By the way

Today, after work, I walked by the apartment building where Heath Ledger died. I wasn't expecting much. It's a nondescript building on Broome Street (as are most of these tony flats in this part of town), a block away from many of my favorite lunch spots. In all honesty, I didn't intend to walk past. I'm not particularly drawn to news scenes, but it was the easiest route home tonight because I was coming from the company's other office.

There were news vans parked on the block; I noticed vans belonging to Fox 5, My9, and the CW. Flash bulbs were going off among a small group of people gathered at the front door of the building. There was a huge pile of flower bouquets at the door as well.

Show business makes strangers into friends. If you watch someone on the movie or TV screen often enough, you start wondering if you might really know them. If you're taken by a piece of art, like a motion picture, you're also drawn to the one who created it. It's a human response. So here were all these humans, responding to a stranger's untimely death in the best way they knew how. Perhaps they'll go home and host a Heath Ledger film festival for their friends, as well. It doesn't seem like a bad way to remember a man.

Mogul home

I had dinner with some co-workers tonight. Afterwards, we left the restaurant and walked up Mercer Street in SoHo, just a few blocks away from my apartment. A black Mercedes Maybach pulled over right next to us, and out stepped two men. I barely gave them a glance as they quietly entered an apartment building. In truth, I hadn't even noticed that a $400,000 car had just deposited a couple of nondescript guys on the very sidewalk I was on until my co-worker recognized one of them. "That was Irv Gotti. The other guy must have been his bodyguard."

So now I know where Irv Gotti lives. If you don't know who Irv Gotti is, or don't care, this post is not for you.

Accident on the 42nd floor

For the past few months, the view from my office has been gradually marred by the construction of Trump SoHo, a 42-story "hotel condominium" located at 246 Spring Street, about seven blocks away. Before the cranes and scaffolding and concrete went up, we had a pretty nice view of the Hudson River. Today, the view got even worse: one of my co-workers stared out the window and noticed that a chunk of the building looked like it had broken off.

We checked the news online. In an effective example of citizen journalism, reports and pictures from the incident were quickly available on local news sites. Gothamist, for example, put up a frequently-updated page with photos taken by neighborhood residents. I remember something similar happening on hundreds of blogs on and after September 11th, 2001.

From what I understand, a construction worker was killed when part of the building collapsed. Scary stuff, and damning for the Donald, whose building has already been in the news for all the wrong reasons multiple times in the last few months.

Oh, and the crumbled corner of the building reminded me of the posters and trailer for Cloverfield.