Welcome to the working week

The morning commute in Jackson Hole.

Urban poetry

The sign is quite clear: Keep This Door Closed AT ALL TIMES.

To which the logical response is, What door? This is a Mexican restaurant on West 50th Street, and there is a back door out of frame to the left, not exactly in the immediate vicinity of this sign. I'm guessing that whoever painted the sign did it late one night after polishing off all the leftover margaritas, but I'd rather pretend that there's a magic portal there visible only to the initiated.

More urban poetry

Another overlooked shot from Istanbul: a display of children's bicycles outside a shop.

I'm going to Scotland at the end of next week, and will probably have a few thousand pictures of mountains and cows as a result, so I'm trying to clean out the old files, get rid of the junk, and properly label the photos I do want to keep.

Like this one -- the pink bicycles make me smile.

Urban poetry

Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night, stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.

That isn't really the motto of the Postal Service, but it is inscribed in marble on the old main post office building on Eighth Avenue, and everyone thinks it is. I was actually disillusioned when I went through my first official blizzard in New York and learned that, heroic slogans notwithstanding, there usually isn't any mail delivery after a blizzard.

However, I've yet to see a calamity -- blizzard, hurricane, blackout, terrorist attack -- where it wasn't still possible to order in. Bills and catalogs aren't always available; Chinese food or pizza is.

And I find that quite comforting.

Urban poetry

A bike rack shaped like a bike wheel.

This cracked me up

Is there anything more romantic than a bicycle built for two? I think of sunny days and picnics in the park, old-fashioned dresses and straw boaters.

I think the idea of them is more romantic than the reality -- my only experience riding one wasn't that much fun. But this poor bike still deserves a kinder reality than being buried up to the handlebars in dirty city snow.

Bicycles

Urban poetry

I can't resist those Citibikes, sparkling in the dazzling autumn light.

Urban poetry

West 46th Street.

It's off the twig, it's kicked the bucket, it's shuffled off its mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisible!! THIS IS AN EX-BICYCLE!!

Still securely chained to the railing though.

Urban poetry

In further praise of the lowly bicycle.

After listening to the truly unhinged Dorothy Rabinowitz rail against the all-powerful bike lobby (seriously -- the bike lobby) at The Wall Street Journal Online,  I started rooting for the Citibike program to be a huge success, just to spite her. And then suddenly yesterday evening, the racks on 43rd Street were buzzing, with several people returning bikes as two others were adjusting their seats and riding off. And I'd already seen a couple of other blue bikers on my way home. People seem to be using them exactly the way they were intended -- as an alternative means of transportation for quick trips in the city.

Quelle horreur! I guess the bike lobby wins again!

UPDATED: Of course, TBogg gives the definitive smackdown.

Urban poetry

Another view of the new bike racks, still empty.

Urban poetry

I hadn't heard anything about this, but apparently we're getting citywide bike rentals like those in Paris. No bikes yet, though -- just the empty racks.

After the deluge

Location, location, location.

That's the old joke about the only thing that matters in the world of real estate, but sometimes matters of life and death use the same criteria. Sandy was catastrophic: New Jersey, Long Island, the Rockaways, have all been ravaged. I know people whose homes were seriously damaged, and many others whose houses are intact but without power so they're camping out with friends and relatives, sometimes moving every night. And, sadly, a couple of families whose homes were destroyed.

But I was a winner in this round of the geography lottery, never even lost power. This branch poking between the wheels of a bicycle is the only damage I saw on my block.

This has left me with a kind of survivor's guilt. How is it fair that those of us in upper Manhattan came through this basically unscathed when some people are hurt so badly?

I know that's not a question with an answer -- or rather, we all know the answer but just refuse to accept it. It isn't fair. It never will be. And all we can do is be generous when it's in our power to do so, and hope that someone in turn will be kind to us someday.