February 12, 2006
It's still coming down, you know. The current accumulation in Central Park is 18", estimated total to come for the whole NYC area being 16" - 24".
On the other hand, our landlord just turned up to shovel our sidewalk and front stoop. It's hard to complain.
Still snowing here, too.
Unfortunately, I am the landlady. (How did that happen?!)
Around noon, I went out and shoveld the front walk because the snow seemed to have slowed down a lot. Alas, it was only temporary, and you can't tell now that I was ever out there. And sometime later today, I'm going to have to not only shovel the walk again, but cleaer the parking lot--hopefully with the help of my neighbors and their handy little plow.
Well, at least we got spring this year, even if it was in January and the first half of February. Better than no spring at all, right?
I got rousted out of bed this morning by the sound of thunder. I knew it was snowing so that big rumble that woke me up... that couldn't be thunder for heaven's sake... so I got up to look and sure enough, a flash of lightning, then a roll of thunder. Weirdest thing. Never seen a snow-thunderstorm. You know how the sky goes completely featureless when it is snowing? When the lightning goes, it's like somebody just switched on a fluorescent light. Pure white light everywhere. Quite a sight, really.
I heard that NYC is having the second worst blizzard ever. Southwestern Long Island, however, seems to topping out at 8-10 inches. Not bad. (It is still snowing, but lightly, and the temp is right around freezing, so I don't think we'll get much more here.)
--Mary Aileen
The snow in this Boston suburb has been light and fluffy. So while there has been lots of snow, it has at least been easy to shovel. My neighbors are doing the right and proper thing to do in this weather: go cross-country skiing.
I'm getting some writing and design work done while waiting for the snow to pile back up so that I can go shovel it again.
I guess this is one good thing about living in the Albany area: far enough inland that we get very little of the coastal storms. (We've had a dusting, if that.)
Hope everyone digs out safely and gets where they need to okay.
Nice pictures.
My sisters and brother are still in the NYC area, probably watching the accumulation with dismay. My parents wisely fled to Florida for the season.
* * *
Portland had one afternoon of snow earlier in the year. It got things white enough to look pretty, and the roads just slippery enough to be a menace.
The Indian fellow across the hall had never, ever seen snow in person, and was taking pictures to email back home.
It was all gone by the next day, washed away rain.
Now, it's 50 F and sunny. I really should be outside. And I'm going to; TaxCut and my folder of reciepts will still be here when I get back.
Keep warm and drive safe!
For whatever it's worth (and you've no doubt been there to look) the NWS says it's going to be 50 degrees on Wednesday and Thursday.
I'm entirely aware that this does not mean the Snow will Vanish like a cheap magic trick. (My first Real Blizzard was Chicago '67, which was bad, though it didn't actually bring down the city government. That was '79, and I was long gone by then.)
Wow. That totally kicks the ass of the 1/2 inch-and-gone-by-morning we got in Tennessee. I sulk now.
I hope the newspaper delivery people find their papers before Wednesday. The 1967 blizzard which hit DC did a lot of things, but one was that I couldn't deliver the Washington Star Sunday edition until three days later. It was the very definition of fishwrap.
Holy wow, that is some snowfall.
I especially like the third one, with the red tail light peeping out in a sea of monochrome greys and whites.
Crazy(and grateful to just be looking at it, not living it, here in Belgium)Soph
We had much less here in DC; more like eight inches or so of nice fluffy stuff. Took me less than an hour and a half to shovel thirty steps and a hundred and fifty feet of four-foot-wide sidewalk. (Not bragging; the snow was light and hadn't frozen to the walk.)
68F and sunny in Berkeley, CA...
I hadn't realized I'd become so blaze about snow until I looked at those pictures and thought "Nice photos" and then read the comments and realized that this wasn't pretty much what everyone habitually sees when one looks out of the window.
About 80, sunny, breezy and very dry (think 20% humidity) in the northwest San Fernando Valley. Great weather for pyromaniacs!
We had six inches in NoVA and it's happily melting away. For some odd reason, the bit of walk that leads up to my stoop (and that of my elderly, also disabled, upstairs neighbor) didn't get shoveled. When I heard shoveling outside, I went out to thank whichever neighbor had taken it on, and it was Luke -- he may be 87 and legally blind, but he was intent on shoveling that snow.
Michael, those are called thundersnows and we get them here every couple of years.
Linkmeister, our WashPost delivery folk delivered all the Sunday pre-print with Saturday's paper, and managed to deliver the rest this morning about 4am, so I'm happy.
Snow is wasted on the people who have to live in it. I'm sure I might lose the novelty quickly but snow still has some magic for me.
26.9 inches in Central Park. New York City has a new record.
We've got about 15 inches at my house south of Baltimore. The power is out down the road but we're fine (duh, I guess or I wouldn't be online.) School's closed for tomorrow and my younger boys are making plans to go skiing and sledding.
Kit, my oldest son, is in NYC this weekend. He's got an appointment at SVA admissions tomorrow morning. He said he wasn't worried about the school closing and not being able to make his appointment because New York schools never close.
Meanwhile, apart from the Winter Olympics, the BBC reported on what happens when you send a rocket-boosted Mini down a ski-jump.
Trouble is, it was nose heavy.
Marilee said: those are called thundersnows and we get them here every couple of years
What a great word. Thanks! Great link, too. It says you might not hear/see a thundersnow from more than a mile away which makes senes with what I saw. There was only a second or so between the light and the thunder. It seemed to be just about right over me.
All of a sudden I feel like one of those people who've seen "strange lights in the night sky." Now all I need is some recovered memories and I'll be set.
I realize it's rather like being glad I wasn't born in Germany because I don't speak German, but wow, I'm glad I was born in California — after 4 generations here, the blood has become very thin. Big ol' weather wimps, all of us. I'm slightly in awe of all of you who manage to live places that get snow like that. I'd be utterly useless: "Sorry, first snowfall of the season, tucking up in bed and won't be out until May..."
