I am not a rap fan but JayZ really sums up New York in his “Empire State Of Mind” Video. If you are thinking about coming to New York this video shows some of the best places in the city to visit.

I always get asked about Central Park and even though it is not in Brooklyn it is a must see when you come into the city. I always wander around near Columbus Circle and then head East towards the Central Park zoo before heading up towards the reservoir. Here is a cool video I found that shows some other cool things to see in the park.

If you are going to walk around in Central Park make sure you bring comfortable shoes, a bottle of water, and maybe some binoculars as there are many types of birds.

Great song about Christmas in New York City.

Today I am standing on a subway platform in downtown Brooklyn, A Japanese guy with only a duffle bag ask me how to get to the airport. As I am giving him directions I ask him where he is flying to and he tells me Japan. I say you don’t have much luggage for such a far away destination he says he flew in this morning from Japan to see the place where Mr Matsui plays before they tear it down.

The guy had a subway map detailed with exactly how long it would take to go stop for stop on the train all the way to the Bronx. He came all the way from Japan to see Yankee Stadium. He didn’t even stay for tonight’s Yankee game. Fly in and fly home and that is it.

He says to me that he was amazed that there was not a big statue of Mr Matsui outside of Yankee Stadium. I just chuckled under my breath. I don’t think there is even a statue of Babe Ruth at the stadium and this guy was expecting a Matsui statue.

I made sure he got on a Far Rockaway bound “A” train that will take him to the Howard Beach station for connection with the Airtrain to JFK Airport. After such a long trip I wanted to make sure he got home ok.

It seems that they are almost done fixing the clock tower down on Atlantic and Flatbush ave. They started to take the wrappings off the other day. It does appear to be cleaner than it use to be. I wonder if they are gonna fix the time on the 4 clocks.

The clocks use to tell all sorts of time. It all depended on which side of the clock you were facing. You can see more about the tower here http://www.nyc-architecture.com/BKN/BKN005.htm

A tornado hit Brooklyn yesterday! As much as I heard it all on the news for the last two days it is still hard to believe. I was not near where the twister set down. I was about 5 miles away and I had no clue that a tornado was that close to me. I was by the Atlantic Avenue Mall around 6am and was caught in a rain storm that made my umbrella totally useless.
The tornado was also said to have touched down in Staten Island as well. The reports from Brooklyn are still not complete but it is said that it touched down around 68th street and 4th avenue and kept on going until it ended up over in Sunset Park. The twister tore the roof off of a couple of houses. It even ripped apart a Baptist church. It just goes to show you these things don’t care what they destroy. There were no lives lost which is hard to believe considering the amount of people that were effected by this freak storm. The New York Subway service was almost shutdown system wide as the 3 inches of rain that fell in about an hour. All this rain ended up in the subway.

There was no escaping the wrath of this storm as people all over New York City lost power due to the high winds. The winds were all types of speeds all over the area. Even parts of Long Island had lost power due to trees falling over power lines

My visit to the “Top of Rock”

If you are planning on coming to New York City and you want to see one of the best views of the city you need to see this. On top of Rockefeller Center they have a spot where you can almost reach out and touch the Chrslyer Building.

Needless to say this is also the best place to take a picture of the Empire State Building as it is only 20 something block away. You can wave to the people on their observation deck.

On the north side is Central Park which looks like it really doesn’t belong there trapped by the buildings. I was up there on a very wet and windy day. It still beats the Empire State Building deck as far as sights to see as you can’t see Central Park from there.