Italia in Brooklyn
A recent visit to Williamsburg's Giglio Festival left me unimpressed. Brooklyn's Atlantic Antic is much crazier when it comes to street fairs. But I was headed to Queens and needed to kill some time before sunset. One thing is for sure, there were characters. This guy wins many awards. He sold cigars. He smoked one. He was focused. He made me smile. He was more real than real. He was it. The reason I'd hoped off the subway and walked up and down two short blocks of noisy rides, smoky sausage stands and a well behaved and rather ordinary crowd. Someone came from behind me as I was preparing my camera and said: "Get the man in the red suit! What a great shot!"
I did. It was. But you had to be there...
The cigar seller, Italian Brooklyn
Mordor Skies Over New York's East River
When leaving work last Tuesday night, I reversed my usual route and headed north and then across the East River on the 7 train. I was meeting Marie at the Gantry Plaza State Park in Queens for a picnic.
While not as masterfully designed as our new favorite Brooklyn Bridge Park, Gantry is nice and uses its rather limited space efficiently with the addition of a few jetties. There are ample wooden lounge chairs as I first saw then on the Highline, hammock-like swings mounted over cement-looking rubber ground for safety, a large playground and the old gantry cranes have been kept and now stand guard over the park like the tall rocks that Bilbo mistakes for trolls in the Lord of the Rings.
Gantry Plaza State Park, Queens
We chose a spot on the grass, laid our kikois and ate slowly while watching people, the impressive Midtown skyline and the sky, which was clouding over. A quick look at the weather radar on my phone revealed a few large storm cells approaching, but we hoped they would avoid us.
They didn't. Within an hour, the sun - which had made a shy appearance - vanished completely, replaced by menacing dark clouds.
It was at about that
By 
Mor-dor! Mor-dor! Mor-dor!