Nathan Veldhoen

Since I’ve been so busy lately getting things ready for this upcoming art show, and working --I don’t have much to say or show but to let you know what I’ve been reading to keep me on the sane side of things…

I found this really interesting article in the local rag out here, I love creative projects that actually get completed instead of just being talked about.  New York has some of the best creative people working on everything from cloths to city projects.  This amazing project just opened on the 8th of June and is costing the city a few bucks, but the buzz this park is creating is second to none.

The project was created from an old rail line  (the High Line) from the 1930′s that transported meat, and dairy down the line from the warehouse district of  the west side of Manhattan.  The line was closed in the 1980′s and was slatted to get demoed shortly after by old Rudy.   But  as the story goes,  someone or some two, notice some flowers growing 20 feet above the street on the railway line.  The great idea was to turn this old line into an Urban park.

It connects three different Manhattan neighborhoods at a length of about 2.4 kms at a cost of over 152 million of state, federal and private money.   Only the first stage of the park opened on the 8th  but the rest is to be opened in 2010.   One more thing that makes me want to head back down to NY!

The parks site and blog can be found here

More pics can be seen at my flickr account.

This weekend I’m spending my Easter long weekend in the USA. We drove by Safeco field in Seattle, one of my favorite ballparks. I usually take in a few games a year and want to take in a few more this year. This is the opening month for baseball and the big event of this year is the opening of the new Yankee Stadium. Its replacing the old stadium that was built 1923, with the new stadium being built right across the street. This stadium is second most expensive stadium at 1.5 billion dollars behind England’s Wembley Stadium at 798 000 pounds. April 3rd hosted the very first game against the Chicago Cubs, with the first regular season game on 16th of April against the Cleveland Indians.

Last year I was lucky enough to get to the old stadium before it wasn’t around anymore. We caught a Mets vs.Yankees game and was one of the coolest experiences. Yankees lost the game but it didn’t seem to matter because there was a lot of Mets fans.

How did we get tickets? 2 months before on Craiglist in New York. We did a little research and figured we got a good deal for 250. We asked around when we sat down at a pub in Mid-town New York (after the game) and the locals confirmed we did pretty well. We were a little hesitant to buy off the net, but we did all the steps to make sure it was not a scam. We had them mailed out once the seller had them printed, so we got them about a month before we headed to New York. It all ended up working out and now I need to make plans to check out the new stadium.

A cool little side story has to deal with Mariano Rivera and Monument Park. He wanted to move the team’s bullpen, as well as to have access to the park directly from the bullpen so the relievers can access it . They added the door and moved the bullpen at his request, he’s got some pull.

Safeco seating at peak 54,ooo

Old Yankee stadium sat just under 58,000, new stadium just over 52,000

Broke ground for new Yankee stadium August 16, 2006

The exterior of new Yankee Stadium was made from 11,000 pieces of limestone.

Kentucky Blue grass surface, same a previous Yankee Stadium.

Total of 227 miles of Ethernet cable that wraps  the New Stadium.

Demolition of Old Yankee began in March 2009

The “new” Wembley stadium is the largest covered stadium in the world.

Here are some shots taken from the NY Times of the new stadium.

As this week quick comes close to the end, so is the interior work on the house.  I’ve been clean and getting most of the dust out of everthing.  I have a small list and will hopefully have it done by the end of the weekend.  I’ve been going a lot of computer work, hense no house updates.  But here are some of the things I’ve been looking at in down times.

Redbull has some crazy events.  One that went on on the 5th of this month.  A giant jump in New York.  Looks crazy, but I havent seen any footage of the actual event. You tube has 200 plus video just from them alone.

Here is a link to the snowbaording in New York.  100,000 dollars on the line

They also sponsor air racing-when guys do some crazy ass flying.

Then Justin passed this clip on to me, on my late night work days.  Pretty freaking cool.