Project 33

With the passing of another year of my so-called life, I was inspired to take a jaunt around the cityrecently with my camerabefore I officially turned 34.  Originally, I intended to go all over town - up/down/east/west.  I wanted to hit nooks and crannies of each area in an effort to get the The Best Of NYC.  There's this impending sense of finality in each thing I do now since I plan on leaving here eventually.   (Heck, I even went down to the Halloween Parade this year since I figured I should do it once while I lived here - lemme tell you: avoid it always.)  I had no idea what I was going to get or wind up doing, but I knew there were images I wanted to capture and be able to look back on and remember.  Things that were quintessentially New Yawk.  With that in mind, I set off with my MTA card, some granola bars, determination...and it started to rain.  Frack!  I refused to let that deter me however and just pulled out an umbrella and still clicked away.  The one thing it did do however was shorten my time out.  It got to be too much after awhile and so all I did was wind up doing the East Side, starting up in East Harlem, going all the way down to the Brooklyn Bridge.  I'll call it Project 33 since it was during the last days of my being that age.  When I'm 66, maybe I'll come back and shoot the West Side.  I'm not sure I got exactly what I was looking for, but then again, I never know that about anything in life.

Many of the pics I'm not that crazy about but because I'm a dork, I wanted to have 33 pictures in the collection just because.  A few I really like but since I only was limited to everything east of 5th Ave, my selections are spread thin.  I really like the one of the door buzzer since that will always remind me of going to people's apartments here.  I like the jogger at the Central Park Reservoir since that's me from time to time (yesterday was the NYC Marathon and I caught some of it - I so badly wish I was in it).  I like the shots in the subway as I was tooling around with settings.  And I like the shots in Chinatown particularly of my fried dumpling lady.  Me and that lady, unbeknowngst to her, have had quite a relationship.  I first came upon her place in 2001 when I was rehearsing for a play right next door to the shop.  5 dumplings for $1?  I fell in love the day I found her.