Photo Wednesday 020514 : Bridge to SnowWhere Edition

And the snow goes on...

This Photo for Wednesday obviously comes from this week's snow storms. Love this pic, I was on my way to an errand when I decided to hop off the subway and take the bridge. Stinging snow, obscured city, frames hands, icy camera. Good times! It got so dark the lights came on, it's actually about 12:35pm in this pic.

Click through and you'll see the other one I like of the mail-carrier living up to that mythic poem.

In addition to the new snow falling today, supposedly more snow's on the way this weekend. I blame the groundhog for being mad that the Mayor dropped him. Stay safe.

New York Shi**y, sometimes

Sewage overflow. Sound bad? it generally is, its the term for and what happens when a huge amount of water from say sudden and epic rainfall (as is seen in this AWESOME photo

Photo by Dhani Jones / https://twitter.com/DhaniJones/status/225644233309163522

now famously snapped by former NFLer & Travel Channel star Dhani Jones as his flight was in a holding pattern over Long Island waiting to land at LaGuardia) is dumped into the sewers and drainage of NYC. 


Yesterday's epic downpours dropped nearly an inch of rain within an hour's time. 


When this happens the actual floodgates are opened and the sewage, a combination of toilet waste, street run off and other less than pleasantry and the sudden rain are dumped, into our rivers. That's bad enough, but worse of course is that we live in an interconnected world and so what goes into the river yesterday will be around the beaches this weekend, and in smaller amounts remain for days to come.


Sewage overflow does have to go somewhere or it will back up into your home, but this is the only solution we as a city have available for when there's heavy rains like yesterday. We let it pour into the rivers and eventually beaches and either don't know or don't think about the results.




That is until someone records one sewage release point (above) this one into the Hudson River, great music select from 4Sespecially who posted the video on youtube.

Hail of a storm in Brooklyn

yeh.... the insta-hailstorm was a few days ago and lasted for all of 15 minutes but life's been busy for this Brooklyn born boy so finally here's some video showing what happens when the subway is your only refuge from the angry balls of ice hailed down Brooklyn last week.

Check for the guy with the umbrella, to
see the velocity of the hailstones:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eM_KeA5fx5w&feature=youtube_gdata_player

unfortunately I'm posting this from my iphone so I'm not able to make it viewable but the link should lead you there.
Finally had time to get the video up, enjoy:

Brooklyn Cyclones

I'm late in mentioning anything about the as yet unconfirmed tornadeos that tore through Park Slope, Crown Heights and Bedford-Stuyvesant before heading on into Queens to share the love. (I did tweet prior to the storm at least, hope it helped)

The roofs that were sucked up from their homes in BedStuy is a seriously unbelievable result of the storm that apparently moved at 30 to 50 miles an hour across the area.

I rode the storm out at work hoping I remembered to shut my windows least I find all my belongings exploded out into the Crown Heights streets.
Ididnt find that but I did see on St. Johns a massive amount of tree limbs large enough to have closed the street between Bedford av and Rogers. The tree debris seems to have severally damaged a white car and caused the B45 bus to be rerouted.

Harder to account for are lightning strikes of which I saw many. And in my opinion a tree I took a photo of on Eastern Parkway near the Chase bank on Bedford Ave looks to have a burn mark where a major branch about 24 inches across tore off a tree.

It was a blessing in disguise that the intense rains caused so many to clear the streets prior to the several winds ripping through the streets. That some much damage was cause an so few fatalities resulted (I one confirmed in Queens) is also amazing.

An as I write this an update, the weather service has just confirmed two touchdowns of tornados. One landed in Park Slope as reports indicated yesterday and I then moved northeast through the edge of crown heights and into Bed-Stuy.

Five urban tornados in four years in the fall no less. Can we all start agreeing climate change and global warming is real?

MTA: Slippery when everything

Jeez so the most heavily used (and only 24 hour) subway system in the world (ours) can't handle snow (ok) water (floods, sure) trash (track fires, sure, acceptable) and now add to that list colorfully brittle fallen leaves. yep leaves.

Today's New York Times reports that leaves are apparently staging an insurgent attack(my words) on rail steel causing trains to be slowed on select outdoor (below grade) subway lines like the Brooklyn Q, N, and Franklin Shuttle. This isn't as much of a problem for outdoor elevated lines like the Queens 7, Queens N and Queens J, (is somebody sticking it to Brooklyn?) because on those elevated the rain washes the resolute leaves away.

