Look! It's That Thing!

This thing! I love it. It's next to the GWB on the path in Riverside park. What is it?

Yesterday I ran down to 145th and across to Riverside Park. It's the place to be for the Spring-minded smart set, which happens to be my set. I ran up along the Hudson towards the George Washington Bridge and was feeling strong enough to push on a little further than usual. I ended up in the maze of NYC Greenway and GWB offramps where, not surprisingly, a pretty thriving hobo village has grown up.

I'm a sucker for the particular sort of charm these little communities possess, and I tell myself every time I happen upon a new one that I am going to go back with a camera. But I never do. Cameras slow you down.

I made it back to conventional society somewhere up where I guess Riverside Drive sort of ends around 178 or 181 and I saw a burnt out car. The thing was still warm and stinky. I checked it out and found a new clean white card from an insurance company on the drivers seat with the name Anthony written on it and a phone number. Weird. I also found a sweet flask on the passenger seat. Stratosphere baby! I've been looking for one, but everything I've found seemed too cookie-cutter. No one has one like this!

I was about to leave, and this old Polish (I think) dude with a beautiful, gigantic pit-bull comes off the path onto the street. I told him he had a beautiful dog. We chatted, and then he pointed to the car, shook his head and said, "Every day."

I asked him what he was talking about, and he told me that the little area we were in was the place people took cars to burn them. He said he'd been living in the neighborhood for years and just about every day there was another one burnt out there. He said it had something to do with insurance. Weirder and weirder.

The flask is pictured with a glass artichoke from DOMUS in Hells Kitchen. That place should totally be on your list.