4 pictures

• 1
• 2
• 3

Photographs of Occupy Wall Street protesters marching down Broadway on May 1st.

6 pictures

• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5

Photographs of the space shuttle 'Enterprise' and its carrier aircraft performing a fly-by over the Hudson River, New York.

6 pictures

• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5

A small collection of photographs from a Good Friday (Viernes Santo) procession on the Lower East Side, New York.

3 pictures

• 1
• 2

A small collection of photographs from a concert by Thomas Dolby at the Canal Room, New York, NY.

3 pictures

• 1
• 2

Photographs taken at sunset on a foggy day in New York Harbor, NY, USA.

3 pictures

• 1
• 2

"Let da boid eat! Aintcha ever seen a boid eatin' before?" shouted the old man. The people gathered by the fence in the south-west corner of Tompkins Square Park ignored him. The 'boid' - a rather handsome young red-tailed hawk - ignored him too.

The hawk has been a resident of the park for about a year now, and has grown from a rather callow fledgling - treated with visible derision by the local squirrels - into a more substantial creature, definitely the apex predator of the park. Sometimes, when we walk through the park on Sundays, it can be seen perched in one of the trees, watching the squirrels and pigeons with the air of a diner hesitating over the choices on the menu.

Today, it had apparently made its choice. It sat on the ground, talons planted in what had recently been a rather plump and glossy pigeon. From time to time, it sank its hooked beak into the dead bird, and yanked loose a tuft of feathers.

It seemed remarkably unperturbed by the people watching it from behind the fences. From time to time it would rotate its head and fix the onlookers disapprovingly with one yellow eye, but then it would go back to tearing at its prey. The patch of strewn feathers around the corpse grew steadily bigger.

At last, it apparently decided that it would prefer to continue its meal in private. Grasping the pigeon firmly, it launched itself off the ground and flapped away towards the west, disappearing over the housetops on Avenue A. A few feathers swirled briefly in its wake.

The intersection of Clinton and Stanton is blocked off with yellow crime scene tape this morning, and two police cruisers squat in the middle of the road. A little further down the block, there is a fairly extensive trail of blood and a bloodied man's undershirt.

I didn't at first connect it with the string of loud bangs that woke us last night shortly after midnight. "Sounded like someone kicking a door," said M. as we both sat up in bed. "Meh," I said, replaying the sounds in my mind: one bang, momentary hesitation, then three more bangs in quick succession, evenly spaced. "Handgun, semi-automatic, sounded louder than last time. At least two rounds left in the clip, probably more." I thought to myself and then immediately went back to sleep, forgetting all about it. Apparently the analytical part of my mind works well enough when woken from a deep sleep, but either I've become blasé about gun violence or my sense of urgency takes longer to wake up.

Bowery Boogie describes the incident as "an altercation" that apparently involved both stabbing and shooting. From the lack of other news coverage, I'm guessing that it was non-fatal and that (happily) no one actually got four rounds of 9mm for Christmas. If that's correct, the owner of the undershirt was probably the stabbee and is presumably celebrating the holiday in hospital.

The blood has now been washed away, the tape is down, and the police cars are gone. We now return you to your regularly-scheduled Christmas Day.

25 pictures

• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5
• 6
• 7
• 8
• 9
• 10
• 11
• 12
• 13
• 14
• 15
• 16
• 17
• 18
• 19
• 20
• 21
• 22
• 23
• 24

The intersection of Pine and Nassau was jammed solid. From my vantage point on the side of a building on Pine, I could just make out a line of pale blue helmets and dark blue uniforms, threaded through the more colorful and heterogeneous mass of the protesters. From time to time, chants of "Shame! Shame!" and "The world is watching! The world is watching!" signaled that the police were trying to put zip-ties on someone.

If the world was indeed watching, there was a good chance that its view was pretty similar to mine. I had ended up on the corner of Pine in a small nest of photographers and videographers, some amateur, some professional. I suspected that the professionals might have picked that spot because it was close enough to the center of any likely action, but just enough on the fringes that their expensive gear wouldn't be in danger if the NYPD decided to go in swinging. Or maybe it was simply that there were so many cameras and video-cameras at that demonstration that wherever you stood you were likely to find yourself within arms-reach of not less than fifteen cameras of various makes and models.