Crosby Street Ghost

Location: New York City, New York, USA
Address: 79 Crosby Street
Date: January 2019
Website:  www.firmdalehotels.com

Oh, my love, my darling  I've hungered for your touch.

  Sam (Patrick Swayze) and Molly (Demi Moore) get attacked on a dark street in New York City.  Sam is killed but lives on as a ghost.  He tries desperately to let Molly know he is still around and enlists the help of psychic Oda Mae Brown (Whoopi Goldberg) to help him.  This is the premise of the aptly named movie, Ghost.  Surprisingly Ghost was directed by Jerry Zucker who is better known for his work on comedies like Airplane! or the Naked Gun movies.

  Sam & Molly are attacked on Crosby Street in New York City not far from where we once enjoyed tea at the Crosby Street Hotel.  When two men finally come to help Sam & Molly we are quite certain that they come running from the vacant lot where the hotel was built.  The photo above is of the rear entrance to the hotel on Lafayette Street.

  In the movie, Sam & Molly walk down Crosby Street and notice a man lurking in the shadows.  We find out later that the man's name is Willie.  Willie quickly pulls a gun on Sam and as the two struggle the gun goes off.

  We see Willie run off down the street and then see Sam run after him.  Sam turns back to Molly and is shocked by what he sees.

 Lying in the street is Sam with a gunshot wound and Molly calling for help.  Sam is shocked and literally beside himself.  They would have been on the coblestone street somewhere near this mysteriously yellow puddle.  Sam soon realizes he is now a ghost.

  Sam & Molly's apartment is only about 3 blocks from where Sam was killed.  It is here at 102 Prince Street that Sam and Oda Mae Brown come to try and convince Molly that Sam is still around and watching out for her.

  Their apartment is the fourth from the top.  The second window from the left is where the workers can be seen trying to pull a statue of Mary up to the apartment.

    New York City is such a popular movie location that no matter where you go, you are probably walking through the ghosts of a movie shoot from the past.

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Map of Our World

Ghost Attack , 102 Prince Street
Crosby Street Hotel

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Post # 267

Detritus

Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Address:  677 Wellington Road West
Date: October 2019
Website:  www.toronto.ca

    Salt both preserves and corrodes at the same time.  The city puts salt on the roads to melt ice, but it also does damage to boots and the roads themselves.  You are more likely to drown in salt water because the salt causes dehydration.  Nuit Blanche comes to Toronto once a year and one of the projects for 2019 was called Detritus by artist Jonathan Schipper.  Detritus means small particles broken away from a mass, much like the salt filling a City of Toronto storage dome.
 

  One of the great things about Nuit Blanche is that you often get to explore places you would never be allowed on other evenings.  Toronto stores its salt for winter inside gigantic domes.  For Detritus we were allowed to venture in and it felt like we had entered another world.

    Looking up at the dome in the middle of the night, it felt like a spacecraft was coming down on top of us.

  The artist had a laptop computer set up at a little table and was using a 3D program to control equipment that was slowly building things out of layers of salt.  The creations would start to deteriorate as the night wore on.

  Most of the salty creations looked like a castle was slowly being built on a salt covered hillside.

   A pathway leading upwards had been packed down into the huge mound of salt.  We double checked what shoes we were wearing and headed up.  We half expected we might slip away into the salt as if we had stepped into quicksand.

   Some other people had already gone before us so we ventured to the top.

   We made it up to the top and realized that we could start to taste the salt in the air.  We looked down as the artist continued to work below us.  We wondered how he could spend 12 hours inside this dome.  Some caution tape kept us back from the edge where we might cause a salty landslide that would destroy his creations.  It was time for us to move on to the next Nuit Blanche exhibit.  Goodbye salt! See you this winter on an icy road somewhere in the city.

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Map of Our World
Detritus

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Post # 266

Everyone Wants A Free Baby

Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Address:  100 Garrison Road
Date: October 2019
Website:  www.toronto.ca

Who wants a free baby?  Everyone does apparently.  Nuit Blanche returned to Toronto on Oct 5th to 6th for another evening of artwork and performances.  Our favourite exhibit was the very entertaining Everyone Wants A Free Baby!  A cannon was fired about every 20 minutes.  Inside the cannon was a baby in a parachute.  Nuit Blanche runs from 7 pm until 7 am so that means around 36 babies were launched throughout the night.

  We arrived just as a baby was being launched.  The crowd shouted "Baby! Baby! Baby! "  The baby floated into the sea of people.  We then visited some other exhibits in the area and returned to fully experience the next launch.

  Dramatic music was played and a baby was brought out.  The baby was attached to its parachute and then the parachute was folded up carefully so it would deploy when needed.  Next, the baby was carried over to the cannon where it was inserted.  For some reason Pump Up The Jam by Technotronic was played while the cannon was cranked into position.  A man then came out and ranted. His rant included some French accomplishments that may or may not have been significant.  Finally he shouted,  "This is my amazing atifice.  I want to show you my genius!"  The cannon fired and the baby was launched into the crowd.

  We had chosen the perfect spot to stand.  The chute deployed and the baby slowly fell towards the ground.  It was right above us and we reached out to grab it.  As soon as we touched it, someone ran into us aand snatched the baby.  They then ran off into the night.  The word from other audience members was that the baby snatcher had been trying to get a baby for some time now and was growing more and more determined.  Finally success!  Adoption is usually a difficult process but tonight babies were falling from the sky much like how they are delivered by the stork.

  The babies looked kind of like homemade Cabbage Patch Dolls.  This doll from an earlier launch also found a good home and the couple even posed for a few celebratory photos.  The only thing that would have made this show even better was if they had a little baby nursery set up so you could see all the babies waiting for their turn.  "We have to come back and see little 4:20 AM, look how cute he is."

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Map of Our World
Everyone Wants A Free Baby

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Post # 265