I spent the weekend just wandering around the city, trying not too sweat too much. It's amazing what a few protests and the presence of politicians will do the dynamics of city. This place is pretty much in lock-down. All sorts of street are closed, traffic diverted, cops with more firepower than probably all of france roaming around looking bored, basically just organized chaos.

For instance, I decided to take a small historical "visit" to the 5 points so dramatically portrayed in the movie "Gangs of New York". For a small refresher for those who have seen the movie, it's basically where all the big blood-fests happen. Supposedly, it was where the worst of the worst mingled and fought and died. But not today. Today, something so simple as walking to this fabled crime-filled historical locale was filled with more drama than a korean soap opera. I could literally see where i had to go, but due to some high-position policital no-name, they shut down a whole section of downtown, making a 5 minute walk into a 45 minute adventure, dodging the feds and nypd armed too the teeth with automatic rifles, sub-machine guns, pistols, guard dogs (which looked they were going to faint even before they around to biting anybody), and fat-ol' moto-cops barking "can't go this way". Yay for the republican national convention...

On a more ironic note, I spent the whole summer trying to go to the beach, which I never went to. But today, after only 3 minutes on the water front (devoid of anything remotely looking like a beach), I got half of my body drenched with this monster wave which decided it would be fun to climb the wall and jump out at the people walking by. So in my 3 months of active search of sea water, it was a small stroll along the harbor that actually got me full of seawater. How sad... at least no sand in the bathing suit =)