GALFROMDOWNUNDER UPOVER

Governor's Island - a little, flat Utopia off the bottom end of Manhattan I'm slowly discovering New York's intriguing chunks of itself scattered close to the "mother ship," Manhattan.  There's Fire Island (holiday favorite of the gay community off the coast of Long Island), Roosevelt Island (an odd little strip of suburbia in the East River between Manhattan and Queens),  Ryker's Island (the prison island), City Island (Bronx), Ellis Island (houses a museum), Liberty Island (on which stands the lady in the green dress) and just this weekend, I visited  Governor's Island .  It could not be easier to get to this "ice cream cone shaped island" (check out the map below!) especially on a bike. Cruise down the west side bike path to where the Staten Island Ferry takes off, go a bit to the left, and there's a FREE ferry from South St to this little car-few nirvana.  From Wikipedia:  Governors Island, a 172 acre island in the heart...

UPDATE: Sold, 6/28/11, to Janine who says: I love riding road so needed a more speeding type of tikit it's 24 miles to work and I work around 13 hrs a day so take the bus and train both besides the bus as I live rurally. +++ Alan Scholz, CEO of Bike Friday zips along on Cycle Oregon 2003 - on an Air Friday with me trying to chase!  I have a new Bike Friday Speeding tikit. Thank you to Rob ,   Alan , Hanna and the Production team at Bike Friday for speccing out such a spiffy machine, and especially  Merle and Bethany for the cute note on the box when it arrived at bfold ! My princess pink Model T Speeding tikit is for sale. Hence, my previous one, about 18 months old, is spruced up and for sale to someone smallish with a penchant for pink (dusty rose, my friend Cheryl calls it) and a fast commuter folder. New, this bike retails for around $2300. David Lam at  bfold.com  is selling it - completely overhauled - for $1600. Me wit...

Laurie Anderson with her Explorer's Club certificate of appreciation, while hubby Lou Reed looks windswept and interesting.   The Explorer's Club  is officially busting out of its extreme snowshoe and crampon mold: Last night's event - a surprising detour from summit-talk and diving bell banter - was a discourse between famous avante-garde composer Laurie Anderson and experimental muso and "philosopher-naturalist"  David Rothenburg . And what's this ... DJ Snoopy slated for an upcoming talk on the calendar? Edmund Hillary eat your stuff sack out! But even more surprisingly, Lou Reed was in attendance. More about that in a moment. For the uninitiated, the Explorer's Club is an oak-clad clubhouse hung with the stuff of "distinguished" hardcore adventure - dug out canoes, sleds and snowshoes worn by someone with Wikipedia creds. It's where scholarly thrillseekers rub ice picks under the watchful eye of a giant, gnashing, taxidermied pol...

As of today I'm moving all my yoga posts to a separate blog . You can get to it any time from my Galfromdownunder Yoga  page or all blogs page .

"Where's Steve?" Fran Lebowitz channeling the famous Steve Haring I've been attending a lot of art shows of late. It's a way to feed the right side of the brain (for most of us, the left lobe gets hammered daily, right? ).   Read about iton my ChelseaGallerista blog .

VIDEO:  Shot by the Galfromdownunder on the corner of 23rd St and 8th Ave NYC.  Music by Honest Charlie, sampled live in Tucson, AZ.  THERE'S a perpetually problematic corner on 23rd St and 8th Avenue in Manhattan. And I'm not referring to the stalwart sales associates handing out the Rite Aid and eyebrow threading leaflets either.  In torrential rain, this corner becomes a deep, impassable twin lake, causing pedestrians to walk an extra block, give pause, or if they're lucky to be wearing the ubiquitous Manhattan Hunter rubber boot (women only), slosh smugly right on through. When it snows, it becomes a glacier and lake combined - necessitating some mini mountain climbing (see video). Squint your eyes to block out the buildings, street and yellow cabs and you can almost imagine you're in watching National Geographic documentary on Greenland - before global warming set in. I have no idea why the city hasn't brought in a truck with some concrete to build t...

NOTE: This post, and future posts relating to the Yoga/Pilates for Cyclists project in collaboration with Karin Fantus will now be continued on this blog: http://yogapilatesnyc.blogspot.com Following our sold-out  Yoga/Pilates for Cyclists Sampler  class in Jan 2011, Karin and I have found a cozy space to continue the series. Judging by the feedback  the New York Cycle Clubbers found our class very interesting and beneficial. (OK, we did hand out 85% dark chocolate with the anonymous feedback sheets). Here's a movie tour of the space: Tour around the space above - and apologies - I couldn't help but tickle the ivories a little, despite a traumatic childhood involving piano lessons and a book of mindless  Czerny Etudes  that resulted in teethmarks on the piano ... A musical space indeed: a 72nd St location - with cushy new carpet - for around 8-10 participants (when we stack the chairs) "What a tangled web we weave ... " It's called the Otello ro...