Long Walk, short purpose

Today I decided to walk home from Port Authority to my apartment on the Upper East Side. It was nice out, I had free time, and fairly comfortable walking shoes, and not a lot else I felt like doing. On the way I noticed several really beautiful little moments in the city while I moseyed along and everyone else rushed by me on their lunch breaks and cigarette breaks.

I looked stopped and looked up (noticing one of the water towers i just blogged about) and on the black background of a building a black and yellow butterfly sat there flexing its wings and looking very relaxed and beautiful amidst the rush of the city. Turns out, it was s black swallowtail butterfly.

Previous to that I walked through Bryant Park. They were in the process of setting up the ice rink and Christmas shops. I noticed that each little booth starts out with just a plain unfinished wood board floor. I passed several couples sitting and working on their cubbies that would be their livelihood and selling homes for the next month or so until Christmas. One was painting the boards a high gloss purple. Another girl was on all fours, painstakingly laying down self adhesive pieces of what looked like imitation wood parquet tiles. Another was just varnishing the floors with what smelled like polyurethane.

I found it quite striking how much time these people were spending on just the floors of their booths, although after thinking about it, the little details make it all more appealing. They didn't even have the lighting or wares set up yet. It was fun to see the mini-construction projects being laid out all next to each other, and interesting to see the attention to detail that the artistic eye can hold. I know that I will be paying much more attention to the floors, ceilings, and setups in the holiday shops after seeing this little behind the scenes peek at how much work goes into setting up such a tiny little booth.