Live Blog: Riding the New East River Ferry, All Day - NYTimes.com

There's a new ferry running on the East River.  I would be surpised if they can break even.  But it may be a good tourist attraction - or romantic ride, or change of pace. Live Blog: Riding the New East River Ferry, All Day - NYTimes.com

Security Checks on Hudson River Anger Boaters - NYTimes.com

Two years ago a police boat approached us to order me off the bow. I was wearing a life jacket, sitting on the deck of a southbound sailboat moving at 7 knots on a lovely day in June. I feel about security checks the same way Chris Christie feels about teachers' salaries: cut them drastically. I've got company.

Security Checks on Hudson River Anger Boaters - NYTimes.com: "Ten years after the terrorist attacks downriver made security checks commonplace, a tea party of sorts is brewing on the Hudson, as boaters and marine businesses complain bitterly about being stopped too often and questioned too closely by officers wearing flak jackets and holstered pistols — many of them on the lookout for terrorists.

And as boating season begins, that vigilance has become one of those vexing flashpoints, like baggage searches and airport body scans, in the shifting definition of what is normal — post-9/11 overreaction to some, and a response to real risks to others.

A petition drive among boaters has generated hundreds of signatures and scores of angry comments.

Boat clubs are mulling strategies, and the largest boating-industry group along the river, the Hudson Valley Marine Trades Association, recently wrote the Coast Guard commander in New York to protest “an incredible increase of recreational vessel boarding.”"

The Tappan Zee Bridge

There are few Dutch names that survive around here - Spuyten Duyvil, Staten Island, Dyckman Street - and the Tappan Zee - a wide zee or bay 15 miles north of Manhattan.  They are painting the bridge - which requires sandblasting it first.  On a barge beneath the east tower is a set of generators and compressors that blast sand up and suck the residue down.  We took a ride there yesterday on the Alice a 1963 Dyercraft 29. (click on pix to enlarge)

Colbert on the Charleston - Bermuda Race

Stpehen Colbert, sailing on a Farr 65, was part of the crew that took second in the Charleston to Bermuda
Race.

Gil Scott-Heron, poet, rhymer, and inspired protest singer, dead at 62 | NJ.com

Gil Scott-Heron, poet, rhymer, and inspired protest singer, dead at 62 | NJ.com: "'The ghetto was a haven/ for the meanest creature ever known,' Gil Scott-Heron reported on 'Your Soul and Mine,' a song from his 2007 comeback album. For four decades, Heron stared that creature down. He stalked it through the alleyways and mean streets of Chicago, Jackson, Tennessee, and the Bronx, and filed unflinching dispatches as he did. He heard rumblings of insurrection and cries of discontent; he confronted poverty, addiction, government neglect and sheer, unmotivated cruelty. Then, with his poise, his outrage, and his sense of humor intact, he spun all he had seen into poetry and song."

Yard Work

Bill Cunningham - nightcaps

I like hats.  I like wearing my fedoras, like my Irish wool winter hat, like my straw hats, and like wearing caps that advertise my passions and loyalties.  And I like walking around New York.  There is no one more skilled at walking around New York with an admiring lens than the celebrity and fashion photographer for the Times - Bill Cunningham.  the editors have finally decided to let you copy the embed code for Bill's narrated photo essays.  here's a good one.

Harmon Killebrew - Twins slugger dies at 74

Killebrew

He had a funny name, he played for a small market team, he wasn't a gold glover, or a flashy center fielder like the three giants of New York baseball: Mantle, Mays, and Snider.
But he brought his team to the World Series in 1965 when they played the Dodgers to whom I was still loyal.   .
He  led or tied A.L. hitters in home runs six times and hit 40 or more homers in eight seasons. He drove in 100 or more runs nine times. He won the A.L. most valuable player award in 1969, when he led the league in homers with 49, tying his single-season high, and in runs batted in with 140, his career best.  The picture tells the story.  The Times obituary recites the rest.

Remembering the Millrose Games and the Armory

When I was in high school I witnessed two records set.  The first was at the Wanamaker Millrose Games at the old Garden on 8th Avenue and 50th Street.  John Uelses vaulted 16 feet - the first man to break the barrier.  The packed garden shook.    The second was on the splintered 220 yard floor of the old 168th Street Armory.  My Brooklyn Prep teammates set a national schoolboy 220 yard flat track record in the two mile relay.  Kevin Lanigan, Bob Bartolini, Dave Long, and Bob Clark ran 8:02.  Only Long, at 2:06, was over two minutes.

16 ft BARRIER CRASHED IN POLE VAULT (video)

Track was thrilling then, as this highlight clip from the 1962 Millrose games demonstrates.  So Tom Connelly's wistful essay about the Millrose Games departure from Madison Square Garden resonates for me.  It is sad that track doesn't matter to Americans anymore.  A few years ago I turned on EuroSport while in Gothenberg, Sweden where the track and field world championships were about to be held.  A name flashed on the screen behind the anchor reporter "Michael" it said.  That would be Michael Johnson, the great American runner, who was going to try a unique double - 200 and 400 meters.  Not since Carl Lewis has an American track and field star been truly famous.

Tom Connelly: 

On May 16, 1971, Marty Liquori and Jim Ryun went head to head at Franklin Field in Philadelphia in what was billed as the Dream Mile. Maybe it did not generate the overheated water-cooler conversation that anticipated Ali-Frazier two months earlier, but in an era of unusually outsize sports personalities, when malevolence of thought and deed were imputed on the slimmest evidence, the Dream Mile fueled a rousing simmer. Like Ali-Frazier, Liquori-Ryun lived up to its hype.
The contestants were a promoter’s dream. It was easy to pick a side. Ryun was from the Midwest heartland, quiet and self-effacing, with a devastating kick. Liquori was from the urban Northeast, cocky and brash, a front-runner who lived to push the pace. Together with Kip Keino of Kenya, who was invited but declined, they were the pre-eminent milers of their day.
Forty Years Ago, a Dream Mile Captivated Like a Track Ali-Frazier - NYTimes.com

Heron visits Seal Beach

Where seals rest, herons hunt, and children play
click to enlarge photos