Yesterday my friend Alice took the train out from Princeton and we had breakfast in Midtown, then took a walk down to the Hell's Kitchen flea market and poked around in all of the mildewy fur coats and ancient rocking chairs. One of the vendors had those boxes of old photos and postcards that you see sometimes. I bought five of someone else's old photos- road trip photos, mostly. Could the photographer have possibly imagined that in fifty years their photos would be sitting in a box at the Hell's Kitchen flea market and bought by a total stranger from California? Seems like human life just passes from one hand to the next.
One of the photos was a black and white snapshot of a gift shop in a town called Adams, NY. When I got to my coworker's place last night, we Googled Adams and, according to epodunk.com (I am not joking), it's upstate east of Rochester. (j, ever heard of it?) (A while ago I was in SF Chinatown and picked up a random postcard of a tiny fog-wrapped lil fishing village that looked sad and beautiful; the back of the postcard said that it was a place called Noyo, CA. A couple of years later, on a weekend when I needed to drive, I drove north without really even thinking about it, and pointed my car to Noyo. The Adams photo felt like that. "Where's this? What's there?")
After Alice left I walked from 42nd back up to 58th, holding my camera at my side and just shooting photos as I went. Some were good, most were blurry, but it's the ZOO of people that's endlessly fascinating, y'know? Everyone from the naked cowboy to a trio of lost Italian tourists to a dad with his daughter on his shoulders. And that was just in Times Square.
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wow, I'm a little jealous, sounds like fun.
ReplyDeleteI know rochester, hour away from syracuse,I have heard of adams.
probably very small.
great story B. naked cowboy must be cold this time of year, and having a hard time playing his guitar.