Thursday, March 26, 2009

No Standing No Honking Butterflies and Stomp

There are signs on street corners in NYC that say "No Standing" which I found a bit confusing until I figured out they apply to cars not people. For awhile I thought that was why so many people were in such a hurry. I guess "No Stopping" would be confusing since you obviously have to stop at the red light. "No Parking" wouldn't work because you'd have people parking their cars to wait for someone. I went ahead and stood around when I wanted to because I understood they would have "No Loitering" signs if they didn't wan't people standing around.

There are also signs threatening a $350 fine for honking your horn. Not sure how effective that is but I like the idea as an attempt to reduce aggressive/angry horn honking. I don't hear a lot of horn honking so it must work somewhat. I'd read an article in The New Yorker awhile ago that people in China honk their horn all the time, sort of as a hello greeting - which sounded kind of fun. Even if they are driving in a rural area they'll honk their horn when approaching a house or whatever. The article said part of the reason for this habitual horn honking is that new first time car owners in China aren't always the best drivers, so honking your horn to tell people or animals to get out of the way makes some sense.

I'm heading to the American Museum of Natural History later this morning. I'm really looking forward to seeing the The Butterfly Conservatory.

Later today I'm heading down to the Orpheum Theatre to hopefully get tickets to see Stomp. I have a coupon for a ticket for $39, but it's only good at the box office. The Orpheum Theatre is an Off Broadway venue in the East Village.

I got that coupon at a really cool NYC Interactive Visitor Center in midtown. It was hard to find the entrance to the place which might have explained why I was the only person there aside from the 4 employees. They have really cool interactive displays/maps, and a companion website, to plan trips and things to do. The young woman helping me told me they work in conjuction with Google. All the people there were very helpful and friendly. They had a video on one wall of Tim Gunn from Project Runway introducing people to New York City. That's one of my favorite TV shows and I like Tim's advice to "make it work".