TIME SQUARE

"HEY, F--KFACE!  YA YOU!  YA'INAH HURRY F--KFACE?"

The sidewalks were swarming with tourists and business locals, so this New Yorker took to briskly walking along the gutter.  For reasons unknown, a taxi driver honked at him and what followed was the above exchange of pleasantries.
Welcome to New York City's
TIME SQUARE!

"MOMMA TOW'D ME NOT TO GO!"

(Sorry! Yes, I added the smiley faces, but not the butterfly)

I said to a grinning businessman sitting at a table to my immediate right, "You don't see this in Iowa!"  He laughed.

       BREASTS TO BEASTS      

Crapping Pennies.

Why do people throw money

into the imprints of a long dead sauropod?

TO EARTH IT FELL

This is a massive meteorite was held sacred by the Clackama Indians of Oregon's Willamette Valley, they named it Tomanowos after a "revered spiritual being that has healed and empowered the people of the valley since the beginning of time."

The rainwater that pooled in its pocked surface was believed to have healing, purifying, and cleansing powers.  But then came the 1850's, and the various tribes of the western Oregon and northern California were relocated, and this object of great religious significance was packed off to the American Museum of Natural History.

T-REX

According to Dr. Jack Horner, Curator of the Museum of the Rockies Department of Paleontology, this flesh ripping, chunk gobbling, Jeep chasing beast of nearly every boy's dream, was more suited for the consumption of carrion than for the ferocious fights choreographed in cinema.  Morevoer, Dr. Horner has pointed out that its dainty forearms were not adequately designed to capture large prey; and I might add to that, or even holding a tea cup.

However, its enlarged olfactory (its sniffer) was enlarged and at best designed for hunting down static, and pungent prey already dead.

THE PEOPLE ON THE STREET

D'OOPS! I already used this picture!

Woody says, "Howdy stranger!"

Hot dog vendor

BRYANT PARK

Carousel

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A few decades ago this beautiful little park, in midtown New York, was the haunt of drug attics, pushers, and other frequenters of society's substrata.  It was successfully taken back by area citizens, and is now a place families can enjoy.

Bryant's Parks exceedingly clean and welcoming public restrooms.

    The EMPIRE STATE BUILDING    

Click on picture to enlarge

THE CHRYSLER BUILDING 

People and Places

Male Boothrooms?

A Subtle Difference 

"HONK IF YOU LOVE JESUS!"

Our journey ends where it began, in the dank, musty smelling subways of The Big Apple.

Copyright © 2010 Jonathan Aspensen All rights reserved. No part of this website, nor any of its contents, may be reproduced in any form without the express written permission of 

Jonathan Aspensen. 

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To The Beach We Go--

The Drive Going

This Saturday morning I sleepily looked out the front door window and to my surprise saw that we were socked in with a heavy fog. The air conditioner kept our townhouse unrealistically cool, and so without thinking as to the season I slipped into my sweatpants and “hoodie” (long sleeve sweatshirt with pull-over hood), leashed our dog for its morning trot, and stepped out the door into a more dreadfully humid environment than I thought possible. Relating this experience to a not yet fully awake wife, she suggested that we head for the beach. “Fine idea,” I thought; if we were going to be miserable in this thick humidity, we might as well do so on the coast where the humidity might have competition with a complementary breeze from Heaven. Hours later -- the beach is not exactly down the street you understand -- we stepped ashore at Hammonasset Point which is east of New Haven, Connecticut.

A closed down, actual, diner car and erstwhile restaurant in New Brunswick, New Jersey.
New Brunswick was a seedy, graffiti covered town with hoards of rude drivers coming at you from every direction. Now in all fairness, there may well be a prettier side to the town that I did not see, but the main drag through it was just that -- a drag. It was New York City in miniature -- absent the crush of yellow cabs.

When you think of New England you imagine quaint boroughs, and townships with white churches whose steeples jab sharply above the trees. Well it t'ain't so along the coast, that is, it ain't so what I saw! It looked like anything but the picture postcard I think of New England as. However, we passed through the Ivy League town of Princeton, New Jersey, and were awed by the diverse mansions of various designs and what we were able to see of the campus it looked as if someone had torn a page right out of medieval England. I know, New Jersey is not considered New England. But Princeton was the only saving grace along the road.

The price of gas was slightly astounding, $4.43 for regular and diesel was a staggering $4.93 a gallon. I am sure that by this fall these prices will be considered benevolent. Start filling coffee cans, and Mason jars now!

On the whole, we stayed on the interstate and were whizzing by some of the most undesirable real estate of the Eastern seaboard. We passed through industrial zones, dilapidated row houses, walls of graffiti, and Stalin-style projects that warehoused the poor. I wondered what the people’s view of their life was as they lounged on their narrow, sky-high patios overlooking the Bronx; their “backyards” -- stacked one atop another, and cluttered with B-B-Qs, lawn chairs, and flagged by drying clothes of color -- was a picture of urban uniformity. But what really struck me was the sterile environment void of even one weed to fuss over. If I were to live in a project I would garnish my slab of concrete with wilderness! I would have planter boxes of dandelions, and crabgrass, thistles, and flowing drapes of puncture vines. Why my lofty courtyard of concrete would reflect the world around me in shades of prickly green, and wafts of smog!

