This man was taking a post-work break in Battery Park which includes, among other things, a nice esplanade along the Hudson river facing New Jersey. As you can probably imagine, the sunsets here are downright gorgeous and finding an available bench to sit on can be something of a challenge at around 7, when the sunset more or less starts. Still, upon finding a seat, one can sit down and watch the sun change colors and forget about the miles of city behind and be hypnotized by the waves running into each other and the wall along the shore. I go here at times when I just can’t deal with all the humanity of things like the subway or Macy’s or B&H Photo. Or Times Square, which I narrowly avoided walking through today.
I realized today that my living situation could hardly be better. Sure, I could have a larger room and a window and my own place, but for the price, my room is hard to beat. My roomates are cool and, now that they’re working, I pretty much have the whole place to myself from 8:30 till 5:30. Plus, there’s the whole roll out of bed and into a subway thing, and the park that’s two blocks away. And, right near the park is a shopping center complete with a bagel shop, a movie theater, the GAP and even… Banana Republic. Yes, folks, I’ve found a new favorite store. It’s better than the GAP… and a whole lot more expensive. Luckily for me (well, more for my credit card), there was a 30% off sale on all button down shirts PLUS a no sales tax sale all last week. I stocked up good, but it was still quite a wad of cash.
But — and you’ll be surprised to hear this — living here is CHEAP. Yeah. There’s a grocery store near me (also within a couple blocks) and I stocked up on breakfast foods and cheap dinner foods to alternate take-out nights and, much to my surprise, I paid only a fraction of what I was expecting to pay. Sure, the Honey Bunches of Oats box was $5.50, but that was like the most expensive thing. Mac and Cheese is $1.29, milk isn’t a whole lot more, orange juice is a little more. Heck, it’s cheaper here than it was at my cabin! Of course, I wasn’t paying rent at my cabin, but I wasn’t getting paid as much as I will be… hopefully.
In summary, it’s actually pretty darn nice here. I could get used to this pretty easily.
3 Comments
September 7, 2005 at 8:06 pm
Glad to hear things are starting to feel more understandable. Wish milk wasn’t much more than $1.29 HERE…though then again, I’m surrounded by the ocean, so I shouldn’t complain.
I like the photo. Really nice tones. Good glow on his shirt, and nice, unposed pose (duh). Great DOF. And I guess it’s New York with that tall lady in the background, huh?
September 8, 2005 at 11:56 am
Being that I never post on this site, I felt like with this photograph, I had to. I really think some of your best photographs are those that include unsuspecting people, e.g. the man in front of the Mona Lisa. You really do have a knack for capturing people on film in a casual, unassuming manner. It’s refreshing.
September 11, 2005 at 3:50 pm
Glad you’ve finally seen the light and become a Banana Republic fan – love it!
It also sounds like you’ve got yourself quite a nice set-up – I wouldn’t exactly say I’m jealous (hard to be jealous of anyone’s living situation while I’m staring out my window at a lake), but I can definitely see the advantages to your new city life.