It’s About Time

Friday 9/27

On September 24th, the Hunters Point Library finally opened to the public. I was so excited that I decided to bike there on Friday, my first available day off.

Hunters Point Library

I first saw this library back in 2015 (which is apparently when construction began) when I was an instructor for Bike New York. Ever since seeing the building, I was looking forward to checking it out as it seemed very modern and chic, and because I’m a design and architecture nerd.

However, whenever I would pass by it, it was still under construction. Apparently this was something that had been in the works for 9 years. I found a multitude of articles about the delay and the $40 million price tag. However, I kept following it online until finally I found an article that posted an opening date.

When I got there, the first thing I noticed was that there was no bike parking. I had to find a place to lock up across the street. However, considering all they had dealt with to get it completed, I wasn’t going to complain.

Hunters Point Library

The library itself is beautiful. The layout is very minimalist and almost industrial, using light wood and concrete in the design. It is very unconventional as well and you sort of have to zig-zag across the structure to make your way up to the higher levels, making for an airy and open design.

When I got to the top level, I was a bit bummed that the roof, which was meant to be a patio for lectures and to just sit and relax, was not open yet as it was still under construction. I guess they just figured, “let’s get this thing open already.”

Hunters Point Library – interior

The only other complaint I had was that there was only one computer that was for searching the catalogue! I don’t understand why, of all the computers they had in that area, just one was for searching. It also seems odd that they would just have a catalogue computer on one floor and not at least one on all of the floors. However, I guess I shouldn’t complain as it was at least cool to finally check it out and I’m sure they are still working out the bugs.

Manhattan Movie Bench

After having explored and photographed the library for half an hour I made my way to stop number two. I biked over the Queensboro Bridge into Manhattan (mention the bit about how I biked far passed it and had to double back) to find a movie location.

View from the bench from the movie Manhattan

There is a clip in an episode of Family Guy where Stewie and Olivia are sitting on a park bench, looking at a bridge and Stewie says, “This really is a great city, I don’t care what anybody says.” However, not until I was watching the CNN docu-series The Movies did I realize it have been stollen from the Woody Allen film, Manhattan.

So, a bit of Googling lead me to the location which I decided to make a quick visit to before continuing on my way. I’ve never seen Manhattan and thus I don’t necessarily care about it, but it’s always fun to go to famous locations.

Apple 5th Ave

Next I made my way to the recently re-opened 5th Ave Apple store for a third attempt to try and go in without a line. However, despite it being open for a week, there was still a line out front. Now, I’m not sure if perhaps the line was only for people who were buying something but, regardless, I didn’t even want to waste the time it would take to lock up my bike, walk over and find out, so I continued on my way.

B&H

After that failed attempt, I made my way over to and down 9th Ave to 34th St to visit B&H Camera. I was looking for a backpack to replace the uncomfortable Away bag I’d purchased, and was in search of a wrist strap for my GoPro.

I found Incase backpacks, the brand I was looking for, but I couldn’t find the specific model I was interested in. I then moved on to the camera section where I ended up finding a wrist strap that was considerably cheaper than the one I had found on their website which was great.

Not that you care, but I wanted the strap so that when I go on my next vacation, if I want to take the GoPro into a body of water, if I drop it, I hopefully won’t lose it. However, as a secondary precaution, I bought a “floaty” for the camera so that if I do drop it and it slips off my wrist, it will at least float to the surface.

Jeffrey Deitch Gallery

Next I made my way to the Jeffrey Deitch gallery in Soho to check out the Tokyo Pop Underground exhibit.

The first thing that caught my eye was a statue of a Golden Robot. I was familiar with the design of the robot due to the cover of the 2001 Aerosmith album, Just Push Play which was illustrated by Hajime Sorayama. It was fascinating to see a three-dimensional version of an image I’d been familiar with for 18 years.

Hajime Sorayama’s golden robot statue

The next big feature item in the room was the skateboard wall. The wall was covered in hundreds of used skateboard decks. The decks had been flattened in such a way that the nose and tail of the boards no longer curved up, making it look like a two-dimensional image.

Whats more, the decks appeared to be layered “over” one another as if they were all piled on top of each other. However, the decks “below” were cut in the middle so that the decks “above” could fit into the negative space in between to give the illusion of sitting on top.

