rhl-oregon
Cameras Guitars Wonders
Hello RFF NYC,
I'll be in Long Island City Friday 6/23-Tuesday 6/27 to visit my daughter and her beau over the weekend.
They go to work Monday, and I have 2 days to stroll, shoot, have coffee or fizzy water with one or more of y'all, do some gear fondling, tell outrageous lies, etc etc.
Let me know if you have any time or desire for the same. Happy to jump on the bus or the tube to Chinatown, Loisaida, Crooklyn. Last time I was there some of us lunched on Vietnamese on Mott Street.
I have been offline for months for death and grief and mourning, and now I'm alive again and ready to see RFF friends. Reply here, or message me.
Ciao, Robert
I'll be in Long Island City Friday 6/23-Tuesday 6/27 to visit my daughter and her beau over the weekend.
They go to work Monday, and I have 2 days to stroll, shoot, have coffee or fizzy water with one or more of y'all, do some gear fondling, tell outrageous lies, etc etc.
Let me know if you have any time or desire for the same. Happy to jump on the bus or the tube to Chinatown, Loisaida, Crooklyn. Last time I was there some of us lunched on Vietnamese on Mott Street.
I have been offline for months for death and grief and mourning, and now I'm alive again and ready to see RFF friends. Reply here, or message me.
Ciao, Robert
Calzone
Gear Whore #1
Robert,
I am pretty close to maximizing the amount of time allowed in my "Vacation Time Bank" so I could easily take some time off from work one or both days (26th, 27th or both). The only thing is I have to give advanced notice.
How are your legs for walking?
Cal
rhl-oregon
Cameras Guitars Wonders
Both legs good! One hip starting to funk out, but thats just age, nothing that can't be treated with Vitamin I. I've lost 50 pounds since I saw you last, so I can stroll all day with breaks for h2o and coffee. No disco dancing on steel girders with heavy gear though
How's Monday? I'm free all day.
How's Monday? I'm free all day.
rajmohan-fotograf
rajmohan
I'm around and available on Monday and Tuesday, most likely after 2pm.
Calzone
Gear Whore #1
Robert,
I'll book a vacation day for Monday.
LIC is a good starting point. If you like we could meet at the Court Square Dinner and have breakfast. I lived in a historic rowhouse (rundown firetrap) just down 23rd Street near 44th Drive. Basically I lived on the same block as the CitiGroup skyscrapper, the tallest building on Long Island and a major terrorist target. The 7 Train ran right in front of my house, and like in the film the "Blues Brothers" it went by so many times that one began not to hear it, except the house shook, and because of this I never set up a darkroom.
There is an industrial section that straddles Queens and Brooklyn that protrudes inland on Long Island about 4- 4 1/2 miles, all heavy industry. We will pass through "Blissville" a way out of the way place that is kinda nowhere, and then the next neighborhood will be Greenpoint one of the largest Polish communities in the U.S. We will work our way to be hugging the waterfront along the East River heading towards locations that hipsters have conquered, and then into Williamsburg.
Along the way after the no-man's land by Newtown Creek where there all that heavy industry it is rather civilized with mucho places to eat, rest and refresh.
For me it will be kinda odd because I really know LIC, Greenpoint, and Williamsburg because I like there before these places were conquered by hipsters. I really know the history there, and it will be rather odd shooting during the work week.
If we really want to do a death march we can cross over to Madhattan via the Williamsburg Bridge.
Cal
Calzone
Gear Whore #1
rajmohan-fotograf
rajmohan
Sounds great, Cal! Please do.
I might be free earlier on Monday, but I won't know until next week how my schedule pans out.
Thanks!
Calzone
Gear Whore #1
Prest_400
Multiformat
Met up with Cal a day like this and just happened to miss NY meet up Dec 2015 because I left the city on a friday.
Just went for a workweek because the flight was crazy cheap.
This is why I am so active in the meet subforum too.
Got lots of memories from that day walk. Mucho more fun to have a walk like that... Too bad I can't join this one!
Every now and then I check out what is going on around and I see that Domino's will be converted to a new installation.
That atea indeed has a mix of industrial, not NY, anytown america feel. Plus the developments that mismatch it.
Also, I recently learnt that Queensbridge was just a street north. Was listening to Mobb Deep, a notorious hip hop duo from the area.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Just went for a workweek because the flight was crazy cheap.
This is why I am so active in the meet subforum too.
Got lots of memories from that day walk. Mucho more fun to have a walk like that... Too bad I can't join this one!
Every now and then I check out what is going on around and I see that Domino's will be converted to a new installation.
That atea indeed has a mix of industrial, not NY, anytown america feel. Plus the developments that mismatch it.
Also, I recently learnt that Queensbridge was just a street north. Was listening to Mobb Deep, a notorious hip hop duo from the area.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Calzone
Gear Whore #1
Jorde,
Ron Artest, the bad boy basket ball player who punched a fan during a game because a drink was thrown at him, is from the Queensbridge Houses. Also Queens Plaza is where you can take the Q100 bus to Riker's Island, and know that Queens Plaza is where former inmates are released back into the public.