Where I live, just outside Atlanta, we had sporadic flurries all morning. It didn't stick.
Lexica: I'm with you. My SO occasionally calls me a "hothouse flower".
(I have noticed, actually, that since I started going to a gym my preferred temperature range has changed a bit; what used to be pleasantly warm is now unpleasantly so, while what was annoyingly cold is now the cool side of comfortable. My optimal temperature has moved down by perhaps four kelvins.
Which is not to say that I want to live anywhere that gets snow regularly.)
Still coming down in Cambridge; the roads are clear, the sidewalks...well, ours is clear. Or was, and will be again.
Jon: Arisia was last month (and pretty much snowless), but it's Boskone's turn next anyway after last year's Arisia blizzard.
Here are some pix from Pleasantville. I don't know how much snow we got: a lot. More than 2 feet. The schools out here just announced a 2 hour school delay for tomorrow. We decided not to bother shoveling out tonight, since it's going to be windy and with drifting we'd just have to do it all over again in the morning. Also, tomorrow it's supposed to be 10 degrees warmer.
Great pictures. Reminds me of a childhood spent in NY, college years in Cleveland (where one year it snowed on June 1) and my five unforgettable winters in Chicago. I left Chicago in August 1972 and never looked back. I do not miss snow. I do not miss it in a boat, I do not miss it with a goat... I could find it if I wanted it -- yes, we have snow in California in the winter, oodles of it -- but I don't. Miss. Snow. I sometimes miss thunderstorms, though.
Enjoy...
Took me awhile to find this...
When the struck ice rings with two pure notes, when wood stands in the tree as hard as glass, when iron snaps and cracks and crumbles, when the fire damps and dims and dies for the sake of the keen of the wind coming back down the chimney, swirling, the stovepipe that almost glowed with the heat in it quenched blue and fragile with the freezing air, then it can snow, one wide obliterating whiteness that leaves deep wells around the boles of trees and humped and crawling drifts over the northern eaves of houses, one white haze over the world at the noon-tide and a stinging, flake-toothed blackness through all the long hours of the night.
Yup. That's what february SHOULD look like.
Of course, the heretical Bavarians don't realize this, and so I'm stuck with 20cm of mush with vague relationship to snow.
Ah, it looks like a typical Buffalo day. Time to shovel off the car and drive to work, wot?
It's always funny to see somewhere that's not my hometown get a large amount of snow. And yet they always pick on us.
Yesterday's plan for today:
Drive from NYC back to Boston.
Today's plan for today:
No.
Graydon -- where did you find it? Yum.
Lizzy --
That's from a 1997 usenet post of mine.
My filing system isn't all that it could be.
Suddenly, 6 weeks of near continuous rain (over 15" for January) doesn't seem too bad. Stay warm and have some nice hot beverages.
oh, pretty!
here in minnesota it's been a relatively light year for snow. however i'm hearing things about single digit fahrenheit highs for next weekend that are making me a little nervous.
Looks pretty. Not quite a normal day, but not so unusual as to occasion much comment.
Of course, I live a little north of Toronto and grew up somewhat further north still.
To be fair, the figures Jim quoted -- 26.9 inches -- are rather worse than the pictures seem to show, and really would inconvenience just about any place I know, for 24 hours or so, until the ploughs got out over the entire area.
Wow, look at that! It's been so long since I've been in a blizzard like that. And today in Seattle it was sunny and balmy. There's a part of me that really misses proper winter weather. But there's another part of me that remembers the necessary shoveling and thinks, "Not so much."
(PS--Hi Teresa!)
I live on the 17th floor and my living room windows have a south/southwest orientation. My terrace is about 10ft x 8ft. Because of the angle of the bedroom wing to the living room space the terrace is usually protected from rain and much snow. The snow made it all the way to the building wall and was about 8in deep on the terrace. I didn't go outside but I poked my head out the terrace door a couple of times to feel the snow blown around by the wind. Early this morning I really liked how the blowing snow looked -- like white mist in the air.
Thundersnow!
*envy*
Cripes how miss Iowa. Cleveland gets snow, but there's nothing like a good old Iowa blizzard with thundersnow and a wind that makes the house lean.
Followed by an arctic blast cold enough to freeze the moisture out of the air and coat it all with tiny ice crystals...wind etched drifts sparkling under a blue white moon...
Dammitall, now I'm getting homesick.
Okay, Andrew posted my entry.
I woke up in Brooklyn this morning, and it was lovely, but I was quite thoroughly snowbound in New York. I'm crashing out at my brother's place outside NYC tonight, and driving home in the morning. And taking 95, not the Merritt, to be on the safe side. I thought I was in good shape because I don't have any meetings in the morning, but apparently I am in excellent shape - my college is actually closed tomorrow, so I have no meetings at all. I get to work at home before going to see Cory Doctorow read at MIT.
We woke up to a beautiful winter wonderland in Alexandria. We also woke up to the power being out. This was bad timing for me--I was booked on a flight out of Nat'l airport (yes, it's now Reagan Nat'l airport *blech*) that was cancelled. I finally got a 5pm flight to Denver, with a connection to Albuquerque that is now delayed to 10:10pm, Denver time. Ugh ugh ugh. Nine hours sitting in airports today. I wish I could have stayed home and romped in the snow with the dog.
This is the kind of weather (well, not 30" of it, but you get the picture) I had in mind when I went out in December and bought a snowblower . I finally grew tired of risking a coronary and generally tearing up my back and shoulders every time I shoveled the driveway. And wouldn't you know it - we have had all of 2" during the worst of the falls we have had so far.
Still and all, probably cheap life insurance...
Stay warm and well!
> My SO occasionally calls me a "hothouse flower".