Skateboard wall

From there, I made my way to a dark room with six glass rectangular cases, three on either side, that were lit from above and below. There was a mirror on the back panel of each case. In the cases were more of the Hajime Sorayama robots, this time in chrome.

There was a pole sticking out from the back of the case into the back of the robots to make them appear as if they were floating or hovering in zero-gravity in the cases. It gave them this haunting yet ethereal appearance.

Chrome robots in glass cases

The last piece that really intrigued me was one in the lower level of the gallery. There was a dark room with a projected image of an anime character, a young girl in a nightgown, on the wall. Towards the far wall was a single light bulb which was turned on and hanging from the ceiling from a wire. In the middle of the room was a podium with a computer mouse on it. Below the mouse was a label which read, “Click mouse, then wait.”

So, I clicked the mouse and the projector whirred to life. The anime character suddenly fainted and fell to the ground, lying on her side for a bit before the image faded to black. Then a noise came from the ceiling and a ceiling mounted printer printed an image of the collapsed character.

Anime girl

It was so bizarre, like a piece of performance art. On the ground were hundreds of other printed papers from the other visitors to the gallery. Pleasantly confused, I made my way to the last stop.

K&M

I headed further south to K&M Camera to check out their inventory of Incase backpacks. Upon entering I immediately found the bag I was looking for but, in doing so, accidentally knocked over all of the other backpacks and a shelf of cables and other equipment sitting above it.

Embarrassed, I took the bag to the table to examine it. I was ready to buy it but it was more expensive than it was listed on the Incase site. I asked if they could price match the website and though they could not do that, they could check Best Buy and B&H. They found they “same” bag on the B&H site for even cheaper than it was marked on the Incase site and gave it to me for that price.

I knew this was not the same bag, having just come from B&H, however I was not going to correct an error in my favor. So, I got rung up for the lower price and then the guy I was working with needed to get the non-display bag for me to take home.

However, when I got to my bike, I noticed that he had given me a different model. I then had to walk back to the store and exchange the one he gave me for the floor model I had been looking at. This should have been easy except that the floor model had a security device that he had to fumble with before I could finally leave with my bag.

Lunch

I biked down to the Fulton Street station since I had two backpacks to awkwardly carry and hopped on the train back to my apartment to grab a small lunch. While eating, I realized that there had been one other thing on my to do list that I wanted to get done. This one, unlike the others, was time sensitive as it was a one-day-only pop-up shop.

Modern Anthology

I hopped on my bike one more time and took a ~20 minute ride to Smith Street in Brooklyn to check out the Never Not Riding x Modern Anthology pop-up event. I had one thing only in mind, a 5-panel hat that I wanted to get as a sturdier cap to wear than my cycling cap.

Upon entering I immediately found the hat I was looking for and, as luck would have it, I got the last black one. I grabbed it and held onto it while walking around the store and chatting with the owner of MA and the founder of NNR. I also grabbed a free beer and relaxed for a bit.

Never Not Riding hat and stickers

I was stoked to be getting this hat. To top things off, it was a little cheaper than I thought it would be, and, the founder Nemo, threw in some NNR stickers for free as I was hoping he would. A very solid/productive day off.

Saturday 9/28

Since Friday had been so busy, Saturday was deliberately more chill. I basically just did laundry, returned my Away backpack and applied to more jobs. However, in the evening, I met up with my buddy Kris for a little birthday shin-dig on his roof.

We chilled for a bit before heading out to grab pizza and eventually bar hopping around Crown Heights. The star of the night however was Butter & Scotch. I had been there once before but had never indulged in their cocktails.

The one I ordered was really good, Ciao Bella, and the one my friends got was also good. I bought Kris a slice of cake since B&S specializes in desserts as well. It was a really fun night and was nice to be able to just bike there and bike home when I was done.

Another NY Adventure – Day 3

—Sunday April 27th – Bummin’ Around Brooklyn

Being that I had a pretty long to do list (of things that I know only are of interest to me) and that both Steve and Tom had their own things to do, I took off and seized the day on my own. Because of how the J was running due to construction, I would have had to go in towards Manhattan, switched to a Brooklyn bound train, taken that to Broadway Junction and then taken that back towards Manhattan in order to start heading in the direction I needed to go.

