O/T NYC Central park

Isn't it beautiful! I had the pleasure of walking in it a few months ago and I'm still thinking about it.

I hear its man made,,, rather surprised me,,, think it was Paul Harvey,,, I have been to the western part of NY state,,, felt rite at home

Alot of it I think is man made and beautifully landscaped. what you can't see in the picture is how beautifully landscaped the park is with lots and lots of paths and little bridges all throughout. Theres beautiful fountains and everything in that park. What is surprising is how quickly the wooded area of New York state suddenly turns into New York City. The sprawl didn't go miles and miles quite like I had expected. In fact, it looked exactly like Vermont, which isn't all that populated right up until suddenly our bus driver annouced we were arriving in Manhattan and we drove down a stretch of road that I think must have had every kind of car dealership there was on the planet.

I guess it is pretty neat for those trapped in the concrete jungle. I can go down to my hunting cabin though and set there for hours, and except for the occasional jet plane going over, can hear no man made sound. That is when you know you are really "away from it all".

Personally, I would love to see New York, and the park, but would want a local for a tour guide. I would trade a weeks stay in my cabin, along with an appropriate guided hunt if they so desired.

Gene

Don't let the summer foliage deceive you, it's populated densely in most directions, you just can't see it.

Its pretty neat for me too, a guy who lives in a very small rural town that doesn't even have a traffic light to vist a place with as much going on as NYC. That park is fun, because its really beautiful landscape with these giant skyscrapers in the background. The skyscrapers made me feel like an ant!

The park is definately not to place to go if you wanted to be alone. I was there on a Saturday afternoon and the weather was nice, so there was thousands of people there, but yet it still wasn't so crowded that I could not walk around and enjoy.

Actually, NYC is about the worst place you could possibly go if you wanted to be alone. About the only place I can think of is maybe in your own apartment and even then with such close neighbors you wouldn't be free to make much noise.

I sometimes go on eathcam.com and watch the live NYC webcams and its unbelieveable, they truely are the city that never sleeps. Lots of people and traffic all hours of the night and day. I've gotten on at 3AM and people are still out and about.

I like to see different things/cultures and I love to travel. I don't do it often enough because money is a bit short, but in this case I got to see NYC on a college sponsered trip, so it wasn't very expensive. Next on my list is to see more of Washington D.C. I've driven through it once, but thats all.

That makes perfect sense. Thanks! I couldn't believe how fast we arrived into the heart of the city with the leaves on.

Ihe hay field looks small

Billy's right, there's a lot you don't see (one of the better legacies of Robert Moses), but going upriver, it does start to thin out after you get above Yonkers, starts being smaller towns, but they'll still get big enough to run together sometimes. What I'd call undisguised spiral tends to be moe out on Long Kyland.

NYC actually has a lot of park areas, and they're fiercely protective of them.

A little trivia -- If you were to get off the paved paths in Central Park and meander the paths through the woods, you can always get oriented by a lamppost. They're all numbered for maintenance purposes, and the first part of the number is what would be the number of the nearest cross street if it were to extend though the park. If the post has a number like 75-12A, you are roughly even with 75th Street.

Built using materials hauled in and distributed with tractors in 1857.
NYC Park info.

Bottom of the pic is the way to times square. The tavern on the Green was nice. Lots of skin on warm days. The massive rock out croping was the biggest surprise. Friends of the park workers is a biggie. Inpressive to a guy from a county yet to this day that does not have a stop light.

If you went out the east side of the park you could have gone[maybe you did]to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.Van Gogh,Warhol,all the big names[including that piece of crap by Jackson Pollak] Went there on last Veterans Day with my dad to check out some British prints done by a 1930s group called the Vorticists.They represent speed and fast moving society all linocuts from 1920-1938.Lot of sports, racing ,and swirls in this artform.Cool stuff and picked up the calander.

And you didn't get mugged ?

Now that looks like the ideal spot for a new Wal-Mart !

I sure would hate to have to live in a city like that.

We get a lot of NYC and NJ traffic headed to and from Vermont, right past my house, lot of em have a place there, like to ski and or what have you. They like to get away from it, still a long hike, it totally jams up the state road here, whenever there is a long weekend, holiday, etc, next one will be Martin Luther King day, it'll start Thursday night, leaf lookers in the fall, and skiing throughout the winter, lot of traffic from down there. I see trucks with the NYC style lettering, black letter stickers, many from long island city, queens where there is a lot of industry, often wonder what's in those trucks, it's usually chinese people.

I'm familiar with most of the surrounding areas, 100-150 miles in most directions, it's populated all right, some really nice areas, old farms and other high priced real estate, that years back was not all that different from here, which is about 160-170 miles north, NYC has an influence in a large radius, just look at the diversity of kids in the local schools. This county is the last one in the local area to be exploited by developers, lots of hills, shale and other things that made other areas more attractive to develop first, but they have closed in with a dozen or so proposed developments now. It's tough to keep as agricultural land, with developers pressuring, it's a real shame, because it's really nice ground, crops like hay, corn and others always do well, the hills and views of the hudson valley are beautiful, I like working in the local fields any chance I get, just to enjoy what it is.

