This morning was dull and gray, but not very cold, which I think is typical for early March.
I was relieved to see that the garbage on my block had been picked up, because last night when I arrived home from work it was still there.
At lunch I went to a business meeting on the 37th floor of a building on Sixth Avenue, which coincidentally enough is the exact same floor where I used to work. Ten years ago to this very day I had spent my time high up above midtown; the only difference was that my office faced east and the person I was meeting with occupied a southwestern corner.
I regretted that I never took any photographs from my old office — which offered beautiful views of the Chrysler Building — and tried to make up for it by surreptitiously snapping a few when the guy I was meeting with went to retrieve some documents from the printer. I remembered how when I worked here, the sun used to stream in from the west, and during the winter you could see the ice floes on the Hudson, which would reflect a brilliant shade of orange.
Times Square seems much less chaotic from forty floors above.
Down on the street, I took a few more pix of my old stomping grounds in midtown. Frankly this was never my favorite neighborhood — it’s very business-oriented and is PACKED with tourists much of the year — but I did feel a certain inevitable nostalgia as I pictured myself ten years earlier, and thought about what I had and had not accomplished during the intervening period.
There were other changes to the building; most obviously was the enhanced security, which entailed a three-step check-in process to access the elevator banks, whereas when I started working there — this pre-9/11, obv — there had been nothing; anyone could go up to our office at the time. Although I understand the need for such security, I think it’s not without a certain emotional cost in terms of a kind of heaviness that clings to the city and its inhabitants; it’s one more thing to weigh us down.
On the other hand, outdoor ping-pong is a relatively new innovation — this was in Bryant Park, which I passed through on the walk back to my office after lunch — and one that perhaps compensates for the oppressive security. I think it’s fair to say that the world would be a better place with more ping-pong table available to the general public.
Predictably a pigeon was perched on this statue’s head. (I’m not even sure who it’s supposed to be, although I can confirm that — like most statues in New York (and unlike those in Europe) — it’s not very gay nor particularly hot.)
If I were a pigeon, I think Bryant Park would be a pretty good place to live. These two seemed very unconcerned by the surrounding people, and content just to chill.
Back at my office, the afternoon passed and the sun set behind the Empire State Building. Needless to say, this view has been documented much better than many others in my past.
