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Wow. [info]rosefox said she wasn’t moving her journal over here because the styles were ugly, and I said, “I don’t really care about styles.” That was before I’d seen them. Wow! When she meant butt-ugly, she meant BUTT-FRACKIN-UGLY.

Anyway, just testing cross-posting, really. Thanks very much, [info]figmentj for the invite code. I’ll let everyone know if I get some.

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Expect Delays: The Four-Boro Bike Jam

Expect Delays< Today was the Five Boro Bike Tour. It was not the most enjoyable ride I've ever had, and I did not finish. The rain wasn't the worst part. Neither were the three flats I got. The worst part, which other cyclists had told me about when they turned down my invitation to do this ride, was the traffic. One of the single best things about riding a bike is never being stuck in traffic. You glide by lines of cars stopped at red lights. You can go around anything, take another route, and enjoy yourself while the cars seethe in traffic. Not today. Today, we sat in traffic just like the cars who were being diverted for the ride. In some spots in fact the cars were moving more quickly than we were. And you know what? It’s better to be stuck in traffic in a car, where it’s warm and dry and you have a comfortable seat and a radio. It really sucks on a bike, in the rain. I stuck it out through a bunch of jams, at the 59th Street Bridge, at the Pulaski, in Dumbo, but after standing for more than 15 minutes in the rain on the Gowanus, I was finished. I’ve spent enough time stuck in traffic waiting to get on the Verrazano Bridge in my life. All the good momentum I’d built up coming down the expressway from the BQE was gone, I was no longer ready to hit the bridge and finish up, just cold and tired and hungry. And I’d been on the bike for more than six hours.

I zipped off at the 65th St exit on the Belt, and then had to navigate my way through that very complex interchange alongside the cars coming off the highway, but after carrying the bike over a divider and pushing it up a hill, I got out of there and took the train home.

I’m glad I did it, I suppose. It was fun in spots, especially riding down the FDR and over the bridge, or through the BQE trench and around the turn onto the Gowanus. But it was interminable. My average speed was 8.6 MPH; I’ve only had a lower speed than that on rides where I was taking lots of photos or where I met friends and walked through the park with them. (The bike computer only counts time when you’re in motion, so the time I spent fixing flats and standing still in traffic is not counted in the average.)

Oh yes. The flats. The first one was on 6th Avenue near Radio City. I’ve had mixed success fixing flats on my own, so I walked it up to the park, where the good folks from NYC Velo fixed it quickly, and then fixed it again when it went flat almost immediately. (Yes, the bike tech and I both went over the inside of the tire and the rim very carefully with our fingers and found nothing.) I got a third flat, on 125th St, a loud blowout near Lenox Avenue that everyone around me heard. That one I changed myself (successfully!) with some help from another rider. Thankfully the tire behaved itself after that.

I’m not sure I’ll do this ride again. Obviously the rain dampened things a bit, and perhaps it would have been better to have tried to start at the front of the pack rather than relaxing and starting in the middle (and falling almost to the back after all the flat tires). But it’s just too crowded and not terribly well managed, and I was very disappointed to find that you ride over the lower level of the Verrazano. That was the main attraction of the ride for me — being able to ride over that bridge which is normally only open to cars. But on the lower level? Not so exciting.

Anyway. Some photos are up on Flickr. I’m happy to be home with some hot coffee, and I will certainly get to bed early tonight!

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Glass On Glass

“It’s all the same! Pathetically the same!”

Philip Glass was not criticizing someone else’s music, but discussing his own. He was sitting at a piano in the St. Ann’s Warehouse performance space in Dumbo, wearing a rumpled suit, his glasses in his hand, leaning around the piano to face his interviewer, radio host Ira Glass. It was “Glass on Glass,” a fundraising event in which the award-winning creator of “This American Life” interviewed his cousin, probably the most famous living classical composer.

A completely fascinating evening

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Bed-Stuy, Biking, and Gig


John C. Kelley House
Originally uploaded by kenf225

I’ve spent much of the last few days on the bike, which is a good thing because I’m riding in the Five Boro Bike Tour on Sunday. I’m helping my friend Fran with photos for the AIA Guide (we were in the Times last week, you may recall). We drove around and took some photos for the Bedford-Stuyvesant chapter on Friday, and then I did more on my bike Sunday and yesterday. It’s such a beautiful neighborhood and mostly still intact, although I had a bad feeling when I got to St. Patrick’s and saw that it is now St. Lucy and St. Patrick’s, and sure enough, St. Lucy’s is no more. There are a few modern abominations, but mostly beautiful parks, blocks of gorgeous brownstones, and other treasures. I even ended up photographing some of mary_wroth‘s old neighborhood.

Meanwhile, I have a show coming up this Friday. Mike Skliar and I did our first show together almost exactly 12 years ago, at the late and not-especially-lamented Orange Bear. It’s been a few years since we’ve played together in New York City but we will be doing so this Friday night on the Upper West Side, playing a mixture of our originals, cover tunes and traditional songs. The show is at Cafe du Soleil on Broadway between 104th and 105th. Further details about that and other shows are are on my web site.

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Where I’ve Been

The last few days have been (in reverse order)…

17 miles on the bike.

A few interesting project possibilities.

A great house concert by Mayfly, a Vermont old-time duo I met last summer at Augusta. It was a great evening, and mary_wroth took some photos, and I think I will have more house concerts in the future.

A short but wonderful trip to Arizona, where my niece and I celebrated our birthdays a little early, and I got to spend a little time out in the desert enjoying spring.

And other good things. This Sunday, I will be back at the Greenwich Village Bistro, playing with Saboteur Tiger.

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Driving About Architecture

I’m mentioned in a New York Times article today, thanks to some consulting work I’m doing on the next edition of The AIA Guide To New York City, a book I own four copies of, one of each edition.

A friend of mine and musician in the local roots scene, Fran Leadon, is co-authoring the guide with Norval White, one of the deans of NYC architecture. I built them the content management system they’re using to work on the text and the many accompanying photographs (You can read a bit more about that on my web site) and a few weeks ago I volunteered to drive the two of them around Brooklyn to see all the new buildings.

It was a testament on many levels to why I love New York City. Norval has an astounding memory, with a historical anecdote about almost any block in New York (at one point he took us a few blocks out of our way in Crown Heights to see a lovely little church tucked away on what seemed like just another residential block), and seeing the city with him is to see it entirely differently.

Beyond that, New York City makes for wonderful random connections, like meeting a world-famous architect by virtue of the fact that I play bluegrass with a guy who is an architecture professor, and I love it. Fran and I have actually been in the Times before, but via music rather than architecture. I guess it’s a twist on the old cliché: talking about architecture can come from playing music.

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The Verrazano


The Verrazano
Originally uploaded by kenf225

I got stuck with a window seat on my flight yesterday, but it was a clear sunny day and I was on the right side of the plane so I got some great photos of Brooklyn as we left. The Verrazano is almost exactly the same age as me (I’m slightly younger). Next month I get to ride my bike over it as part of the Five Boro Bike Tour.

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Vermont: Not Quite “Landlocked”

Am I missing something? I’ve been to Underhill, Vt. It’s less than an hour from Burlington. Which has a gorgeous waterfront on Lake Champlain. Into which the St. Lawrence River flows. From the Atlantic Ocean. Vermont may qualify as “landlocked,” depending how you define the word, but you most certainly can get there by boat, and Captain Phillips could very well own a boat where he lives.

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