Walking the city streets I create desire paths. Routes that please me for a variety of reasons and unless I'm in a rush they are usually not the quickest ways to where I'm going, if I'm going anywhere. I apply the same reasoning when I bicycle. I enjoy countless places, circles, terraces, avenues, streets that have elements my five senses eat up. Bluestone sidewalk, uneven brick lines, spice and coffee aroma, trees that stretch across a street bed to entangle and touch other, frame houses, buildings with changed uses, sturctures that lean, signs of a widen street where a building was sliced off the end of the block, the #7 Flushing line concave El between Rawson Street and Bliss Street, old trolley tracks pushing up through cobblestone, walking on granite blocks of pavement, elaborate fire escapes bursting with workman pride. All these things engage my five senses: I see, touch, smell and hear them, and in the case of the Sunnyside concrete El, I sing on the top of my lungs and hear my echo roll back to me. I did it as a boy and I still do it. It please me.
78th Street is one of the blocks that runs my imagination. There's a row of houses built between 1861-1865. Construction was slowed by the Civil War causing a supplies shortage. These homes preceded the Third Avenue El built in the 1870s to accommodate Steam Engine service. Imagine a dirty steam engine train rattling pass your open window on Third Avenue?
Here are photos of the block and other sights from there to 79th Street and First Avenue. Just look around when you go from one place to another, it's all there.
http://thomasrpryor.photoshelter.com/
"River to River: New York Scenes from a Bicycle" my book of photography available at Cornelia Street Cafe and online at Amazon.
If you are in the West Village on a walkabout please visit Cornelia Street Cafe to see my photo exhibit, "New York Scenes from a Bicycle," running through March 31st.
