Jersey at night, hard to focus with my little point & shoot camera but beautiful. Missed the Manhattan Stonehenge thing tonight, I'm sicker, but not, than I thought I was, or am. Probably not Swine Flu, but I do have a high fever that only ice packs and Advil bring down. Oh, and 11 hours of sleep. My friend in DC said to look for a tick bite. In this city?

One would think this might be a typical scene, but actually, it's not. And this weekend there the Stonehenge effect going on where the sun lines up with cross streets and totally freaks New Yorkers out. Maybe tomorrow but I just took my temperature because I don't feel well and it was a little over 100. We're flipping out about Swine Flu here, and I hope I didn't pick it up in the subway. That will not make me happy.

Enough with the nakedness, let's get back to the waterfront where we belong. Ah yes, not a human being in sight, just the way I like it. Now that I'm working with the general public again, I really appreciate the serenity of silence. Although it's never actually silent here, I can hear the whoosh and squealing of different tires, and a siren, no wait, make that two,  just shrieked by in the time it took me to type this sentence.

Okay, one last shot from the Soho Art Walk. Check out the cardboard ice cream truck. And the big pink balloongirl with the yellow banana pigtails dancing around in front of it. Love that silly thing, it's shown up every year, and says Made In China across the back. I pity the fool who's stuck inside it, you know it's got to be sweltering inside there.

More semi-naked New York artists as well as some in funny costumes. I took at least a hundred pictures at this Art Walk and am surprised to find only one cell phone in them. It may look like fun to you, but trust me, the noise and the nuttiness would get on your nerves if this went on outside your house all day. The only thing to do is grab your camera since that's what they want anyway.

As I said, naked as you dare. There was a third woman in this Star Trek version of the Ronettes a gogo girl group, also tall, blue and willowy. Don't know which was the more intriguing, the thigh high patent leather boots or those wicked wigs. The yellow woman was in charge of their performance, but the least comfortable in her costume. On the other hand, Mercury, with the winged hat in the lower photo, loved his silver thong and ribbon jewelry.

Every summer, usually on Labor Day, there's an Arts Walk through Soho that is a nightmare for the businesses on West Broadway, but all the participants seem to enjoy it. More a Mardi Gras atmosphere than anything else, it's a good reason to get as naked as you dare, or prance around in drag. I love the cameraman glaring at me, like he's the only one allowed to take pictures.

Perhaps one of the least serene scenes in New York, a Con Ed construction zone on a busy street corner. In this case, Houston and West Broadway, which is now all cleaned up, but looked like this for almost two years. Besides the jack hammers and beeping back hoes, there was the usual traffic perils. Because of accidents caused by the chaos, a number of people, crossing the street or riding their bicycles, died. 

West Broadway about 15 minutes after Italy won the last World Cup. An Italian restaurant on the block hosted an endless party while the games were being played but they weren't the only place with a big screen TV broadcasting the event. There was a cop on horseback with his head cropped trying to control the crowd which set off firecrackers and tied up traffic for hours.

One of the comments I get a lot about this blog is that the images are so serene. I think that's because I avoid taking pictures with people in them. So, just for fun, I'm going to post a series of photos that focus on New Yorkers themselves instead of Manhattan. This was taken on the Houston Street pier, for some reason the fishing is really good here.

The end of our perfect Cape Cod vacation in Yarmouthport. And, I've noticed, my 100th post on this blog! Have another week or two on the Archetypal Angels blog, but I'll get there. The photos are clearly more popular, easier on the eyes and mind, I suppose. New York tomorrow.

Sunset at Grey's Beach, how gorgeous is this? If you happen to be in Yarmouthport, this is the place you are most likely to run into the locals at this point in the evening. Except when the weather is nasty, this is where they congregate. I'll bet there' have been countless marriage proposals, if not the weddings as well, on the boardwalk that crosses the moors along the rest of the beach. 

Grey's Beach is not on the ocean, or even the bay; it's an inlet, or perhaps the correct word is cove, but you can see the Cape, which eventually turns into the Atlantic, off in the distance. Most of Grey's Beach is actually marshland. It has an odd swampy smell, and the water level changes daily making it too mushy to walk on, inviting as it is. I can't help but think of Cathy and her Heathcliff.

Grey's Beach, early in the morning. I got up and did my yoga then wandered there before my hostess was out of bed. Passed a jogger on the cemetery road but it was just me and the lonely seagull on the post to the left at the beach. The silence was incredible, even the water was quiet. And those hot fushia flowers below were so beautiful. I remember not wanting to leave, but my breakfast was calling.

Let's back up a bit and make a quick stop at the cemetery I mentioned before we head on to Grey's Beach. The center tombstone in the photo below is for Elijah Taylor who died on April 2nd, 1873. The one on the right is for his wife while one on the left appears to have been for his sister-in-law or daughter-in-law Eunice, who died in February 1889.                                      

Still in Yarmouthport, on the road to Grey's Beach, where we'll spend the next few days. There's a lovely old cemetery one passes along the way before reaching this field, I posted photos of it in February's Cape vacation, but I may show some while we're here during this visit too.  

