Penn near Subways restaurant. Nice yellow light there. Subways is the home of the five dollar "foot long" sandwich. It is called sub, hero or grinder depending on where you live and eat.

Out west they call a sodas (Coke, Pepsi et al) "soft drinks."

I prefer a stout ale.

late.july warmth

LIRR platform at Penn walking back towards stairs mid concourse.

I believe the picture in the past post is one of the best "traditional" photos I have taken with my BB - shot form the hip and panned and a miracle did result because this is anything but controlled.

Some one could come from the other way, I could be spotted, my finger missed the button, I pan too fast or too slow or my sweep moves upwards or down.

A blog fried wrote recently and commented that she did not take my Blackberry photos seriously. I do, I have come a long way since my first BB images. For every image like in the last pose there are many more moving towards the blur.

Sometimes there is magic that is still and other times less frozen.

Something else I need to address is my general subject matter. I prefer to photograph women. The photos are made with a nod towards Richard Avedon.

I know I am playing with boundaries - candid taken under poor light and close quarter contact without intimacy.

There is respect in these images and I hope that is seen if not heard.

Penn rush hour. Happy Thanksgiving and my gratitude for your visits and kind words.

Late July subway commute. Going through old BB shots, sometimes.

"a.drift"

Found a left.over quilt....fighting off the flu even though I had a flu shot a month ago.

cough.drop any.one?

Just when I thought it was safe the NY Post reports:

The MTA had to fumigate parts of the Ninth Street station on the D line in Brooklyn after the creepy-crawlies were recently spotted in a subway booth, NYC Transit officials said.

Employees hit the booth's emergency button and "immediately left" after they were seen 10 days ago, according to a transit complaint titled Infestation of Bedbugs.

"I lost my mind," said Norman Pou, a station agent who noticed the bugs. "Where there's one, there's two; when there's two, there's more. There's always a whole group of them."

Workers trapped the bugs in an envelope and closed the booth, with freaked-out station agents refusing to go inside. Managers fumigated the area the following weekend, and the booth has since been reopened, union officials said.

According to MTA policy, all complaints about bedbugs are investigated and contractors apply pesticide when needed.

The pests have turned up on wooden benches in some subway stations, including Hoyt-Schermerhorn in Brooklyn, Union Square in Manhattan and Fordham Road in The Bronx, according to city Housing Preservation and Development Department officials.

A transit spokeswoman said there have been no other complaints about infestations on subways or buses.

Early August when the livin' was easy....

E train platform Penn, morning commute. One person waiting for less crowded train, sitting and reading. I walked by and shot from the hip, pausing slightly to avoid too much blur, but careful not to stop too long since there were people right behind me. Have to avoid a pile up.

A BB ballet, of sorts.

I would not sit on that wooden subway bench due to the out break of bed bugs in NY City. I experienced bed bugs in a mid priced hotel abut ten years ago and it was awful.

Note that the picture in the magazine is a pro trait of a model - luck beats skill 5 out 10 times, do you think?

It's beginning to look a lot like Thanksgiving.

Return to the same tunnel - softer focus this time.

The lens on the BB has gotten a bit dirty over a year and a half and I have never cleaned it. I have considered this softening as part of the process since Leica like clarity has never been the BlackBerry's calling card. A dirty lens also requires more time to get light levels so this also has increased blurriness.

Seldom do I discuss technique here.

There is this short tunnel from the downtown subway entrance to the main Penn Station Long Island Rail Road promenade that has a slight incline and figures there are softened by the cold fluorescent lighting that reflects off warmer light gray walls. It can be quite crowded there and in the afternoon you can sense some commuters tiredness as they walk up.

Almost, heading home.

E train heading south tonight. Crowded train, you can see my reflection if you look hard.

Beware of ghosts with a craving for ATM cards. Penn light. Happy Monday.

E train uptown platform, Penn.

There was a time a few years back when I thought the fur trade and fur fashion would end, it has not.

Penn pan pal. Weeks old when the sun still warmed midtown sidewalks.

Thank you for your visits.

Penn morning. Maybe a Madison Avenue man. Does anyone remember Greg Kihn?

There was a time when most businessmen men wore hats.

5th Av. platform this morning.

Go here to preview selected songs from Bruce Springsteen's latest album, songs framed around 1978 when he was working on his "Darkness" album. Bruce cannot leave his old work alone and publish it as honest demos the way Dylan repeatedly does in his Bootleg series. So these songs are not 1978 Springsteen but 1978 as polished by a mature Bruce recently.

I would have preferred the demo originals, warts and all. In 1978 Springsteen was in his artistic prime and still very very hungry. Still "The promise" is worth your time if you like the Boss.

The link will be shut down around the 16th when the CD is available. Got to love NPR.

Uptown E platform, Penn.

5th Av. uptown E platform - 9:15 AM. Almost darkness at the edge of uptown.

Bob Dylan has come out with his earliest discs in Mono. I collect old Mono recordings, once remastered. It is how songs were prepared for radio consumption until around 1968.

As I have stated before the Beach Boys' "Pet Sounds" is a mono masterpiece. Just got the Dylan discs in from Amazon. So Johnny will be "in the basement mixing up the medicine..." These discs have gotten good reviews.

Going towards the E train....

Waiting for popcorn at Penn.

Penn Station, near K-Mart, near elevator to Track 21.

What should one read - a tabloid or the "New York Times?"

"world.serious"

During a brief summer between childhood and puberty, many many years ago, I thought to myself, "Someday I will have sex and the San Francisco Giants will win the World Series."

Many summers and falls have gone by and many baseball teams have gone to win the championship, but until last Monday the Giants had not won since 1952. I had heartbreaks in 1971, 1987, 1989, and worst in 2002 when we were 5 outs away and lost it all over the next two games.

When I was small I lived in Cuba and Cubans back then, before Castro, loved the New York Yankees. You can see many references to it in Hemingway's Old Man and the Sea where the fisherman thinks much about Joe DiMaggio.

It is easy to be a Yankee fan.

Go Giants, a team with great pitching and no super star profesionals who made it a real team effort.