The view from my phone: storms 'n such

Just some random pics from my phone. I didn't get around to re-charging my camera for almost a month after Nick left, which is why they're all from my phone.
This has apparently been one of the rainiest summers ever here, and there is nothing I enjoy more after work than chasing down a good rain-storm.

A walk in the Hudson River park after failing to get my hair cut. This park stretchs almost the entire length of the city and is really pretty. I was in the Chelsea area, which is a very nice area of town in general.

I was so thrilled with all the weeds. You almost never see weeds in the city!!

Neato tables.

A really great storm in Astoria. Sadly it just passed over us (this is facing east in the evening).

Different storm. The view from my porch.

Storm watching in Union Square. This one had some wicked lighting. All of these idiots will be shocked, just shocked!, when it starts raining in a few mins. I laughed to see them all run for the crosswalks.

Seriously, did they not look up?

Yah, that cleared out fast.

Pretty Union Square at night. This might be the only neighborhood in the mid-town area that I honestly love going to.

See, it's just so pretty! And home to the world's largest used bookstore. And a whole foods. And a huge discount shoestore. And this great park! And a market every friday that sells local foods and artwork, including a guy who makes t-shirts with soviet propaganda posters on them. It's a great place, Union Square.

View from my window after a storm.

I think Astoria is just so pretty. I'm constantly taking pictures on my phone, but they don't really do it justice.

This is the truest color I could get a picture of. It was crazy! Everyone was out staring at the sky.

The pictures make it look purple, but it was red!

View from a back window at work.

View from our top floor at work.

5th Ave at night.

Central Park at night.

My street.

The view from the steps of my porch. I have always been jealous of the people who sit on their front steps in the summer, and now I'm one of them! There is nothing I love better than sitting on the steps for hours after I get home from work. I talk on the phone, draw, read, eat, talk to my neighbors...it's great!

I am obbsessed with the sunsets from my window. I've never had such a good view every single night before! It's wonderful!

I leave for Missouri in 3 days!! I wonder how long before the upside-down feeling of "visiting" Missouri and "returning" to New York goes away....

All American Day

4th of July!
The day started early for me. I somehow managed to make myself get out of bed and to Tara and Jon's place by 10ish. AM. Where we promptly sat around drinking coffee and watching REM concerts on their amazing HD TV untill we realized we were probably going to be late to our original plan: Hot Dog Eating contest on Coney Island!!
So, we were a little late, but in our defense a 1-1/2 to 2 hour subway ride is just so awful you will just keep trying to put it off even if it makes you slightly late to the hot dog eating contest.
The contest was so much fun! I didn't take any pictures because I have literally never been in a more crowded situation. I don't know how to describe how crowded it was. But it was fun to watch. ESPN airs it every year so there was cameras and announcers and they made a big production of it. AND they broke the world record this year! The old record was 59 hot dogs in 10 mins, the new record is now 68 hotdogs in 10 mins. It was insane!! And disgusting!!
Anyway, off to the beach. Coney Island was everything I ever wanted, like a smaller Prater on the beach. Run-down and guady and cheap and faded. Wonderful!!! Again, really too crowded for me to take pictures, concentrating more on navigating the boardwalk without running into people, but I'll go back some day.
We got ourselves a nice haul of corndogs, arepas, funnel cake, and beer and found a nice place pretty far from the boardwalk.

I found 4 crab legs, all in good condition!! They were so neat.

They are so cool looking up close.

Coney Island Lager while on Coney Island. Nice. I should probably mention now that the weather was beyond perfect, low to mid 80s and kinda breezy, but the breeze while nice, also blows sand around very slowly. Our blanket was almost buried by the end of the day, and I ended up eating and drinking a lot of sand. It got into everything. Sand is why I'm not a big fan of beaches.

I found these with my crab legs! I don't know what it is but it's kinda scary!

That's the amusement park on the right, you can kinda make out the rides.

The seagulls were great amusement for us. They fought over trash cans, it was some big drama. Jon tried to bait them into fighting again with half a corn dog, but this one just ate the whole thing stick and all. Crazy!

Jon and Tara making our way back to the Boardwalk.

After that Tara had the brilliant idea to go to Hallo Berlin for dinner. Best German food in the city!! And there was something about ending the day on a German meal that seemed very fitting. At least to me.
After that, the plan was to stroll across the street and try and find a spot to watch the fireworks from. This never happened. The way NYC handled their firework display was just awful. I don't even want to go into it, but after 10 mins we had all had enough. We grabbed a cab back to their place in hopes that maybe we could see the fireworks from their roof/fire escape. We couldn't, but it was still better than staying on THE ENTIRE WEST SIDE OF NY. Because it's so big it's not like we were trying to go to a park or somewhere close, we were 3 avenues away from the river and we walked about 10 street blocks before giving up. Their fireworks literally go up the entire length of the city.
So, to end my night, Tara discovered that I've never seen America's Got Talent and we watched the entire season so far. That show is so good!! Don't judge until you see it for yourself. Then she was shocked to find out that I've never heard Adam Lambert, from last season's American Idol, so she caught me up on all that. That's when I realized it was 5am and Jon had given up and left us both hours ago.

Happy 5th of July!! Sunrise over Harlem.

It was so pretty out I walked all the way down the East side and hopped a cab over the bridge. See the Empire State Building?

What a crowded, wonderful, long, all-american day!