42nd Street Library

So finally after a year and a half of living in New York, I decided that I needed to go inside the huge library at 42nd St. This is the one from "Ghostbusters" where all the books go crazy. I actually went to a beer focus group right before this, and sadly, they didn't want my opinion on how their beer tastes, but what I thought of their commercials. Still, I got a hundred bucks out of it, and I trucked down to the library afterwards. I find it amazing the thought and money that used to go into municipal architecture. Ever been inside a library built in the 1960s with orange carpets and yellow plastic chairs? The 42nd library is basically a temple to the wealth of the Astor family. Now philanthropy is more about creating trust funds to fight disease or celebrities running off to Africa to bring home some babies. It used to be about building huge stone monuments with your family portraits inside.