Category Archives: around town

Tomorrow

How would you design the city of the future?

Future think is hard. Imagining what life will be like some distant day is hit or miss. Will we all take a flying carpet to get from home to work?

I would design a city with no major traffic. Busses or trollies will pick us up at certain points.

Bikes will be there for the young. Road lanes for the elders on walkers and wheelchairs will also be by design; strollers and carriages will be able to get by. As will those walking as sidewalks will be wider.

Cars will be kept outside city limits. They are useful for visiting friends or family in the hinterlands.

Trees will be a prominent feature on my city streets. As they already are in NYC in our present time.

Homes will be modernist, whatever that means. I like glass bricks.

There will be balconies cantilevered on structures no taller than 12 or 14 storeys.

Lobbies will open to stairwells and glass elevator banks. Each floor will offer a common room and plenty of privacy for when you prefer not to be communal.

Starring New York

What are your top ten favorite movies?

Top ten New York centric films are:

  • Annie Hall
  • Hannah and Her Sisters
  • Moonstruck
  • When Harry Met Sally
  • Breakfast at Tiffany’s
  • Goodfellas
  • Saturday Night Fever

Pause here before the final 3 plus 4 are announced. Bada Bing …

  • West Side Story [1961] & West Side Story (2022)
  • Rear Window
  • The Devil Wears Prada
  • Autumn in New York
  • Sunday in New York
  • Barefoot in the Park
  • The Way We Were

Some repetitions from my other favorites list are inevitable.

My home is

What do you love about where you live?

It’s a long list, that one that answers your question about what I love about where I live. Got some time?

  • The river is at my door;
  • There’s a playground less than a block in the other direction;
  • Convenience is on my corner: drugstores, groceries; coffee joints; restaurants;
  • There is also a school, a library, a barber, and a cleaner, all a short walk away;
  • Quirky stores that are original to my neighborhood;
  • My friends and neighbors;
  • And the person I love lives with me, too;
  • Buses and subways to take me in every direction.
Not this convenience necessarily
There’s a Starbucks under the scaffold
Cherokee Place is a special kind of landmark
Food and drink and quiet near to home
Our homes are also landmarks and special
The playground is a lovely place to sit
Or to play: if that’s your thing, grab a swing
Quirky. It’s a treat to pass the Tiny Doll House
Coffee and Frenchified goodies
My walk is full of decorations and flowers
It’s someone’s project to put up birdhouses
More coffee. More French goodies*
This is near enough to my house.
*Italian, too. See below. I’ve done a huge coffee quest just in my own neck of the woods.

Architects

What profession do you admire most and why?

Sometimes… oh, it’s hard to choose, but for the purposes here, what’s better than an architect.

We had family friends who used to razz their son-in-law as Frank Lloyd Wrong. Even a wrong architect is a big deal in my books.

It’s like a page out of the Seinfeld script, in which George impersonated Art Vandelay out of pure admiration.