Stacy Horn

Every year they close off 46th Street for Brazilian Independence Day and my band plays all day, and I mean all day. When I was younger and more determined my hands were bleeding by the end of the day. The festival keeps getting bigger and bigger. It used to be just one block of 46th, now it’s 46th Street for a bunch of blocks and 6th Avenue for I don’t know how many blocks. It’s HUGE.

This is a big stage they erect now every year on 6th. We rarely play on the stage. We’re a street band.

The police kept telling us to move. We’re very loud and invariably some store would complain. This is us telling the crowd which direction we’re going. Ivo (the band leader) finally just had us play while we paraded up and down 6th, which was very clever. The police couldn’t ask us to move because we were constantly moving.

One of my band mates brought her baby and she put these huge headphones on him to protect him. Those girls are smart to wear gloves (to protect from bleeding hands). I kept meaning to wear golfing gloves, the ones with the fingers cut out but constructed to maintain a good grip, but I never got around to it.

I’m taking care of a friend’s cat this weekend who lives in Hell’s Kitchen. I haven’t been up there in years and I was a little nervous about what it might look like. The last time I was there it was on its way to total gentrification, and it was one of the last places that looked like the New York of my youth and I couldn’t bear it.

Turns out my neighborhood is a thousand times worse, and the total gentrification didn’t happen up here. It’s kind of a nice mix of old and new. And my favorite restaurant Ralph’s is still there!

And lots of places that are not Starbucks.

A close-up so you can see they are selling pig toes, for the love of God, among other things.

I couldn’t get close so my I didn’t get any good pictures I have to forewarn you. But my neighborhood was taken over last night for a Sex and the City shoot. I went out to get bird seed and Perry Street was blocked. So I went around to 11th Street and came back over to Perry via West 4th. There was the familiar “craft services” table. Apple Jacks?? I didn’t even know they still made that kind of … junk.

There were crowds of people watching.

And cops … watching.

Perry Street was just jammed with equipment.

So here’s my first not-good shot of Carrie/Sarah Jessica Parker, at the bottom of Carrie’s apartment stairs.

Here’s my second not-good shot of Carrie ON the stairs.

My not-good shot of Miranda/Cynthia Nixon running off to sit down.

And I believe this is the actor playing Brady! I asked and in this picture he’s ten years old now.

I was going to try for more, but then I thought if I don’t stick to the hour then I will know an hour doesn’t really mean an hour and it will be harder to repeat this tomorrow. Maybe I will add a half and hour each day? In any case, the holiday weekend is ON.

Here’s another shot of lush, green, Manhattan. This is down in Battery Park, I forget what they call this particular spot. It’s where all the docks are, behind the Winter Garden (which is not a garden, but a building).

Except I can’t quite enjoy it. I have to go back and re-write this book proposal, and it isn’t even really fair to call it a proposal yet it’s so unfinished, and I’ve been so unable to get any traction on it. This is not like me. Hmmm.

For the last two books my job has been clear, tell the story of the NYPD’s Cold Case Squad, tell the story of the Duke Parapsychology Lab. I still had to figure how to do that, but the goal was as simple as it gets. This is a book about singing with the Grace Church Choral Society, but not really. It’s like Waiting for My Cats to Die was not really about my cats.

Right now I’ve been telling myself you only have to write an hour a day. It’s an insanely small amount of time.

In the meantime, this is a picture of a tree on WeeHawken Street. It’s a tiny street off Christopher, right before you get to the river. It’s kind of dismal place, and at the same time, old, haunting and beautiful. It has that back in time feel that I love, like sailors might live here, or spice merchants, and horses are kept in the stables, and people are getting drunk on beer and too many oysters in a real oyster bar, and doesn’t this tree literally look like a tree in a dream? God, I think that might officially be the most beautiful tree in Manhattan.

UPDATE: I thought people might appreciate a pulled back view, so scroll down to see this tree in context.

The street is better than it looks in this photo though, some of the buildings down this street have that from-the-past appeal I was describing. I should go back and try to capture it.