From the New Jersey side of the Hudson River we could see the Empire State building. In light blue silhouette it stood alone, in audience with skyscrapers bunched to its north. What an edifice it is; a mountain range on its edge; Jacob’s ladder at its first landing -- wow!

The View From New Jersey

The following portrait was a collaborate effort by two eye-witnesses to fully illustrate an event that no picture could possibly explicate:

While heading north the loud rumble of motorcycles could be heard coming up from the rear. The first biker was a wiry, tattooed fellow, in a bandanna, dark sunglasses, and a stringy beard that the wind blew over his shoulder. The second biker was a large man in a tank-top, and whom we presume, had recently lost a good deal of weight. He was still quite stout (stout my gluteus maximus, he was huge!), but not as immense as he once was. The blanket of loose skin below his upper arm flapped in the 80mph slipstream that blew over his rotund, tattooed, biker’s body like amber waves of grain in the Midwestern wind, the tattoos rippling on his skin like patriotic symbols on a flag from Bikerville. Of course, what we saw, and how it has been tastefully masked is far from the visual reality. The verity is, the view was fleeting and most captivating; but we have not captured just how repellent it was.

Upon concluding our pleasant, and late lunch (we ate at 5:30 PM), we only stayed for 30 minutes, and then it was time to head back.

Copyright © 2008 Jonathan Aspensen All rights reserved. No part of this website, nor any of its contents, may be
reproduced in any form without the express written permission of
Jonathan Aspensen.

Golly Gothom Gunther!

Old Bohemian Church Established in 1704

Our journey started off simple enough; it was late Saturday morning, and we wanted to visit the Old Bohemian Church on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. The church was established in 1704 to serve this rural community’s Roman Catholic population. Judging from the name “Bohemian” there must have been Czechs around, and after reading the names on the various tombstones there were Germans, and Poles there as well.

Crypt Top left: 1853; Bottom left: 1731; Top Right 1813

Life's Tour of Duty Ended for "PN" in 1789

After the visit to the cemetery we decided to jaunt over to Delaware and look for a place to have lunch. Heading north after we toured a shaving of this sliver of a State, I was asked if I had ever been to New Jersey. I replied that I had not, and the next thing I knew we were crossing a bridge on the New Jersey Turnpike looking down upon the Delaware River. I met a woman in Baltimore who hailed from New Jersey, and I said, “Nu’Joisey? How come you don’t talk like dis?” She frowned and replied, “I ain’t from HO-boken!”

The rivers here in the east are far broader and deeper than they are in the west, if you have ever seen the Mississippi River as it saunters through Missouri then you certainly know what I am talking about. Upon entering New Jersey we shortly found ourselves crossing the Hudson River, and driving over Staten Island. I was astonished to see rolling hills of a fair height and girth; when considering that the surrounding countryside was flat and forested, where it was not paved, this was astonishing. “Mound Builders perhaps? Did the ancient Mississippian culture expand this far east?” I wondered. It did not take long before I became suspicious as to the origin of these hillocks. I became skeptical when I observed a series of tall, white pipes poking out of the hillsides. “Those are vent pipes to exhaust the methane.” I drolly stated. “For cryin’ out loud, this is a garbage dump!” “Yes,” said my wife, “New York City is right over there.” Pointing northeast I could see the distant cutout forms that distinguish Lower Manhattan from the Rocky Mountains. “There’s the Statue of Liberty!------It sure is small.” After we passed the countless rows of houses of Brooklyn we suddenly came face to brick with the iconic masthead of the Big Apple--we were crossing into New York, on New York’s Brooklyn Bridge! My mind was swiped with an abrasive, surrealistic crash of reality, “Good gawd, I’m in New York City! The fabled, GOTHOM CITY!

Brooklyn Bridge

It was not long before my wide-eyed enthusiasm began to burn with the harsh smog of rush hour traffic. Couple that with rude and aggressive taxi drivers; sirens wailing; car horns honking. waves of gawking, oblivious pedestrians; bicycle couriers that know no fear, and a skateboarder that pushed himself from taxi to taxi only to grab onto the back of a transit bus for an additional few hundred feet. I was astonished. Then I forgot about my blazing eyes as glimpse of the Empire State Building poked in and out of view. “Holy donut holes, Batman! There’s the Chrysler Building, the Theatre District; Central Park; Carnegie Hall---Oooo, a bagel shop!”

I wanted to drive past the foot of the Empire State Building to see if the pavement still bore the imprint of King Kong’s massive hulk, but the wife informed me that that was strictly Hollywood, and that the Empire State Building was only a prop. I was dismayed.

Playing Peek-a-Boo with the Empire State Building

Standing Alone

The Taxi Cab Whistle Man

The U.N.



My First Impression

We returned home at mid-night, and together had a glass of burgundy. We shall return.

"There are eight million stories in the naked city. This has been one of them."

Copyright © 2008 Jonathan Aspensen All rights reserved. No part of this website, nor any of its contents, may be
reproduced in any form without the express written permission of
Jonathan Aspensen.