Madison Square Park

Art for sale at the Madison Square Market, which is on until October 23. This is a small sliver of a crafts market, lining the west side of the park, but several stalls (especially those of a few jewelry designers) caught my eye. Worth a look if you’re doing some early holiday shopping. (There’s also food.)

Fulton Street and Rockwell Place (Brooklyn)

Entering the lobby of the Harvey Theater at BAM feels like going into a cave of columns and decay. With the promise of something even more interesting on the other side. (This is my favorite theater lobby.)

Mulberry Street and Spring Street

Fried olives and falafel-covered meatballs at Balaboosta were delicious recently. (And a big pot of hummus, I was happy to discover, pretty much matched this description of it in the Times.)

23rd Street and Broadway

Nice video here about the typography of New York (affiliated with a blog called New Type York). Once you start paying attention, the typography in this city can be overwhelming(ly interesting).

Spring Street and Lafayette Street

It’s hard to walk by the colorful pastries at Ceci-Cela and not take a picture of them. (Hard to walk by and not buy some.)

Fifth Avenue and 23rd Street

The new Italian food hall/market/café/restaurant complex called Eataly is kind of a crazy place at the moment, and it’s hard to navigate among the crowds to find the section selling what you want in this sprawling space—although I did manage to order a platter of salumi and cheeses in the main hall, and they were lovely. The bread counter couldn’t bake bread fast enough to satisfy customers, and every loaf offered up appeared to be steaming hot (I know my olive bread was). I also bought a bag of pasta (shape: vesuvio) from the impressive pasta section, filled with bags from Italy, because, really, how could you not?

Wythe Avenue and N. 8th Street (Brooklyn)

Autumn afternoon at Bakeri in Brooklyn. (Nearby is the Causey Contemporary art gallery, with a fabulous Ran Ortner exhibit on until October 11; you can take a look at his gigantic paintings online, but really, you have to see it to believe it. Ortner won the Grand Rapids ArtPrize in 2009.)

Williamsburg Bridge

Warning upon leaving Manhattan: THIS IS A TEST: to see if we can survive outside of it?

Mulberry Street and Prince Street

Scene from the San Gennaro festival, which is taking over Mulberry Street this week. (San Gennaro is the patron saint of Naples, I recently discovered, and the feast day was yesterday in Italy.) I knew I was getting close to the action here in the city when I began spotting people on the street with plastic bags of goldfish and paper bags of greasiness.

42nd Street and Ninth Avenue

“Vehement silhouettes of Manhattan—that vertical city with unimaginable diamonds.”      —Le Corbusier

Hudson Street and Franklin Street

Lobster as sculpture caught my eye at Nobu Next Door when I looked up, for a moment, from my plate of sea urchin tempura.

Gold Street and Flatbush Avenue (Brooklyn)

I took this shot because I was admiring the skyline and this angle on the Manhattan Bridge, and I didn’t even realize until I downloaded the photo that I’d captured a sentiment perfect for September and back to school, the season of fresh starts and reinvention: “READ.”

West Broadway and Chambers Street

Good to be back in New York, waiting in line at Starbucks with the tourists, wondering if I should buy a souvenir mug in order to remember my experience.