Idle camera

No photos from the weekend ... ah, well.

Saturday was a washout (we needed the rain).
Sunday, I got a late start getting into Manhattan, and once there my knees were so painful that trying to make up for lost time by covering as much ground as possible was just out of the question.
Picture Fred Sanford from "Sanford and Son" with a heavy camera bag slung across his shoulder trying to cross a busy street. Yes, my "arthuritis" got the better of me.
Hurt like hell, to tell the truth.

There was an annual Halloween dog costume contest Sunday at the dog runs at Tompkins Square Park. The crowds were large, the energy level overbearing. I gave it a miss. Besides, I covered it last year in a photo essay for a Lower East Side magazine, and once was enough.
Some people I know could use a short, sturdy leash ...

But there was one interesting encounter Sunday, which will be filed in my "It's a Small World" folder. I was walking along Seventh Street between Avenues C and D in the East Village when the facade of a pre-1900 synagogue-turned-apartment house caught my eye. There was a fellow sitting on the top step of the sandstone staircase leading up to the front door, smoking a cigarette.
"You live here?" I asked.
"Uh, yeah," he answered warily.
"I was just wondering if any of the original architectural details are preserved on the inside of the building."
He explained that a roof leak ruined the building's interior, and that when it was renovated and converted into apartments, any vestiges of its former incarnation were removed.

I don't remember how, but eventually the conversation turned to our livelihoods and I explained that I work for a daily newspaper in Jersey.
My new friend said he has a good friend who also works for a Jersey paper.
I asked the name of this fellow journalist.
Turns out that we work for the same paper and are friendly with each other.
These two guys went to college together, and the person I had just met seemingly at random was a groomsman at my colleague's wedding.

Yeah, it's a small world, all right.