I met some pretty cool guys, this weekend. They are the guys behind the brand Only New York, a local street wear brand. I am going to be doing a SoJones piece on them, and was able to do a quick shoot on Sunday afternoon. They are definitely cool guys. You should definitely check out their stuff. More on Shotbyjake.com

Saturday was the first race of 2010 for me. It was a good one to start out the year with, since the weather was beautiful and it was for a good cause (run for Haiti). It was also pretty cool, because it was the first race that our new team “New York Running Club” was listed correctly on the roster/results.

I tried to charge my Nike+ sportband the night before, only to find that it was malfunctioning, again. The display looked like some sort of alien language. Reagan was kind enough to let me borrow hers, since she was sitting this one out. I will be sending it back on Monday Grrrr. The Central Park Races are normally capped at 5000 runners. But since it was for a charity (I guess), they doubled the cap and let 10,000 participants run. It was crrraaazyy. I wasn’t expecting such a crowd, so I showed up at the 9th hour and barely made it starting grid before the gun. As a result, I was way in the back and had no real chance of making it through the pack enough to get a good time. It was ok, though. My friend Mike ran with me, and we just had a relaxing race, and chatted the whole time. It also made me totally pumped for the upcoming running season and nice weather. Woo hoo!

Our Alaska/Hofstra friends also came to visit us, this weekend. Reagan and I pretty much just tagged a long with them through the village to various thrift stores, before hitting Broadway, in SoHo (pretty much Reagan’s dream day). It was a pretty good time, even for me.

We also saw this guy, playing in Washington Square Park. It is the same dude who drags that busted old piano down to the 4th St. A platform in the Subway on the weekends. Pretty awesome.

Since Piper has been back at Columbia, I have been back to the old car moving routine. I have not enjoyed it. I normally get up at 6, so that I can get it done before there is any real traffic. The sweet spot is between 6 and 7. After 7, there is a garbage truck and a school bus blocking every single street in our neighborhood.

This morning, Reagan woke me up, while she was stirring around. I had one of those sudden moments of panic, like I knew I shouldn’t still be asleep. I had forgotten to take my phone off of silent, and the type of alarm that I had set for moving the car, doesn’t make any noise, when my phone is on silent. It was already 7. I got down stairs just in time for the blizzard to start, and in time to get stuck behind every school bus and garbage truck in our neighborhood, at least once. Hahahaha. I’m ok with that though, because the snow was very pretty and entertaining to watch, while taking breaks from watching the dudes toss garbage into the truck.

At long last, I did find a parking spot in time to make it down to work w/o being late, where I took the above photos of the storm. I know they are kind of boring. I liked these ones much more.

To add a little bit of contrast to the gray photos above, I thought I would post the image below. It has made its way around the internet by now, but I thought it was cool enough to share again anyway.

The image comes from artist Steven Worley’s blog. In his post, he outlines the history of Crayola’s color spectrum, and how the palette has expanded over the years, saying:

Crayola’s crayon chronology tracks their standard box, from its humble eight color beginnings in 1903 to the present day’s 120-count lineup.  According to Crayola, of the precious crayons of my childhood – the seventy-two colors from the official 1975 set – sixty-one survive.

So cool.

Make no mistake, these guys are weird. But, they are also pretty awesome. This week, we are swinging back to the NYC Electronica scene. Fischerspooner was formed by New Yorkers Warren Fischer and Casey Spooner. They got their start performing in the Starbucks at Astor Place. So, you know the’re good. Hahahahah. For real, though, you have to respect an outfit that can make it from performing at Starbucks, to where they are now.

Over the years, Fischerspooner has grown from just the duo, to become a full-on theatre/music troupe (sort of). By this, I mean that they have put together some pretty elaborate stage antics to accompany their live performances, including more than 10 people on stage, at a time. Their sound consists generally of some Matt and Kim-style keyboard, with a technofab beat underlying a barrage of various Depeche Mode-esque samples. The vocals are reminiscent of the performance that Kip gave at the end of  “Napoleon Dynamite,” or what it would have sounded like, if he had a clone of himself singing a duet. Despite the fact that I just made them sound totally lame, I’m really a pretty big fan. I currently have two of their tracks on my latest and greatest workout playlist.

Fischerspooner has released a few studio albums. I think that my favorite Fischerspooner album, track for track, is their 2005 release “Odyssey.” The particular track that I’m sharing, is called “Get Confused.” This song is awesome for many many reasons. The reason that I personally love it, is because it embodies an inside joke that Reagan and I have had forever. I always tease her about being confused and about getting too excited. She does this fake pant-breathing when she pretends like she is getting excited and when she is pretending to be confused. When I first came across this song,  I felt like they were totally ripping off our joke. Ok, so there is that, pluuuuussssss, toward the end of the track, there is a flute solo not unlike something that Ron Burgundy could have composed on the fly, to woo a lady like Veronica Corningstone.

If you are feeling nerdy, don’t be shy about pressing play.

Right now I’m covering the January Cargo Tradeshow in SoHo, for SoJones. I shot their July show last year, too. After the Sojones articles are published, I’ll put up more from the show.

