Tel Aviv Rooftop

A visit to Zuccotti Park, the epicentre of the Occupy Wall Street movement, triggered a sharp sense of deja vu. We'd flown in from Israel where the last vestiges of the protest tent encampments were being removed, only to find that they had been reincarnated a spit away from Wall Street. And what was fuelling the protestors here among the sleeping bags and placards  was the same middle class anger with big business, with bad government, with the disproportionate distribution of wealth, in short: with the system. There was also the same infuriating/intriguing refusal to be tied down to fixed set of demands. References to the fundamentals of American democracy were a major motif. One man stood reading the Constitution out loud. I copied the following passage from the New York Times Review (but forgot to jot down the name of the author): Sounds familiar? It would be hard to beat this as a description of the Daphni Leef  school  of the Israeli social prot...

The last in the New York series I think, especially since all eyes on Annapolis conference as of now (although what am I going to do with the other 400+ photos?). So, in no particular order, above is a shot of the southern tip of Manhattan taken from the return trip on the Staten Island Ferry. This wonderful shimmering effect should have been something that I composed but is actually the result of poor focus and lack of camera stability. Don't remember where I took this, possibly in the now gentrified Lower East Side or thereabouts. Some people find the fire escapes romantic but I couldn't figure out why they didn't put them on the back of the buildings. This was taken in Williamsburg . Note the ad, selling Brooklyn real estate, that says 'Manhattan is so 5 minutes ago'. Lower Manhattan with Brooklyn Bridge in the foreground. Being based in Brooklyn gave me a different perspective on New York, one shared by the majority of New Yorkers who don't live in Manha...

Brilliant flutist Itai Kriss (who happens to be a close relation) playing Latin music at the Fat Cat club with his excellent band Cachimba . See Itai's site . Back on the Rooftop again after almost two weeks in New York. It was great fun (thanks to Itai & Adeola again) and provided plenty of food for thought and blogs but meanwhile here are a few more of the almost 400 photos (!) I took there, concentrating this time on music Music is to be heard everywhere in New York and particularly in subway stations where musicians of every imaginable style play to a hostage audience of waiting passengers. My personal favourite was a drummer (unfortunately not pictured) who played brilliantly on a set of upturned plastic paint containers (with bits of dried paint still falling out of them). Apart from the subway and enjoying Itai and friends at various venues we went to hear two concerts by musicians we'd never heard of: the New Orleans based Subdudes at the B.B. King Club ...

The variety is of course endless. Sitting on the subway, where photography is forbidden, is like watching an unending stream of faces from every corner of the world. Above - a window cleaner who thinks he's a rock star. A waitress at the Aqua Santa restaurant in Williamsburg. Polish kids fooling around in a park in Greenpoint. A stylish shopper buying organic vegetables at the Union Square farmers market. A hairdresser in Greenpoint. This guy was sweeping up leaves in the park and gave me a hip hop salute.

Hi everyone. Resurfacing at last in NYC or to be more precise Greenpoint, Brooklyn, (thanks to I & A for a wonderful time). Reappearing also with a new and exciting Nikon D40 replacing my beloved but limited little Olympus. So without further ado.. above is the Empire State Building, over the East River, as seen from the kitchen window on a grey day. Strange to see it from this angle. Polish rules and Yiddish lives. Green Point is a blue-collar Polish neighbourhood: decent, unpretentious, and a bit down at heel. Everyone here speaks Polish. The newspapers are in Polish and every sort of service (food, travel, DVDs) are advertised in Polish. If you go into a shop, people will assume that you are Polish and then be surprised that you aren't since non-Polish speakers are the foreigners around here. This is the perspective I'm getting from this trip. Each neighbourhood in Brooklyn (as in Bronx and Queens) has its own character, quite separate, even segregated, from its neighbo...