Williamsburg Sights

Recent sights from Williamsburg and the Williamsburg Bridge.  Above, the view from the top of the bridge's south walkway.  Note the old-school Navy Yard cranes that echo the rooftop cubes in front.


Above left, I'm so used to this thing on N 7th that I believe it should be landmarked as-is.  Above right, I bet this building at Bedford & N 3rd will never look better than it does here.


Above left, the huge pit behind the Bedford & N 3rd building, that has warped spacetime and swallowed sidewalks.  Above right, a soft tank down on River St. near N 1st that fits right in with the gray day.


Above left, near the entry to the bridge's south walkway, Intel Outside.  Above right, from further up the north walkway of the bridge, a scrawl that proves we've moved past "the medium is the message" to "there is no message, just buzz."  I blame spray paint manufacturers, the Internet, and the idiots who post these pictures (oops) for this sad state of affairs.

And finally, below, up on the middle of the bridge, living proof that taggers operate in the armpit of the world -- a pink world at that.

Kitchen Breakthrough!

Actually, a kitchen accident -- funny how most great discoveries happen by accident -- led me to discover what you see to the left: cheese soap!

If you use Hot Pepper Jack cheese, as I have in this case, it exfoliates the top layer of skin before sealing the rest in a protective coating of wonderful cheese!

[ Frauds Who Claim to Have Invented Cheese Soap Before I Did ]
[ Custom Carved Soap ]
[ Soap on Edge ]

Visual Dessert

Haranguing without rewarding is cruel, so a few pictures.

Above, the view one day of Broadway & Houston from Lafayette.  Left, from under the BQE in Williamsburg, the brownish monster that is 20 Bayard, caught between two left thumbs.

Back to Business as Usual

- Paul Krugman worries that "a crucial opportunity is being missed," and that we'll soon be back to following Reagan's lies and banking "innovation" off a cliff: All the President's Zombies

- A short, fascinating article on "high speed" trading that details how some Goldman Sachs software (in someone else's hands, of course) could be used to unfairly manipulate stock prices.  The thieves still own the economy, and they're going to milk us for everything we're worth: Arrest Over Software Illuminates Wall St. Secret


- And "Mike" Bloomberg harasses voters!  Sure, anyone can spend $37 million from their own pocket to run nearly unopposed for mayor, but how many can do it so efficiently?: Bloomberg Campaign Is Juggernaut of Detail

Why doesn't he just buy the immortality he seeks directly, instead of going through this long charade?  With a net worth of $16 billion, and figuring 8 million people in New York, he could give us $2000 apiece!

A big part of leadership is having the "vision" to find a healthy balance of interests.  But Bloomberg's vision is limited to the concerns of Wall Street and banking aristocrats, "innovators" like himself. 

The city outside his own circle of power is just warehousing for (us,) the drones who serve his class, so block after block of the plastic condos and chain outlets that kill DIY enterprise and culture is fine with him.  He puts on a big show of catering to the middle class, but it's mainly window dressing -- bike paths, outdoor seating, and light-pole banners -- that also just happens to decorate streets around new developments priced out of middle class range.  (Queens Plaza not plastic enough for new condos? -- put up some window dressing.)

Enough.  I feel like a dilettante when it comes to spelling out Bloomberg's crimes -- for the real story, see Lost City or Queens Crap.

Rock On, Rothman's

Sure it's not Macy's or Bergdorf Goodman, but the window crew at Rothman's Union Square store still faces the constant pressure to come up with something -- something with that special Rothman's combination of Crass & Testosterone, symbolized by the Socialist Vanguard Hedge Fund Hero that Rothman's features in its illustrations, like below left.

The current "Rock On, Rothman's" theme is so unconvincing that I've skipped the display's centerpiece, an uninspired "rocker" posing with a guitar & amp, and surrounded by custom-labeled vinyl, like the record above.  I do like the headbanger lettering on the amp below right, though -- one of my fondest rock concert memories is of a speed freak gripping the front of a massive amp, furiously working his legs as he rushed into the white light of 130 decibel deafness.


To counter the rocker's limpness and bring the Crass Quotient up to Rothman's standards, around the corner on Park, in a "Cash for Clunkers" themed window, below, they humiliate a mannequin by nailing a black rectangle over its lack of genitalia, while a '70s used car salesman admires its white plastic ass.

Alwyn Court

Above, the Alwyn Court at 58th and 7th.  After it was built in 1910, Architecture magazine said that "...[while its surface,] if made by a pastry cook, would be of the highest excellence... it can hardly be considered at all in the light of architecture."

The picture here is from a bad photo I couldn't do much to improve (other than crop), but I still like it a lot.  The drizzly gray light cuts through the surface confection to concrete.

The Alwyn Court's long journey, from housing piano and cigar tycoons to burning and losing its cornice, is detailed here.

Bowery Extremes

Extreme examples a block apart on the upper end of Bowery.  Above, a repair shop at Great Jones, one of the neighborhood's last outposts of raw visual funk.

Left and below, a unit of the suburban "Edge City package" so popular with developers -- slick, context-free living above a bank branch (note how the sign comes pre-installed!) -- plunked down on the corner of Bond.

I would guess the well-to-do tourists at nearby sidewalk cafes are thinking "The great thing about New York is: You feel like you never left home!"


Update: I noticed this morning that the colorful corner is diagonally across from the Bowery Hotel's sidewalk cafe, pictured here.  Maybe the corner will be left alone, as a relic to entertain the tourists.