David, I'm very happy to read this; congratulations. It's been a long time since we whiled away the hours in the basement of Evans Hall at UCB (speaking of chilly), being net.addicts in the finest tradition of the word.
(The email address karlht@ocf.berkeley.edu may or may not mean anything to you after all these years; not to worry if it doesn't. Just know that someone from the old days is happy that you are alive and well and partnered.)
Brad DeLong: 68F and sunny in Berkeley, CA...
I know! It's cooled down a bit over the last few days, too. We had the most wonderful picnic on Friday, it was 72 and sunny with a lovely breeze...
I was born and raised in California. This is my kind of winter. Snow can stay where it belongs - that is, away from me. :-)
I was born and raised in California. This is my kind of winter.
Abruptly I am reminded of an episode of "Lou Grant," in which Lou, having his first Christmas in LA after relocating from Minneapolis,* sees a bell-ringing Santa wearing red shorts and sandals. Outraged, Lou asks what the guy supposes the kids are going to think seeing Santa like that. Santa replies, "What are they going to think if they see Santa passed out on the sidewalk?"
*where this is, purely coincidentally, being written. Relatively little snow just now. Ten degrees. Next serious chance of snow is Wednesday . . . by which time I will be in New York.
When I lived in Carlisle, PA, we had 28 inches one March day. (I think that was the anniversary of the blizzard of 1893, but I'm not positive) Two guys in my apartment complex shoveled a path just big enough for one car out of the parking lot, so that the lady on dialysis could make it to the hospital. I wish I'd had a digital camara then.
Heh. It was so sunny and warm in the Bay Area that I forgot it was winter elsewhere.
I spent the weekend planting roses and citrus trees, and moving sod around in the garden. It's been long enough that I've been away from the Northeast that February doesn't make me think "snowfall and resulting slushy curbs" any more, but rather "prime gardening season." This is the time when we have enough rainfall to let plants get established.
I love that sort of picture of snow, though. It always looks so clean and beautiful before people come along and ass it all up.
Hey, I've been trying to convince the publishing industry that NY was a bad choice. No one seems to think Oahu would be a great place to set up office...
Taken Dec 3rd. Stay inside, stay warm, give aloha!
-=Jeff=-
Ahh image blocked. http://static.flickr.com/18/69896036_5c628a9631_m.jpg
Cornfed wrote: Cripes how miss Iowa. Cleveland gets snow, but there's nothing like a good old Iowa blizzard with thundersnow...
Damn. I lived in Iowa for three years, I've been to one World's Fair, a picnic and a rodeo and yesterday was the first I ever heard of thundersnow. Of course, I lived in Iowa City which isn't the same as "Iowa" exactly. There may have been an ordinance.
I would like to point out that you got our snow. I don't mind very much, but my boyfriend would like to have it up here so he can go skiing.
And here in Western Massachusetts, we only got about 4 inches. Enough to be lovely but not crushing in its impact. However about twenty miles to the east, they got a lot more.
Jane
It's always funny to see somewhere that's not my hometown get a large amount of snow. And yet they always pick on us.
I grew up in Amherst, NY. Now that I no longer live there, I find that no one believes me when I tell them that Buffalo is really not in a state of perpetual blizzard. (I did find the area exceptionally windy though.)
Wow, that's the kind of weather that calls for hanging out in the kitchen and cooking some serious comfort food.
Snow, snow, snow...
(That's supposed to sound like Bing Crosby & Danny Kaye singing with Rosemary Clooney & Vera-Ellen.)
Oh, man, I hurt all over. I spent pretty much all day yesterday shoveling and snowblowing. I think we got close to the two-feet mark. I do our sidewalk/driveway/steps, and then I go up and down the block on both sides and try to at least get the front sidewalks of the neighbors.
On a positive note, I finally figured out what the heck was wrong with my snowblower. It has been acting weird the last couple fo times I've been using it, and I couldnt' afford to not use it yesterday, so when it died on my I poked around with it for about half an hour and found the throttle doesn't have a direct connect to the cauberator, it's a weird rube-goldberg contraption that involves a couple of linkages that pivot, and some springs, and the problem occurs when the springs get tired and don't spring back. Now, when it dies, I know to reach underneath and pull the last linkage forward and that fixes it.
I think I want my next snowblower to be a Bobcat with an enclosed cab.
Richard, you're right on the money. I made a king-sized pot of jambalaya yesterday, and boy howdy was that good. Much of the rest of the day was spent curled up on the couch watching the Olympics. Every now and then we got up to check on the awesome snowdrifts forming on the fire escape. What more could one want under such circumstances?
Aw, foo.
If you really get the 50 degree days, we won't get the follow-up pictures of all the folding chairs and card tables and wierd crap people put in the parking spaces they shoveled out to stake their claim.
My grandma fled the Sierras ASAP (only a ghost town remains), and as a second-generation Bay Arean I still find snow exotic. Luckily, Prescott doesn't get all that much even in a wet year -- not so far, anyway. But we did have snowthunder once. Amazing! Now I'm just waiting for temps in the 70s and things to start blooming.
Teresa is one of the very few people who have seen me and snow together at the same time, so this may give her a sense of deja vu:
AAAAIIIIIIEEEEEE!!!!!!!
Man, I hate snow. Yeh, it's very pretty. But it's cold. It's cold, and it hurts. It's solid water! That's just unnatural. The world isn't supposed to work that way.
The time Teresa saw my reaction to snow was while driving over Wolf Creek Pass in an icestorm. I told the other people in the car that route was a bad idea, but did they listen to me? No-o-o-o-o.... So I think I was perfectly justified in pulling my jacket over my head and moaning. (No, I wasn't driving. Fortunately, one of the other passengers, Jim, had lived in Montana for a while and had experience driving on ice-covered roads. And I was paranoid enough about driving in Colorado, period, that I'd put a set of tire chains in the trunk; otherwise, we'd probably have all gone sailing off the edge of the road and down into some deep canyon where our frozen bodies would have been eaten by wolves in the spring thaw. So, when you come right down to it, Teresa is alive today because of me. Say thank you, Patrick.)
