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The closer we get to real spring, the more it seems like we might actually get away with what was probably the dumbest winter on record. It’s weird to think this winter’s most severe storm landed on Halloween, and even though this is probably the result of man-made climate change that will eventually end in horrifying catastrophe, I’m finding it rather hard to complain about it, all the same.

Indeed, the diminishing seasons are truly testing my innate negativity’s ability to remain, well, negative. It’s the second week of March and there really isn’t much to argue with regarding this week’s weather forecast (I’m specifically referring to that sexy looking couple of 60-degree days in the middle of the week). A forecast like this is particularly enticing if you’re one of those overgrown adolescents who likes to spend your off time sweating like an animal, falling repeatedly in filthy city gutters, and, you know, like, skateboarding. A forecast like this makes the prospect of 9-to-5 work even less enticing than it already is, which really isn’t very enticing at all in the first place.

I’m not even really all that mad about the rain on Friday, since that’ll just give me an excuse to chill in and drink beers after killing it the previous two days.

If you have a job, you should probably just go ahead and quit it so you can spend Thursday chasing your dreams (and, more specifically, chasing your board as it shoots out into traffic). Who needs money when the world’s ending anyway, right?

Just don’t come crying to me (or suing me) when you can’t pay your rent next month. Try to keep in mind that while I do have your best interests in heart, they’re what I perceive to be your best interests, and I’m really not a very good role model.

Ironically, this song was playing while I was writing this post… seemed too coincidental to ignore. You know, that whole second half of the song where dude says “you’re so cold” like a thousand times in a row? That part. Good song though.

The Strokes - Juicebox

After an unprecedented (but perhaps precedent-setting) 2 weeks or something, I finally found the time to do a new drawing. This one’s inspired by my recent sinking realization, thanks to yesterday’s relentless, bone-chilling winds, that winter is not only here to stay, but that it’s probably only going to get worse. Nonetheless, just-scratching-50-degree temperatures are on the forecast for the weekend. If you care about skateboarding, or even if you just care about going outside and not immediately being in pain, you probably should take advantage of not only the last weekend of 2011, but what just may be the last good weather weekend for the next 3 months.

Well, all that rapture stuff… sort of amounted to a whole lot of nothing, huh? Unless we’re simply not the chosen people and we now have to spend the next few months languishing here in a literal Hell on Earth. Frankly, not much has seemed to change, as far as I’m concerned, but I never really liked it here in the first place.

Still raining, too. That’s like… 8 straight days under constant threat of mild to moderate precipitation. But it could always be worse…

Just one of the new benches the city installed last fall.

Not the most newsworthy of photos but what the hell… if we’re in hell, I’ll do what I want. And I’ve got a backlog of photos the size of god’s wang, so there you go.

Is it too soon to call it? Has Spring finally begun to, uh, spring? Disasters of precipitation have been known to happen in April, and I’m not talking about the famed showers, either. Hell, it managed to squeeze out one last dumping of snow a couple weeks ago. At the very least, this video I’ve had sitting in my drafts for like 3 months isn’t quite entirely irrelevant yet… so here’s some cool footage of a train going by during the The Great and Terrible Blizzard of 2010, which makes a snow shower at the end of March seem pretty tolerable by comparison.

That must be why they tell you not to ride on the outside of the train. Makes sense now.

Four hundred tons of train, 25 mph of snowstorm and 625 volts of electricity. Sparks fly as the subway passes between Parkside Avenue and Prospect Park stations during the blizzard of December 2010 in NYC.

Ah, a distant memory now. Goodbye Winter, you were fun while you lasted, only not really.

As is typical for many who dwell in the Northern Territories, I’m going on a brief vacation to a warmer land. Florida, to be exact, so expect a lot of photos of alligators, palm trees and fanny packs resting gently on the guts of the elderly upon my return. Accordingly, posts will be a little bit slower than usual for the remainder of the week. And by slower I mean dumber, but literally slower as well.

Naturally, I make my escape from New York in what is poised to be the mildest week of the winter, which is kind of funny but also kind of bullshit. Granted, complaining about how going on vacation to Florida is forcing you to miss a 60-degree day in February is kind of ridiculous, and definitely falls well within the “first world problems” category. Anyway, here’s a few re-edited shots from colder days several years ago to get me psyched to leave this sun-forsaken place.

Catch you on the flip flop.

Weekends just aren’t the same when I can’t fire off up my barbecue for some killer brats.

Oh jeez, this again.

Wresting every ounce of motivation I could find buried within my bones, and subsequently forgetting to wear gloves, I hurried over to the river this morning in the hopes that the Manhattan skyline could offer some nice photo ops. Needless to say, visibility was rather low.

Running around in the middle of a snowstorm only 10 minutes after waking up usually isn’t high on my list of favorite things, but when creativity knocks you’ve got to make an exception. Plus, it still beats working.

Head’s up everybody. The weather over the past couple days has been bad enough, but tonight’s forecast is looking downright scary.

Seriously though, Winter, enough is enough. Another couple months of this and they’ll be able to make an episode of SVU about me.

If you live in New York, you’re probably not too thrilled about these photos today, given the state of the local atmosphere. Nevertheless, here are the last photos in my ongoing dedication to beat this blizzard shit to death. Fortunately, today’s snowfall isn’t supposed to accumulate to much, so hopefully we can all finally move on with our lives. And by our lives, I pretty much just mean mine. Although I guess it’s probably too much to ask for the winter to just stop on January 8^th this year… hm. I wonder who you write to about that.

To think, last year at this time I was living in Chicago, a frozen wasteland, with temperatures well in the negative territory after the wind chill. How quickly we forget. And by we, I pretty much just mean me.

Nothing spells success like excess, so here are a few more shots from last week’s snowmageddon. Uh, that didn’t really work as well as I had hoped. Snowblivion maybe? Maybe I should just stop trying.

Friday marks the end of our blizzard recap, and I’ll be as happy to see them off as I was when most of the snow melted over the weekend. Unfortunately, once again, snow is on the radar for Friday, which would be kind of ironically amusing if it didn’t completely dissolve my will to live.

As predicted, the rain and unseasonably mild temperatures this weekend took care of the bulk of the snow last week’s blizzard was kind enough to drop by. And now here we are in 2011. As we race into the uncertain future, perhaps these photos will remind you of December 27^th 2010, when time in New York City stood still for a day.

I don’t know about you, but I enjoyed having a lot of the city shut down — nothing like a free day immediately after Christmas weekend. It was probably a kind of shitty day for cabbies though.

It was one of the extremely rare occasions when having a large vehicle designed for off-roading made any amount of practical sense in the city. Plus there’s room for sleds in the back.

The buses weren’t so well-equipped for the weather. There was a procession of them stuck along Bedford Avenue the entire day, emergency lights flashing in an utterly pointless celebration of the obvious.

As surreal as the aftermath of blizzards like that one are, admittedly, the charm wears off mighty quick. Like when you don’t have the next day off, and have to actually confront the whole mess instead of simply reveling in its magic. As the snow slowly turns into a slimy brown buck filling the streets, you start thinking of the whole thing as less magical and more along the lines of evil sorcery. And for poor suckers who enjoy riding skateboards and aren’t fortunate enough to possess a membership to the KCDC mini ramp, the next few weeks are going to be cold, wet and unhappy indeed.