Spanish Harlem, Madison Avenue at 111th Street

Mary Sargent © 2007 …………………………………….. click to enlarge

We've crossed Fifth Avenue and here is Madison; that means we're in East Harlem now. Here's one of those buildings that gets to me every time.

One more photo: La Pequena Grocery at the base of the building.

See map.

Midtown East, Second Avenue Between 37th and 36th Streets

Mary Sargent © 2006 …………………………………….. click to enlarge

Early post to beat the New Year's Eve rush.

I love New Year's Eve and Day, the end of an old year, and thank god, the beginning of a fresh new one! With optimism that this one will be BETTER. Please. And I'm all for ritual. This is the first year of my blog, so I'm right now establishing a ritual. Tomorrow I'm posting something from 2007. This means I must get up, get out, and take some photographs, come home, select one, edit it, write it, all in time to leave at 4:30 for a New Year's Day party. I'm up for it!

Luckily my New Year's ritual before the blog has not involved late night parties and drunkenness, appropriate though that may be. On this one night, I like to get all serious and reflect and make resolutions and go to bed at a reasonable hour and wake up without a hangover. So it's probable that I'll be in good shape to get out there and photograph tomorrow.

I realize that I'm probably writing to myself, as this ritual will go unnoticed by most of my readers since they'll be involved in their own selfish rituals without a thought for me. That's okay! I understand.

So for the last posting of 2006, here are two views of a building on Second Avenue, taken on my December 28 walk. It's old, that's appropriate. And, as I've mentioned elsewhere, these buildings left standing while all around them new tall buildings are going up seem poignant to me and I feel like I must photograph them before they're gone. These two especially so, since it looks like their immediate neighbors were just stripped away. Oh, let me not get maudlin. For auld lang syne and so forth.

Happy New Year everyone! Thanks for visiting! Love you!

See map.

Theater District, Eighth Avenue Between 46th and 45th Streets

Mary Sargent © 2006 ……………………….........…….. click to enlarge

Same walk of November 4; I've just crossed into another neighborhood, turning onto Eighth Avenue and walking downtown to 42nd Street to get the subway home.

There're two ways these old buildings, only 4 stories high, still stand. One way is when it's squeezed between tall, tall newer buildings and the other is this way, standing all by itself, isolated. Well, there are more than two ways, but these two ways seem especially poignant to me. I hope I'm not identifying with old buildings.

See map.