Thursday, May 27, 2010
Full Moon
Tonight the moon will be full. Yesterday I took these pictures of a view from my living room with the (almost) full moon shining in the Buffalo's night.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
HH Richardson Complex
One of the most beautiful night scenes in Buffalo is that of the illuminated H.H. Richardson Complex, originally known as the State Asylum for the Insane. I took a few pictures on a recent, cold January night, and here are a few that I most liked:
I especially like the huge tree that seems to protect the building and its former residents from the approaching elements. The grounds of this architectural gem were designed by landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted.
The complex, a National Historic Landmark since 1996, housed mental patients until the mid-70s, and the tower housed the administrative staff of the hospital until much later.
Illuminated!
I especially like the huge tree that seems to protect the building and its former residents from the approaching elements. The grounds of this architectural gem were designed by landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted.
The complex, a National Historic Landmark since 1996, housed mental patients until the mid-70s, and the tower housed the administrative staff of the hospital until much later.
Illuminated!
Sunday, August 17, 2008
Biking to Delaware Park
A nice bike ride to Delaware Park, the main of seven parks designed by Frederick Law Olmsted in Buffalo:
An afternoon on Buffalo's East Side
I leave my home on Delaware Ave at Lancaster at approximately 3pm, biking towards Buffalo's East Side. My goal is to know the Martin Luther King Jr. Park, a park of relatively small size, located at Fillmore Avenue and Best Street.
On my way, a hear sirens and see a crowd gathered to observe a car accident at Masten Avenue and East Ferry St. An ambulance, and several fire department vehicles. On Ferry, a mid-size sedan has it's front destroyed, puffs of smoke still evaporating from what remained of the engine. A couple of feet away, on Masten Ave, a full-size SUV rests upside down. No victims are on the scene. The paramedics must have removed them a bit before my arrival. Around the crashed windows of the SUV, lots of trashed items rest on the asphalt, along with a few broken pieces of the collided vehicles.
A guy arrives, asking me whether it had just happened. I say it must have happened a few minutes before, and point to the destroyed, but still smoking engine. Already, he has a theory.
— "She must've been speeding a lot, cuz a SUV won't flip over like that when a smaller car hits it. She must've been speeding, I tell you."
He must have asked other people before me, for he knows that the driver was a woman.
— "That SUV flipped over like that? She wasn't at 30 miles per hour, I tell you that", he says pointing to a nearby traffic sign displaying the city's speed limit.
Paramedics and cops walk about, without saying much. Streets remain partially closed. I can see no victims to commiserate, so I decide to keep my ride. I don't feel like asking anyone about victims either. Instead, I ask a girl where is the park. She point towards the direction I am going, and says, "It's down there".
I mount on my bike again, and leave the scene, but the scene relucts to leave me. After several blocks, I see a park. It's not the one I'm looking for. It's Masten Park, a small community park about a city block in size. Inside, two young guys play basketball, and a girl watches them. I ask the girl for directions to the MLK park. She is holding a brown-bagged beer bottle. She says I should just take Best Street and keep going. I will soon see a church and the park to its left. And so I do.
MLK park is bigger in size than Masten Park, but isn't big. It is divided in two, just like Delaware Park, by an avenue, Fillmore Avenue. The first part is home to the Buffalo Science Museum, which seems to be closed today. I see no one around it. A few people sit in the parks' scattered benches.
I head over to the other side, where some sort of religious meeting is underway. An amplified man's voice shouts against the air, barely comprehensible. After a while, I get to follow one sentence.
— "Even your house will be put down", yells the preacher in an almost concluding tone. "But not the house..." I loose the almost predictable end of the sentence to the wind.
I cross Fillmore Ave and start to walk on the grass (too many people around to keep mounted on the bike). I think about the accident. What were they thinking? What was in each of their minds when bad luck stroke? Whe were they? I should have stayed, asked a few questions around, perhaps approached a cop. I should have taken picture with my cell phone camera. Ah! I trust that the Buffalo News will report on the accident the next morning.
The Christian preacher keeps screaming his rhetorical sentences, I walk about with my bike in search of something to eat. I stop by a food cart selling "pastelillos", Puerto Rican beef fritters which remind me of the "pastéis" I am used to eat while in Brazil. Two dollars each. I eat one, with a little bit of hot sauce. A few more peddlers are on the row, offering T-shirts, perfumes, and accessories. I walk back and ask for another pastelillo. What were they thinking?