Richard and Andrew...I made habanero oil following Teresa's heuristic Saturday night. I was toasty warm, thank you. And when I tasted the oil at the end...yummmmm! Not just hot, deLISHus. I mixed some with butter to gentle it a little and ate that with...hmm, never mind. Not quite prepared to admit how I ate the habanero butter.
As for the oil, it's upside down in the fridge per Miss Teresa's instructions. Still waiting for it to congeal. So far it's no more than vaguely cloudy, but I maintain hope.
In other news...anybody else think that, despite the actual numbers being a record, this just isn't as bad as the blizzard of '96? I remember Hoboken being closed to non-resident vehicles during that. And the city being pretty well paralyzed.
Am I just an old man? "Hah! This is NOTHIN'. I remember the BIG one...back in '96!"
Ye Gods, I hope not.
Ah, looks like time to cue up Loreena McKennitt's setting of Lampman's Snow.
Stay warm and watch for the play of light on the snow when the sun comes out. Those big fluffy flakes turn into millions of prisms.
I'm with you, Xopher. The '96 blizzard was a lot more widespread, I think. This one gave barely a foot to much of Long Island (less than that where I am); in '96 we got 20+ inches.
Or maybe *I'm* an old fogey, too. AIEE!
--Mary Aileen
Us *real* fogeys (grin) still rcall the blizzard of '78 (or was it '79? The memory is going...). I was living in Cambridge, MA at the time. The snow forced the closure of most roads in the metropolitan region to nonemergency travel -- you'd walk outside, and the silence would be broken only by the sound of human voices and the distant whump-whump of military helicopters delivering supplies. Skiing on the Charles was a special treat for this California boy.
Now I'm living at 6,000 feet in the Sierra Nevada, where the current snowpack at our elevation is less than 70 percent of the average for this time of year (although it's at 140 percent on the ridgeline to the west -- a result of moisture-laden cold fronts that dumped much of their loads before reaching town). We'd love to see a few more storms like the one that just hit NYC. Studded tires are on the car, and the Honda snowblower (gratuitious plug, but it's a heluva good machine) is gassed up and waiting....
Those of us from the SF Bay Area remember the blizzard of '75 — a whole half-inch of snow! And my parents still made me go to kindergarten, and by the time I got home, somebody had scraped the snow off our yard and a number of other yards and had made a 1-foot-tall snowman, leaving not enough to even make a decently-sized snowball to throw at anybody. *sulk*
Here in central CA it's nearly 60F and the forcase high is 70. The first couple of irises opened over the weekend, and the (several million) fruit trees around her just started to blossom. (Lots of hives around, too.) It is supposed to drop by at least 10 degrees by Wednesday, though.
Think warm.
JKRichard, I'll put in a plug for Oahu; we have a few publishers out here, but not enough. I'm also available for employment, should such a relocation take place.
MMM. Impressive for the place that gets to complain that snow in December means an interruption of the citrus harvest. Owie. That looks like our first major snow here at its end ... but I know it's mid-storm, and it definitely isn't the 26" you got in total according to Jim - which would be enough to close down brash ol' Winnipeggers who claim they can handle anything. (I still say that's because we know to stay indoors if possible on a day like this.)
Will there be more pictures of the final results?
I am so jealous.
We had a pitiful inch or two here, enough to be a nuisance, not enough to be enjoyable.
Damn storm moved ~ 40 miles east says weather service, or we'd have got the 4-6 inches forecast, which would at least have been respectable.
Well, in March 1999, Rochester, NY got two separate snowstorms that dropped over 40" of snow in 48 hours. The city was uncharacteristally overwhelmed. They wound up towing cars from Snow Emergency Streets (and some from non-emergency streets, too) to downtown parking garages and then made the buses free for a few days so people could go get their cars. With no tow fees.
Upstate is different.
I had crazy business school classmates that actually wanted to go to school and have meetings. I told them that they were nuts, and if they wanted me, I'd either be at home or at The Distellery, a bar within extended walking distance of my house.
Damn.
Here in Beverly Hills it's a bone-freezing 86 degrees Fahrenheit.
And I? Am okay with that.
I'd be happier with the more usual mid-seventies range, but hey, a Southern girl can't have everything.
(And, I just realized I have been mispelling "Fahrenheit" for years. Why's German names gots to be like that?)
It's beautiful.
I was in Budapest this weekend, and went to a bathhouse. There's something very strange yet wonderful about swimming outside in very hot water while the snow falls.
Leigh, I'm so sorry you have to live in such an uncomfortable and unnatural place (even the real trees look fake there). Should you ever decide to free yourself of whatever bonds keep you there and move to a place better suited to human habitation (plentiful water, changing seasons, REAL TREES), we'll welcome you with open arms.
Then we'll put snow down your back. Otherwise you won't know you're really here!
Xopher, you really like snow? I grew up in Quebec City and have no regret having left it behind. True, snow is pretty to look at, but the shoveling? Bleh.
By the way, Patrick, which of those buried vehicles is the Nielsen-HaydenMobile?
Ah, but Xopher, fake things looking real is our stock in trade! Our raison d'être, even! It's the MAGIC!
And, I know. Some people just can't take the unweather here. My mother came to visit for a week once, and by the second-to-last day had actually begun ranting about how sunny and beautiful the weather was consistently being and how it was driving her NUTS.
I do confess to missing thunderstorms, but as far as "real seasons" go, I've seen real snow precisely three times in my life and haven't felt the lack too terribly.