The article details the MTA's efforts to warn of delays and the average rider's understandably incredulous reactions. There's even a scientific breakdown of hot leaves become fatty acids which become waxy buildup on the rails, which some how requires a vacuums train to clean, although the cavity creeps fight crest squad might be a better way to go....



Interestingly what is not mentioned is why or how after 100+ years of service (and in my person 30+ years as a New Yorker) there seems to be no prior sign-age posted by the MTA about delays caused by fallen leaves. I'm pretty sure we've had autumn a few times before in the last 100+ years you'd think the problem woulda shown up before now.

Is it scientific? Are the new wheels of our mostly new subway fleet's extra stainless steelery causing them to get lubed up quicker? (let your minds glide on that) Or as some strap-hangers suggested is it the MTA looking for new and more creative excuses rather than newer and more creative savings methods?

PhotoWednesday 12/9/09 : Rubber Tipped Edition

Yup no xmas shots, outside seems more octobery to me, and in keeping with that, I offer tips. Rubber tips. I caught this on Washington Ave I think, I was trying not to alarm the owner. They were up on the Hill near Clinton. If you see a little flash of yellow today (I think they're rubber glove fingers) it's probably this little puddle jumper.

Missed it Mondays: Wknd of 7/25-7/26 Edition

I myself missed alot of this weekend, what did I not miss? I did catch the block party on Grand Av in Clinton Hill, organized by local merchants.
and I did not miss getting caught in the rain as you'll see in the video below.

Photo Wed: 7/1/09 : The Rainbow Connection

(by B'klynBorn from flickr: Fort Greene Park)

Considering the size and diversity of the planet it's probably true to say that rainbows are an everyday thing. But it's not everyday that you get so close to everyone watching one rainbow. Last weekend, on Saturday the 27th I saw one over Brooklyn and so did many others. It kept my attention for nearly a half hour of shining brilliance.

As I've told friends I've never seen a rainbow as well defined, vibrant, wide and long lasting as that rainbow. What a way to end a week of surprises good and bad.


("Rainbow over Brooklyn" by Barry Yanowitz, on Flickr: Downtown)

The rainbow which was observed by thousands at least (possibly millions when you consider that the populations of Brooklyn, Staten Island, Queens and lower Manhattan alone, number in the 4 million range).


(by Danon' from flickr: East River)

My research comes from the search I did on flickr by topic and date. Dozens of shots began to load from flickr, all rainbows, all from Saturday all with Brooklyn center frame.


(photo by andyclymer on flickr: Williamsburg)

Dozens of pics of the same rainbow from various vantage points and angles all over Brooklyn and the surrounding areas.

(by B'klynBorn on Flickr: Fort Greene Park)

How ubiquitous was it? To give an idea how much of Brooklyn was covered by this one rainbow, I found a photo on flickr with a clear view of my residence framed by the rainbow (I wasn't home but it was nice to see what it would have looked like had I been there) there's almost nothing remarkable about that block of mine and yet someone was moved to photograph it and had an impressive view at that.


(by Alberto Vargas26 on flickr: Williamsburg)

I was so taken with the phenomenon that I created the flickr group "Brooklyn's June 27th Rainbow Massive" http://www.flickr.com/groups/1158831@N21/pool/and you should really check out the snapshot-in-time it offers in addition to the variety of rainbow orientations. It's not often you get to see what people are doing all across Brooklyn at roughly the same moment.



(top: by underwhelmer: Prospect Park / bottom by Rubys Host from flickr: Coney Island)

All the photos on this posting are also from the flickr group and besides catching the rainbow, in an impromptu (nearly) all Brooklyn snapshot, the photos in the group offer some great views by photogs with great eyes. Check it out.


(by RICHBRAT from flickr)

Which takes me back to the dynamics of the rainbow. Don't get me wrong I've seen rainbows before, and while they're pretty I've never thought much more than "oh look there's moisture in the air combining with refracted sunlight..."


(by yatta from flickr Clinton Hill)

But (cue the crazy talk) this rainbow was different, as you'll see in my flickr pics, it appeared briefly and then disappeared, reappeared suddenly and then grew from an almost totally vertical band to an arc that then grew until it seemed to connect both north and shout Brooklyn from Williamsburg to Coney Island. And it lingered.

(photo by petname on flickr Crown Heights)

Long enough that I called people in Bushwick and Flatlands from Fort Greene and was able to direct them to see it with enough time to walk around taking more and more pictures.