The preacher has given way to a chorus singing soul music. I like it, so I stay a few more minutes. Then I mount on my bike and head home again.
Again through Best Street, again up on Masten Avenue. Again at the scene of the accident. Nothing was left. People are gone. Police, ambulances, gone. Cars are gone. I stop at the corner where the accident took place, and see a small pile of trash. I see a couple of infant-girl magazines, with pages to draw or pick the right color. Was the child in the car? The children?
On my way, a hear sirens and see a crowd gathered to observe a car accident at Masten Avenue and East Ferry St. An ambulance, and several fire department vehicles. On Ferry, a mid-size sedan has it's front destroyed, puffs of smoke still evaporating from what remained of the engine. A couple of feet away, on Masten Ave, a full-size SUV rests upside down. No victims are on the scene. The paramedics must have removed them a bit before my arrival. Around the crashed windows of the SUV, lots of trashed items rest on the asphalt, along with a few broken pieces of the collided vehicles.
A guy arrives, asking me whether it had just happened. I say it must have happened a few minutes before, and point to the destroyed, but still smoking engine. Already, he has a theory.
— "She must've been speeding a lot, cuz a SUV won't flip over like that when a smaller car hits it. She must've been speeding, I tell you."
He must have asked other people before me, for he knows that the driver was a woman.
— "That SUV flipped over like that? She wasn't at 30 miles per hour, I tell you that", he says pointing to a nearby traffic sign displaying the city's speed limit.
Paramedics and cops walk about, without saying much. Streets remain partially closed. I can see no victims to commiserate, so I decide to keep my ride. I don't feel like asking anyone about victims either. Instead, I ask a girl where is the park. She point towards the direction I am going, and says, "It's down there".
I mount on my bike again, and leave the scene, but the scene relucts to leave me. After several blocks, I see a park. It's not the one I'm looking for. It's Masten Park, a small community park about a city block in size. Inside, two young guys play basketball, and a girl watches them. I ask the girl for directions to the MLK park. She is holding a brown-bagged beer bottle. She says I should just take Best Street and keep going. I will soon see a church and the park to its left. And so I do.
MLK park is bigger in size than Masten Park, but isn't big. It is divided in two, just like Delaware Park, by an avenue, Fillmore Avenue. The first part is home to the Buffalo Science Museum, which seems to be closed today. I see no one around it. A few people sit in the parks' scattered benches.
I head over to the other side, where some sort of religious meeting is underway. An amplified man's voice shouts against the air, barely comprehensible. After a while, I get to follow one sentence.
— "Even your house will be put down", yells the preacher in an almost concluding tone. "But not the house..." I loose the almost predictable end of the sentence to the wind.
I cross Fillmore Ave and start to walk on the grass (too many people around to keep mounted on the bike). I think about the accident. What were they thinking? What was in each of their minds when bad luck stroke? Whe were they? I should have stayed, asked a few questions around, perhaps approached a cop. I should have taken picture with my cell phone camera. Ah! I trust that the Buffalo News will report on the accident the next morning.
The Christian preacher keeps screaming his rhetorical sentences, I walk about with my bike in search of something to eat. I stop by a food cart selling "pastelillos", Puerto Rican beef fritters which remind me of the "pastéis" I am used to eat while in Brazil. Two dollars each. I eat one, with a little bit of hot sauce. A few more peddlers are on the row, offering T-shirts, perfumes, and accessories. I walk back and ask for another pastelillo. What were they thinking?
The preacher has given way to a chorus singing soul music. I like it, so I stay a few more minutes. Then I mount on my bike and head home again.
Again through Best Street, again up on Masten Avenue. Again at the scene of the accident. Nothing was left. People are gone. Police, ambulances, gone. Cars are gone. I stop at the corner where the accident took place, and see a small pile of trash. I see a couple of infant-girl magazines, with pages to draw or pick the right color. Was the child in the car? The children?
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Moving to Buffalo
After several days packing stuff, and two days later than I originally thought, I left Jersey City, NJ, toward Buffalo, NY, in the first afternoon hour of April 30, 2008. It was a Wednesday, and a pleasantly warm and dry day throughout most of the itinerary. In the morning, with the help of two Brazilian friends, I had uploaded all my belongings to a rented truck. Believe-me dial-up users: it's much easier to upload a large video file in a rainy day!
