The Gates - Central Park - New York City
Thursday - February 24, 2005
It's been over a year and a half since I've hung out with my friends from uconn. One night i was online and i mentioned to amy that i wanted to see "the gates" in new york. It was perfect timing because i was home for break, and there wasn't much else going on. The show was also going to be up for only one more week, so time was of the essence. Amy really wanted to go too... then we got our friends Jen and Danielle to go along as well. After a little planning and remeniscing about old times on line, we were set to go, snow or no snow.

"The Gates" are a public installation piece along the walkways of Central Park designed by the Christo and Jeanne-Claude... they've done things like drape a canyon in fabric, wrapped some building in germany in fabric, and other crazy things. It's wierd because i learned about them in art history... and here it is in our backyard... once in a lifetime type of thing.
Amy points at my puny camera lense on the train. Puny cause she's got one of those monstrous digital SLRs. I'm so jealous.
We took the metro-north from Bridgeport to Grand Central. It was event just finding out where to park at the train station because they blocked off a main road.
Hmm.. which subway to take... oh where to eat?
Me and amy. i made it a point to where my favorite color.
If your cursor turns to a finger, that means you can click it to load the bigger version.
You can see why i couldn't miss this for the world... orange everywhere, marching in the distance, over you, around you.
There was no way i could lose Danielle with that bright green cap.
mmmm.... orange....
what if the gates were red? they woulda SUCKED!
Squirrels in Central Park have a lot of balls. they were just dancing around us where others would've run away when you got near them.
camaflouge
I'm glad they decided to exhibit this during the winter. The bright orange brings such life to the drab gray... they would've been lost in the dense green foliage of spring or summer. worse yet, fall, where they would've just blended right in.
We found a guy who was handing out samples of the fabric used. I'll keep mine in my wallet for protection... from rich.
It was nice to go on a weekday... a very COLD day on top of that, it wasn't as crowded as it would've been on a weekend. Damn... it was COLD.
All the gates were the same height, but varying widths. There were thousands of them. We walked along the paths for hours and only ended up going half way up the park.
It's neat knowing that the park will never look this way again, ever.
Jen
There's the feeling that once you've seen one, you've seen them all. but then the terrain is so varied, the background always changes, the way the sun hits them, the shadows always change, the clouds always change... It's almost like going to the Grand Canyon, where you're just looking at rocks, but there are so many nuances that remind you how sublime the forces of nature are. likewise, here, in a manmade park, in a city of concrete and steel, you are awed by what man can create.
After the park, we were really hungry and decided not to take the subway back, but just walk, and see if there were any food places along the way. I saw a hardrock cafe, and just had to go to add to my collection of HRC glasses.... ... food was subpar, service was slow... we ended up being late for our train... but i saw it as a couple extra hours to spend with friends.
The snow hit and it was time to go home
Go back home...