another eye opens

a familiar sight in Astoria from the Q train

spied on Sixth Avenue from my bicycle

David and Gareth are going to Italy in October, and they invited Andy and me over to confer.

We ordered sandwiches from Sfilatino, a new Italian takeout joint on 57th Street, and went to Gareth’s house where he DJ’d an appropriate playlist (Connie Francis and Nilla Pizzi), David made Negronis, and we opined heavily and show pictures of Italy on my iPad.

The storefront that used to be Compusa looks like a David Zinn set these days.

The women who work at the post office were all atwitter about the new Miles Davis stamps, so of course I had to have some.

Gamelan Kusuma Laras in rehearsal at the Indonesian Consulate

Another New York landmark disappears: Tanti Baci, the archtypical Village Italian restaurant

Andy and I had dinner with Tim Whiteside on his three-day stop in New York on his way home to Hawaii from a month in Argentina. I met Tim in 1992 on Fire Island; Andy met him independently on the swim team in 1999.

Puerto Rico Day at the West Side YMCA