Tag Archives: winter

New Decade

Posted on by

It was kind of cool to wake up to the sounds of fog horns on the East River Saturday morning. It was one of those days where it never really rained, but everything was wet all day. It has officially been three weeks since surgery. I’ll be starting regular PT week after next. I have enjoyed the steady return of my mobility, and decided to capitalize on it Saturday after spending some time with PJ. I drove to the Tarrytown reservoir and took a lap on the reservoir trail. I wished so badly that I would have brought my real camera with me. Instead, all I have are these mediocre-ish cellphone snaps. The fog transformed the depressing dead-looking winter woods into a nearly silent ethereal dreamscape. I felt like I was walking through an Isabella Stahl photo.

Switching gears completely — One of my 2020 goals is to get back on the horse creatively. As a part of my end-of-year and end-of-decade reflections, I became painfully aware of  how drastically my time spent being creative has waned over the past several years. One decision that I have executed to proactively kickstart said goal, is taking a break from Instagram. I disabled my account shortly before midnight on Dec 31. It was an idea that I had been leaning toward for a while (since the app was acquired by F@#$book).

When the app first came on the scene, I feel like it actually may have helped my creative juice via the inspiration I gleaned from the photographic works of my peers and acquaintances. In the past couple of years it seems to have devolved into the same torrent of internet diarrhea that is F@#$book. Having so much additional down time lately while recovering from surgery has intensified my awareness of how much time can be wasted mindlessly scrolling absolute nonsense (yikes!). Some people do dry January. I’m doing ‘gram-free January. So far I don’t miss it at all. I’ll re-evaluate on Feb 1. In the meantime, perhaps I’ll find the juice to expand the content on Jake.News beyond monthly playlists and the occasional book review, hehe. I realize that the ‘blog’ as a format has been dead for a while now … oh well.

For now, please enjoy this set of photos from my walk through the woods in the fog.

 

February 2019 Playlist

Posted on by

While my monthly playlists usually consist of mostly new music interspersed with a few throw-back tracks, this one takes the opposite approach. This decision was a product of few different experiences that I had during the month of January when I was compiling the playlist. First was a BBC essential mix I heard that was almost exclusively old disco tracks from the late 70s and early 80s. Next was the fact that so many of my regular spots in G-point play great rock. January was a big going-out month for me and I really soaked in the stuff that I was hearing. It made me realize that I don’t listen to nearly enough rock these days when I’m selecting my own jams.

A lot of the stuff that I was hearing while out and about was material from the era that I grew up in. I dropped in some Mad Season and Jane’s Addiction to this month’s mix. Both of these tracks elicit strong nostalgia of my high school and early college days. I had to mix in some Radiohead as well. Rock was really the first genre of music that drew me into music as an artistic media. So in a way, I’m starting out 2019 with a kind of “back to my roots” playlist. Of course I also included a couple of recent releases. The two that I’m mostly vibing-on are the new Bonobo track, and the new Rufus diddy. I also included the latest Chemical Brothers release. Even though they were more late college and law school for me, I’m happy to see that they are still producing high quality material. So I included their new track “MAH” even though it doesn’t really mesh so well with the rest of the songs. Anyway, enjoy-

Soft

Posted on by

I came across this film earlier this week. The one redeeming quality of winter is snowboarding. It doesn’t take much to get me stoked for riding, but this vid definitely kicked it up to eleven for me. Lots of deep pow and awesome imagery (the night sequence is next level). I really enjoyed it. Possibly you will, as well–

soft from Christian Haller on Vimeo.

Some Art, Some Running

Posted on by

Even though it is March and the days are getting longer, it still 100% feels like winter out there. Despite the temps, B and I forced ourselves to be out and about last week. Thursday night we hit the Retna opening at Chase Contemporary. I have been a fan of his for a while. Here is a sample of his Bowery wall mural, as I saw it in March 2012. Anyway, we saw some equally awesome stuff at the gallery opening on Thurs.

That being said, I kind of feel bad for anyone who opened an exhibition last week in NYC, because the town was all abuzz with the fact that Banksy was back in North America and had put some work in NYC. So much hype that even the local news covered it, hahahaha. Lordy, it was like listening to a couple of elderly ladies talking about “the grime raps” or something. Speaking of the Bowery Mural, B*nksy has turned it into his latest propaganda piece.

I haven’t made it over to see that one yet. But we did wander into Chelsea to look at the rat. Here are a couple of snaps, along with a couple of my faves from the Retna opening.

Aaaaand finally, B and I both ran the NYC half on Sunday. It was a new course, starting in Prospect Park, ending in Central Park. The course went over the Manhattan Bridge, which was awesome for me since I mix that bridge into most of my longer runs anyway. The difference being that I usually have it to myself instead of sharing it with 20k other runners. Back to the weather…. this was probably the coldest race I have ever run. It was fine, once I finally got going and the sun came up. But man, waiting for it to start was brutal! New course is amazing. B got a PR. Overall, a really decent day. Here is a crappy pic from my celly of my fellow runners freezing their booties off in Prospect Park.

Rainy Weekend

Posted on by

Same Brooklyn, different weather. Some of these are from walking around doing errands on Saturday, shot with real camera. Some are cell phone shots from my Sunday morning run. I normally don’t take a phone with me when I run, but I did in the rain? Go figure. Try to spot Lola. She was wearing Camo.