Friday, May 28, 2004

Fieldwork again...

So, we've finished taking photos of the entrances of each building on 42nd Street for our Vision42 project. (Actually a cool premise, take a look.) Next step, clocking the time it takes to get from the street to subway platforms along the same route--it all goes into the travel time savings for workers if they can just step on a street level light rail vs. going down into the subway.

Fine, we can start on it next week, but there's only one problem: SECURITY. A couple of my colleagues were detained for some time while doing a landuse survey around the entrance to the Queens/Midtown Tunnel and Naja and I had a bit of a brush with the police when photographing an area around Grand Central, in fact, we were told "NO PICTURES" and to leave. This was on the street, can you imagine what it's going to be like IN the tunnels? However, the work still needs to be done.

Now, don't get me wrong--I'm really glad security is as tight as it is. It really should be given the world situation. I'm just not looking forward to a task that is not going to be enjoyable in the least in the first place, coupled with the potential for unlimited detention as possible under the Patriot Act.

Hmmm...maybe I'll have Naja do the subway timing.

Thursday, May 13, 2004

Field work in New York F***in' City

So yesterday, Naja and I got tired after 4 hours of looking for freight entrances on 42nd St. in the blazing heat, so we decided to time off-peak bus travel (another project requirement). Well, you think wandering around Port Authority with an exposed digital camera is dangerous? Try riding the damn bus.

We're sitting there, stop watch and notepad in our respective hands, and a rather obese woman with a metal cane sits behind us, one leg up on the seat beside her because, as she tells everyone, she just left the hospital after some surgery on her foot. A child with a coloring book sits next to her (small enough to fit on the leftover seat) and the woman spends the next leg of the trip sweetly commenting on what a gifted artist the child is--beautiful colors, composition, yada, yada, yada. The child and her mother leave a couple of stops later.

By the next stop, it's started to rain and the bus is suddenly jammed with people--mainly older tourists looking to escape the downpour. Well, an older, kinda scruffy looking guy takes offense that this woman is using two seats. She offers to move her leg over so he can sit on the edge, but he wants the whole seat. As they're talking, she becomes aggitated and is tapping her cane harder and harder on the back of our seat. Then it gets ugly. He's screaming, she's screaming back and suddenly, she's up on her knees swinging her cane at him with a LOT of force. The guy in the single seat across the way jumps up just in time to avoid the cane coming down on him. She's slamming the cane against her seat and the now-empty one across from her, making as much noise as she possibly can while she screams obscenities and some rather interesting insults at this guy. My favorite was "unwashed toothless bitch". Then she jumps up and starts jumping up and down (on both feet, mind you, despite her supposed surgery) while threatening to splatter his brains against the bus walls out with her cane/smash his remaining teeth up into his head/shoot him with her gun, if only she had it with her. At this point, I had to stop paying attention to what she was saying and pay attention to the cane: the follow-through on her swings had the thing coming within a few inches of my skull. There was no where to go. I had one arm up for protection and was actually touching her tricep at one point to make it NOT hit me. The guy ran off at the next stop--along with a large number of the tourists. She sits down, still screaming threats out the window about how if he ever shows his face on 42nd St again, her "bloods" will kill him.

She starts to calm until some woman sits on the edge and starts comisserating with her on how stupid the guy was--speaking of stupid... She starts to relive it all and the cane starts slamming on the back of our seat again. Then some idiot in the back of the bus loudly says "Gee, well this is New York City--more entertainment on the bus than in a theatre!" Okay, true, but you DO NOT say it within earshot of the crazy woman... She starts in again with "Entertainment!!! I'll give you EMS! This is fuckin' New York fuckin' City! Fuckin' entertainment...and the summer's just starting..."

I've never been so glad to see someone leave a bus in my life. I've never seen anyone freak like that. Naja said that since she's been riding the bus alone (since she was 10) she's never witnessed anything like it--and she was living here in the bad old days.

Monday, May 10, 2004

What the Hell?!!!

Okay, about the pictures from Iraq:

I know that I've never been in the situation where I'm constantly under fire, so I cannot know the context for those actions. However regardless of circumstance, the primary question that came to mind when looking at the photos was:

Are we freakin' Nazis?!!!

'Cause really, while I don't think we're going for all out genocide, the similarity to photos at the Holocaust Museum in DC was really disturbing.

Thursday, May 06, 2004

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh

So here I am at 10:30 on a Thursday morning, typing from the comforts of home. I'm taking a personal day a.k.a trying to retain sanity. I've been thinking about it since finding out that Greg had this whole week off 'cause of holiday days that needed to be taken, but finding out at 3 yesterday that about 3 weeks worth of fieldwork needs to be finished next week pretty much capped it.

Oh, you may ask why I'm not getting started on it now. Well, the work entails mapping and taking digital images of all the primary and freight entrances of every building on 42nd Street. That's 13 LONG blocks through the very heart of Manhattan. It's something that one person cannot do well alone (lots of stuff to handle/keep track of) and since my partner for this is my boss' daughter who is out more often than in until next week due to finishing her latest Master's...

The one thing I could do alone, is time the walks from subway entrances to platforms for each entrance on the street, but I refuse to do that without a letter of explanation from the client. Unusual activity in the subway can cause some uncomfortable questioning and after some people I work with and their clients were detained by the police for 90 minutes because they were taking photos of the entrance to a tunnel... I'm not going in until my bases are covered.

But really, on to the sanity restoration...last night, we went to our favorite neighborhood Italian for a fabulous meal with a fabulous bottle of wine--Le Solive Connubio--lovely. It was amazing, rainy, romantic, the food was excellent, the music was mellow.

And today I intend to putter about, do a few chores, do a little smoochin', go to a movie at the Tribeca Film Festival, come home for the final episode of Friends...bliss.

To my friends: Enjoy your crappy workdays! HA!

Monday, May 03, 2004

Better places?

Once again the insanity of this place boggles my mind. The HR director is interviewing candidates for a janitorial position today. At an open table in the lobby. On the other side of the half-wall of our area.

Um....shouldn't an office be used for the interviewing process? Wouldn't the interviewer AND the interviewee find it distracting to be doing this within sight and sound of the lunchtime comings and goings of the 300-odd office staff? Also, shouldn't there be some consideration for the staff who work in the vicinity who are being subjected to really stupid questions repeated over and over again very slowly and, of course, very LOUDLY because few of the interviewees have English as their primary language?

Idiots abound. Truly.