The Concept of Snow
Suday morning, Feb 2006 Last Summer, Sept 2005
I know it might be dangerous, but I did it anyway, and without any puppy or dog following me (those NY dog lovers!). According to Nation Weather Service, it was the most snow for one day since record keeping in1869. Airports were shut down and hundreds were without power along the East Coast. As a person who never experienced any snow storm in his life, I walked out the street curiously around 10am and observed how New Yorkers deal with snow and storm (I saw and heard thunder last night, a weather channel explained it is very rare to have thunder and snow at the same time). Perhaps I can write an anthropology Ph.D. on how North Americans deal with snow and “The Concept of Snow” as the title. Anyways, here are a 2 scenes around my apartment door:
The Driveway Outside the street (Bleecker Street)
To my surprise, there was no car on the road. Actually, all the cars were buried under piles of snow. J The famous Broadway (sorry, this is the area near Greenwich Village, not Time Square) was emptied except a few snow workers. When I walked pass a driver with a really mad face - trying to clean up his buried car as fast as possible, but failed because the blizzard was not yet over, a homeless popped out in the middle of nowhere and advised him loudly, "Next time when you know it's gonna snow, cover your car with n'ewspapers. When the storm ‘s over, just pull those newspapers out along with the snow and your car is as good as new." The driver grinned at him for a moment and continued his business. What a strange comment, but nonetheless effective in theory.
I literally dug through the puffy-covered street (the snow was above my knees) and finally reached Stern Business School. Without hesitation, I pulled out my camera again and took a picture of the school building’s wall strongly standing against the severe storm. What a wonderful representation of mankind struggling with nature! (Mahler 6 in the background please)
Stern Business School and cars covered by snow
I walked further down the road and guessed what I found? Starbucks! (Not that I don’t know there is a Starbucks at that specific corner, but for dramatic effect, we should all say, “Wwwooooo…”) Since I hate Starbucks so much, I slipped through the melting snow rather quickly until I met an Indian girl with her pajamas.
“Hello! What are you doing outside the snow?” I asked.
“I’m from India and I’ve never seen a snow storm before!” she replied.
“Me too! I’m from California and this is spectacular!”
After a few conversations about the concept of snow, she decided to take a picture for me, near the corner of the Starbucks across the library.
(larger version of my new Facebook picture)
I took another picture facing the Washington Square.
As you can tell from both pictures, the heavy snow hasn’t died down at this point.
After that, I continued my journey to Union Square to pick up strawberries and salad for the meeting-party. Here is one of the more snow-scenery street along my journey.
I also encounter a few entrepreneurs dumping snow out of their stores with these snow machines.
Finally, I arrived at Union Square. Here is a street view. You can see the 2 NYPD vechiles inside the snow in the corner.
Up in a department store for a better view of Union Square. All the stores were open for business as usual.
Here's a quick comparison of what the park looks like in September.
The subway entrance on the right (the round circle structure in the top-middle of this picture) was almost covered by snow. People has to use the other subway entrance.
The snow storm stopped in the late afternoon. The whole city was white, snowy and fluffy. People went out to play on the streets and parks (too bad I didn’t have time to check out Central Park). Given the normally crazy Manhattan traffic, there were no cars on the street at all. I overheard a store manager talking on his cellphone, “this is beautiful! It should be Christmas right now.”
I went home afterwards to prepare a dinner party for the council meeting. The 1st course was Egg Salad. Here is a picture:
The eggs took the most effort, because it was my mother’s secret recipe. It was my first time making this, and it tasted fairly close to the original style, although I still don’t get how my mother can control the egg before boiling, so that its yoke appears in the middle of the egg. The egg yoke part is a mixture of tuna or carrots, egg yokes, and mayonnaise. I put some Japanese masago (fish eggs) but they fell off due to my inexperience in food decoration. The salad is just vegetables and olives with dressing, nothing special.
The 2nd course was spaghetti with alfredo sauce, peas, carrots and garlic shrimps on the side. The shrimps were really fresh and not overcooked this time for some reason. I sprinkled a little parsley and masago on top to look more like those Japanese food picture.
Originally I was going to dip those strawberries in white chocolate, but I ran out of time. So I just serve them fresh as dessert. I also forgot the crunchy Chinese New Year sesame biscuit. The box was sitting in my room. The other dessert I prepared was the Chinese nian gao (lin go in Cantonese), aka Chinese puddling cake or Chinese mochi (whatever you prefer). They are made out of rice, brown sugar, salt and water. First I have to cut them into squares (although mine doesn’t look like squares). Then dip each piece with egg and pan-fried them. My RA, a hardcore-World of Warcraft addicted guild leader, was chatting WoW with me at the time I was frying the cakes, and I burned some of the pieces. The drinks were hot chocolate and green tea.
I would have taken some more pictures if the food weren’t all gone at the end of the meeting.
Let’s get back to snow. The street scene next morning was amazing: snow near the street turned grey and dirty-brown. It got contaminated badly by cars, dog poo, and trash. Here is a picture with the dirty snow, a naughty dog and a melting snowman near my apartment park.
More Post-blizzard street scenes:
Another blizzard aftermath:
Muddy-ice patches covered most of the streets. When pedestrians need to cross the street, they have to walk through the brownish snow.
I'm glad I got my water/snow shoes on. :)
As usual, they dumped trash on the street. This time, they dumped them on the snow...
After class on Monday, I went home and did a little experiment outside my balcony. I put my half-eaten ice-cream inside the snow and see if the temperature is low enough to sustain the ice-cream. I was fairly disappointed 24 hours later (on Tuesday) when I found out my melted ice-cream.
Ice-cream inside snow
Short and Un-scientific Conclusion:
Snow is beautiful when it is clean and fluffy. Snow gets really nasty in New York City after a day or so. New Yorkers seem to be very excited when they know it is the record snow fall in the city. However, they don't seem to bother much with snow, even the dirty snow/mud.
Discussion Time!