Scenes from The Pond at Bryant Park, New York City

I travel to New York City just enough each year for the city to be directionally familiar and situationally unexpected. So that I was not expecting, on our wind-whipped day, to find Christmas shops in Bryant Park behind the public library, nor an imported rink with a snow-top finish where these skater congregated. I'd have put on a pair of skates had I been alone, for it was early in the New York day and there was room for one more glider. But I took photographs instead—spectating in this case being nearly as good.