USA Holiday 2, September 21 (Frozen Rope)

Went across the harbor to New Jersey in the morning, Hoboken specifically. Probably because it's so close to NY it feels like just another part of the city, like Queens I guess. Walked up Washington Street and then back down the harbor front, which is basically parallel to the west side of Manhattan and gives you some nice views. Unlike New York it was not nearly as busy, so could actually be quite a practical place to live if you worked over in Manhattan.

Washington Street, New Jersey.

Jersey again.

NY.

Stopped off in Washington Park back in Manhattan, one of the many parks around the city - there's more than just Central Park. Went looking for the Chinatown district but ended up in nearby Little Italy instead. I'm not sure if it was a festival or summer-based thing, but they had this street closed off to traffic and had about six blocks worth of food and games (the crappy carnival type that you never win). So that was good, but almost every store was selling the same few things - cannoli, funnel cake and a couple of others.

Washington Park.

Brooklyn Bridge.

Little Italy. One of the top five little cities. Still waiting for a Little Australia.

Madison Square Park after that, which isn't actually near Madison Square Garden - at least not the current location. I was planning on stopping off at the Shake Shack located in the park for some lunch, but the line was massive. Probably all of the NYU students from the nearby buildings.

Madison Square Park.

Up towards midtown to visit the NBA Store again - unfortunately one day before the in-store appearance of Dwight Howard. I found some Oklahoma clothes to buy, but because the whole range is Adidas every team is basically the same - three stripes of Adidas, team colors and a logo. Nearby is a Sony demonstration store, called Sony Wonder Technology Lab - probably something similar to the one I missed out on seeing in Ginza (Tokyo). It was ok, but not as amazing or impressive as I though it might be, and not as geared towards showing off cool Sony products and features as I thought it would be - not even a three-d television !?

It's a...SONY. And some Nintendo.

Old junk.

Robots!

I planned to visit Nike Town next, but the store was closed due to bedbugs. How does a store get bedbugs ? There was a Playstation HQ store across the road which was just a temporary place rented out to demo the new Playstation Move. I had a go at it and was underwhelmed. OK, so the technology is as good as or perhaps slightly better than the Wii Remote. But the games, absolutely terrible. The depth and quality of these games is something that could easily have been created for the NES. In the one I played your remote was represented as a hand-held battery fan on screen, and all you had to do was tilt it so that a falling bird was sent into one of the two nests, rather than out of the bottom of the screen. That's as far as we've come in video games by 2010?? John Carmack would not be impressed.

In the evening we went up to The Bronx to Yankee Stadium, to see the NY Yankees vs. Tampa Bay Rays. My first game of baseball and it was actually not as boring as I thought. Given that I was going for NYY it's tough, you want them to win, but you also want a close and exciting game. The Yankees got off to an early lead 5-0 and were able to hold on to that for the rest of the game.

New Yankee Stadium. 

The lower level.

CC !

A-Rod !

Now batting for the Yankees, number 2, Derek Jeter.

Phil Hughes.