carousel

Sometimes one's lucky enough to take a picture that just makes one happy, and this is one of them … it's the carousel in Bryant Park, just behind New York Public Library.  it wasn't actually open when I went past - the horses and a rather morose frog were behind drapes - but I'm sure that later on today, or later on in the season, they'd have been rotating to their usual cabaret music accompaniment.  You'd think that this gorgeous, beautifully laid out urban park, continually referencing the most demure of Parisian leafy urban spaces, had been there since the late C19th - but I remember it in the late 1970s, when it was a seedy and dangerous little patch that you wouldn't want to go near (except of course I peered at it, constantly fascinated by the edginess that I found in New York, although usually remaining street smart enough to retrace my tracks if I found myself on a seedier than usual patch).  It didn't really get remade until the early 1990s, and this apparently historical remnant, Le Carrousel - it dates from the early 2000s.  Faux heritage, but it's very pretty.