…near the entrance to Bryant Park you’ll find these two beauties.

That fella on the right is the new headquarters for Bank of America. I’m not a big modernist but I actually like that design. At least it’s not just another upended glass cracker box like its neighbor to the left. It has some interesting contours and angles.

Here’s a close-up of the façade of the Bank of America building.

Those dark spots? Those are boarded up windows where the panes of glass fell to 6th Avenue during construction! This occurred on more than one occasion. It happened at this time last year and I don’t understand why they haven’t replace the glass yet. I remember coming out of work and being horribly annoyed because I couldn’t walk down 43rd St. I later found out that they had to block off the area because it was raining windows.

My favorite quote from the linked story:

“I saw the glass fall,” said Ana Contreras, 40, a roasted-nut vendor who runs a stand at 43rd Street and the Avenue of the Americas. “I was sitting right here.”

And then, proof positive that Ana is a true New Yorker:

Ms. Contreras said she was seated on a milk crate under an umbrella next to her vending cart and was unafraid as the shards of glass fell around her.

Because everyone knows that a vendor umbrella is the best protection against a plate glass window that’s plummeting to earth at a high rate of speed.

The previous year, eight people on the ground were injured when a bathtub-size steel bucket full of debris fell from the roof of the same building.

Not long after these incidents, Bank of America purchased the detritus of the collapsed Lehman Brothers, which was the first step in pulling BoA under water.

For years, I’ve been reading a book to 7-Year Old Daughter about Edgar Degas and his dancer sculpture. In the book, the model is a poor girl who can’t afford ballet lessons and never learns to dance, but in the end she is immortalized by Degas. I’m pretty sure it’s fiction and doesn’t have anything to do with Degas or the girl who actually posed for him, but I could be wrong.

I told daughter that one of the dancer sculptures was in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, complete with the ribbon in her hair and dancing skirt and that one day I would take her into the city to visit it. Finally, I decided to take a day off of work, leave Mrs. Wife and 3-Year Old Daughter in New Jersey and fulfill a promise.

I’ve been in that Museum dozens of times over the years and know my way around pretty well, so I took the most direct path to 19th Century European Painting and Sculpture. Little legs exhaust easily and I didn’t want her running out of gas too soon.

I turned the corner where I *thought* the statue was but she wasn’t there. Then, from behind me, I heard Daughter gasp and say, “Dad! Look! There she is!”

And there she was.

Daughter’s face was glowing. It’s as though she spotted a celebrity. Here, in front of her, was the girl we had been reading about for years and years.

We spent quite a bit of time in the Degas rooms. The funny thing about Degas is that he didn’t paint dancers performing. He painted them stretching or in class or getting dressed or talking amongst themselves. But not dancing. It was scandalous at the time.

After Degas, we looked in on some of the other Impressionists. That stuff is pretty easy to take and I don’t want her to work too hard yet. Baby steps. First, van Gogh’s Irises. Later on, Picasso’s blue period.

I could see that tedium was setting in so we started towards the exit. But before we left that wing, she turned to me, looked up and said, “Dad, can we go look at her one more time?”

Everything is going according to plan. Muuhahahaha!

If you’re walking down 42nd Street on your way towards either Times Square or Grand Central Station and fancy a quick game of ping-pong, you’re in luck. This summer, Bryant Park (42nd and 6th) has outdoor ping pong tables set up. The net is a piece of sheet metal.

When I moved to New York (mumble-mumble) years ago, I didn’t dare go anywhere NEAR Bryant Park (or Union Square, for that matter) unless I was looking for a bag of weed. You conducted your business and got the hell out as quickly as possible. It was scary. Now, you can play ping pong. That’s quite an arc.

I didn’t know about it until I stumbled across a heated match between this old rattlesnake and a young buck. It looked like they were taking it pretty seriously. I don’t think they were playing for fun. Sometimes, people in New York take things way too seriously.

Not long ago I did a post about what I thought was the “best” pizza in New York. It was tongue-in-cheek. Picking the “best” of anything is an exercise in futility. It’s purely subjective and open to an individual’s personal taste. (But I do like watching the Oscars.) Well, I got an earful from the city pizza capos. They accused me of having unsophisticated tastes and other unflattering characteristics. Pizza! My God! Who cares!?

I was sitting in front of Rockefeller Center sipping a coffee and watching the big parade of humanity stroll by. I looked up and saw this interesting juxtaposition of sunlight running up the Simon & Schuster building. The left edge of this beam runs up the building in precise alignment with the edge of the windows. It forms a perfect straight line.

Upon closer examination I realized that the U.S. flag is in the middle of the beam, as if being illuminated by a stage lighting expert instead of Old Sol.

It pays to occasionally look up from your laptop. I should do it more often.

Fun New York Fact: The “Simon” part of the Simon & Schuster publishing empire is Richard Simon, father of singer and mope-queen Carly Simon. Carly was raised in an upper-class, wealthy New York family and spent her life doing what she loves, as opposed to having a traditional job like the rest of us. Yet, she still managed to be miserable most of the time. Way to waste it, Carly.

There are enough guide books that tell you what to do while visiting New York City. As a public service, I thought I’d do a series of posts telling you what to AVOID during your stay. So far, I only have this one idea, so this may be as far as it gets. Leah, if you have any ideas, jump in.

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A few years ago, in an effort to enhance revenue, the TLC (Taxi and Limousine Commission; a powerful government regulatory agency) decided to allow small flat screen TVs to be installed in the back seats of taxi cabs. They purport to play brief snippets of local news and weather but what they really are is yet another in-your-face way for advertisers to promote their products.

Once you step into a cab and the meter is activated, Taxi TV boots up automatically. TV is so ubiquitous in our lives that it’s difficult to tear your eyes away from one once it’s turned on. There are flat screen TVs in the elevators at A Company Called Malice, Inc. and it’s the same way. People ride up to their floors starring into the glowing screen with blank looks on their faces. I wish I had invented elevator TV. I’d be posting this from Tahiti.

Can you imagine? All of Manhattan is rolling by just outside your window and people opt to stare at a TV instead. You could miss the beautiful façade of The Waldorf Astoria or someone being shot outside of the Port Authority bus depot.

Thank God almighty you have the option to turn these things off. When they were first installed the ad industry, of course, did not want to allow the on/off option. But in an uncharacteristic moment of clarity, the TLC insisted on it. When visiting New York, turn off Taxi TV! Life is too short and Manhattan too interesting to waste your time watching another Claritin D ad. The “off” button is in the upper right corner.

I’ll bet it’ll be a cold day in hell before you see these insidious devices installed in London cabs.

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Tomorrow at 5:00! The beautiful people of Fashion Week!