Happy New Year

Happy New Year to you all!

I have made actually quite some photos in the past few weeks, but posting them online somehow didn't happen.
Ah well...

I love all the pretty lights outside this time of year. I don't know how the streets in your town or city look like, but this is how my neighborhood looks like during the winter season.

This looks pretty, right?

Of course all the christmas tree vendors have left by now,
but this one seemed festive to me with the overhead lights

Streetnoise

I love living in New York, but the noise....

Most of the time I don't really mind the noise in the city, if I did I should have moved to another city. But there are days it seems like everyone is making noise and I get the urge to scream at them from my window, haha. (I never did though, screaming from my window, but it seems like a fun thing to do)

New Yorkers are not very patient, especially not when they are in a car. If they think that they might have to slow down, or even worse: they have to stop for a second, they start honking. If the honking doesn't help they lower their windows and start screaming. And if that doesn't help they even might get out of the car and start screaming louder. Most of their frustration has to do with the fact that they don't drive very well (at least not to my standards) and that leads to all kinds of congestions and traffic jams, they don't care about anyone else in the street, they all think they should be the one to cross the street first. Of course I exaggerate a little bit, but they make lots of noise, that's for sure!

In the street where I live (and many others) there is a street sign that says: 'don't honk penalty $350,-'. 

I have never seen anyone getting a ticket for honking, and I can tell you for sure this sign doesn't impress anyone in my street. I made a video once from my window, it's a bit long, but you can hear quite some honking (starting at 30 sec mark) and even a bit screaming if you wait around until the 1.10 mark. 
In short: I won't miss the noise in my street when I move to Belgium!

Laundry

There is one thing that I absolutely won't miss when I leave New York City and that is doing my laundry at the laundromat. When I lived in Holland I had my own washer and dryer at home (like most people there). That means that you can do your laundry whenever you want, put it in the machine and continue doing what you were doing. You can even forget all about the laundry and get it out of the machine hours later if you want. And most important: you don't have to carry all your laundry down the stairs and go to the laundromat at the next block. 

The laundromat where I do my laundry could use a little bit of tender loving care, but the machines work just fine. And Rosa, the lady who runs the place, is very nice and we always chat a lot while the machines do their work. So it ain't all that bad, but I sure won't miss doing my laundry this way once I have my own machines again. 

Memories

It's been a long time since I did some serious blogging. It has also been a long time since I took photos. I had no inspiration, at all.
But this morning I decided that it is time to start taking some photos again. The reason this came to mind started when I put on some perfume and I realized that this perfume reminds me of our time in our first apartment here in NYC. (On an unrelated note: for some reason the smell of a coffè-latte with sprinkled cinnamon on top from Starbucks always reminds me of San Francisco....)

You might start thinking "and yes, where comes the actual part that made you think about photography again?" 
Well, that all has to do with the fact that I will be leaving New York City in January. Our new hometown will be in Ghent, Belgium. So this morning when I put on some perfume the idea came to mind to make photos of everything that means New York to me, what I will be missing when I move back to Europe and what I won't be missing from New York. Let's see what I can come up with for the next month or so. To start off this series I think it is appropriate to begin with my perfume bottle:

Idole by Armani - reminds me of our first apartment in NYC

Taphophile Tragics #4

It's been a long time since I posted my last {Taphophile Tragics} post. But this past weekend I visited Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, mostly because I wanted to photograph the beautiful fall colors, but I did see a grave that caught my eye.

It wasn't just the sun that I liked here, but this family grave/headstone looked very beautiful to me. When I took a closer look I also saw that three members of this family died in the same year (1996) and that's what I thought was worth looking up. 

Doing some searches on Google gave me a bit more information:
On August 16, 1996 there was an car accident and that was what killed Jeanne Lagano (mother) and her children Joanne (18 yrs) and Joseph Jr. (16 yrs). They were coming home from a family reunion in Nova Scotia, Canada. The father, Joe Lagano, returned home a day earlier for business and therefore was not involved in this crash.

A sad story.

Marina City

About a month ago I was in Chicago for one weekend. One of the things we did while we were there was taking a boat tour with the Chicago Architecture Foundation. During the 90 minute tour you get to see the many, many buildings along the Chicago River and the very knowledgeable volunteers tell you everything you always wanted to know about it! I am very much interested in buildings and architecture, this tour was really one of the highlights!

And until we passed the buildings in the photo by boat I had no idea they were Chicago based. I knew these building from photos and maybe from tv, but had no idea were I could find them. What I like the most about it is the round shape it has.

This is 'Marina City' and this is a residential/commercial building. It was designed in 1959 by architect Bertrand Goldberg and completed in 1964. What you don't see in my photo is that this building has parking space on the lower floors. Besides residential space (that also includes dry cleaners, grocery store, package room and valet parking) this complex also houses the House of Blues concert hall and Sax Hotel as well as an upscale bowling alley and a bank.

TWA Flight Center II

I made tons of photos at the TWA Flight Center this past weekend. Mainly because I fell in love with this building. Endless lines, round shapes everywhere, I wish I could live there, haha.

The terminal seen from the bridge or balcony (or whatever you want to call it),
 a real good spot for people watching

Even the stairs and banisters have round shapes