{"id":1612,"date":"2007-02-03T20:28:41","date_gmt":"2007-02-03T20:28:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/2007\/02\/03\/my_time_of_nigh\/"},"modified":"2024-11-29T13:56:29","modified_gmt":"2024-11-29T18:56:29","slug":"my_time_of_nigh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/2007\/02\/03\/my_time_of_nigh\/","title":{"rendered":"My Time of Night"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Unlike <a href=\"http:\/\/www.petergallagher.com\/theatre\/guys.htm\">Sky Masterson<\/a>,<\/strong> I\u2019m not much of a night owl. I am a big fan of cities, though, and my favorite time to see a city is the middle of the night. I like the play of shadow and artificial light. I like seeing what spaces designed for lots of people look like when they\u2019re empty. I like the stillness. When you know a city\u2019s rhythms during the day, it\u2019s almost magical to see it at night. Sometimes it\u2019s not a <i>good<\/i> magic necessarily \u2014 sometimes it\u2019s like an evil curse of drunkards and litter \u2014 but it\u2019s usually quite lovely.<\/p>\n<p>Through a wacky series of logistical mishaps, I went into London last night but my plans for lodging fell through and I found myself having to kill time until the morning train. (Of course, the joke was on me when I discovered that there are trains running all through the night.) I decided to take a late-night walking tour and look for interesting pictures to take and get a feeling for London&#8217;s other side.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/cam\/street_night.jpg\" alt=\"Desolate Street\" width=\"50%\" height=\"320\" align=\"right\" hspace=\"4\" \/>Even during the day London\u2019s curious, crazy-quilt layout of tiny streets, back alleys, mews, and side passages leads to a lot of serendipitous discoveries, and they\u2019re even more curious at night. Granted, I avoided the darker alleys and passageways, a little too haunted by visions of Dickensian ruffians in every shadow, but there was still plenty to see. For one thing, the main drags of Soho and the West End are filled with even more stumbling drunks than I\u2019ve ever seen at the same hour in New York. And they all want curry or pasties! Since they mostly seem to stick close to places to get food, taxis, or night buses, though, the streets would be completely empty as soon I turned a corner. Places like <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=_G47fy7D7zw\">Carnaby Street<\/a> whose shops are thronged during the day were completely desolate. Empty little passages that just look grey during the day glisten a little under the lights at night. It\u2019s lovely.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/cam\/carnaby.jpg\" alt=\"Caranby Street\" width=\"479\" height=\"360\" vspace=\"5\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Unlike Sky Masterson, I\u2019m not much of a night owl. I am a big fan of cities, though, and my favorite time to see a city is the middle of the night. I like the play of shadow and artificial light. I like seeing what spaces designed for lots of people look like when they\u2019re &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/2007\/02\/03\/my_time_of_nigh\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;My Time of Night&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ultrapersonal","category-ultraphotographic"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1612"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1612\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71895,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1612\/revisions\/71895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}