I was hoping that it would be a nice break and lift my spirits, for a bit. And it did, for a bit.

Today there was also this photo that showed up in Gothamist. Thanks for using my stuff, Joe.

I mentioned previously that I had recently started a new book about the conception and construction of the Brooklyn Bridge. As it turns out, the bridge was the brainchild of the Prussian immigrant architect/engineer/genius named John Roebling. The construction was overseen by himself and his son Washington Roebling, who evidently was equally gifted. John actually passed away pretty early on in the construction phase, after complications related to an injury he sustained at the construction site.

Apparently, at the time, the majority of Brooklyn belonged to the democratic party. The political control seemed to lie predominantly with the Irish immigrants. John Roebling, in addition to all of his other attributes was a very strongly opinionated fellow. In Roebling’s opinion, the Irish democrats did not share his same strong feelings about the bridge. When they would walk off the job demanding higher pay, Roebling would fire them, and hire Germans immigrants, to replace them. While referring to this matter, Roebling once stated:

No democrat can be trusted, they are all disloyal and treacherous, more or less.

Hahahaha. To me, the best part about Roebling’s statement, is that I can think of a few prominent right wing talking heads who are still trying to push that generalization as fact. I’m pretty sure you know who I’m talking about.

I was out early this morning moving the car, and I really liked the way that morning sun was making these buildings glow. I’m going to try to take full advantage of the sunshine today, since it is supposed to snow/rain for the next two days. Boooooo.

This is the first year, since Piper has been around, that we have been in town for Thanksgiving  weekend. In the past we have spent it in New England with our Boston friends. It was kind of nice, not to be traveling, this year. It was extra nice to be able to see Piper on Thanksgiving. Of course, Reagan whipped up a festive turkey headband for Piper, at the last minute. Piper wasn’t too keen on having it around her head. But she was a good sport for the photo. We had a lot of fun teaching her about why we celebrate the first day that people ate turkey.

Something happened during our visit that was extra fun for me. I finally figured out something that makes Piper laugh. Normally Reagan is the only one that can crack Piper up. But yesterday, when I was holding her. She started tapping me on the mouth, like she does quite often. As she was doing this, I started pretending to eat her fingers. Apparently she thought that was pretty funny, because she started cracking up. Then I started cracking up. Good times had by all.

BTW, Reagan is now officially obsessed with her iPhone, which is where this photo came from. She has an application that renders photos to look like old Polaroids.

I have been a huge fan of Shepard Fairey since I first discovered his work. Despite his recent legal battles, which include the City of Boston (for illegal street art), and the Associated Press (being sued for copyright infringement, Re: the image from which is based his “change”/”hope” image), I still think that he is pretty freaking awesome. A lot of street artists feel like Fairey has sort of sold out, with his commercial projects. He did a Saks ad last year (proceeds went to charity). Then there is his Obey line of clothing. Obey is what brought him to Times Square last night. He created a live installation to promote the collaboration that Obey is doing with Levi’s. The installation was right in front of the Levi’s store in Times Square. I was covering the event for SoJones. It was pretty cool hanging out, like that, with one of my long time, idols. I had a really great time shooting it.

Sorry to bomb this post all up with so many photos, but I really liked all of these.

^—There was a pretty solid crowd spectating (like there ever isn’t one, in TS)

^–Even though this thing was probably going straight in the trash, Shep still paid attention to detail.

Below was shot from a cherry picker. I kind of liked this vantage point. I wished that I had brought more lenses.

I titled this post “Conference Weekend,” because it is the weekend that our church, instead of having local meetings, just has one mega-meeting, that everyone watches on TV/Webcast Billy Graham-style. Okay, not really Billy Graham-style, at all. Lucky for us, everything comes out in print, in a few weeks. Because we missed most of it. We ended up having an insanely busy weekend.

I ran a half marathon in Central Park, Saturday morning. I wouldn’t recommend the course. It is basically just 2 laps of CP Drive. Normally this is fine. But when you are trying to get a good time, the hills at the north end of the park can break your spirit a little bit. Reagan showed up to cheer me on (which helped, immensely) and take some photos. My goal was to score less than 1 hour and 30 mins. I missed it by 5 minutes, but still beat my previous best by almost a minute.

^—-My blistered up feet.

I thought that I was going to have to go into work after the race. It turned out that I didn’t have to. So after having a nice visit with Piper, Reagan and I basically went nuts and tore our entire house apart to accommodate a new shelf that Reagan has been begging to buy for a month or so. In involved moving a 1000 lb. aquarium, dismantling some wall-mounted shelves, patching the wall, painting the wall, re-arranging all of the furniture in 2 rooms and cleaning up a spilled gallon of paint.

^—-Reagan, driving us up to see Piper

We were able to take a break on Sunday morning, while having some superbly delicious homemade cinnamon rolls with a few of our friends, followed by another great visit with our baby. Our house still hasn’t completely recovered from the transition, but it is pretty close. All in all, it was a pretty productive weekend.