coffee and cheer

if you were in the vicinity of union square at a little past noon today, i bet you saw a little commotion on the northwest corner and had 2 thoughts:

uh-oh, what did starbucks do now?

and

where am i gonna go for my afternoon-tall-nonfat-chai?

i should have been in a rush to get back to the office, but had my camera with me and couldn't resist lingering for a few minutes to see what kind of "protest" photos could get.

turns out it was less demonstration, more celebration by the manhattan starbucks union-- starbucks workers received either a paid day-off or time-and-a-half for mlk day, for the first time ever. overall, the company's commitment to paying its baristas for the holiday amounted to roughly $1.2 million dollars. (hence, the many happy horns...)

all photos © anita aguilar

ladies' day: hitting the high line

a hat this big, not unwise with today's winter winds...

richard galpin's viewing station

***

clear sky, cold wind...(big smiles)

all photos © anita aguilar

AO 2011: fantasty tennis

i'm leaving my original typo in the title, because somehow it fits.

i just signed up for tennis.com's grand slam fantasy tennis event. i believe this makes me a superfan of tennis and tennis.com.

i've only enlisted in 2 fantasy sports enterprises before today--and both were related to football (soccer), a sport i know next to nothing about. i joined out of "fantasy sports curiosity" but mostly because one of my best friends and her husband were starting a league and the promise of weekly updates -- brit trash talk!--by rich was too fun to pass up. (he's so good, he was able to parlay it into a paying gig, blogging the world cup for men's health magazine.) i hovered around the basement of the our league's standings, though i eventually pushed myself to a more respectable 3rd or 4th from the bottom. but to be truthful, all the things that real football fans probably geek out about--assembling a "dream team," mulling over "contracts" and managing the injuries and substitutions, week to week--turned out to be way beyond my level of interest.

but this tennis game seems to require just the amount of attention i can commit to.

will my fandom translate into points? meh. i just want to see if they could make a fun fantasy version of a sport i already love. and i need one more tennis distraction during my work day.

here's part of my team:

nadal. jan 15, 2011. photo © mark baker/ap via tennis.com

djokovic on jan 12. photo © ben solomon via australianopen.org

verdasco, with his cool hair. on jan 13. photo © getty images via australian open.org

and don't think i picked them for anything but their potential winning ways.

otherwise i might have picked...

tommy

marcel granollers (l), tommy robredo (r) after winning the heineken open doubles tourney.

in nz. jan 15, 2011. photo © wayne drough (ap/nzpa)

i round out my team with:
murray, because he'll go just far enough (and i won't ever pick federer or soderling. for anything);
almagro and isner, not because i actually like them or their games, but because nadal seems to have trouble against them (like my barometer?)...
i wanted to pick baghdatis, but a groin injury heading into the fortnight is not promising.

so: troicki, who (despite a loss yesterday) has been riding a good, strong wave. also, he makes the most desperate faces:

jan 15 © ap photo/rob griffith

photo © ap/rob griffith

photo © ap photo/rick rycroft

and my wild wild card? nishikori. 'cause he's with BG now, and i just like that pairing.

***

so that is fantasy.

this is compulsory (real tennis world insight from señor tignor):

men's preview: "can anyone kill off that ambidextrous euro-beast called fedal?"

the women's draw: "this whole women’s draw prediction is one massive caveat"

and

the "rivalry"(rafa/fed presser): guess who said, “i for sure am feeling less favorite than him,” he said, “and not more favorite than djokovic, murray, soderling, these kind of players, no?”

read up. it's "game on" soon...

