Morning Bull

My new occasional morning routine is to get off the subway two stops before work, grab a chocolate chip muffin at the farmer's market in the plaza every Tuesday and Thursday, and then leisurely make the 8-minute walk up Broadway to the office.

This brings me right by the famous Wall Street bull, and there's always a crowd -- even at 9 in the morning. Now there's fences to the side and behind the bull, but I'm not sure why. In any case, it prevents the always popular bull butt shot.

Wall Street on the Weekend

Showing my family Wall Street was a little like giving them a tour of our apartment, only more exciting. After all, I spend the majority of my waking weekday hours in the Financial District, and I think I know it pretty well. I must look like I know it pretty well, too -- a few weeks ago I was standing outside of the stairs to my subway tapping out a message on my phone, and three different people approached me with questions.

In any case, no visit to Lower Manhattan is complete without a look at the New York Stock Exchange. Sorry, no tours since 9/11, but it's still a sight to see.


We were there on a Sunday afternoon. Dozens of people milled around Wall Street's pedestrian-only zone, but it was a far cry from the weekday crowds of tour groups and school trips. You can probably find Paul in the photo below; on, say, a Monday afternoon it would have been much more difficult.


Paul is regularly in the area for work meetings, but both he and I discovered something new on this trip: the four-story J.P. Morgan Building, once the home of J.P. Morgan & Co. It doesn't look so grand now. It's actually empty and rather drab. It didn't even occur to me to take a picture of it. In any case, the photo on Wikipedia makes the building look nicer than I remember it in person.

Reason #523 that I love New York: You can learn something new, even a hundred visits later.

NYSE-- Who knew?

I work five blocks from the New York Stock Exchange.

I did not realize this until about three weeks ago.

Yes, it took me four months to figure out that I work within walking distance of the center of the financial world.

I knew I worked close to Wall Street. That subway stop is the one right before the one where I get off, and it only takes about a minute to get there, so I knew it was close. So during my lunch break on a blustery Friday, I went exploring.

Sure enough, I saw some interesting sights/sites. Trinity Church is about five blocks away on Broadway at Wall Street. I took some photos from the second floor of a Borders bookstore across the street.

Turn east and walk a few blocks, and there's the NYSE. It's hard to miss-- it's the building about a million people are taking photos of.

Before I descended into my subway station after work that night, I noticed that I could very clearly see the building from Nassau Street, about a 1/2 block from work. I'm obviously turning into a New Yorker, keeping my head down and not getting a clear look at anything!