A beautiful day in the neighborhood

Since moving to New York in 2008, I've worked at the same company in the same building in the Flatiron District. I've enjoyed the relatively short commute (some days more than others) and still love the neighborhood. From it's delicious lunch places to its colorful people, it's a fine place to make a living. However, in two weeks I'll be starting a new job, one that will cause me to work from home. This means I'll spending more time in my home office in Astoria (good for the blog!) and more time with my new co-worker, Dinah (good for my evolution into crazy lady who talks to her cat!). However, there are a lot of things I'll miss about my current work neighborhood, and so this week I brought a camera on my commute to capture them.

One of the first things I see every day! I'll miss paying $104 each month for a metro card.

I was trying to photograph that white building. Every month or so they change that to a different building sized movie poster. They were in the process of doing so here, having just painted over the previous one. The funniest thing about this is that I was walking with a friend who is a huge Giants fan and two blocks later we ran into Victor Cruz and my friend asked our other friend (the hair in the foreground of this photo) to take a picture of them together on his blackberry. She failed at getting it to work, but Victor was a nice enough football player to wait why she took a photo on her iphone that didn't come out super well because it was directly into the sun. It wasn't until after we were sitting down to lunch and the Giants fan was bemoaning the failure to take a proper picture that I remember I was carrying a camera.

Here is the same building after work that night. The reason I like it so much is you get to watch their progress and try to guess what movie it is. At this point, based on the tagline (that you can't really read here, but it says: Feel the Wrath), I can tell you with reasonable certainty that it will become this.

I'll miss working around the corner from the birthplace of our 26th president Theodore Roosevelt. Goodbye, Teddy's childhood home, I would have visited more than your museum shop if you weren't open at such inopportune times!

ABC Carpets and Home has the coolest window displays. Unfortunately, they are really difficult to photograph. This was the best of a series of five I took, and it doesn't look like much. I couldn't take any more without feeling super lame photographing window treatments during sidewalk rush hour.

Goodbye, Beecher's Handmade Cheese! I know it seemed like I only ever freeloaded your fresh cheese curd samples, but I swear I did frequent your coffee happy hour in the mornings and your cocktail happy hour in the evenings. After a few of the aforementioned cocktails, I even shelled out $30 for a cheese plate once. It was really good, but probably not worth $30.

I almost got hit by a bicyclist going the wrong way up the street while taking this. There are some things I won't really miss.

And then there are the things I'll miss which I couldn't photograph for fear of retribution. There's the adorable Burmese Mountain dog I see every morning like clockwork. I've watched him grow from a tiny puppy to an equally cute giant of a dog. I didn't want to photograph him though because I worried his walker would think I was sketchy. I'll also miss the walks for lotto tickets or coffee or lunches with some good friends in the office (who probably wouldn't let me photograph them because they'd know it would go straight to my blog).

Of course, I'm being over-dramatic because I'll actually be back in the office many times in the future, but either way, it's always nice to take a moment to appreciate the subtleties that make up each day.