Gothamist Picks Up the Brooklyn Bridge Cyclist-Tourist Story
Three days ago, I quietly published a story about the daily clashes between cyclists and tourists on the Brooklyn Bridge. I had been planning on doing a month-long study of the issue but got decent pictures on my first shoot and, impatient, I posted them.
Brooklyn Bridge Hot Line
Marie liked the pictures, put them up on Flickr and soon, Gothamist, one of New York's most popular local blogs, part of the world-wide group Gothamist LLC, found them and wrote in to get usage permission. Permission granted, they went ahead and pushed their version of the story, featuring my pictures and giving me back ample credit - which I am truly grateful for.
Since then, my traffic has spiked. The Gothamist LLC web site reports 3.2 million visitors a month. [silence] That's 3.2 million more than me. Still, just from those links, my Google Analytics burped, Clicky (below) was intoxicated and the newcomer Piwik got dizzy.
Traffic Spike on Coriolistic Anachronisms
And all this, along with reading close to 150 associated comments, has reminded me of a few key web principles, some sad, some happy, all essential.
1 - Controversy is gold.
2 - Networking, respectful content usage and back-linking rule.
3 - Despite my eternal love for faraway
Exploring the Pennsylvania Woods
When possible, escaping the city for a few days is revitalizing, as in "vital". It restores perspective and calms nerves down. Having graciously been invited to do just that, we caught a bus at New York's Port Authority Terminal and rode west for two hours, crossing three state lines along the way. Leaving the city, our coach plunged into New Jersey, hooked north back into the State of New York, then drifted south again to Port Jervis where it crossed the Delaware River into Pennsylvania. We were picked up by our good friends Ellen and Michael in Milford and driven into the nearby Shohola woods where they live half of the week.
With a long weekend ahead of us, we felt like an eternity was ours to spend leisurely, i.e. doing nothing, but we kept our priorities straight and first took G&T's to the lake a few hundred yards away, for a cool-off swim. Thanks to an ancient - brilliant - decision by the community of land owners, the lake has been kept motor-free and not only is clean, but quiet!
Late in the evening, after a chicken and boerewors dinner, I walked back to the lake in complete darkness, to marvel at the
By 
Wow, you really caught something there. Can’t wait to see the rest.