Certainly the highest subway station in New York City (some claim in the world), the Smith-Ninth Street station reopened today after nearly two years of closure for renovations. I happened to be free so I decided to check it out. Some highlights are below. Or you can view the complete set.
Biking (Southern) Staten Island
Staten Island isn’t exactly known for its bicycle friendliness. Nevertheless, over the past few years, several bicycling improvements have been made. Much of this has occurred in the northeastern section of the island by its most popular beaches. This area is still on my to-do list. In the southern section of the island is home…
Biking in Queens
Biking Through Brooklyn
On several occasions each year I uncover my mammoth chrome mountain bike and go for a ride. My destination is generally the Howard Beach – JFK subway station in Queens. After mentioning this to people I’m often asked for details. I think that my mention of such a trip conjures up images of me biking…
TWA Flight Center Open House
The annual Open House New York happened to be a couple Sundays ago (10/16). Usually I only find a a handful of events that I’m interested in and usually they require a reservation, which I’m always too late for. This year there was one event I was interested in that didn’t require a reservation: The…
The Journey to Vienna Has Begun
I’m probably approaching 50 lifetime trips to/from Vienna. Amazingly I’ve never experienced any serious travel disturbances. About the worst that has happened so far is that I got into Syracuse at 2:45am instead of 10pm back when I was in college. So maybe I’m due for some travel insanity. I just got on a New…
Lost in Translation Series: Pimp Your Economy Class Ticket
As my blog turns ten years old next week and I’m flying over to Vienna on Sunday, I thought it might be nice to give a little fodder to my “Lost in Translation” series of posts, where I present some amusing and ridiculous attempts by companies to translate content from German to English. Whether it’s…
Fire in Williamsburg
I saw a fairly large fire on my way to see the fireworks tonight. It was in an industrial building at the corner of North 9th Street and Wythe Avenue in Williamsburg. I saw the first smoke around 9:15 while walking on Berry Street along McCarren Park. I quickly walked down to North 10th Street,…
Say Goodbye to ‘The New Kai’
While the newkai.com domain will be sticking around, I killed the over-eight-year-old “The New Kai” concept of this website. Not only was it horribly out of date content and design-wise, much of it was broken! “The New Kai” concept was based on fifteen-to-eighteen-year-old me and simply had to be discarded of. I now work about…
Public Bathrooms in New York City
One of the first things you learn upon arriving in New York City is that Starbucks contain the quasi-public bathrooms of this epicenter of Western civilization. There are two major reason for this: The city only provides one. (There are also about a dozen in the subway system, but they’re not recommended) There is a…