar to the Orange Line and Blue Line trains on the MBTA. As has been mentioned elsewhere here, the side platform at Pavonia/Newport was off-limits due to construction.

Emerging at Hoboken Terminal, I soon found Doug “BMT Man” and Pelham Bay Dave, and hung out with them most of the rest of the day. We checked out the new ALP locomotive on display, as well as the new Comet coach before hitting the new segment of the HBLR line. The ALP locomotive was very sharp-looking, and the Comet coach looked pretty much like your standard-issue NJT coach with a few modern touches.

On to my first-ever ride on the HBLR. Not bad for me to explore two new transit systems in one day. My impressions: A very nice, clean system with very cool LRV railcars. My only complaint is that it seemed exceptionally slow in many areas. But then, I’m more used to rapid transit. As others have mentioned here, the new extension offers and incredible view of the NYC skyline and the rail yards leading into Hoboken Terminal. This was the first time I had gotten a real good view of the lower Manhattan skyline since 9/11, and it just doesn’t look right. Without the WTC, it actually doesn’t look much different than the bland Jersey City skyline. What a shame… How many more words can be said about that day?

Dave got off at Exchange Place, while Doug and I got off at Liberty State Park and transferred to another train and got off at MLK Drive. Doug showed me around a bit before we grabbed the next train back to Hoboken. Once back in Hoboken, we headed down to the PATH station. Being unfamiliar with PATH, I naturally followed Dough into the next outbound train, which happened to be going to 33rd Street. For some reason the distance between stops seemed much longer than it had been on the way in. I finally realized my mistake at Christopher Street, and got off there for a train bound for Journal Square. I finally got off at Pavonia/Newport, and jumped back onto the New Jersey Turnpike for an uneventful drive home.

It was nice meeting up with Doug and Dave, and I’m sorry I missed the rest of you who were there. Hopefully I’ll see you all up at Branford on October 13th.

(originally posted on the SubTalk forum at nycsubway.org)

Back from NYC and Philly: Full Report

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Just letting everybody know that I’m back home safely in Chicago.

My week in Philly was very productive. As I’ve already announced here, I’ve accepted a nice job offer from Kitchen & Associates (how’s that for a name?), a 50-person architecture firm located in a converted schoolhouse in Collingswood, New Jersey. I also got registered for classes at Drexel; I’ll be taking two classes per quarter for the next four years or so to finish my undergrad degree in architecture.

I’ve also settled on a place to live. There’s an apartment complex called the Village of Stoney Run in Maple Shade, NJ located on highway 73 between highway 41 and I-295. The apartment complex, while located in the midst of suburbia, is secluded back off the highway amongst a heavily-wooded area. If figure if I can’t live in the city, then my next choice would be to live in the woods. The apartments are very spacious, and have most of the amenities that I was looking for. My paperwork is still being processed, so we’ll see whether or not I get approved. (I also have backup plans in place if I don’t get approved.)

On Friday, I met up with Jersey Mike at 30th Street Station, where he had just arrived from Connecticut for a weekend home from school. We didn’t do much railfanning, but we rode the Regional Rail from 30th Street to Market East, and then transferred to PATCO to Haddonfield, NJ. I gave him a ride home from Haddonfield and met his parents before we parted ways.

Saturday, I headed up to New York City. I drove up I-295 to Hamilton, NJ where I parked my rental car (a nice 2002 Pontiac Grand Prix) and waited for the New Jersey Transit train to Penn Station. During my wait on the platform, a couple Amtrak trains pulled by AEM-7’s roared through the station at 125 MPH. Impressive.

Once in New York, I wandred around a bit on my own before meeting up with the SubTalk crowd for lunch. While wandering around on my own, I took a (3) express from Penn to 72nd on a train of R-62’s, where I grabbed some breakfast at a nice little bagel place at 77th and Amsterdam. From there I walked to 86th, where I waited in sweltering heat about 20 minutes for a (1) local to Times Square. By the grace of God, the R-62 I eventually boarded was as cold as a meat locker and not as crowded as I feared. At Times Square, I transferred to the Shuttle to GCT, where I wandered around a bit and browsed through the Transit Museum gift shop. After grabbing an iced coffee at a nearby Starbucks, I boarded a train of Kawasaki R-142’s to Bleeker Street. My first impressions of the R-142’s are generally favorable, although I think the R-62’s have a much cooler sound, and that stupid “Mr. Ed” voice is annoying as hell. Due to some sort of delay, it was announced that my train would be skipping Bleeker and a couple other stops, so I had to get off at Union Square and wait for the next train. This was my first time at Union Square, and those platform extenders are by far the coolest I’ve seen! After a short wait, I boarded another train of Kawasaki R-142’s to Bleeker.

I walked eastward down Houston Street hoping to browse through the cool surplus store near Broadway-LaFayette, but for some reason it was closed. (Their posted hours indicated that they should have been open.) Having about 30 minutes to kill before lunch at Katz’s, so I browsed around a bit in the local shops before heading over to Katz’s. After a short wait, I met up with Kevin Walsh and Francis Sibilla. After spending an eternity in line, we finally grabbed a table near the back and chowed down. I barely made a dent in my sandwich, and to be honest, I’ve had better reubens here in Chicago. My meal seemed to be more about quantity than quality, and several flies buzzing around didn’t help my impression. Katz’s was okay for just one visit as a tourist, but I wouldn’t make it part of my regular rotation of favorite restaurants.

