Preamble to Winter Jazz Fest and the Jazz Connect Conference

This time last week, I was sawing logs in a friend's living room in Brooklyn, with a day of the Jazz Connect Conference under my belt. Following day two, the Winter Jazz Fest would be in full swing, along with walks all over the New School campus and subway rides down to the Village and back.

I'm not ready to write up all the details of the trip yet, but I felt like I needed to do some sort of quick post to say, keep watching this space. The whole festival diary is going to appear on the City Paper's FFW blog site, but it'll, of course, take some doing.

The weather was good - until Saturday morning, when the snow started falling. And it didn't stop until about 6:00 that night. But unlike Pittsburgh, New York doesn't slow down because of the elements. Everyone just walks with their heads down, which I hated doing because you miss out on discovering all of the surrounding scenery.

Speaking of observations, I rode to and from New York on the Megabus, as I did last year. I splurged on a front row seat on the upper level, where my face was about three feet from the windshield. It's probably the best seat on the whole bus because even if someone sits next to you (I only had company for half the trip back, none on the way up), you still have plenty of room to stretch out, and you don't really have to deal with anyone else. The view on the way up was sunnier, but the view while leaving the city wasn't all that shabby either.