Friday, November 19, 2010

Trick or Treat, Part 1

Halloween night in Times Square was incredible! Not so much the people in costumes but the people in general. Everyone was happy, smiling, laughing and taking pictures of everyone in sight, costumed or not. We talked to a few police officers working the crowd ("Great costumes -- Police!") and they said working on Halloween was second only to working New Year's Eve. We asked if that was good or bad, and they said it was good because everyone was so happy and having such a good time.


I'm quite sure there were no NYC residents there because they all went down to the Village to see the parade there. The tourists (us) didn't know exactly where to go in the Village or where the best viewing spot was or where the bathrooms where so we all stayed in Times Square. That's where I made two new friends.



Do you know what a lowrider is? In Texas they are quite common in certain areas of town. A number of lowriders rumbled through Times Square, drawing quite a bit of applause and hoots as they went through. This poor guy (video below) was the last one and he got caught at the light which provided entertainment and a number of photo-ops for the tourists. Notice how cool he remains while on his side and the passenger side people line up for their picture. When you have a lowrider you adjust the suspension so you get a charactistic bump or jerk.



Susan took the first part of the video and she pans past me at the end. Her video ends up on a guy from Costa Rica. He is desperately trying to contact his family to tell them to watch him on the EarthCam. [Wait semi-patiently through the commercial, then check out the CAMs just below the main image.] We had been standing there calling our friends to tell them to watch us and he asked us why we were stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. Just above him on the left of the video you can see the two webcams, the one on the right gives real-time (CAM 2), the one on the left is delayed (CAM 7). The webcams let you save or send an image, below the video you'll see the image my sister-in-law got of me, while Susan (behind me) is on the cellphone to her.


The Blog Wrangler speaks: More images to come eventually, Time-Warner Road Runner has decided to convert my broadband speed to something like a dial-up and even that is intermittant. I have talked to tech support twice (Costa Rica and the Phillippines) and maybe it will be fixed "between 8:00 a.m. and 12:00 noon tomorrow, be sure you are at home." Yeah, right. It's their transmission, they are trouble shooting it from countries outside the US, but you are on house arrest until they show up.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

the village parade anymore is also attended mostly by out of towners. used to be a small affair for neighborhood kids through the windy autumn streets of the west village. was kind of co-opted by adults somewhere way, moved to sixth avenue and got out of hand.
you're right about times square tho - natives do not go to there if they can help it.
not for halloween, not for new year's, not for the millennium. too too scary what will all them tourists. :0