(If I ever actually follow through on my ambition to live in New York City for a spell, I'll probably be one of those idiots that manage to freeze themselves to death in November because I didn't know you're supposed to Krazy Glue your windows shut, or something. I hear you northern folk have to do all kinds of weird survival shit like that.)
I have seen snow twice, both times light sprinkles, and at a distance, and not here, of course. Here, it is 97 degrees Fahrenheit today. It was 97 degrees yesterday, and over 90 every day of the last four. It will be 98 degrees tomorrow, according to the forecast.
Just now, I want to see snow again. And this has been a very mild summer.
Linkmeister: I hope the newspaper delivery people find their papers before Wednesday. The 1967 blizzard which hit DC
?? I don't remember 1967 (my last winter in DC), but I remember a storm in 1966 that completely drifted over the 8'-deep cut the road went through near our house. (We were 1.5 miles from the middle of Potomac, on the non-posh side, if you remember from that far back.) We were used to wet snow bringing down the power lines about every other winter, but never to the sort that fills in deep patches and leaves bare crests exposed.
Richard: It was definitely 1978; I remember because Boskone somehow went on, but the schedule posters in the display cases showed everything else in the hotel had been canceled. I also remember the snowslide somebody built out of the 1-1/2--story window of a brownstone, and realizing the little button next to my foot was the top of a car's antenna....
Here (northwest corner of Boston) we got well over a foot, in several waves; only the guy with the miniature snowblower worked the ~noon lull, but everyone was out between 2 and 3 -- so all the first round of shoveling got masked over by ~3" of fresh snow. Now \most/ of the roads are clear; one major street in my office park was hardpack this morning without any asphalt showing. (I shouldn't have been surprised -- this is the first time in years my doorknob was cold enough to stick to bare skin when I went out for the paper.)
Lexica: half an inch? We got two inches in San Jose! And the plants survived the experience, too.
Leigh, you misread me. I was talking about REAL things looking FAKE there!
I agree with your mom though. My first visit to LA was in 1984 (for the worst WorldCon I've ever been to, which made me more irritable than I'd otherwise have been). I started talking about the "relentless LA sunshine" after a couple of days.
Even in NYC, I remember the first time I ever saw a completely cloudless sky for the second day in a row. I grew up in Michigan, and such a thing had never impinged on my consciousness before. Days on end without the sun so much as peeking out, that happened a lot.
But then I burn like a lobster in a few minutes, and make WAY too much vitamin D to be healthy. I've spent my life avoiding the sun...and that's why, at 46, I still get carded from time to time.
My favorite weather? 55 or so, overcast, with a mist or maybe a light drizzle. For some strange reason this makes me happy. Also homesick for Ireland, a place I've never been.
Xopher writes My first visit to LA was in 1984 (for the worst WorldCon I've ever been to, which made me more irritable than I'd otherwise have been)...
The worst worldcon? How come? For me, it was probably my best worldcon, and not just for reasons related to today's celebrations. It was also my first trip to California, and my first trip to the West Coast. I remember our driving down from SF and first being introduced to LA's highways. Yes, I could see the dirty buildings off the side of the road, but this was frigging California. And I'll never forget zipping past an old gas station that had on its lot the six-wheeled vehicle from Damnation Alley. (No, Susan Sarandon wasn't near.)
I've seen snow four times close up (not counting on top of distant mountains or from overflying jets). Twice I've seen it actually falling; once in December(?!?!?!) around Blayney/Oberon, from the night train to Broken Hill, and once in a midwinter Canberra.
But if you are discussing snow-deprivation, let us consider some bereft peoples' childhood Christmases, and the lengths they had to go to.
I'm now feeling kind of apprehensive, because I'm due to fly into JFK tomorrow (Wednesday) and need to get to a hotel in town.
What sort of level of disruption to transport should I expect?
Xopher wrote:
"But then I burn like a lobster in a few minutes, and make WAY too much vitamin D to be healthy. I've spent my life avoiding the sun...and that's why, at 46, I still get carded from time to time."
Oh, hey, I got carded at age 48. But that was because the little bastard at the movie theater wanted to know if I qualified for the senior discount. Which I hadn't even asked for.
Nobody has carded me yet for looking close to retirement, Bruce. It probably won't happen for a few more years, based on what happened on my way out of the office yesterday. I was riding the elevator down to "G" (officially the 'ground' level, officiously the 'get the Hell out' level) with the mailroom guy, who said it was quite windy, at which I expressed concern about our respective toupees flying off. One young woman also riding down made some comments, to the effect that neither of us looks like we wear toupees. At first I thought she meant that our hairlines looked too thin and too much like General Zod's to be fake, but, no, she said we still have too much hair to need a toupee. That made my day.
Charlie Stross: I'm now feeling kind of apprehensive, because I'm due to fly into JFK tomorrow (Wednesday) and need to get to a hotel in town. [...] What sort of level of disruption to transport should I expect?
None, I should think. It's a bright sunny day today, into the 40s or maybe 50s. The streets have been plowed. You might face large Alps-sized mounds of snow and/or lakes of slush while trying to cross at some street corners, but even those are going away. Tomorrow (Wednesday) no precip predicted and temps should be in the 50s.
It's snowing here in Seattle - and I left my computer at work so I have to go in. :-( Won't be 26" though, more like 0.26", but enough to send everyone and everything into a panic.
Wish me luck.
While here in central OK, it's still dry as a bone. Well, I admit we DID get an inch of rain a few weeks ago. We have a Siberian iris blooming, and they're watering the grass on campus.
Yeah, I remember '96. I drove from Nashville to Pittsburgh for an interview just a day or two later. All the way from the neighbor's kids not owning a pair of gloves to play in the snow, through ever-increasing numbers of cars abandoned by the side of the highway, to 36" on my parents' back porch. I have this wonderful video about it put out by one of the Pittsburgh TV stations (true weather pr0n!). I do NOT miss driving in snow, thank you, and Arizona's looking mighty tempting...