This building had a storefront for rent that my Yarmouthport friend and I had a happy fantasy about what kind of business we could open there. I was for an internet cafe sort of place with a pastry takeout counter on the side. She wanted it to be more gourmet, more upscale, with a selection of cheese and pate for cocktail parties. No reason not to have both, except neither one of us had the start-up money for it.

Just some more pretty Yarmouthport scenery. I like the magenta bush in the background and the gnarly old tree. I can not tell you how badly I want to live there. I look at the Cape Cod craigslist housing at least once a day. A girl can harbor a dream, can't she? Perhaps, someday. 

I love how GREEN these two images are, with the pale grey and dramatic shadows. The scenes are actually across the street from each other on the Old King's Highway, also known as Route 6A or sometimes Main Street in Yarmouthport. I can still smell the verdant aroma and hear the buzzy hum of silence I've experienced only on the Cape. Not the country or even a beach, but not the city either.

Yarmouthport again, we'll be here for a while. This was taken in the first week of May and it's not quite as green as some of the other images will be, but I like this crooked old tree and it's crazy shadow. Very Cape Cod, what with the grey shingled houses in the background. Can you hear Rosemary Clooney singing, how's that song go? This is on the main drag through town and a few blocks away from the Edward Gorey house, which is pictured below. That photograph was taken on the side veranda looking in at the life sized copy of Mr. Gorey's self-portrait in his famous raccoon coat looking back out at us. The coat itself was on display in a glass case when I was there. They also have some of his  jewelry in etageres near the gift shop full of books and toys and tee-shirts. I think I wrote about the pair of hand signed etchings I got the first time I brought you here.

Yarmouthport, on the northern edge of Cape Cod, and one of the first photos I ever took there. I visit a friend who moved up from New York, by taking Amtrak, love the ride through Connecticut along the Sound, and catching the bus in Boston. That first trip, I dropped my bag and after a quick lunch, headed out on the Old King's Highway in search of the Edward Gorey house, which I will show you an image of shortly.

Just a pretty shot of a New York sunset, I like that forked shape cloud a lot. The swollen river is already coming down, those mooring posts were just spots on the water last Thursday. The weather this morning reminded me of Cape Cod, it is the time of year I enjoy going up there before the summer season tourists descend. Anyone up for a vacation?

Twilight, or perhaps later. It's so nice that it gets dark after 8 these days. Eventually it will be after 9, and then alas, following our long hot hot hot summer, come winter it will at 4:30 again. Here in New York, surrounded by all the concrete and enormous buildings, it is so easy to forget this is a living planet. Maybe that's why I'm so taken with the Hudson, it reminds me, with its fluctuations, how alive it is.

This is a piece of the High Line, if you look closely at the triangular shape on the right side of the image, you can see the backside of the patchwork quilt window building that's next to the Geary. You may not recognize it because the back is quite different from the front, it still has mismatched windows, but just not nearly as many of them.

So while we wait for this endless rain to stop, here's a back view of the spectacular Frank Geary building with its patchwork quilted window neighbor that I posted last Friday. That's a chunk of the High Line in the foreground, the massive renovation project that has spawned all the other construction in both Chelsea and the Meat-Packing District.

Those of you who've  followed this blog for a while may remember that I worked at an art fair in Chelsea in early March. I posted some rainy day photos and then went back a few days later to shoot the same area in the sunshine. This is one of the photographs I took that second day. Funny, after shooting this because I now work in that building in the foreground, I realized I'd shot it before. I wish it was this sunny today.

Still raining in New York, and it was also pretty chilly this afternoon too. Booo! It's rained so much this week the river is a good eight feet higher, very swollen, almost smooth, and it's odd not to see all those mooring posts that usually stick out of the water. So here's a sunny West Side Highway late afternoon scene around Chelsea, with water towers, storage warehouses, a crane, and the Empire State Building. 

Still pouring in New York, the whole east coast I suppose, you'd think we were in Seattle or Dublin. This is for me, from my walks home of a building a few blocks south and west of where I work, although that graffiti is on another building to the east as well. The full message in both places is Read XXX You Go Girl. Cars Kill is probably because of the perilous West Side Highway, which those late to bloom trees line. 

It's been pouring in New York all day, we have had one of those weeks where it just seems to have been raining constantly, although I walked downtown last evening and saw some sun. Perhaps we will get to see one of these soon, wouldn't that be fun? Pot o' gold hunting, anyone?

Two towers in my new neighborhood, the one on the left is actually a block behind the one on the right and next door to where I'm working. The one on the right is still being built, there are glass-less windows behind all that scaffolding. There is a certain optical illusion going on here, but the new structure does in fact curve out out at a funny angle.

Part of what I love about my walks home are the amazing buildings on the way. To the right is the incredibly gorgeous Frank Geary structure across from the Chelsea Pier Sports Complex. There will be more shots of in it the near future because it is too hard not to be mesmerized by it, especially with that new blue patchwork tower rising up next to it.