My old neighbor Jimmy in LIC told me that street walkers would patrol right in front of our houses.
The "Bridge To Nowhere," a phrase coined by Andre Dos Santos, happens to be an artifact that is used for many Hip-Hop and Rap artists.
On the Williamsburg Bridge it seems they put up a chain link fence to prevent me from getting my panoramic shot of the Domino refinery that spans eight blocks. Basically I climbed up a railing and leaned over to get the eastern casion out of my shot. The fall to South 5th Street below is well over 100 feet. Someone must of reported me. LOL.
Cal
Calzone
Gear Whore #1
Robert,
I booked Monday. Call me on my cell for an early meet-up. Know I will likely go early to photography around Queens Plaza in the early morning light.
What is really cool about living in NYC is a day trip for shooting is like vacation without having to travel.
Cal
stompyq
Well-known
Guys, be careful of Cal's LIC death marches. He's not exaggerating when he calls them a death march. Nearly killed me several years ago.
Phil_F_NM
Camera hacker
You remember the one where we started down by Queens Plaza then to Newtown Creek, over the Pulaski Bridge (I think) then backtracked more along the creek, then over the huge rail yard then a kind of roundabout east flanking of LIC only to wind up talking our way onto a warehouse roof up closer to Astoria? (Sorry for the odd run-on sentence!) The only shade that day was under the water tower on that roof! I think you were carrying a Pentax 67 or 67II? Holy cow that was a long walking day. Not bad though. Just a lot of ground covered in some serious heat and humidity.
Robert, I wish I could make it up to NYC for one of those days but I have appointments at the VA already scheduled. Grrr!
Phil Forrest
stompyq
Well-known
Lol. Oh I remember that one. Cal and I did one before that. We picked the hottest day of they year (100F) and didn't have any water (or anywhere to buy any). So yeah.. be careful with Cal
Calzone
Gear Whore #1
LOL.
Around Newton Creek on a weekend pretty much no bus, nor subway, a definitely difficult to find food or water (do not drink the water from Newtown Creek). During the day during the Great Recession no people or cars either.
Pro-Mone must be thinking of the time we went shooting during a time of high heat index, and he was actually worried about me because I am older, but it was Pro-Mone that almost got heat stroke. Also I told Pro-Mone that if he collapses that I'm too small a man to carry him out, and that self preservation instinct prevails, and that I would simply leave him for dead. LOL.
Kinda funny because Pro-Mone comes from a tropical country of blazing heat.
Know that I once ran a NYC Marathon "off the couch" under 5 hours at the age of 49 when a friend of mine, an elite runner, overtrained, ran himself down, and was too ill to race. He offered me his bib on a Friday right before the Sunday race, so literally I one day to get ready. LOL.
Also know that formally I raced bicycles so my conditioning as an endurance athlete allows me to do crazy/dumb things that otherwise old men should not do, or even young-ones. LOL.
Cal
stompyq
Well-known
Thats the one! He's not joking guys. Cal's got some major stamina
Phil_F_NM
Camera hacker
Yes, but you can get water all over Sri Lanka, I'm pretty sure. LIC is a "developing nation" and is as dry as the Atacama desert!
Phil Forrest
stompyq
Well-known
I thought I saw the Taj Mahal that day. Then Cal just said it was a mirage....:bang::bang:
Calzone
Gear Whore #1
Pro-Mone,
When I raced bicycles my friend "Eric" use to say, "Pain is like pleasure: it is only a feeling." Kinda true if you kinda hang at anerobic threshold or do intervals, and hill climbs for conditioning. You know you are training hard when you start tasting iron, you start to involentarily start to gag, or you throw up, because you are basically choking yourself and getting use to it.
Also after a workout your eyes are bloodshot as if you were strangled.
Eric built swimming pools for a living, and by the end of the summer he would be totally ripped by mixing 50 pound bags of cement by hand. The guys I rode with and trained with were mostly younger than me and were more like machines than human.
Anyways I was know as a "hammer" and a climber who had a very high threshold of pain. In my prime my resting heart rate when I woke up in the morning sometimes was under 40 BPM.
Anyways as a serious endurance athlete one really gets to know ones body and what it can do. BTW as a racer I usually took my beating like a man. I was an old guy hanging out with young studs. What I did to you was only some revenge. LOL. Sorry for being mean. LOL.
Cal
rajmohan-fotograf
rajmohan
I just fixed my schedule so that I have the 26th off work. But all this talk of death marches and heat stroke gives me pause!
Will I be able to make it to work on Tuesday, Cal, or will I be spending the week in an ICU somewhere?
Will I be able to make it to work on Tuesday, Cal, or will I be spending the week in an ICU somewhere?