Heh. Turns out that the dusting that stuck immediately melted with the first rays of sunshine. Even our crazy traffic was unaffected.
Serge: they did everything on the cheap. And they were really obvious about running it as a profit-making venture for their club. Lest you think I was the only one who felt that way, there was a run on "Better Dead Than Mellow" buttons, and I got quite a laugh (and singing along) from some folks from Maryland by filking "Rock the Casbah" with "Fuck the ConCom."
Also, it was billed as LA but held in Anaheim, which is like advertising New York and holding the convention in Garden City. I felt baited and switched once I found out. "Oh, it's just a short drive!" Great. I have no license. Remind me never to trust you again.
There are many things to like about Southern California (San Diego, for example, where you can't throw a water balloon into a crowd without drenching a truly magnificent specimen of manhood). But that club isn't going to trick me again into flying 3000 miles to air-condition their clubhouse, or whatever their next project is.
Oh, hey, I got carded at age 48. But that was because the little bastard at the movie theater wanted to know if I qualified for the senior discount. Which I hadn't even asked for.
Don't you hate them? A couple of weeks ago one young gentleman encouraged me to take back something I said with the kind phrasing "Put your dentures in and eat your words, old man."
Since the statement in question was that I thought he was a reasonable human being, I was glad to do so, and closed with "Take your retainer out and give head to a shotgun, s***head." I'm afraid I shocked his delicate sensibilities.
Xopher says:
Leigh, you misread me. I was talking about REAL things looking FAKE there!
That's in order to facilitate the fake things looking real.
Besides, lovely live oaks they ain't, but if jacaranda trees are an example of fake L.A. trees, I can deal with it.
But then I burn like a lobster in a few minutes, and make WAY too much vitamin D to be healthy. I've spent my life avoiding the sun...
Well dude, no wonder then. Anyone with an excessive sensitivity to sun has absolutely no business in Southern California.
*shrug* Me, I like it. L.A.'s definitely got its issues, but I really like that on pretty much any day of the year I can go to my favorite coffee shop and sit outside in the sunlight and read or write or whatever, and it's warm and dry and beautiful.
The one thing I don't miss about New Orleans is the climate.
My favorite weather? 55 or so, overcast, with a mist or maybe a light drizzle. For some strange reason this makes me happy.
Then I heartily recommend San Francisco to your attention.
My favorite weather? 55 or so, overcast, with a mist or maybe a light drizzle.
Yeah, that's San Francisco all right. Everybody always says the weather is "so nice" in SF, but I find it windy and cold.
Give me snow, or temperatures in the single digits, and I know it's cold, so I dress appropriately. But 55 is a temperature that I don't know how to dress for. I prefer 70.
You know, Laura, the late Herb Caen, columnist at the San Francisco Chronicle, used to say one can easily recognize tourists in the Cool Grey City of Love during summer: they were the only ones wearing shorts.
And the surest way to be swamped by tourists asking for directions and the like is to show up around the Wharf or Ghiradelli Square dressed appropriately for the weather.
San Francisco has some interesting microclimates. If you live out in the Richmond, or in the Sunset or the Marina, or even in the Haight, you can pretty much expect many fog-bound mornings and evenings across a year. South-of-the-slot neighborhoods like Potrero Hill, SOMA, Rincon Hill, Dogpatch, and much of the Mission, however, can be downright balmy. When I lived in the latter, my friends and I grew tomatoes, squash, lemongrass, jalapenos, arugula, and basil in our apartment building's back yard. I don't think that's possible west of Twin Peaks.
To return somewhat to the subject of this thread, I recall the San Francisco Chronicle back in the 1970s (perhaps very early '80s) running a front-page photo of a XC skier on one of the city's streets during a snowstorm. Although snow events were rare then, they seem nonexistent now.
(Apologies to non San Franciscans for the extreme provincialism of ths post.)
Richard Anderson wrote:
I was living in Cambridge, MA at the time. The snow forced the closure of most roads in the metropolitan region to nonemergency travel -- you'd walk outside, and the silence would be broken only by the sound of human voices and the distant whump-whump of military helicopters delivering supplies. Skiing on the Charles was a special treat for this California boy.
Oh my gracious. I miss Boston like my heart, and a big snow is always magical for someone who grew up in North Carolina, as I did. The idea of Boston in a snow big enough to create total silence -- the way anything over a foot does in NC -- is tremendously beautiful to me.
To return somewhat to the subject of this thread, I recall the San Francisco Chronicle back in the 1970s (perhaps very early '80s) running a front-page photo of a XC skier on one of the city's streets
I recall that one of the first uses of a TV camera van (KPIX, IIRC) was to cover snow on Twin Peaks - enough to have snowball fights!
And then there were the snowplows on Skyline Blvd in the Santa Cruz Mountains (routine winter snow of 6-12 inches).
Jacaranda trees! I competed in the Gay Games in late 2002, in Sydney. The Jacarandas were in riotous bloom. I'll never forget them--these shameless purple masses you could see for miles.
I would love to be in Sydney right now.
The Bay Area, aka the hairy sweaty armpit of America the Good. And, as one of my co-workers said even after working on Wall Street and finding SF people too laid back, he wouldn't have it any other way.
Serge - if your co-worker finds SF people too laid back, he should try Portland or Seattle!
And FWIW, I found SF Bay people, especially Silicon Valley types every bit as aggressive as Wall Streeters - and I worked on Wall St for over 10 years so I've got some basis for this assertion.
True, Larry, but my co-worker seems to feel that his other co-workers (yours truly not included of course) are a little bit too unstructured in their approach to our business. I think that's what he means. Anyway, when people complain about living around the Bay Area, I'd like to suggest that they come live in Albuquerque. Or drive a bit north of SF to the top of Mount Tamalpais on a sunny day - that truly is a view to kill for.
