Lost Show part 3

The verdict: individually I like them; all together, not so much.

[ All Lost Show parts ]

Recycling day

Above left, seen Monday on University Place at 8th St.  It might not be a world's record for most stuff on a pair of shopping carts, but it must be close.

The rest of these are of a metal recycling yard on Kingsland in Greenpoint, where mechanical monsters sort scrap into dumpsters and a compacter, below right.

McCarren Park lights 2

More McCarren Park lights.  Four of these are blurry & grainy from the dim light.  I like them anyway, especially the one above right.

[ McCarren Park lights 1 ]

Newtown Creek wastewater plant 2

This is the second part of my collection of photos of the treatment plant.  These were taken from Greenpoint Ave. or a little further south of the plant.

[ All Newtown Creek wastewater plant parts ]

The Bride with White Hair

The Bride with White Hair is one of my favorite Hong Kong movies.  I saw it back in the mid '90s when I got addicted to a weekly series of Hong Kong double bills that played at Berkeley's UC Theater.

I can't recommend it -- I've made that mistake more than once.  The movie's incredibly sappy, and tedious unless you're able to surrender to the imagery.

Here are frames (top-down, left-right) where the embittered bride unleashes her deadly hair on a clan of warriors foolish enough to have pissed her off.

The real Dutch Kills

I read that hotels are going up in Dutch Kills.  Why would anyone build a hotel on a stagnant slough, an offshoot of Newtown Creek that sits under the Long Island Expressway?

Turns out the hotels are moving into a neighborhood named after the kills, not the slough itself.

Too bad, because the kills has a few things visitors might like.  Being under a freeway, there is of course a "gentlemen's club" (the Infinity, pink building above).  There's also a view of a wastewater plant, and once in a while a circus train comes to town.

And one overlooked benefit of stagnant water is: if you drop something in, it's not going anywhere.


Above: the real Dutch Kills.  Below: Borden Ave. Bridge over kills; note tracks for moving bridge.



Above: slough-side view of wastewater plant, and the circus (animal?) train on a nearby siding.

Lost Show part 2

This is the second set of (ex-) paintings from a show that barely seemed to happen.

[ All Lost Show parts ]

Newtown Creek wastewater plant 1

I've put together a collection of pictures I've taken of new construction at Greenpoint's Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant over the past year; this is the first of four parts.  (I reviewed the plant's "nature trail" here.)

One reason I like the plant is obvious: it's stunning, especially for something so useful.  I see it as an ideal example of public art, that turns urban plumbing into monumental sculpture.  Unlike pretty freeways, it subtracts pollutants from the environment.

These photos were taken at different stages of construction, which is still in progress.  I'm posting them in groups, by the side of the plant I took them from.

From the Pulaski Bridge, north of the plant:


From the Greenpoint Ave. Bridge, east of the plant:


[ All Newtown Creek wastewater plant parts ]

Karl Fischer, Powerhouse

A defender of Karl Fischer says (in the comments for my recent post on Karl in The Showerhead) that "The Powerhouse is an very tasteful conversion."

I hated the Powerhouse the second I noticed the sun bouncing off its plastic Coppertone top, long before I knew it was one of Karl's.  In fact I thought it might be a Donald Trump enterprise, because of the tacky casino faux-class of its round castle towers and metallic color.  As I said in the comments, "If I worked at the U.N., right across the river, I would sue for degradation of view."

See the Powerhouse's copper top sitting to the right in front of the U.N. above?  Even now it's hard to believe it's sitting on the brick base; you could merge the two-tone building in front of the base into the Powerhouse and it would make more sense than it does now, with the non-existent relationship between plastic top and base.


At least other plastic tops, like the domes on the Greenpoint bank above left, and the Sixth Ave. store above right, fit the form of their perch.  The Powerhouse looks like Karl took the model from a canceled freeway hotel-casino project and dropped it on top.

Lost Show part 1

These are paintings from a hard-luck show I mentioned earlier.  I painted over or destroyed all of these.

I'll post the rest a few at a time.

[ All Lost Show parts ]

Karl Fischer in The Showerhead

Every time I walk by architect Karl Fischer's timeless Empty Clockface building on McCarren Park, I think: I know I've seen that look somewhere.

I believe I am getting closer to the source of his inspiration with this picture.

Having recently watched The Fountainhead, and watched Karl help turn this area into a luxury condo theme park, I'd guess it's only a matter of time before his life story is immortalized on film; let's call it The Showerhead.

The Showerhead will tell the story of the architect "who could not say NO," who brought the soul-deadening plastic of the suburbs to the city, and designed buildings that make you wish The Fountainhead's Gary Cooper would blow them up.

Developers couldn't care less about what the rest of us have to look at, and condo owners live inside the hideous creation, the one place where they don't have to look at it.  It's up to supposedly high-minded architects to save us, and Karl's just not getting the job done.


The fantasy boulevard setting of Karl's Warehouse 11 promo picture, above left (compare it to the less spacious reality, right), betrays its purely suburban origin, designed for a world where people drive everywhere, and where a home is not part of some organic neighborhood rich with diversity and history, but just a garage where residents park the alienated corporate work-unit their soul has become.

The only good looking building Karl's produced is the Ikon, left; they are not done yet, so they still have time to wreck it.

It looks like a slick Swedish ant farm, the perfect setting for another movie or reality TV show -- call it The Glass House -- about the problems of Wall Street worker ants so filthy rich and hollow that it hurts, and leaves them wondering if their lives of shuffling other people's money from one esoteric financial instrument to another has lost all meaning, so they spend their nights in drug-fueled debauchery, and greet the dawn with their naked bodies stuck to the Ikon glass like suction toys stuck inside a car window.

If only Karl could return to the inspiration for that one.

Poor man's star nursery

Now everyone can own their own model of star formation.  Made from foam packing chips and fresnel lenses.

[ Also re: Simplicity ]