Colors on the Drive

Life in the urban jungle requires compromises.  It's an axiom.  The very paradox of an "urban" "jungle" would suggest no less - life being threaded between a space at once thoroughly unnatural and teeming with the natural life force.

And so, to deal with a career that sucks an obscene amount of time and balance it with the desire to have just a normal, relaxed, sane existence calls for different inputs in the time/money grid.  Living out in Yorkville means a better space (with a terrace!), close to the river and a pretty little park, for a reasonable price (as prices go in New York City), but far from the subway (until the long-promised Second Avenue subway line opens), which would otherwise be the quickest way to get downtown.  But nature abhors a vacuum.  Before the great global recession, there was an express bus service; that went away.  There is a van service.  And, thankfully, the cabshare stand.  It is my daily weekday indulgence - $7 is a small price to pay for sanity and not having to deal with the hordes taking the Lexington Avenue subway downtown, and to halve my morning commute time.  (At the rates I get billed at, that 20 minute savings is worth a whopping $300 - to someone; so $7 seems fine for me to spend.)  Of course, sometimes, more often than ideal, I am forced to take my own "golden chariot," as Sissy has styled it - I am just a sadly habitual late-ling; many mornings I just need more me time to get out and start the day.

Such was the case this recent Friday.  But having the cab to my lonesome allowed me to take some shots of my morning commute.

The glistening East River, that leads to the Harbor, that leads to the ocean, that leads everywhere.

View of a garden of edibles - often featured on FoodNetwork shows; the crops are grown in milk crates lined with landscaping fabric to hold in the soil, set atop the concrete terrace.

The towers of Williamsburg - shiny, new, surely expensive - not very suited for hipsters, unless one assumes all those hipsters are being bankrolled by their mommies and daddies.

East River Park.

The "necklace" of the Brooklyn Bridge - its view so beloved that it was the subject of negotiations with users of the Brooklyn Promenade slating the view to be protected from the hotel development at Brooklyn Bridge Park.  But to no avail - the too-tall mechanicals don't seem to be coming off that building.

Getting closer to the Bridge.

Gotta love the new cab sunrooves!

  

I had already been meaning to, had made a point to try to remember to capture the sure signs of the onset of Autumn - there are trees by the side, visible on the FDR, that turn a beautiful, bright, almost glaring yellow - well before all the other trees have caught wind of the change of season.

The bright yellow foliage, approaching the Brooklyn Bridge/Civic Center exit.

View from the drive.

The tinted cab windows and Blackberry camera do no justice to the truly blazing yellow of the leaves.

If/when the office moves to the westside (and if I even last that long), I will miss the daily shoot down the FDR.  As lovely a way to commute as any, I'd say.