Xopher wrote:
Also, it was billed as LA but held in Anaheim, which is like advertising New York and holding the convention in Garden City.
Not to a resident. Different part of the country, different geographical thinking. More importantly, different transportational thinking. "LA" (which is different from both "the city of Los Angeles" and "Los Angeles County") isn't a place; it's a whole territory, whose bounds are "anywhere you can drive to from Los Angeles City Hall without seeing undeveloped land". And by that definition, Anaheim is "in LA".
The Anaheim Convention Center (at which the Worldcon was held) is next door to Disneyland. If you ask people where Disneyland is, you'll probably get a lot of people saying "in LA". Even though it's outside Los Angeles County. (If you told friends you were going to LA and visiting Disneyland, I doubt anyone would object "But Disneyland isn't in LA!") Are the people who place Disneyland "in LA" being deceitful?
I felt baited and switched once I found out.
It didn't occur to you to look at a map before you left? Or to do a little research? The Worldcon may have been pre-Google, but travel guides were certainly readily available.
But that club isn't going to trick me again
I get the impression that New Yorkers, on the whole, are willing to walk considerable distances to get where they're going. Los Angeles residents aren't. This post talks of New Yorkers walking to work during a blackout. A Los Angeles resident, faced with travelling the same distance on foot, without his car, simply wouldn't go. I've amazed my car mechanic by walking an hour to get to his shop. I've seen people get into their cars to go half a block. They'll circle parking lots endlessly to get a parking spot fifty feet closer to the mall. Walking just isn't done.
Now, if you were organizing an event in New York to which Los Angeles people were coming, you might describe the site as "within walking distance of many good restaurants". Would it occur to you to explain to the Los Angeles people what "within walking distance" meant to you? And would you think them unreasonable if they accused you of trickery for describing the restaurants as "within walking distance" when they were clearly (to the LA people) much too far away to walk to?
The con committee, being good LA residents, very probably just didn't think of people as being carless, because, as you discovered, being carless means being all but immobile. It's assumed that, if you don't bring your own car, you'll rent one, because a car is all but a necessity here. (While there is a public transportation system, it's far less convenient to use it than to just drive somewhere.)
I have no trouble believing that the con committee was excessively "LA-centric"; being "<your city here>-centric" is an easy trap to fall into. But I think to accuse them of outright "trickery" --of deliberate dishonesty--is going far overboard. It seems to me no more dishonest for them to assume you'd have a car than for you to assume (as you clearly did) that you wouldn't need one.
Glen - When I hear something described as "in LA" I do tend to check, but I basically agree with Xopher. LA to me is from Downtown west to the ocean, and takes in Beverly Hills, Santa Monica and West Hollywood.
Anaheim, Pasadena, Burbank, the Valley and basically anything east of downtown or south of Marina del Rey should be billed as LA vicinity.
I, for one, would never hold an event in Redmond or Bellevue and call it Seattle. Seattle to out-of-towners is the Space Needle, the Public Market and Puget Sound. Not the suburbs, however nice they may be.
Nor would I hold an event in Brooklyn or Queens and call it New York, even though both are part of NYC. NYC to out-of-towners is the Empire State Building, Wall St, Central Park, not Flushing Meadow Park and Flushing Main Street.
Although you can easily get from Flushing to Manhattan without a car.
It seems to me no more dishonest for them to assume you'd have a car than for you to assume (as you clearly did) that you wouldn't need one.
Worldcons 20 years ago were attended by people all over the economic scale, which means that for a lot of them a ticket and a hotel room was a substantial outlay; most of them were in places that didn't require a car, so not telling people that a car was a strongly-desirable additional expense is less than frank.
These days they'd get called on it, because the no-zone plan has made more bids competitive; in 1984 they were effectively unopposed.
And I don't think it's unreasonable to expect a \World/con committee to speak in something close to a common tongue, rather than regionalisms.
All of which ignores the fact that they ran the convention to make a lot of money. The ice cream social was massively undersupplied; the registration lines ran out the building and down the driveway (in the August LA sun) because they got experienced people to run registration and gave them half of the materiel needed; the convention was solidly in the black before a single at-the-door member registered.
Well, I will say that I went to the WorldCon held in exactly the same place in 1996, and had a great time. And I'm looking forward to the one to be held there later this year.
CHip, I'm willing to believe that DC blizzard was '66 rather than '67. I just remember worrying about my customers not getting their papers for days. Either my work ethic was extraordinary or I got docked for deliveries not made.
I have to agree with Mr. Fisher about LA transportation habits. I lived there (Century City and Westwood) for a while, and cars are assumed. Public transport (meaning the bus) was what you rode when your car was in the shop, and if it was going to be in the shop more than that day, renting a car was automatic. I don't know whether Enterprise Rent-a-Car started in LA, but it wouldn't surprise me if their concept of neighborhood car rental agencies began there.
David Goldfarb said that he went to the WorldCon held in exactly the same place in 1996, and had a great time. Wasn't 1996 when LA held a NASFiC, but across the street from where the earlier worldcon was? (I think that was also the year of the big LA fire in the hills.) They did have a worldcon, in 1999 I think, and it was held at the same location as 1984's and this year's. Right?
Heck, it's down the street from DisneyLand. One can walk there easily. (My saying that probably betrays my East Coast origins.) Let's not quibble about misconceptions about the location of the LAcon. It'll be fun, no matter where it is in the real world as opposed to where Californians consider it to be.
One more bit of (Bay Area) parochialism: the East Bay is warmer, espec. in summer, and once past the hills toward Walnut Creek, etc., you'll find true summer in the suburbs -- if you want it.