So, I decided to bypass all that by taking the J to Hewes St, getting off and down to street level to switch to the G train (Broadway Station). This meant an extra swipe on my MetroCard but I figured it was worth the time I saved. I then proceeded to take an epic ride on the G train southbound to a part of Brooklyn I’d never been to before. Along the way, and now I wish I had taken pictures, we rose, what seemed to be high above the city for great views of both Manhattan and Brooklyn before reaching my first stop at 4th Ave and 9th street.

—GOWANUS/Park Slope—

This part of the city, Park Slope (I think), was actually really nice. It helped that the day was very sunny. After fixing a small mistake, walking the wrong way down 9th, I ended up at a bagel place on 5th Ave where I had a very tasty ham, egg, and cheese.  Once finished with half my drink and sandwich, I made my way to my first stop, Brooklyn Superhero Supply Co. I had heard about it from my sister who had -coincidentally before I left for my trip- sent me a link to a list of “secret” stores, shops, and restaurants in NYC. This was the one that I was most interested in.

Brooklyn Superhero Supply Co.

The store is a front for a tutoring company called 826 (or something like that). All of the proceeds go to funding the tutoring. I walked around the small store looking at all of the weird and cool stuff that they had. A lot of it was kind of expensive so I ended up just getting a $2 pin. However, making my purchase was not as easy as you might think. Initially I took out my money and handed it to one of the workers, but he refused to take it.

Looks like a cross between the Mythbusters labs and The Big Bag Theory.

Instead he went up into this booth and the other worker opened a vault in the front. I was told to place my item and money in the vault. Then I had to read a pledge, stating my real name, my superhero name, and assuring that I was not a villain and that I would use my purchase for good, not evil. After “checking the superhero database” to make sure I was not a villain I was told to open the vault door. My money had “disappeared” but my item was in tact.

Speed of Light serum… or something like that.

I then thanked the two gents and made my way back to the G train. I took the G northbound two stops to the Carroll St Station.

—Carroll Gardens—

Once again my iPhone was invaluable, using the Maps App I was able to figure out how to get where I was going. Also Embark once again steered me in the right direction as to what trains to take. I then walked the mile or so from Carroll Street to Union Garage.

Union Garage was a place I had heard about through Iron & Air magazine, and though I didn’t need anything, I merely wanted to check it out. What a waste of time and energy it ended up being. The walk felt pretty long and the store was tiny. I’m not trying to crap on the store because they seemingly had good stuff, it merely wasn’t worth the effort for me to see it just to say I’ve been there.

I then made the trek back to Carroll to take the F train northbound to the York Street station.

—DUMBO—

Shpeard Fairey peice right as I exited the subway station.

Here, in DUMBO, I had three goals. The first was to find Tough Mudder. TM was/is a company that I would love to work for. Initially the idea was to try and go up to their reception area and try and convince the receptionist that I had an interview. However, after realizing that this might be a bad idea, I decided to settle for just finding it. I knew the address was 55 Washington Street, and to my pleasant surprise, without any help from my phone, I was able to figure out where it was all by myself.

However, upon finding the address, I had no idea how to get into the building. It seemed to be hidden behind these everyday type shops. They were part of a bigger building and I’m sure TM was several floors above them, but I could not figure out for the life of me how one would access the business section of the building. Fed up, I decided to move on to my second goal.

Saw this -the Manhattan Bridge- down a side street while walking to the Brooklyn Bridge.

My second goal was to check out the area surrounding the Brooklyn Bridge. This included two goals in itself: a) the park and b) finding the foot/bike/pedestrian entrance to the bridge.

Manhattan Bridge Panorama; shot this on the footpath leading towards the carousel and the grassy area next to the Brooklyn Bridge

a) I made my way towards the carousel and stopped to take a picture of the Brooklyn Bridge (see image below). I put my bag with my half bagel sandwich and my glass Snapple bottle down on the concrete step and took out my phone to take the picture. All of a sudden the wind picked up, knocking over my bag and bottle. The bottle rolled off the edge of the concrete step and smashed on the step below. The bottle was now in pieces, it’s ice-tea-blood spilling on the now active crime scene of the concrete steps. I collected as many of the large and medium sized glass shards as I could and tossed them in a nearby recycling bucket.

Brooklyn Bridge

I then found a bench overlooking the water and the Manhattan skyline, and, with the Brooklyn Bridge behind me, began to finish the second half of my breakfast sandwich for lunch. While sitting, a woman came over and sat near me. After looking at her phone for a while, she asked me where the Smorgasburg [Flea Food Market] was. I apologetically told her that I’m not from New York and that I didn’t know what she was talking about.

