Your time is just about up. Today (Feb. 27) is the deadline for you to get your chance to pay $1,500 for a pair of Google Glasses. http://bit.ly/YFOd6d. Come up with your own tweet. Here’s mine:
#ifihadglass You give me 2 shares of Google stock, I don’t tweet about the prospects of serious brain rewiring from all-day use of computers
Next: Running for Your Life: Mix It Up
Running for Your Life: Jesse On My Mind
The first time I visited Los Angeles was in 1983. With a frame backpack, bed roll, Hollywood hostel. I remember listening to the LA Philharmonic rehearse for that day’s evening concert at the Hollywood Bowl. Lovelorn, I teared up in a big-house cinema watching the sentimental Jersey love story by John Sayles, “Baby, It’s You;” Remember chatting up a pretty girl at a bar, when I told her I was from Ontario, Canada, not Ontario, California, she looked past me, a million-mile stare. Clueless before “Clueless.”
“Who needs to learn to parallel park when everywhere you go has valet?”
That’s a “Clueless” moment quoted by daughter Kate, who was eight years old when the movie was released, and will soon take her driver’s test in Los Angeles. (She tells me you don’t have to parallel park for the test, only show that you can comfortably back your vehicle along a street curb without going up on it.)
Then, in the summer of 1988, I was back, but only at LAX – and then south to Orange County, the land of laundry room notices for alien abductee support groups.
Twenty-five years later, I returned. On Jesse Street in Boyle Heights, the new neighborhood of my transplant Angel, K. I was there for only a short, awesome weekend.
Some thoughts:
• East LA is a real world away from Hollywood and West LA. And not like Manhattan’s West Side vs. its East Side. Let’s leave it at that.
• Pink grapefruit is five times as tasty as Brooklyn market ones. Color: Red-pink
• California rolls are HUGE, with REAL crabmeat.
• LA Kings-Columbus Blue Jackets hockey game Friday night: diverse fans, courteous and fun-loving; K and I only hear the word "suck" screamed twice, near the end of the game
• Skid row is SKID ROW; others are pretenders
• East LA is home to magical bridges that link raw riverside warehouses, lofts.
• This past weekend the river was a river (not a dry concrete roadway), where from some vantage points the homeless have Jay Gatsby-like views of downtown and the surrounding mountains.
East LA banishes those shop-worn clichés of Los Angeles. I won’t be thinking of it in that reductive “Clueless” way ever again.
Next: Running for Your Life: Mix It Up
“Who needs to learn to parallel park when everywhere you go has valet?”
That’s a “Clueless” moment quoted by daughter Kate, who was eight years old when the movie was released, and will soon take her driver’s test in Los Angeles. (She tells me you don’t have to parallel park for the test, only show that you can comfortably back your vehicle along a street curb without going up on it.)
Then, in the summer of 1988, I was back, but only at LAX – and then south to Orange County, the land of laundry room notices for alien abductee support groups.
Twenty-five years later, I returned. On Jesse Street in Boyle Heights, the new neighborhood of my transplant Angel, K. I was there for only a short, awesome weekend.
Some thoughts:
• East LA is a real world away from Hollywood and West LA. And not like Manhattan’s West Side vs. its East Side. Let’s leave it at that.
• Pink grapefruit is five times as tasty as Brooklyn market ones. Color: Red-pink
• California rolls are HUGE, with REAL crabmeat.
• LA Kings-Columbus Blue Jackets hockey game Friday night: diverse fans, courteous and fun-loving; K and I only hear the word "suck" screamed twice, near the end of the game
• Skid row is SKID ROW; others are pretenders
• East LA is home to magical bridges that link raw riverside warehouses, lofts.
• This past weekend the river was a river (not a dry concrete roadway), where from some vantage points the homeless have Jay Gatsby-like views of downtown and the surrounding mountains.
East LA banishes those shop-worn clichés of Los Angeles. I won’t be thinking of it in that reductive “Clueless” way ever again.
Next: Running for Your Life: Mix It Up
Running for Your Life: Lakeside Is for Boondoogle
In the good old days in brownstone Brooklyn, winter was a sensation for the cross-training athlete. When ice and snow transformed pavement to peril, I went skating before work at the outdoor rink in Prospect Park. Long before I saw my first rat, I considered myself one: a rink rat. M and I grew up skating, and from the 90s until 2010 in the winter it was a special joy.
