On Bleeker Street

New York is a city filled with key locations from pop culture - at least the pop culture I was familiar with in my formative years. If there was an Usborne Spotters Guide to New York References in 20th Century Music, Film & Literature I would have managed to tick off a few as I went around. Bleeker Street was one of the first I wanted to see - it was much nicer than I'd been expecting, but maybe that's what a Simon & Garfunkel song does to a place.

I also stood outside Kurt Vonnegut's brownstone for a few minutes (I thought about Rabo Karabekian's studio in Bluebeard, though I looked like I was stalking a dead writer), stuck my head in the door of the Algonquin Hotel (where many writers have hung around, and where I looked shifty and hurried out again) and I wandered around New York Public Library (where I imagined a flooded, frozen world, and wondered which books I'd burn first to keep warm. Then I looked shifty and headed back out onto 5th Avenue). Dancing up and down 42nd St and waltzing in Grand Central station didn't make me look odd at all.

The heart in this picture was on the base of the post, as I recall, and though the city is filled with photographers selling 8x10s of famous street signs, I was pleased to at least get something nicely up and angular with this one. I was particularly pleased with the edges, where the lines come in and go out, and the shapes made by things. It only took a second to line up, but it fitted with the way I was viewing the city.

The map will show you where I took it - quite a way from the east river bank, so possibly explaining why I saw no fog and no sad cafe. I did note the distance to Canaan, however. A long way...