Manhattan Bridge

As Manhattan begins to be overwhelmed by shoppers, it was time to retreat for another walk on a bridge, this time the Manhattan Bridge, which is very close to the Brooklyn Bridge.   It is more or less ugly;  the bridge is undistinguished, and you are mostly surrounded by fences and so forth.  In addition, the pedestrian path runs right next to the subway tracks, which makes for considerable noise and shaking.  That said, it was still a wonderful and interesting walk, starting from the mostly high rise modern section of downtown Brooklyn, and ending up in the heart of Chinatown.

I took lots of pictures...

Some detail on the bridge:

A view of a beach and weddings in the new Brooklyn Bridge park:

Walking next to the subways:

 A very peculiar building, with Manhattan towers in the background:

More rooftop grafitti and towers

I never knew that rooftops were a good place for grafitti:

Grafitti on the bridge:

Subway tracks:

Geri Allen

Last night we heard the jazz pianist Geri Allen in a quartet at a club called the Jazz Standard.  The quartet was the pianist Allen, a bassist, a drummer, and a tap dancer, Maurice Chestnut.   The tap dancer was there as an instrumentalist, and functioned as a musician in the quartet.  While this sounded very odd at first, with the sound of the taps jarring with the very traditional sound of a piano trio, I gradually became used to it, and by the end, with a vigorous duet between the drummer and the tap dance, I was enjoying the combination.  Allen is a wonderful pianist, mostly in the mainstream, but with a delightful quirkiness and sometimes a very delicate touch.   At a certain point, I was listening to one of the numbers, and realized it had evolved into  "It Came Upon the Midnight Clear" .   You haven't lived until you have heard "It Came Upon the Midnight Clear" performed by a jazz piano trio and tap dancer.  Perhaps my only Christmas concert of the year...