Out and About in the Neighborhood

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July 4th, 2012

12:00 pm - Out and About in the Neighborhood

mudcub and I went out and about in our Flatiron neighborhood yesterday afternoon for some shopping and dinner. Here's some snapshots.

You know that scene in The Graduate where the annoying party guest approaches Dustin Hoffman at the party to give him some unsolicited career/investment advice, "I just want to say one word to you... Plastics." Well, in New York City the industry that basically mints money is "Scaffolding." Scaffolding has to be erected outside buildings every time they do work, construction, or cleaning on the exterior -- which for many of the city's older buildings, is often. You'll often see several buildings on the same block under some sort of erected scaffolding, and it's nearly impossible to walk down any of our commercial streets and not have to walk under some.

This full-block building on Sixth Avenue is probably at the limit for a full-building scaffold, as opposed to lowering platforms from the roof (which still requires street-level scaffolding).

In such a densely-populated city, there's also furniture constantly being left on sidewalks for garbage pick-up. You can furnish your entire apartment with street finds (and some people do).

After years of misses (including a food truck festival that I went to early but "the ice cream isn't ready yet"), I finally found and got to order from The Big Gay Ice Cream Truck!