Trees in NYC are highly protected by city of new york department of parks officers, whom are full fledged, handgun carrying, ticket issuing royal pains in the asses, especially if summoned by some enviro activist who has nothing better to do, I took 2 of their officers to a jury trial over a darned tree on one of my jobsites. I won the trial, represented myself, no counsel, both officers backed right off, woman judge had no clue, I was well prepared with documentation proving they had no case. It was all over a dead tree, they tried to blame on us for killing, had nothing to do with the 20" high pressure steam line directly under it, cooking the roots ! Idiots - I grabbed a con edison guy working on that street one day, heisted his as-built drawings and made a copy for submission at the trial + photos and other information. The dumba$$ who complained, I found his address in the court paperwork, which I was not supposed to have, I went directly to his apartment building knocked on the door, shoved the trial results in his face and bluntly told him, the next time you call an officer and make a complaint, know what you are talking about, you just wasted the time of several people who are busy working and don't need or have time for this crap.. his jaw dropped to the floor, good day sir !!!!!!! LOL !

Mason contractor supplier picked up some pallets one day, he hit a limb on a tree and broke it off, you should have seen the ensuing, video camera wielding crowd from the adjacent buildings, like the immediate tree response team, come out like insects from the old civil war era brownstones nearby, (was actually a farm before that) they surrounded me, an angry mob gathered over a darned tree branch, had to have a laborer take it into the basement and immediately hack it up with a sawzall, stuff the pieces in a dozen or so different mini trash containers, told the crowd to get off the private property and disperse or I'd call the 10th precinct and have them for illegal assembly, we really got along great with the neighbors on that job, what a miserable bunch of activist types, surprisingly one of em even came from the middle of the country, like Iowa or Nebraska. Trees have more rights than citizens in NYC, they will try to nail you to the wall if you damage one.

Mugged? I wouldn't worry about it much. Check out the link. It's from 2005 so numbers change from year to year, but NYC has the lowest overall crime rate of all cities in the country with a population >100,000. For robberies (no distinction between muggings and store holdups) they fall a little below the middle of the pack.

Lived there for ten years, was out and about at all hours, and never once felt threatened by anyone.

As for the park, developers have been drooling over it and others (Prospect Park in Brooklyn, vanCortlandt Park in the Bronx) for years. They ain't gonna get 'em.
City crime stats 2005

For the ten+ years I lived and worked in the city, most weekends we'd go up to my girlfriend's place in the Catskills, so I know the drill. She had 40 acres on a mountain tucked back where Ulster, Delaware and Sullivan Counties come together. T'way to Kingston(90 mi), 28 to Big Indian (30 mi), then a county road 4 miles or so to the road up the mountain. Over near the Bellayre Ski Area. No gettin' away from the traffic on holidays or good skiin' days.

I know a lot more city folks went lookin' for upstate places after 9/11. I remember I was pumpin' gas at Big Indian one day when a fella pulls in and asks if I knew of any places around for sale he might look at. He had been over around Rhinecliff/Red Hook (Ithink that's still Dutchess County over there, might be Columbia)for years, but the city folks competin' to buy things up were drivin' valuations up so that he was about to be run out by taxes.

Spent some time there early 80's, mostly summers then from '91-'04.... and got away from my stressful job, the places you mention are really nice, but taxes, real estate prices, are out of touch for most, some really nice areas and views.

Know the area near kingston, used to train with the national guard on some land west of there, in the catskills, was mostly desolate then, things have changed though haven't they.

I can see the 3 big humps, northern part of the catskills from my kitchen, about 50-60 miles away, we have a nice view from this area.

Pic looks beautiful, look at all those buildings, I bet you need short arms and deep pockets to live there. Can you imagine the number of nut bars living in that city?Give me the serene country anytime.

I had brought a cheap disposible camera with me because I was thinking the very same thing and didn't know what to expect. After I got there I really wished I had brought the digital camera. I felt super safe there, and not to mention, everybody else was running around with expensive cameras.

I walked around in that park on my own, and unfortunatly I didn't get to see only part of it. I did walk around the smaller pond in the picture. and didn't know the other big one even existed until I got home. Time was unfortunatly an issue, and what I went on was only a day trip.

Actually, I was there for the American Museum of Natural History, which is definatly worth seeing. Their stuffed animals don't look stuffed! Its one of four museums along the park.

That massive rock outcropping into the water of the smaller pond was covered with people sunning themselves on the day I was there. I've never been to a place that equals NYC.

Thats another good museum.Went there for the Darwin exhibit.Darwin carried a nice little handgun on his trip.