Trees, trees and more trees

Hi Mom, here's a little inspiration for your mosaic art pops! Just one of the many tree photos taken yesterday all over NYC.

Just found out that Sarah was in Prospect Park when the storm blew in and was really worried about being hit by a tree branch at the time. Luckily she outran the tornado. Talk about scary!

NYC Tornado, Sept. 16, 2010

Flatbush Avenue: This tree was in front of Haifa Bodega blocking three lanes of traffic. I was on the subway during the tornado so I didn't even know that a storm hit. A guy who had been in Haifa during the worst of it came out and told me that the sky turned black, there was lightning and strong gusts of wind and that it was one of the scariest situations he'd been in. (A week or so ago a branch of this tree broke off and was hanging by a thread from the trunk. For some reason the city never cleaned it up. So when I saw that the whole tree was destroyed and blocking three lanes of traffic on Flatbush, my initial thought was that the broken branch somehow dragged the rest of the tree down. Now the city's really got a mess on its hands!)

Prospect Heights, Vanderbilt Avenue:

This was a typical scene. People everywhere talking about what happened or cleaning up what they could in the aftermath. Other people taking pictures of people taking pictures of people taking pictures of fallen branches.This is weird. Park Slope, 5th Avenue:

The beautiful tree near the Stone House was another casualty. This tree was so old that I imagine it could have been around during the Revolution. You can't tell from the picture, but it was massive.

Seth was so disturbed by the whole situation he grew a Michael Douglas hairdo. What the...?

I can't remember what street this was on. I think 4th. I read that many of the trees uprooted like this because their roots were trimmed so they wouldn't crack the sidewalk.

Here's another view of the same tree. Those are firetruck lights in the background. Soon after I took this, the firefighters drove the truck right up to this tree to survey the damage. One firefighter seemed like he really, really wanted to rev up the chainsaw, but I think they decided that this was too big of a job to tackle with just one saw so late in the evening.

5th street between 5th and 6th Avenues was hit hard. The 5th Avenue side of the block was blocked by a huge old shade tree that all the neighbors loved......the 6th Avenue side was blocked by this. Most cars that I saw while we walked around seemed intact. For example, a branch fell on top of someone's car in front of our apartment building and the car owner just got in and drove away. It didn't even look like it was scratched. But then there was this:

While I was taking pictures of this car I talked to a woman who said that water and dust flooded into her apartment when the storm hit, her kids were screaming and scared, the sky was green. I overheard another woman on this block tell a police officer that a tree busted out all the windows in her apartment. What a mess. Read more here and see a video here shot by a person who was pretty...gutsy(?) to stand in front of all those windows filming during a storm like this.

"Platform Diving" at the Houston Street subway station

What did you see in the subway today? I spotted an octopus!

Scenes from Fashion's Night Out at the Limelight Marketplace

Angels wearing teeny tiny tighty whities? So that's what all the fashions-night-out hype's about! A pair of these guys were standing guard at the entrance to the Limelight Marketplace.

Channeling Marilyn Monroe:

Mimi Imfurst (of The Queens of Drag: NYC fame) looking fabulous in a fifties inspired frock. Look closely and you'll notice Seth in the background posing for photographers in his own stylish-yet-understated day-to-evening ensemble:

She must be thinking about the Limelight's wilder days...

That's what all those shiny kitchen gadgets are for!

Labor Day Weekend 2010

One of the many, many plumed beauties spotted that day.

We caught the tail-end of Brooklyn's West Indian Day Parade on Monday. Wish we would have got there sooner, though, it was so much fun with everyone dancing in the street to music so loud you can feel it pounding in your chest. And the costumes were off the hook!

There's a neat article about the carnival's origins in NYC at Uncommon Caribbean. The author says that back in the 1920s it was "celebrated in February, the appropriate pre-Lenten time for jumpin’ up in Trinidad and countries around the world. Unfortunately, New York’s February climate wasn’t terribly hospitable to their skimpy costumes" so the celebration was moved to Labor Day. You can read the article in its entirety and see many more pics by clicking on the link above. I also found a slideshow on flickr that nicely captures the feel of the festivities.

Out for a very, very, very long stroll with Laurie and Bryan. Here they are posing with an unidentified man in Chinatown.

Also, did you know that it takes about 3 hours to walk from Prospect Heights to Central Park if you stop for snapshots and juice along the way? All in all, a great weekend, but by Monday night my dogs were killing me!