Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Winter, trees, food, and light

Mainly, this week. I ate. I will leave it at that.

I did go jogging every morning but one. If I never had a day job, I would be super athletic. Today and yesterday, I went down Second Ave. to where it become Chrystie and followed it out onto the Manhattan Bridge. I do love that part of town, the way you see where it was Puerto Rican, but before that Jewish and before that who knows what and then you pass into China Town in a part which was once Little Italy, and of course most of the Lower East Side is terribly gentrified, and there is a ginormous Whole Foods on Houston, cause apparently the the one at Union Square isn't sufficient. But its still charming retaining its edge even with all the boutiques and cafes.

I passed the warehouse where a friend of mine lived back in the day on the corner of Chrystie and Grand. It wasn't zoned for residence, their roof deck was bathed in fumes from the industrial dry cleaner below, their neighbors were a brothel and a sweatshop, and they ended up moving out because a man broke into the apartment while his girlfriend was sleeping there. Still it had its own urban gritty new york story charm, the entire episode. He now lives in Europe and I miss seeing him here.

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