After finishing my sandwich, I took out my phone and Googled what she was talking about. What I found was difficult to make sense of. It seemed like we were where it was supposed to be… and yet, we weren’t. I told her that I had looked it up and was sorry I couldn’t find it; then got up, wished her a good day, and went on my way

Took this selfie before leaving the grassy park area.

b) I then began to walk from the Brooklyn Bridge park in search of the pedestrian entrance to the bridge. I wasn’t planning on walking across the bridge, but I wanted to know how one would do so if one were so inclined. I basically just used my own common sense to get where I was going.

[Anecdotal detail/sidestory: I got to this one intersection where there was the Do Not Walk hand but there was also a red light for the cars that would potentially kill you if you crossed in front of them. One of those things where you know, the second you go to go, the light will turn green. A guy came to the intersection on the other side and we shared a galce as if to say “Should we go for it?” Then, at almost the same time, we went for it. As we passed I was like “Fuck it, right!” It was just another cool little shared moment with a strager I’ll never see again in my life, but for the moment made everything excellent.]

My walk took me much further around the proverbial mulberry bush before finding what I was looking for.

Along the way I passed the High Street-Brooklyn Bridge station where one would get off if one wanted to walk across the bridge from the Brooklyn side. While walking up Adams Street I walked by the US District Court building. As I walked by, a section of the side of the building opened up towards me and two guys walked out. It was a concealed door you’d never know was there if you didn’t already know it was there, that’s how camouflaged it was.

[talk about how I was proud and liberated to do this bit all on my own using common sense rather than relying on my smartphone] 

Once I got to the end of the building I was finally at the entrance to the bridge. I crossed Adams, continued on Tillary and took a left onto Jay.

Modern Anthology

My third goal while in the DUMBO area was to visit a store called Modern Anthology. There I was in search of Autodromo watches. I had heard about MA while at the Capsule Show last year, and I had heard about AD through the YouTube channel I follow called Petrolicious. I knew the address was 68 Jay street and sure enough, after a bit of walking, I found it.

Autodromo watches

I looked around the store for a bit until I came across what I was looking for. Behind glass in a case near the cash register were several Autodromo watches. Unlike the jacket, I didn’t bother trying one on. I merely looked and them was on my way.

I headed back to the York Street station and took the F train to 14th St and 6th Ave where I changed to the L. I took the L from 14th St and 6th Ave to the Bedford St station. It was a long ride into -and then back out of- Manhattan, in order to end up in Williamsburg, but it was the most direct route I could take.

—Greenpoint/Williamsburg—

There were only two more things I wanted to see before finishing my day long Brooklyn excursion, Vice Magazine HQ and Genuine Motorworks. After exiting the station I took a quick look on my phone and eventually figured out where to go. I made my way to North 11th Street. I wasn’t sure of a specific address, but based on my intuition and what I remembered from the opening of each episode of Vice on HBO, I headed towards the water.

Brooklyn Brewery

As I made my way there I happened upon the Brooklyn Brewery. I then looked across the street and saw the famous watertower. I looked down, and there it was; Vice magazine. I had no idea it was across the street from the Brooklyn Brewery, and though I didn’t take a tour (of the brewery), it was still cool to know they were so close to one another.

Vice Magazine

I then walked around the block to see the other side of Vice on North 10th Street; arguably the cooler side. I only thought to do so because when I posted the first pic I took, from the other side, to Instagram, I noticed that others had posted pictures from different angles. This made me realize that perhaps I was missing something on the other side of the building and sure enough, I was.

Fast Ashley’s Studios; North 10th Street.

As I made my way back up North 10th Street, I stopped to take a picture of this painted sign for Fast Ashley’s Studios. After doing a bit of research, I think it might have been the name of the warehouse in which I saw the things pictured below.

Zig Zag Records sign in some warehouse on Wythe Ave

While walking around the block, on Wythe Ave, I passed an open garage that had a bunch of old signs and other big prop looking things in it. One of the signs I saw was for a store called Zig Zag Records. I knew I recognized it, but I wasn’t sure from what.  It wasn’t until I got home that I realized how I knew it. My sister used to have a day calendar where each day had an image of a store front in New York that no longer exists. Before tossing the calendar, she asked me if I wanted to keep any of the pictures. The Zig Zag Records storefront was one of the pictures I kept and it now hangs in a collage on my wall in my room.