Now, though, even the real rats don’t come to Wollman Rink, Brooklyn. That’s because that fond ramshackle barn was demolished to make way for what politicians and civic boosters alike said would be a world-class ice palace. Twin ice surfaces, with dramatic views of The Lake in Prospect Park.
Ha! It’s now three seasons and counting with no rink, much less two. Deadlines have come and gone, and there’s no telling when there will be ice skating again in Prospect Park. Street views of the building project itself are blocked by iDesign-like hoarding boards that promise: “Lakeside Is for Skating; Lakeside Is for Ice Hockey; Lakeside Is for Nature; Lakeside Is for Learning . . .”
But a view from the hill that overlooks the building site in winter, without leaves on the trees that have been brutally thinned by a series of storms in recent years, suggests a different story. There is no work going on, only a concrete shell of a structure in place.
The truth is, Lakeside Is for Boondoogle.
So, again, there will be no wintertime ice skating in Prospect Park for athletes like me. Or for children, their parents. And as Valentine’s Day approaches, for lovers, either.
Next: Running for Your Life: Mix It Up
Now, though, even the real rats don’t come to Wollman Rink, Brooklyn. That’s because that fond ramshackle barn was demolished to make way for what politicians and civic boosters alike said would be a world-class ice palace. Twin ice surfaces, with dramatic views of The Lake in Prospect Park.
Ha! It’s now three seasons and counting with no rink, much less two. Deadlines have come and gone, and there’s no telling when there will be ice skating again in Prospect Park. Street views of the building project itself are blocked by iDesign-like hoarding boards that promise: “Lakeside Is for Skating; Lakeside Is for Ice Hockey; Lakeside Is for Nature; Lakeside Is for Learning . . .”
But a view from the hill that overlooks the building site in winter, without leaves on the trees that have been brutally thinned by a series of storms in recent years, suggests a different story. There is no work going on, only a concrete shell of a structure in place.
The truth is, Lakeside Is for Boondoogle.
So, again, there will be no wintertime ice skating in Prospect Park for athletes like me. Or for children, their parents. And as Valentine’s Day approaches, for lovers, either.
Next: Running for Your Life: Mix It Up
Running for Your Life: The Next Big Run!
Chicago 2013. Save the date: Sunday, Oct. 13, two weeks after the Catalina Island Half, where I have a longstanding plan to run with my daughter, K, seen at below right while on the sidelines of the Pittsburgh Marathon 2010, to honor my first marathon in 23 years. (K’s now in the City of Angels, natch.)
Chicago’s registration is in two weeks, then I’ve got less than eight months before race day. My goal this time: I’d like to improve on my Personal Record of 3:33:08. Good enough, though, is 3:40, which would re-qualify me for the Boston Marathon 2015.
From the beginning there was Chicago. My grandfather’s favorite club, the Blackhawks (Stan Mateeker, he called him), so the Golden Jet, Bobby Hull, was my first hockey god. My wife, M, was born in Chicago, and we were married there, at the Standard Club.
For years, M’s parents lived along the Lake Michigan waterfront, at One Thousand Lakeshore Drive. I know the short jog to the shore very well. For the next few months I’ll be running and training with the idea that I’ll be back home (I grew up on Georgian Bay, Lake Huron) along the Great Lakes shores, where I’ve never run a marathon.
Next: Mix It Up
Chicago’s registration is in two weeks, then I’ve got less than eight months before race day. My goal this time: I’d like to improve on my Personal Record of 3:33:08. Good enough, though, is 3:40, which would re-qualify me for the Boston Marathon 2015.
From the beginning there was Chicago. My grandfather’s favorite club, the Blackhawks (Stan Mateeker, he called him), so the Golden Jet, Bobby Hull, was my first hockey god. My wife, M, was born in Chicago, and we were married there, at the Standard Club.
For years, M’s parents lived along the Lake Michigan waterfront, at One Thousand Lakeshore Drive. I know the short jog to the shore very well. For the next few months I’ll be running and training with the idea that I’ll be back home (I grew up on Georgian Bay, Lake Huron) along the Great Lakes shores, where I’ve never run a marathon.
Next: Mix It Up
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