MFW at the AO: " with just the stars for company"

aussie open photo via tennis.com

i have a pretty good heart for winter--a snowfall can still feel and look like magic to me--but the cold here in nyc these last two days has been nothing short of stunning.

and so i dream of sunshine (it's summertime in australia)...

and now i dream of stars: read the career (watching) slam (maximum favorite writer is posting--thrice daily-- and podcasting from the open). i caution that he might inspire a little envy. who wouldn't want to be down there now? and: who wouldn't want to be able to turn phrases like:

"Outside was a Milky Way like I’ve never seen it. It looked like a thin cloud of stars stretching from one end of the universe to the other. How can it be that for all of human history we couldn’t fly, didn’t believe we were even meant to fly (see Icarus) until the Wright Brothers did it at the start of the 1900s? Now, a little more than one century later, we fly at 40,000 feet over the equator with just the stars for company, and no one gives it a second thought..."

and

"It’s always the same, but it never gets old. You fly in total black-hole darkness for hours, and then you come down in blinding brightness. The windows are all open now; you get the green countryside below you, and then you hit the clouds. They make the whole cabin flicker with light, while they rock the plane up and bring it down with that slightly sickening but fun unpredictability—you’re on an amusement-park ride now. Seeing New Zealand for the first time, I remembered again how flying makes the world seem so much less separated..."

and

"If I ever get my dream job as a cloud-watcher, I’ll move to New Zealand. I wish I could have stayed for a while."

***

ps. he will write just as brightly about the tennis too.

stay tuned...

it's practice, man...

nadal/djokovic, jan 15, 2011. photo @ ben solomon via australianopen.org

snow day 2011: union square park

***

"puddle shots 2011"

all photos taken on january 12, 2011...

© anita aguilar

striking poses: the apap showcase

was lucky enough to snag a front row at the free apap showcase at city center on saturday night...

i had my tamron zoom with me--i took a chance by selecting that lens, but the real error was deciding not to bring a backup. i also tried working with the camera's built in "sports" setting, thinking it would be foolproof--it's possible that the combination of my lens on that body isn't fast enough to catch the stunning movement of dance artists drew jacoby and rubinald pronk. i would have liked to try a few manual shots, but in such an intimate space, the camera's loud shutter and the bright lcd would have gotten too obtrusive very quickly and it didn't seem right to spend too much time fiddling with the settings. i was a bit disappointed with the choices i made, but it was a good reminder of how i could better prepare for a scenario like that, where there are some unknowns in terms of space and light.

hopefully, i'll have another opportunity soon.

also presenting: whim and whim, from seattle.

does this pose look weird to you? well, the whole number was strained and strange like that.

the dance that followed was more relatable and moving.

well, i never...

union square market was weirdly quiet yesterday during the noon hour--no greenmarket--and it allowed me to notice, even in my particular rush, the beautiful grey tones blending across the sky, and behind me, from the south, a bit of sun fighting through. i stopped to take it in and realized that i've never stopped on the southwest corner of union square park, and looked north.

it's really quite pretty.

there's this maginficent loner of a tree...

and the view, toward ladies mile.

what's the shiny thing? someone needs to do a little exploring with her aia guide...

bronze statue of Mohandas Gandhi was sculpted by kantilal b. patel.

dedicated to the park on october 2, 1986 on what would have been gandhi's 117th birthday.

read a good poem: upon discovering...

12/31/10

Upon Discovering My Entire Solution to the Attainment of Immortality Erased from the Blackboard Exce

If you have seen the snow
somewhere slowly fall
on a bicycle,
then you understand
all beauty will be lost
and that even the loss
can be beautiful.
And if you have looked
at a winter garden
and seen not a winter garden
but a meditation on shape,
then you know why
this season is not
known for its words,
the cold too much
about the slowing of matter,
not enough about the making of it.
So you are blessed
to forget this way:
a jump rope in the ice melt,
a mitten that has lost its hand,
a sun that shines
as if it doesn't mean it.
And if in another season
you see a beautiful woman
use her bare hands
to smooth wrinkles
from her expensive dress
for the sake of dignity,
but in so doing trace
the outlines of her thighs,
then you will remember
surprise assumes a space
that has first been forgotten,
especially here, where we
rarely speak of it,
where we walk out onto the roofs
of frozen lakes
simply because we're stunned
we really can.

--by Dobby Gibson, via the writer's almanac, nov 24, 2010

in all the wrong places...

fifth ave, nyc

he can do ma-gic...

(whoops)