Photo of the Day: Chess Pieces, Paramus Park Mall, Bergen County NJ

 

It had been a while since I had visited Paramus Park Mall, so I was surprised—pleasantly so—to see these giant chess pieces in the common area.

Not that I was a chess aficionado, mind you. But I enjoy seeing a bit of whimsy in public displays, and nowhere is this needed more than in the midst of a day fighting through snarled traffic to make it to a mall.

Anyway, I just had to take this photograph once I saw this scene.

Photo of the Day: Chess Board, Rockefeller Center, NYC

The onset of warmer weather, as I indicated in a post the other day about an outdoor food festival, has brought with it a slew of activities to enjoy in the open. Rockefeller Center, where I work, is no exception. There are Friday morning concerts on the Today Show and Fox and Friends.

Outside my building today, on the way to the subway or subway concourse, I beheld a different sign of summer leisure: a chess board. Its pieces were not the small kind that rest easily on a table, but oversized. They need to be on the ground. 

At the start and end of my lunch hour, when I took the image accompanying this post, the size of these pieces clearly attracted onlookers. They couldn’t wait to try their hand at moving the pawns, knights, rooks, bishops, king, and queen.

New York is all about making one’s move when lighting upon an unexpected advantage—not unlike chess, played for lower stakes but far more fun, outside in this sunlit space today.

Joke of the Day (Dave Barry, on Playing Chess)

“My problem with chess was that all my pieces wanted to end the game as soon as possible.”— Dave Barry, “Bored Games,” Miami Herald, Jan. 27, 1997

Photo of the Day: Giant Chess Game, Hilton Head SC

I came across these larger-than-life chess pieces on the grounds at the Marriott Grande Ocean, where I was vacationing early last month, in Hilton Head, S.C.

Quote of the Day (Comic Emo Phillips, on His Bouts With a Computer)

“A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kickboxing.”—Stand-up comic Emo Phillips, quoted in “Laugh Lines: What the Tech?” Reader’s Digest, January 2014.