Last-minute Sprinter

I thought we were going to miss Sprinter this year because it was so warm in February but then just in the nick of time Sprinter arrived this weekend when it got cold again. So Happy Sprinter!

And check it out, turns out Sprinter is a Canadian thing:

18 Struggles All Canadians Understand About “Sprinter”

Sprinter is here

Balto in Central Park

Some years we don't get any Sprinter at all thanks to global warming - I recall 2012 being especially bad on that count. But we are definitely having Sprinter this year. Walking home from my birthday dinner at a restaurant on the UES I could definitely feel that sprinter-y wind and smell that burning-wood smell.

And then the massive snow-storm this week.

Sprinter is here 2019

Sprinter is our shortest season - sometimes lasting only a day or two.

This year Sprinter was delayed thanks to the cold snap in the past week or so. But today it was just warm enough for Sprinter.

Sprinter 2016

I got to walk in Central Park in the afternoon recently and experienced that most ineffable of all the seasons, Sprinter.  And not a moment too soon - apparently it's going to be in the mid-60s by next week. And of course this has been an unusually warm winter, so we're lucky we got any Sprinter at all - we didn't in 2012.

You can tell it was Sprinter because it was sunny and bright and above freezing, but if you kept your hands out of your gloves to take photos with your iPhone for a while you definitely became uncomfortable. But meanwhile trees are getting ready to bloom, like this willow.





You can tell it's above freezing because the Canadian geese can swim around freely.




A month from now this covered walkway will actually be covered by foliage.

Portents of Sprinter

Last year I spoke too soon - I said it was an early Sprinter - the seasonette between Winter and Spring - on February 20, and then we got snow and bitter cold for three weeks. I remember it well, because I was spending my lunch hours during that time period walking around near the Kew Gardens courthouse in the biting wind, since I had endless jury duty. Has it really been a year already?

Anyway, this year there sure isn't an early Sprinter - according to my iPhone weather app the temperatures aren't going to get much above 30 degrees for the next week, and there's a chance of, what else, snow on Tuesday. But in spite of the frigid air tonight, I could feel the distant hints of Sprinter in the breeze. It will be here any day now.

Early Sprinter

I first blogged about the mini-season I named Sprinter last year. I said it usually arrived, on the years that it does, between my birthday and St. Patrick's day. Well it isn't quite my birthday yet but it's already here. While walking home from work I could smell cedar wood burning - that's always an indicator that Sprinter has arrived. Don't ask me why burning wood smells appear more during late winter than any other time, but that's what happens. It's a fleeting, ephemeral season, so don't wait until Spring is here, get out and enjoy Sprinter.

Sprinter is here again

It's been three years since I celebrated Sprinter so it's about time.

I don't have any outdoor pictures handy but I do have an indoor image of a Sprinter afternoon shadow.

Springtime

Here is Mr. Fuzz during our first spring on West 85th Street. Look at the green elm tree and the ivy, so beautiful. Both destroyed by my neighbors.

In other seasonal news, Sprinter finally arrived yesterday, even though we already had some 60 - 70 degree weather. Sprinter is very late this year thanks to it being unusually cold this winter especially in late February - early March. But as I was walking around Astoria yesterday there was suddenly the exact confluence of temperature and the scent of burning wood necessary for it to really be Sprinter.

Mr. Fuzz is 17 and a half now. He has some health issues but he's hanging in there!

The greyness

Back in March I talked about a mini-season that I have identified. The season comes between winter and spring, at least in the mid-Atlantic coastal region of the United States. I considered calling it "sprinter."

We are now in the beginning of the other mini-season. Sprinter occurs in the couple of weeks before the vernal equinox. This season is a couple of weeks before the autumnal equinox.

While I really like sprinter, I detest this mini-season. It always occurs right around Labor Day and it's always the same: warm, muggy and cloudy, but without the release of a cooling rain. Just this nasty grey funk that occurs off-and-on, but mostly on, in the early weeks of September. So I decided to call it "the greyness."

The Summit in Sumter

I was certainly right last week when I said I needed to recognize Sprinter while there was still time because it was going to get warm this week - but I underestimated just how warm. I walked in CP on my way to work this morning in my t-shirt - it was warm already and before the day was done it broke the record by getting up to 76 degrees, after breaking another record yesterday.

Normally Sprinter is the harbinger of Spring, but this year it was the harbinger of Summer so I guess I should call it Sumter.

Summit Rock in Central Park is close to my apartment so I strolled on by - I know I've seen at least one theater production there. It looks the same. These steps are on the south side coming down from Summit Rock.

While I was strolling along the Summit I was struck by this building along Central Park West. I've seen it before of course but never really noticed those two... I don't know what to call them - towers? They look like entire houses on top of the apartment building.

Here is a close up of the north tower. It looks more like something at the Vatican than NYC. I would love to get up in there and see what it's like. Naturally I had to Google it - this is the Beresford, a "luxury, 23-floor "pre-war" apartment building..."

Many rich and famous people have lived here including my boss's boss's boss's boss's boss's former boss.

You can apparently get an apartment there for as little as $3million - cheap!

I wondered if those towers were apartments. The building doesn't seem to have its own web site. This article from eleven years ago in the NYTimes has some info:

The building's northwest quadrant fronts only on West 82nd Street and was subject to more restrictive zoning, but the other three quadrants face wide streets with more generous zoning allowances, and Roth gave them three stubby but picturesque towers.
These were the topmost parts of the most unusual apartments in the building, all multilevel residences. The original drawings suggest that they were all intended to be triplexes. The apartments rise to the areas behind the towers' great arches; the areas are labeled "Observation Room" on the original architectural drawings and are about 25 feet square.
The Observation Room in Tower No. 2, at the corner of 81st and Central Park West, was designed with a 16,000-gallon water tank concealed under the tower roof; in Tower No. 3, at 82nd Street, the design showed a smaller, 3,500-gallon tank for firefighting. But Tower No. 1, the most westerly on 81st Street, had none.

