Meeting old friends

I had the chance of catching up with Ali, whom I hadn't seen since he finished his PhD in Lausanne and left for Columbia University almost two years ago. A great photographer and victim of his own academic success (his rate of photographs on flickr has greatly diminished since starting his post-doc at Columbia) he showed me around on my first visit midtown since our arrival, proved to me that every type of beverage has not only its own appropriate bar ("If you want a juice, we'll go to a juice bar!"), but there will be multiple instances on the same street and you'll have the luxury (burden?) of choice.

An outing for drinks and catching up transformed itself into a photo shoot through Times Square and Central Park. The former a quagmire of people, cartoon characters, scantily dressed pin-up ... something (she had 2m wide angel wings and NY painted on her butt, one letter per cheek), and a ton of people waiting around and queuing to get tickets for Broadway. The latter a very enjoyable oasis of tranquillity, of random encounters with interesting people and of abundant opportunities for pictures.

Anecdotally, a couple of hours after we left Times Square, there was a shooting where the police accidentally shot and wounded two ladies while aiming for a running man. A small reminder that this is a big city in America. To me, however, it was a nice afternoon walk in the park with a friend.