Well, you can run a Worldcon to lose money - Baltimore did it in 1983 - but the idea is to at least break even. making money means you can pass money to the next one. I can tell you that break-even for 1984 was set at 6000 members (I remember sitting through several con-com meetings and a giant envelope stuffing session, where we stuffed 6000 giant envelopes in 6 hours); every member after that meant the possibility of more programming or something. Making lots of money was in fact not the point. (The 'Star Wars' marathon brought in a lot of extra people.) And there were people who showed up for the ice cream social who didn't actually have memberships. (I also think that some may have gotten more than one serving of ice cream.)
I wonder if this year's LAcon will have the full-sized Gort standing at the entrance of the dealers room...
Faren - The South Bay (San Jose, Santa Clara, Cupertino) can also be 20+ degrees warmer than SF. During the turn-of-the-century madness, I lived in the city and worked in the valley, and often found myself overdressed for the weather when I got to work since it might be 55 degrees at home and 85 at work.
I remain amazed that there's not a permanent thunderstorm installed somewhere between San Bruno and San Carlos as the warm line moves up and down the peninsula.
Back to the winter aspect of this thread... I haven't been following the Winter Games currently going on in Italy, but I did catch Jon Stewart's 'reporting' on the opening ceremonies. Based on the clips he showed, I'd tend to agree with him that, had Fellini been around, even he would have thought this was a little too much. The Italians's weirdest idea was to have the entrance of each country's team accompanied by an American pop song of the Seventies and Eighties. I don't know what Canada's song was, but somehow the last pop song I'd associate with Iran is funky town...
NYC to out-of-towners is the Empire State Building, Wall St, Central Park, not Flushing Meadow Park
Flushing Meadows? The site of two "New York" World's Fairs?
Yes, I know, different city self-images and external images. There's probably a decent book in that.
Speaking as a Californian, a resident of LA, and a one-time visitor to NYC: I think of Brooklyn as part of New York, although not necessarily part of 'Long Guyland'. Staten Island is more or less part of New York. Newark is part of the New York area: flying into New York means Kennedy, La Guardia, or Newark, like flying into LA means LAX, Burbank, or Orange County.
This talk of New York and Brooklyn reminds me of Betty Garrett's taxi-driving character in On The Town as the whole gang is being chased by Manhattan cops on the Brooklyn Bridge. She exclaims that she knows a place in Brooklyn where the cops will never be able to find them. When asked for clarifications, she simply says:
"Brooklyn!"
Off topic, but what the heck... Today, on her web site, Diane Duane proudly announced that it's been 19 years since she married Peter Morwood. She goes thru all his qualifications before ending with his impressing Paris cabbies with his French accent, and sticking pills down reluctant cats.
As a resident of LA - albeit a transplant - I don't consider Anaheim to be LA by any stretch of the imagination. Indeed there is a big to-do about the (major league baseball team) Angels being called "The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim", which I think is the stupidest thing in the whole world.
The public transit situation here is far from perfect; in fact it is much closer to "suck". I am lucky to work across the street from a subway stop, and last time I went apartment hunting, I made sure my apartment was close enough to major bus routes and/or subway lines. Still, I find myself carpooling with my roommate often, if for no other reason, because sometimes walking even bus stop distances can make you sweaty and fatigued.
The general spirit of the city is much different from NYC, but just because the fake people get all the publicity doesn't make the city feel any faker than others. I tend not to move in the same circles as phonies and tools, so that helps. I do think Anglenos are as "fake" as New Yorkers are "rude"; if you're looking for it, you'll find it.
I can't help but think I should prefer New York to LA; it certainly has more bookstores, venues for non-trendy music, cheap food places, and awesome public transit. Not to mention that I sunburn with the least provocation (had to call out sick a couple of summers ago for sun poinsoning!). But despite the chronic smog, the weird racial tensions, the lack of distinct seasons, the crap governor (our Mayor's pretty awesome though!), the shitty traffic and the whimsical approach to public transit, I can't think of any place I'd rather live.
The aforementioned Jacarandas, as well as giant jade plants and glossy green and yellow/orange citrus trees, the art deco architecture scattered seemingly at random throughout the city, the breathtaking views of the Pacific when travelling along the coast, the silhouettes of the palm trees against the sunset, the friendliness of the neighbors (no matter how much they insist, do NOT accept a rosewater drink after two cups of Armenian coffee!), an yes, even the smog clouded view of the Hollywood sign from the bedroom window of my cute apartment in a grimy, pre-gentrified neighborhood - all these things still make me catch my breath a little.
It's entirely irrational, but I don't think I ever want to leave.
I was rude to a lot of fake people in 1984!
Also, I was a callow youth (thus didn't check assumptions), barely three years out of college, and only the fact that plane flights were (IIRC) way cheap that year got me there at all. I couldn't have afforded a car even I were licensed to drive one. (Keep in mind that car-rental places charge a premium for the under-25 driver.)
My resentment toward the LACon ConCom was fueled by the fact that Anaheim is an entirely pointless place to be, absent the convention itself (unless one wants to visit Disneyland, which I've never wanted to do...it was within easy (New Yorker) walking distance, and there was a discount IIRC, but I didn't go). Some people tried to mollify me (or maybe not) by telling me that Anaheim was really pretty much what LA is like; I believed them for years. I know better now though!
I mean, a friend and I walked (!) to a Chinese restaurant, which had good (if somewhat bland by NYC standards) food. But when we asked for chopsticks they were amazed. All the members of the family who ran it came out to watch the round-eyes eat with chopsticks, which they'd never seen before. And of course we did it New Yorker fashion, with the plates decorously on the table, rather than held up to the mouth like a sensible poys'n would do.
Now I know that LA has a Chinatown, and I'll BET that white folks go there and eat with chopsticks without shocking anyone. But Anaheim! Anaheim is (or at any rate was) more middle-America than Middle America. Probably because of everyone going to Disneyland, which strikes me as a t
Comments on Brooklyn, this morning, 9:30 AM: