Our home on CBS Sunday Morning show, May 23, 2010

June 2, 2010 at 11:54 pm

I was contacted a week before I left for NYC about being part of a story on the CBS Morning Show, which airs Sunday mornings at 9 PM eastern time. The particular segment was to be titled “America’s Dream Homes.” When I heard it included the Hearst Castle, and a multi-million dollar home in Big Sur, I had my trepidations. When the reporter and photographer got here, they seemed pretty savvy, and I told them, “This is a home built out of used lumber and windows from chicken coops, it’s pretty different from these other places you’re covering.” They said no, this was another aspect of “dream homes,” so we walked around the homestead. I showed them the outdoor solar shower, our chicken flock, the compost bins, and inside our house, and they seemed to get it.

I thought it would end up on the cutting room floor, but lo and behold, our handbuilt homestead made an appearance. Here’s the piece:

https://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6541104n&tag=cbsnewsVideoArea.0

The segment concluded with a poem:

Be it ever so grand (shot of multi-million dollar cliffside home in Big Sur),

Or ever so humble (shot of house built out of corrugated steel grain silos),

Home is where dreams live (shot looking in gate at our home).

What do you know?

Flatiron building and street art

June 2, 2010 at 12:09 am

My last afternoon in the city, I went down to the new skate park that just got built at Chelsea Piers. My friends, twin brothers Shelter and Ivory Serra, who grew up in Bolinas and now live in NYC, were going there to skate and I met them there and shot some movies of them skating the bowl. I marvel at the grace and skill (and guts) of all these guys that skate these steep bowls.

Here are a couple of photos from earlier that afternoon. What caught my eye at the top left side of the Flatiron Building was what looked to be a person standing, looking down (barely visible here). Turns out it’s a fiberglass statue of a person by British artist Antony Gormely.

I’ve got an overwhelming amount of photos and experiences from the last week. but also a ton of stuff to do now that I’m back home. I’ll post stuff when I get the time.

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iPad vs. Kindle/Nook/Sony Reader

May 31, 2010 at 11:07 am

At the book convention I tried out the above 3 reading devices. There’s just no comparison with the iPad. As someone said earlier in the week, they seem like stone age compared to the iPad, which I’m writing this on now at the airport. It’s just phenomenal, the more I use it.

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Nap in park, warm Saturday afternoon

May 30, 2010 at 6:48 pm

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Chocolates on the sidewalk

May 30, 2010 at 6:40 pm

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Out and about in the city

May 30, 2010 at 6:22 pm

City footwork: My competitive running days are over, but all those years of training have given me the ability to move deftly through busy city streets. A lot of it is footwork. Also being able to shift your weight and spring left or right, ahead or backwards. Don’t obey traffic signals, but watch the traffic. Often I’ll do a quick speedwalk to get across in front of a lone car. I pretend like I’m a hunter out on the streets, shooting photos instead of game.

Architecture: The Seagram’s building (Mies van der Rohe, 1958), at Park and 52nd, still looks great

Map: Found this tiny map, fits easily in pocket, does the job for Manhattan: New Yorker’s Manhattan MiniMap

Sustenance:…”Guinness is good for you.”…Pescatore Italian seafood restaurant, 955 2nd (50th-51st) is my dream restaurant. Pasta is as good as it gets, reasonable prices..…Buttercup Bake Shop, 973 2nd, good latte, great cake…Le Pain Quotidien, a number of locations in NYC, recycled lumber community tables, artisan bread, best French toast I’ve ever had, hip workers, good vibes…Blue Ribbon Sushi, 119 Sullivan at Prince, had standing room only at 11:30 Tuesday night, v. hip looking.

Books: Stopped in at the Strand, 828 Broadway, venerable old bookstore, it was mobbed with book buyers (who haven’t heard that books are dead).

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Fleet’s in

May 29, 2010 at 4:59 am

It’s fleet week in NYC and there are white-clad sailors all over the city. On Thursday, from the cab on the way to the convention at the Javits Center), I saw the USS Iwo Jima coming up the Hudson, looking huge, with sailors lined up-side-by-side along the starboard and bow of the ship. Pretty spectacular.