Carrying boxes and pieces of furnitures all morning is not only physically demanding (and not a bit rewarding), but also mentally stressful. As soon as I parked the 12-foot truck, I decided I had rented too big of a truck. As soon as the first three boxes were put into it, I changed my mind, and a minor state of panic started to unsettle me, causing fears of having to leave behind part of what I had, in the previous several days, so judiciously concluded worth carrying along. I started prioritizing, putting the most important items first in the truck, half-expecting a last-minute Solomonic decision-making session involving whether to carry or leave behind a metal-frame futton sofa (hard to assemble anyway), several boxes full of plastic household items (cheap to replace), and other objects of relatively less importance. At the end, everything fit into the truck's box, and I was happy to postpone those objects' fate for at least a few weeks.
Driving the truck was a cinch. My friend Skye drew a small map and taught me a way to exit Jersey City towards Route 280, better way than that offered by the Google Map I had printed the night before. She also suggested a great place for me to buy the water and foodstuff I expected to need during the trip. It is a "Wonder Bagel" on Route 1/9 Truck North that actually sells wonder focaccia sandwiches! I grabbed two, and never for a minute regretted.
The first third of the way felt really like driving a truck. Driving a 12-foot truck fully loaded with personal trash up Mount Poconos gave me a notion of what the life of a truck driver must be like. More of such a notion than I ever wanted to have, with my left hand constantly reaching for the gear shift to try to maintain a stable speed. But the last two thirds of the way, down the Poconos and beyond, with the cargo weighting in my favor, it felt like I was driving a... Ferrari! Yes, yes, yes, a gas-guzzling yellow Ferrari made in the U.S. by GMC!
There were several moments of great scenic beauty in the way. Delaware Gap, Mt Poconos, then a valley, then deer grazing in the open fields... The truck's odometer showed 400.1 miles when I finally parked it at the Holiday Inn in downtown Buffalo. It was 9:20pm, and the skies had just turned, slowly and graciously, dark.
Buffalo, NY, is a very interesting place. There are many cities in the U.S. like it. There are many cities in the world better than it. And yet, there is something very particular about Buffalo. "Buffalo, an all American city", says a road sign on New York State Thruway I-90 as you approach the Queen City. What is it that attracts me to Buffalo? Why Buffalo?
Carrying boxes and pieces of furnitures all morning is not only physically demanding (and not a bit rewarding), but also mentally stressful. As soon as I parked the 12-foot truck, I decided I had rented too big of a truck. As soon as the first three boxes were put into it, I changed my mind, and a minor state of panic started to unsettle me, causing fears of having to leave behind part of what I had, in the previous several days, so judiciously concluded worth carrying along. I started prioritizing, putting the most important items first in the truck, half-expecting a last-minute Solomonic decision-making session involving whether to carry or leave behind a metal-frame futton sofa (hard to assemble anyway), several boxes full of plastic household items (cheap to replace), and other objects of relatively less importance. At the end, everything fit into the truck's box, and I was happy to postpone those objects' fate for at least a few weeks.
Driving the truck was a cinch. My friend Skye drew a small map and taught me a way to exit Jersey City towards Route 280, better way than that offered by the Google Map I had printed the night before. She also suggested a great place for me to buy the water and foodstuff I expected to need during the trip. It is a "Wonder Bagel" on Route 1/9 Truck North that actually sells wonder focaccia sandwiches! I grabbed two, and never for a minute regretted.
The first third of the way felt really like driving a truck. Driving a 12-foot truck fully loaded with personal trash up Mount Poconos gave me a notion of what the life of a truck driver must be like. More of such a notion than I ever wanted to have, with my left hand constantly reaching for the gear shift to try to maintain a stable speed. But the last two thirds of the way, down the Poconos and beyond, with the cargo weighting in my favor, it felt like I was driving a... Ferrari! Yes, yes, yes, a gas-guzzling yellow Ferrari made in the U.S. by GMC!
There were several moments of great scenic beauty in the way. Delaware Gap, Mt Poconos, then a valley, then deer grazing in the open fields... The truck's odometer showed 400.1 miles when I finally parked it at the Holiday Inn in downtown Buffalo. It was 9:20pm, and the skies had just turned, slowly and graciously, dark.
Buffalo, NY, is a very interesting place. There are many cities in the U.S. like it. There are many cities in the world better than it. And yet, there is something very particular about Buffalo. "Buffalo, an all American city", says a road sign on New York State Thruway I-90 as you approach the Queen City. What is it that attracts me to Buffalo? Why Buffalo?
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