How many people can downtown Manhattan hold? The sidewalks in my neighborhood are getting that unpleasant moving-herd feeling of midtown, you know, that savory mix of stationary tourists and frantic commerce. The strain on the infrastructure (electricity, gas, water, sewage, transportation etc.) from these giant buildings, populating the spaces of former parking-lots and six-story tenements, must be huge.
And personally, having all these new eyes possibly staring down at my tenement apartment, from vantages only allowed before to birds and helicopters is unpleasant. But it is not all bad. I still have a six-story winter sunset horizon south of these buildings, something to cheer my early Winter evenings. And in the heat of Summer, sunsets are mostly blocked by these buildings, a good thing, considering the easy-bake oven factor of having west facing windows. Educationally, having these urban monoliths to use as astronomical reference is giving me visceral feel for the seasons. The coated glass and flat sides of The Ludlow (right in the photo) often grant me a rosy reflected dawn. But I’m not yet astronomer enough to know how often moonset now will be denied me.
Outside the Battery Maritime Building in Lower Manhattan. Linda, a turtle fan tells me:
The consensus on Turtle Rescue of Long Island message board thought it might be a red-eared slider of some sort — albeit a dirty one — because of what little bit of color you can see on the bottom of the shell under it’s neck and around the edges. The other theory was a diamondback terrapin who swam up from the south jersey coast. But most likely it is a slider. Red-eared sliders (usually abbreviated RES) are extremely common and often dumped because they get too big and people don’t know what else to do. Here’s the website of a rescue organization that gives advice for trying to rescue RES. It might not be so easy. As for whether he needs rescuing, I have no idea what to say, RES are freshwater turtles, and I have no idea what effect brackish water would have on them. And it’s definitely a male. Females don’t have those long nails. Chinatown markets sell live RES as food and sometimes they get away.
Update, 6/5: Added Video, bottom of the post. Playing the Building, a 9,000-square-foot, interactive, site-specific installation by David Byrne in the Battery Maritime Building in Lower Manhattan. The project consists of a retrofitted antique organ, placed in the center of the building’s cavernous second-floor gallery, that controls a series of devices attached to its structural features—metal beams, plumbing, electrical conduits, and heating and water pipes.
I loved having access to the Battery Maritime Building, but the organ as an actual musical instrument left much to be desired. The keys, especially the ones that banged on things were often unresponsive (the solenoids tap on things that swing like a pendulum) often leaving you tapping away and not getting a sound. But I imagine if left to play with it for a longer than I felt comfortable doing with a long line waiting behind me and learning its quirks, I could get something going eventually. Don’t get me wrong this event brought to you by the great folks at Creative Time is awesome. Go check it out, weekends until August.
Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays from 12 to 6pm May 31–August 10, 2008 - The Battery Maritime Building, 10 South Street, NYC