Genuine Motorworks

I then made my way to the last stop on my itinerary, Genuine Motorworks. It was supposedly only a few blocks away on North 14th Street but upon my arrival there, I couldn’t find it. This is where trusting your eyes is sometimes better than trusting your technology. What was tripping me up was that it wasn’t where it seemed it was located according to the marker on the Maps App. If I had trusted the numbers on the building in the first place, I would have saved myself the time of walking back and forth on 14th.

Oh well, I eventually followed my common sense to 195 North 14th Street and into Genuine Motorworks. The only reason I was there was for a button up shirt. There is a company called Iron & Resin that I heard above via Iron & Air magazine. I&R makes goods and GMW is their nearest stockist. As it turns out they only had one of the two button-up shirts I was interested in buying and when I tried on the small, it was huge on me. This was fine because it saved me the $70 I didn’t really feel like spending on it anyway.

Found ’em

While walking back towards the Bedford Ave station, I saw this scooter and liked the typeface of the number 6, as well as the Where’s Waldo sticker, so I snagged a picture of it. I then got on the L at Bedford Ave and took it all the way to Broadway Junction. Initially I was going to get off at the Halsey stop and walk to the apartment from there. But I was so damn tired and I knew that the Halsey stop on the J train was much closer to the apartment than the one on the L.

Took this “artsy” picture of the traffic light at the end of the platform while waiting for the J train at Broadway Junction.

Once at Broadway Junction I switched to the J, took that to Halsey, and then walked back to the apartment.

—Bushwick—

Once back at the apartment I grabbed a beer and headed up to the roof.

#rooftopbeers #depthoffield #iloveit

I ended the day alone on the roof of Steve’s apartment with a solitary beer looking out on the Manhattan skyline and listening to the song Obvious Bicycle by Vampire Weekend. When it got to the part “So while the sun’s coming out…” the sun actually came out from behind the clouds in real life, I shit you not; very cinematic.

After just chilling and admiring the skyline for a bit, I carefully climbed back down the fire escape and into the apartment through Tim’s window. Once inside, I wrote the outline for this blog post. I then took the next few hours to just chill and organize my stuff for the next day.

A while later, Steve cooked some meat and brought out some fixin’s and we made DIY “burritos.” We ate and chilled while watching the Simpsons. Then, at around 8:30 Tom and Steve realized that they were going to miss the new Game of Thrones because Steve had never gotten around to watching the previous week’s episode on demand. So, Steve and I watched last weeks episode while the new one was recording and then, once last weeks was done, Tom joined us to watch the latest episode that had just been recorded.

Eventually I got a text from Dilila saying that she was out of work and that I could swing by her place to meet her. The backstory is that we’d been trying to meet up all weekend and now finally she had time for me. So, at around 10pm I ventured back out into Brooklyn. I took the J train two stops to Kosciusko St. I then walked two blocks down Lafayette to her apartment. We chilled inside for a quick second and then went out to a nearby pizza place. I wasn’t that hungry, but I grabbed a slice anyway. We sat outside in the mild night and ate and chatted about many things. My one regret is that I didn’t take a selfie with her; again, oh well.

I walked her back to her apartment and then fruitlessly asked her if she could give me a ride to Steve’s. I knew she wouldn’t want to, but I just wasn’t in the mood to take the train to Broadway Junction again just to have to wait to take another train to Halsey. I figured if she said no that I’d just hoof it. Instead however, I was offered an alternative. She said I could borrow her longboard to make the trip take less time. Now keep in mind I haven’t ridden a skateboard in years, let alone a longboard, and yes there is a difference. However, because I didn’t want to walk, I reluctantly took her up on her offer.

To my own surprise, I got the hang of it pretty fast. The big wheels and smooth ball bearings made high speeds with minimal effort easily achievable. The other thing that was in my favor was that because of the late hour, there weren’t many cars on the streets or people on the sidewalks. I only “fell” twice, and that was due to big cracks in the sidewalk. The ride actually went by pretty fast and before I knew it, I was back at the apartment. After quickly doing a once over of all my things, I got in my PJs and hopped onto the couch a sweaty mess. What a day.

—Sidenote/Note to self:

One goal I still didn’t accomplish; taking the train into JFK just to see how easy/hard it is and how long it takes. Also, walk across the Brooklyn Bridge.