Never Before Posted Pictures! (Most Of Them At Long Last Off Of My Phone)

Recently, our friend Anthony came to visit. It was very fun! One day, on our way to the fancy cheese store, we walked up the East Side past the UN Building, which was blocked off around a four block radius that was staffed by police at each intersection. Wonder what's happening there!

On our walk, we encountered interesting statues!

All the statues were different, but I only have a picture of the one, because I didn't have a proper camera with me - only my phone. And my phone camera, it turned out, was turning half the pictures I took into black squares saved as pictures. Oh, well! I think Anthony has some.

Shortly before Anthony got here, I had gone on a fun quest: Hitting up fancy chocolate stores in search of exciting new kinds of chocolate! Here are a couple of the chocolates I tried in the process:

The one on the left is a bleu cheese chocolate; the one on the right is an olive oil and basil chocolate! It's especially weird, because on the inside, they still just look like chocolate - but they taste, respectively, like bleu cheese and olive-oil-and-basil! Mixed with chocolate! Super weird. But cool. I would maybe not eat them for dessert, but I would eat them for a weirdly pleasurable snack!

I also tried a violet chocolate from a little chocolate shop in Grand Central. It had violet-flavored ganache in the center and was topped with little bits of candied violet. The weirdest part was the way it tasted exactly the way violets smell - and yet, while I love the smell of violets, I'm not sure yet if I like the taste. It's a little cloying and a little bit, well, fruity, but at the same time, if you are actually paying close attention to each moment of taste, it just tastes like itself, like the smell of violets, which is nice and neither cloying nor fruity, only violety. There were moments where I thought I might not finish it, and moments where I liked it and wanted to try another. Confusing! But cool.

Before Anthony came was when my brother was here. I mentioned that we got fries from the Breslin - here they are:

These are the ones that Alex and Ilan loved, that I just thought were fine. There are chilies and pickles in the little carafe on the left; the dipping sauce on the right is cumin mayo. They were crispy to the perfect degree, but I sort of thought they just tasted like, you know, fries. Which, ok. And the cumin mayo did go well, and did have a little bit of a surprising taste in a nice way, but I didn't love it for itself.

At one point while we were walking through Tompkins Square Park - Ilan and Alex and me - we happened upon a group of people grouped around a man in a crown, who seemed to be speaking to them in a grand way. When we approached and politely asked what they were doing, though, they were very obscure and uncomfortable, and they looked at me like I was nuts for taking a picture! Well, too bad for them. If you are going to hold court in the middle of a public park, you dang well oughta be willing to have your picture took. So there.

Also, they all seemed to have Eastern European accents. I don't know if that was relevant to their activity or not.

Another time that we were walking with Ilan, near Bryant Park, Alex noticed some pets on the corner! There was a guy who seemed possibly to be affiliated with them standing not too far away, but though there was a bowl that appeared to be designated to hold money, there was no sign explaining the situation and the man never spoke.

The pets were very cute, though! The little thing upstage center is a guinea pig that did not appear to be restrained in any way but made no move to go anywhere. Grouped around it are kitties and a cute dog! One kitty you can barely see is hiding behind the money dish.

Heading back even farther, a month or so ago - when it was still snowing - Alex and I came upon some truly excellent snow sculptures on some benches in Union Square Park. The camera had a little trouble distinguishing some of them from the snow around them, but you can more or less make them out.

Penguins! Happy penguins!

Also, puppy!

I know the puppy is harder to see, but it is worth squinting for, because it is very cute!

In other news, I may have mentioned in the past that my favorite subway ad is for Dr. Zizmor, dermatologist to the people. I finally took a couple pictures, although my favorite Dr. Zizmor ad - one very similar to the one pictured below but with the addition of various landmarks, notably the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building, scattered across the banner and stamped with big red APPROVED!s - no longer appears to be in service.

I don't know if you can tell, but the two people in the before and after pictures are not only obviously different people, but the after person has a complexion almost as terrible as the complexion of the before person! The note "from an actual patient" (placed to the left of the before person) reads thusly: "Dear Dr. Zizmor, Thank you for improving my face! Thank you for improving my life! Thank you! -Isabell R., Queens". The box on the right says "CLEAR UP! CLEAN UP!" and indicates that if you have any blemishes, scars, etc. you will for sure be approved! And it features a hilariously terrible cartoon of a woman in a a 50s-ey bathing suit and a man in a suit suit, who apparently have very little to do with each other.

Basically, I would be hard pressed to pick for you my favorite aspect of Dr. Zizmor's ad campaign, which has historically been viewable in 20% of all subway cars.

And on a final note, I will leave you with this gem, posted outside a motel we stopped at a year and a half ago on our road trip to New York.