As seen at the NYC Subway Museum in Brooklyn, NY

Posted via email from Stephen’s Posterous

The first NYC based showroom for Tesla Cars opened yesterday in a former art gallery in Chelsea. Those look like very cool cars. I look forward to taking a little jaunt up to Chelsea to check it out!

The mean streets of New York are going to show their softer side in the future. The Mayor’s office released a design manual for NY city streets, including visuals of how they may look “down the road”.   We are already seeing these sorts of changes in NYC with the recent additions of seating areas along Broadway in Mid Town, and the additions of bike lanes on 7th Avenue downtown.    While its great that NYC is beautifying its streets, this does once again chip away at the edgy, unique qualities of NYC and move it that much closer to it being a big mall.

Now I am hardly a NY baseball fan, and the thought of both NY baseball teams getting new stadiums and lots more revenue opportunities does not sit well with me, but these are some amazing photos of the construction of the two new baseball stadiums here in the NY metro area.

Citi Field – NY Mets
New Yankee Stadium – NY Yankees

Today is just a sad day. There is no other way to describe it. I was not going to write anything today. But watching all the tributes on TV really hit home.

Five years ago, I was sitting in a conference room at Lycos in Waltham, MA about to embark on a full day’s worth of mind-numbingly boring training on an irrelevant subject I can not for the life of me remember. Soon after the session started, the instructor came in and informed the class that the US was under attack. We all went into another conference room and watched the day unfold in stunning reality.

I did not want to be at work. I went home to be with my wife and my then 2 month old daughter Rebecca. I sat in front of the TV and just stared in stunned disbelief. The rest of the week and the rest of the year was just a blur, a surreal and sobering time.

To this day, it still so hard to comprehend. The images looked like they were from a bad terror movie. But they weren’t. I can not begin to imagine what it was like that day in Lower Manhattan. Five years later, I now work in Lower Manhattan, about 200 yards from the big hole in the ground that is “Ground Zero”. People I work with were there that day. I don’t mention it unless they bring it up. And even then, its awkward. I walk past “Ground Zero” every day as I go to and from work, and do my best not to dwell on what happened at that site. Because when I do, it is just too overwhelming. And I did not even lose a close relative, a close friend, or a loved one.

I don’t know what it was, what it is, like to lose a loved one in such a horrid manner. I don’t know what its like to have to rebuild your life after such loss. All I can do is provide my support and encouragement to those that were directly impacted by that day. Their strength is humbling.

One day, I hope soon, the idiot politicians will figure out what to build at that site, and maybe, just maybe, the collective “we” will be able to have some minor sense of symbolic closure.

Today is a sad day.

Seen outside a bar in Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen/Clinton neighborhood today:

Fixed Income Special
8AM-4PM Pabst’s Blue Ribbon – $1.25

If you have to ask wether the deal was for cans or bottles, then you just don’t know… PBR at 8AM…now that’s dedication. I would have taken a photo but I was driving.

Found this on Diggnation…a Google Maps version of the New York City Subway system. You can plot out where is the closest subway stop to any address in NYC. Pretty slick!

A couple of weeks ago, I went to Ellis Island with my co-workers as part of an afternoon away from the office. It was really interesting to visit Ellis Island and see all the island in its restored state. For a long time, Ellis Island was in disrepair until the state of NY took over and restored this very historic part of our country’s history.

 

Every day when I commute home from work, the bus I take drives past some apartments that overlook the entrance to the Holland Tunnel. Under one of the apartment windows is a “John Kerry for President” banner. At first, it was a pretty basic cardboard banner. But recently, they upgraded to a nylon type banner. And it seems that this apartment owner has been talking to their neighbors as now other apartments have election paraphernalia in and outside of their windows (all Kerry supporters). If Mr. Kerry is funding this effort, I do have to say that it is pretty impressive banner positioning. He gets a captive audience as they battle traffic into the Holland Tunnel.

On August 3rd, I started my new job at American Express at the HQ in NYC. Being that we are situated in East Brunswick, NJ at present, this means that I am now commuting into NYC on a daily basis. Overall, the commute is not that bad mainly because Suburban Transit has bus service to downtown Manhattan, saving a good 20-30 minutes off my commute since I don’t have to deal with Port Authority, and the Subway.

And in these short few weeks, my iPod has already paid for itself. It is a lifesaver for the commute as I just plug into my tunes and I am on my way. The biggest problem now is just finding the time to load up more songs!!

If you build it, he will come.

I have also been able to crank through the book Shoeless Joe by W.P. Kinsella (This is the book that the movie Field of Dreams is based on. If you are a fan of Field of Dreams, then I would highly recommend reading the book. Like any other book-to-movie story, the movie had to remove a ton of details and several characters that were pretty important to the original story). I am currently working on What Should I Do With My Life? by Po Bronson. Not sure what books to take on next but I will figure that out in short order. Any suggestions?

The past few weeks have been amazingly crazy. The main reason for the craziness is that I was offered, and I accepted, a job at America Online. I will be working on their AOL Instant Messenger product as a Senior Product Manager, focusing primarily on rolling out additional consumer services and features to the AIM user base. The source of the craziness is not the job, but the fact that we will be moving to Northern Virginia, as the job is located at the AOL headquarters in Dulles, VA. In the end, the opportunity was just too interesting for me to pass by. It was also obvious that, even with the recent troubles from the AOL-Time Warner merger, AOL is just a great company that seems to really focus on their employees. Neither my wife nor I have ever lived south of New Jersey, so this is going to be quite a lifestyle change from what we are used to. I think it will be a good move for my family once the dust settles. I look forward to getting started with this new chapter in my career, and I am excited to explore the Washington DC and Northern VA area!

The NYC area is recovering from the huge blackout. Where I am living (Central NJ), we were not really effected by the blackout. There was a “brown out” when all the power went down around 4:15PM on Thursday but then everything turned back on and it was as usual. The weird thing was that I was planning on visiting friends in NYC that evening as a friend was in town from Singapore. I thought about traveling into NYC early that day, but decided against it. I am sooooo glad I did not travel in early, because I would have been stuck in NYC. Literally “Escape from NY“. The video footage of the people waiting to board the NY/NJ ferry was insane, as were the photos of people sleeping on the steps of the US Post Office on 34th Street (Opposite MSG). Overall, I am very happy that I decided to stay around a little longer, because I would not have been happy to be stuck in NYC. I think this is one of my biggest problems with the NYC area…the fact that if something goes wrong, it can cause a near riot and a completely unfathomable situation. Is it really worth it?