| Traveler Edge | Christmas at NYC Midtown |
| Christmas at NYC Midtown | Visits : | ||||||||
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| Christmas at NYC Midtown | |||||||||
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After a long time with freezing temperature since late November,
we finally got a nice sunny weekend with upper 30 degree temperature that is suitable for human beings
to craw out of their shelters to see some sunlight. Knowing that the New York city, especially in midtown,
must be overly crowded, we still decide to go there to see the huge Christmas tree in Rockefeller center.
It's Christmas season, and we should have some Christmas spirit.
In my (biased) opinion, the so called Christmas atmosphere is nothing but the tricks played by the merchants to persuade customers to spend more money than they realized. When a person (like me) see the luxury Christmas decoration, his conscious will suddenly stop functioning. Then his legs will just blindly follow the other people and rush into the nearest store with his hands grabbing all kinds of things. Ends up everybody gets a lot of surprise gifts. I have passed by this building on the corner of 5th Ave/52nd St so many times before but was never that curious to give it another look, until this time I noticed the bright red gift-wrapping kind of decoration. I was even curious enough and ready to get inside to have a closer look until I figured out what this place was. Cartier ? I have better stay outside to pay tribute rather than go inside and literally pay tribute to them. | |||||||||
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| Atlas | |||||||||
| It looked as if everyone in the whole world was here in front of the Rockefeller Christmas tree. I was lucky and patient enough to get a nice spot in front of the Atlas statue to take some pictures. Interesting enough, the two biggest and most famous statues in Rockefeller Center are Atlas and Prometheus, two ill fated brothers in greek myth who had guts to stand on the opposite side of the Olympus Gods, and eventually got punished by those more powerful guys. Is there any implication here for the theme of the statues ? | |||||||||
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| Prometheus | |||||||||
| You know, people who have seen 'Da Vinci Code' will probably not take 'coincident' as explanation. | |||||||||
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| Statue | |||||||||
| Another statue with the Christmas tree decoration as background. | |||||||||
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| Skating Rink and Christmas Tree | |||||||||
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Check here http://www.wnbc.com/christmastree/1775313/detail.html for facts and details about the Rockefeller
Christmas tree. I personally don't feel that exciting about the tree itself.
The bright shining Prometheus statue is located in the front center of the famous skating rink. It never ceases to surprise me seeing people willing to stand and wait for an hour just for the chance to skate here. Most skaters looked like novice, I guess that most of them are visitors from all over the world. | |||||||||
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| Angels | |||||||||
| Twelve angels made by wires. It has become part of the Rockefeller Center Christmas tradition for more than 20 years to have these angels standing in front of the tree. | |||||||||
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| Christmas Cadet | |||||||||
| These 6 Christmas cadets were added to the roster since 1989. Each is about 13 feet high with carefully decided gender and diversity of ethnic characteristics. I can understand and appreciate this "politically correct" arrangement. However, it's interesting to observe how a supposingly simple thing evolved to become a complicated issue, and how people handle the issue so carefully. | |||||||||
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| Rockefeller Center | |||||||||
| You might be curious why there aren't any people in these pictures. I simply work around them (with a lot efforts, actually) and try to get some clean shots. The density of people here in weekend is comparable to that in a subway cabin during rush hour. Look at this guy on the wall, it seems as if he was shouting to people "Shut Up !" | |||||||||