(by M505XL from Flickr: Flatlands)

The pictures don't do it justice, the two bands of the rainbow were visible, the thinner outer band less so but the colors against a fairly bright sky were vibrant and frankly, cheerfully fake looking to the point of seeming painted on.


(photo by petname on flickr Crown Heights)

And for the first time I looked up at a rainbow and thought,"water vapor my ass, that thing is magic!"

I think we did it. I have complete belief that the intangibles of life affects the physics of nature, and that human expressions such as emotion are just one of those affecting factors. I believe happiness, sadness, etc have manifestations in the visible world. My caveat is I don't think the small scale, one individual's emotional/spiritual affect on the world for example, is enough to be noticed. So if I win the lotto I don't expect anyone to see pot's of gold other than me. However on a large scale if we all feel the same way so to speak, I really think we can have an effect on the world around us.


(by Abhimanyu Lad from flickr: near Metrotech)

A week ago I was looking forward to my niece's high school graduation on Thursday. Thursday comes, I'm in an auditorium at Brooklyn College sitting with family waiting for the graduation to start when a ripple of conversation begins to spread. My family and the rest of the audience began checking mobile devices. Thus the news was broken, as well as some websites and communications networks and so the weekend was turned into a review and assessment of the life of Michael Jackson.

The sheer volume of people interested in the news was enough to motivate us to push the internet into a busy signal or at least Google for a few minutes. I know what you're thinking, "google is essentially a bunch of computers, a device, we pushed it, we broke it. The atmosphere is physics, we can't just change the laws of science and physics."(cap'n)


(from MariaTeresaCB from flickr: Prospect Park)

Well, okay. You can talk about refractionary forces on molecules of water, suspended in the atmosphere until you're blue (and every other color of the rainbow) in the face, but really isn't science a consistently repeatable, confidence inducing magic trick? And who's to say positive energy is any less potent or operational?


(from MariaTeresaCB from flickr: Prospect Park)

I was at a Michael Jackson party on Saturday night in Sputnik (thanks DJ Spinna) where the crowd was so deep with hundreds of focus points of personal nostalgic revelry and exhalation; that the air turned to steam. During the same weekend Pride celebrations filled the canyons of Manhattan expressing not only cultural joy and tradition; but did so in the most favorable political climate for that culture in over a decade.

(by The MikeD on Flickr: South Street Seaport)

For over thirty-five years I've lived in this borough and I've never seen a rainbow much less a double solid manifestation stretch borough to borough lasting nearly 30 minutes.

(by BarkerBell from flickr: Williamsburg)

Maybe there aren't enough occasions in our fractured world where we've all got the same topic in mind, or the same level of emotional out-pour, to really see what can be manifested en masse.

(by simply photo on flickr)


(by sarkeezy on flickr: Williamsburg)

Sounds crazy? Not to the lovers, the dreamers and me.

(by B'klynBorn on Flickr: Fort Greene Park)

(Wikipedia rainbow definition entry)

Photo Wedns: 6/17/09 Waterfall friendly

Remember when water made us happy?

According to the converted box enabled HDTV, today will be the best weather day of the week. Rain is expected for the next five days, says the fickle converter box.

So I thought this shot from the Brooklyn Museum, where water dances for our amusement, would be a welcome change from the NYC-as-Seattle rainy days we've been experiencing.

(Also don't the kids all look like adults who were hit with a shrinking ray moments before the photo was snapped? (seriously check the young girl with the woman's purse) it's all freaky-friday looking!)

Da Fog

Today's taste of Spring? Cold 52˚, 15 mph winds. As my grandmother used to say "icky..."

Yesterday was at least dramatic with a heavy dose of figurative and literal atmosphere.
Here's a pic from Crown Heights:

1st B'klyn Snow 08/09 season

One hit? I wonder...

Ah... I love nature's ability to read our minds and translate our thoughts into weather events, don't you? The way it rains incessantly when your team loses the championship or the gentle rainbow arching across the sky after a funeral. Or do I have those reversed?

Whatever. As I was about to write a post 'xplaing how much last night's 1st snow is nothing but a memory, wacky moms-nature decided to shake more snow in front of me than at a south beach coffee table, even more snow than this;


An how about that, as I finished that paragraph so have the snow flurries stopped. "licky boom boom" indeed, whatever that means.

And without further delay here's last night's first snow pics:

impromptu BK Weather report

a gentle rain is falling in Brooklyn
chaperoned by an intemperate lightning
(for the moment I can't find my camera)
6/29/08