After lunch, Francis parted ways, leaving Kevin and I to our own devices. During intermittent periods between downpours, Kevin led me on a marathon walking tour of lower Manhattan. We covered the Lower East Side, parts of Chinatown, South Street Seaport (where we took a much-needed rest), the financial district, Ground Zero, TriBeCa, and SoHo. I feel like I walked about 30 miles, but it was well worth it. I saw plenty of cool things that I had never seen before, and of course one can’t have a better tour guide than Kevin Walsh. Back up at Houston Street and having walked a huge circle around lower Manhattan, Kevin and I caught a northbound (6) train to GCT. Once at GCT, we parted ways; Kevin headed home on the (7), and I waited for a northbound (5) train so that I could experience the Dyre Avenue… And I waited, and waited, and waited… Finally, I boarded a northbound (6) train, where it was announced that the (5) was running as a shuttle between 125th and 149th, and then in another section betweem 149th and Dyre. So, ruling out a six-seat ride to Dyre and back, I rode the (6) to 125th, where I grabbed a very crowded (4) train to 149th, then transferred to a (2) train to 96th/Broadway, and then finally a (1) train to 86th.

Once at 86th, it was about 9:00 PM and I had about 30 minutes to kill before meeting up with David Greenberger, so I headed over to the Starbucks at 86th and Columbus for some much-needed rest and refreshment. 20 minutes later, I finally forced myself out of the comfy chair and walked back down to 86th. I met David just outside fare control, and we took the next southbound (1) train to Columbus Circle. Once at Columbus Circle, we poked around a bit and scoped out some signs of an closed-off crossunder below the IRT tracks before meeting up with RIPTA42HopeTunnel. From 59th we headed northbound on a (C) local train of R-32’s — my only venture to the B-Division all day — to 168th Street, where we transferred to the IRT once again. This was my first visit to the super-deep stations on the West Side IRT, so this was quite a sight. Due to some sort of delay, we ended up waiting quite a while for our southbound (1) train, even watching one (1) train breeze through the station without stopping before ours finally showed up. Somewhere along the way — it may have been 96th Street — we transferred to a (2) train of Bombardier R-142’s that had been diverted to the express track, and was making express stops only to 34th. I got off at 34th, as I was pretty exhausted and eager to head back to my hotel room, and we all parted company there.

Back at Penn Station, I waited about 30 minutes for the next NJT train to Trenton, which left around midnight. After a screaming child and his parents mercifully got off at Newark, the rest of the ride was quiet and uneventful. As the train was approaching my stop at Hamilton, a passenger seated a couple rows behind me was carrying on a conversation with the conductor about NJT new bi-level trains. I joined the conversation and mentioned that I was visiting from Chicago, where bi-levels rule the roost. The NJT conductor feared that the introduction of bi-levels would induce mass confusion while boarding and alighting on NJT trains, but I told him that Chicago commuters have been using bi-levels with no problems for many years.

The passenger and I both got off at Hamilton, and continued chatting. Turns out he works for the NYCTA (I forgot exactly what he does, but he had been a conductor for some years before), and we chatted for a while on the platform about trains and such. He’s even familiar with nycsubway.org and SubTalk. Before parting ways, he gave me a little MTA booklet outlining “Operators Rules and Regulations” for OPTO. It’s been a pretty interesting read so far… Thanks, mystery MTA employee!

I finally got back to my hotel in Maple Shade at around 2:00 AM, and promptly crashed.

Sunday and Monday found me running around and finding a place to live, and I suddenly found myself bored on Tuesday afternoon. So I decided to head out to Atlantic City to see what that place is all about. The thought that came to my mind was: Daytona Beach on steroids. Tacky as hell and brimming with massive casinos and blue-haired ladies sitting in front of slot machines, Atlantic City was just about what I had expected. There’s a neat little amusement part on the pier near Trump’s Taj Mahal Casino (where I had parked), and the boardwalk itself is a cool place to watch people. Later that day, I made one last visit to Jim’s Steaks at 4th and South Streets for yet another big fat steak hoagie. I flew back to Chicago this afternoon, and I’m now preparing to pack all my belongings into cardboard boxes.

I start my new job on Wednesday, September 4th. That prior weekend (Labor Day weekend) will be spent packing up boxes, loading up a U-Haul truck, driving to New Jersey with my car in tow, and unloading said U-Haul truck in New Jersey. Wish me luck!

Thanks to Jersey Mike for meeting up with me in Philly, and thanks to Kevin Walsh, Francis, David Greenberger, and RIPTA42HopeTunnel for meeting me in NYC. Special thanks to Kevin Walsh for the very cool walking tour of lower Manhattan! Watch for some photos to be posted soon.

We’ve got a nasty thunderstorm bearing down on us now, so I’d better get offline.

(originally posted on the SubTalk forum at nycsubway.org)