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good. looks like mother nature is trying to maintain a grasp with those high temps in the upper 40s/lower 50s. maybe this will get me to take a trip into nyc for some photography. it's somewhat odd that i'm saying that, almost acting like i live a few hours away. in reality, the nearest train station is a 5-minute walk away from my apartment, and a train ride takes 1.5 hours.
i used to ride my motorcycle into the city, almost nightly at times, but i'm less inclined to do such nowadays because of ny's recent sleep act that was passed a few years ago. an equipment violation ticket for possession/use of an aftermarket exhaust can yield around $1000. a thousand dollars-- it used to be $150. fortunately, law enforcement doesn't enforce that law in my area, in my experience. it's one of those policies that were created with the intention of stopping an almost nyc-exclusive problem, but the governor decided it should be a state-wide thing. i say 'exclusive' because even though you have the occasional idiot seemingly trying to wake up an entire neighborhood/town, the issue is rather rare and isolated here (it'll just be one or two people rather than a large group of motorcycles/cars). we also don't have a bunch of tall buildings in close proximity for the exhaust notes to bounce around and exacerbate the issue. that was also one of the main talking points as the policy was being passed.
on a side note, i have been thinking about japan more since my last post. it also doesn't help that i've been finally exporting and publishing several photos from 2018's and 2019's japan trip, those photos of which have been sitting dormant since i've returned from those trips.
at the very least, i've been geotagging the exact location of my photos, and i've taken enough shots where it made me almost completely remember where things are in tokyo. admittedly, there have been things that changed since the pandemic. one of my shots was of the toriyoshi shoten location in nishishinjuku:
it has since went out of business/been replaced with something else that has a completely different storefront. i use street view to verify my geotagging, so i ended up overlooking the spot where i took the photo a few times, until i finally had the idea to go back a few years in the street view history.
worth mentioning that toriyoshi shoten is an izakaya chain that specializes in chicken. a rough us-equivalent of that would be something like buffalo wild wings. i say this because it makes me ask the question, "why can't the outside of buffalo wild wings locations have a similar appeal-- in a loud, yet warm and inviting, sort of way. i mean, most buffalo wild wings storefronts have that black and yellow theme going on, but still have a bunch of brutalist influence to match the surrounding buildings, or the strip mall they're attached to.
the design choice also plays it on the safe side, as far as local laws go. in my area, you basically need a permit for everything that's displayed on the exterior, and you can have a store front that's deemed too loud and distracting, even though it can be something like a typical neon sign on a storefront window. boo.
anyways, i am still eyeing a summer trip to japan. i just really need to relax somewhere outside of ny/us for a couple of weeks.
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bix