Pencam

I found this batch of photos I took with a piece-of-crap pen camera in either 1999 or 2000. I took time out of my busy day at the Time & Life Building to grab some photos around the T&L and in nearby Times Square. I guess I thought I was being stealthy, since the camera was sold as a “spy” device. Some of the shots came out alright. Here are a few, with detailed annotations as appropriate.

This was the view from my office on the 4th floor of the Time & Life Building. The office itself was bigger than all four of my first apartments in New York, and if memory serves correctly it was bigger than my first three apartments combined. The blue art piece is called “Curved Cube”, by William Crovello.

Most offices in our department had televisions. Mine was probably the only TV with a choo-choo train on top. That’s not just a decorative train. It is actually a radio, from my now mostly vanquished collection of novelty radios. After I got shit-canned from AOL/Time-Warner in 2002 I shipped a bunch of stuff from my office to my apartment. Somehow, while in transit, that train radio got turned on and its volume turned up to the maximum. The box which contained this train radio arrived here blasting 1010 WINS so loud you probably could have heard it back at the CNN offices from which it had been shipped.

There were three payphones outside the Time & Life Building, three or four across the street, and until as late as 2009 2000 you could find a number of phone booths downstairs and one block up in the basement of the UBS Warburg Building. So you can see why I liked working in that area. I wonder what the sticker on the phone to the far left says?

Here’s where I was trying to be stealthy, surreptitiously capturing a photo of someone who likely could have had no idea that the pen I was holding was actually a camera. This picture almost works, just wish I could have caught a little more of her face. I think this was at the Smiler’s on 50th Street but I could be wrong.

Here is another view from my 4th floor office at the Time & Life Building.

A friend of mine, originally from one of North Carolina’s largest cities, told an amusing tale involving Tad’s Steaks. His hometown had a single Tad’s Steaks outlet. Somehow it was impressed upon this friend’s father that Tad’s was a local establishment, and that Tad was a native North Carolinian. So when my friend moved to San Francisco and his father came to visit he was mightily impressed to notice a number of Tad’s Steaks outlets in that west coast city. He said “Guess good old Tad’s doin’ alright, branching out to San Francisco.” Friend of mine had not the heart to tell his dad that Tad’s was a national chain, originally from I don’t know but anywhere other than North Carolina.

Here are a couple of people waiting to cross the street.

I remember that sign. Every time I saw it I thought it said “BE MORE BULLSHIT.”

These last three are my favorites of the set. Just everyday passers-by passing me by.