So they are apartments and you can't just ask to go for a tour. But I guess it couldn't hurt to find out who lives there. Helen Gurley Brown used to live in one of the towers, until she died in 2012. You can read about her apartment here. It says:

Offered for sale for the first time in 40 years, this iconic penthouse apartment occupies the South/East tower of the Beresford, one of the most recognizable and sought-after buildings on Central Park West. It offers dramatic 360-degree views of Central Park, the southern skyline, and the Hudson River, and one of the largest terraces on Central Park West. 

It's listed as $20 million. The pix in the related slide-show are pretty impressive - and HGB sure liked the color pink. 

The site gives the apartment number as PH22D, which is no help. The Homemetry (my guess is that it's pronounced hoe-MEM-eh-tree) web site, which is normally very snoopy, is no help - it doesn't list any of the penthouse apartments, unless "MR" is an alternate way to refer to them. You can see John Stossel (ugh) - 15K and Jerry Seinfeld (meh) - 19F live there. But not in the towers.

Summer is here

Well Sprinter never had a chance, the weather leapt from Arctic levels of cold two weeks ago to 77 degrees today. Completely bonkers.

I took advantage of the weather to finally explore my new neighborhood, although it isn't completely new since I used to work nearby. 

I visited some of my old haunts today including the glacial erratic. Back in the day, in 2014 to be exact, this ancient rock, resting immovable in the middle of a side street got no respect. There were parking lots for nearby businesses all around and people even used the rock itself for parking - I took a picture myself back then, which you can see here.

These days the entire block is a park dedicated to the rock, with tables and benches and several lively cafes nearby. Although I will say, the little park is fairly neglected, I saw a lot of garbage strewn here and there including some on the rock itself. Somebody needs to start a volunteer club to take care of the park. It deserves at least some of the care given to Central Park, which has teams of volunteers working to keep clean seven days a week.

Not far away from the rock - I don't think anybody has given it a name - is a cafe called The Local, where I used to go and hang out during the work day, so I stopped in to check it out. It's still pretty much as I remember it.

I wonder if the French are still crazy about Long Island City - that was apparently a thing back in 2017. My own theory was that they liked it because the movie Julia and Julie - the Julia was "the French Chef" Julia Child - is set there. I did hear a couple of guys speaking French in a different cafe the other day, so I wouldn't be surprised. 

The Julie in the movie had a blog, back in the early days of blogging. Now it's a thing of the past. Except for some of us.

Sprinter?

It's the special time of year, which has no name, but I recognize it as a distinct season that arrives at the end of winter. It only comes around between my birthday and St. Patrick's Day - if it comes at all. Last year, thanks to the excessively warm winter, it didn't appear - or if it did, I blinked and missed it.

At the end of winter, there comes a time when the formerly extreme cold temperatures moderate, just enough so that you can walk around outside without being really uncomfortable, but the breeze is still fresh and chilly. You might even need a pair of gloves to feel fully warm, but it's still not quite winter - or at least not the typical North East USA winter, which Wikipedia tells us has the Humid continental climate.

It's the best of winter and spring in my opinion - you still get to feel cozy in your gloves and winter coat, and for some reason at this time of year you can often smell wood-burning ovens or fire places - I'm not sure why this time of year more than others - and yet there is the promise of spring right around the corner. I like spring more than winter, so I do like the change even if spring usually doesn't live up to its hype, but at least it isn't a complete disappointment compared to summer, which not only fails to live up to its hype, but is hyped much more than spring. No, I am not a big fan of summer. But when it's summer at least you know the next season is autumn, the very best of all the seasons.

But the second best is this strange brief unrecognized season at the end of winter. I need to come up with a name for it.

I'm Waiting for the Man in the supermarket

I walked to the supermarket, enjoying the first day of Sprinter 2022.

Back in ye olden days, when you went into the supermarket, you heard muzak. You can hear a selection of supermarket muzak on Youtube.

Eventually supermarkets began to play pop tunes, often considered "oldies" by the time they were played there. I discussed some of my favorites ten years ago.

Today in the supermarket I heard the Velvet Underground's 1967 "I'm Waiting for the Man," Lou Reed's ditty about going to Spanish Harlem to score heroine. The 4/5/6 subway line in Manhattan has a stop at Lexington and 125th Street.

A live version of the song can be heard on The Quine Tapes.

If the supermarket ever plays Sister Ray or Black Angel's Death Song, you'll know that things have gotten really weird.

 

I'm waiting for my man
26 dollars in my hand
Up to Lexington 125
feelin' sick and dirty more dead than alive
I'm waiting for my man

Hey white boy, what you doin' uptown
Hey white boy, you chasin' our women around
Oh pardon me sir, it's furthest from my mind
I'm just lookin' for a dear dear friend of mine
I'm waiting for my man

Here he comes, he's all dressed in black
PR shoes and a big straw hat
He's never early, he's always late
first thing you learn is that you always gotta wait
I'm waiting for my man, ah, work it now

Up to a brownstone, up three flights of stairs
Everybody-body's pinned you, but nobody cares
He's got the works, gives you sweet taste
ah, then you gotta split because you got no time to waste
I'm waiting for my man

Baby don't you holler, darling don't you ball and shout
I'm feeling good, you know I'm gonna work it on out
I'm feeling good, I'm feelin' oh so fine
until tomorrow but that's just some other time
I'm waiting for my man, walk it home