Surrogate Drinking Problem

Above, on Nassau in Greenpoint, a burlesque window display at a liquor store seems to say that while "Love Kills Slowly," liquor does it quicker.

And to the right, an ad for the movie "Surrogates" in the subway.  I like the tag line "Human perfection.  What could go wrong?"  And the image is creepy enough, though it distracts from the message -- since lustful objectification is eternal, why not just go ahead and build the objects? -- by screaming for the spelling "surroguts."

Full Frontal Scaffolds

(Speaking of scaffolding...)  Frontal above, anyway.  The naked toothpick lattice gives all three of these a gauzy, web-like thickness, then the working planks bring another level of order.

Above, an older photo from Adams St. north of Tillary in Brooklyn.  Below left -- a little too subtle for my camera -- at 13th St. and 4th Ave. in Manhattan.  And below right, wrapping a big box of living units rising where they used to park the Brooklyn Brewery trucks at Berry and N. 13th in Williamsburg.


[ Scaffolding - Urban Shed Competition ]

High Line Show

Instead of launching into yet | another | screed -- complaining that the High Line is just an elevated causeway that allows celebrities and aristocrats to "drunk walk" between the clubs, hotels and condos woven into the line, high above the hoi polloi -- I will jump right to the money shot.

I figured I would eventually see something like this; it took less than 20 minutes into my first visit to the High Line, on Sunday, to capture it.  Show-goers enter the theater from the south, near 12th St., above.  The show took place on the north side of the Standard Hotel, below.  I assume the show is destined for TV, titled "Who's that Ass in the Window?"

Btw, I'd like to start a betting pool that pays out the first time a celebrity is arrested for peeing onto traffic from the High Line.


[ High Line 2 ]
[ High Line 3 ]

Urban Shed Competition

Something Is Going On Up There; 38th St. off Sixth Ave.
I got excited when saw a blurb about the Urban Shed Competition: I thought I'd finally be able to share my plans for a stylish shed with room for the moonshine still, an outhouse, and other stuff you either don't want indoors or don't want the Sheriff's boys to find in your possession.

But when I visited the Urban Shed website, I find out they're serious, and want suggestions on how to paint a Happy Face on the unbridled development required by Bloomberg's core constituency: the Masterds* of the Universe and the greedy developers who build condos for them and their legions of wannabe Masterds (who binge crawl all over the LES, East Village, and soon Williamsburg, doing their best to eject their soul along with their stomach contents and thus attain Masterdhood).

The point of the competition is to design a new system of scaffolding and "sidewalk sheds" (like the one to the left, at 2nd Ave. and 12th St.) -- a ridiculous idea, because the current scaffolds nearly always look better than the naked buildings, and the ad hoc, zigzagging sheds are some of the most interesting pedestrian passages in New York City.  (And most exciting: pedicab drivers could sell thrill rides through these twisting labyrinths, swerving around groaning cranes and whooshing I-beams, welding sparks and hungover construction workers.)

Not only is there no need for new scaffolding & sheds, but we get the insult of the Urban Shed website, a detailed propaganda exercise selling the idea that a jury headed by Dept. of Building officials, in a competition supported by the players who've brought us all these years of Masterdization, will somehow come up with something good for the city.

High Above Lexington at 48th
It's a little irritating for a creative type like me to see the respected architects and designers on the jury.  I know that's the way of the world -- rich people buy the art and develop the buildings that keep artists and architects afloat -- but the idea of tarting up passageways around construction sites -- usually the most interesting sights on our increasingly drab and uniform blocks -- just to make the Masterds, the developers, and their friends in office more comfortable is a bit too much.  I accept my place as an artist in the economy, a lapdog to wealth if lucky enough to sell work; but I draw the line at whimpering and licking its face like a neurotic toy poodle.

If the competition could come up with something guaranteed to withstand a semi-truck sideswiping a scaffold, I might be impressed.  As it is, I can almost guarantee the results of this needless exercise: A design that somehow complements the slick blandness of new construction, and is smooth enough in spots to sell to Cemusa as ad space.

Like the case of the "urban shed" that wraps the still-dead escalators at the Union Square subway entrance, right -- courtesy of a sweetheart development deal that cheats the public -- the perceived ugliness of the sheds is not the problem.  The sheds distract from the problem.  To turn urban sheds into something that fits in with the Cemusa newsstands, bus stops and "bike shelter" ad platforms that, thanks to Bloomberg, now bring that slick plastic corporate flavor to every corner of the city, just adds to the problem.

[ Union Square Subway Shed: A Tale of Two Entrances ]
[ Urban Shed Competition ]

* Excuse me, I just read about Quentin Tarantino's new movie "Inglourious Basterds"

What Obama Should Do

Tiresome, I know.  But since I started this, and read Paul Krugman's excellent piece this morning, I might as well finish it.

My question about Obama before the election was: Is he tough enough?  I think he's proved that he can be, but he's also shown a tendency to get over confident and sloppy, and forget just how dangerous and amoral the enemy is.

The #1 enemy of the United States is still the GOP and its media allies and enablers.

I think it was good of him to let go of the Clintonesque tit for tat war with the GOP.  Doing so could bring around voters who are not confirmed dead-enders ready to help Rush, Palin and the rest shove this teetering bus off the cliff.  And you can't win a war like that, with people living a lie, because you wind up fighting on their terms.  The GOP never argues the merits of an issue, and always seeks to invalidate civil discussion with emotional triggers based on distortions and lies.  It can't stop lying because it has nothing else, and arguing with a liar is a waste of time.

The only way out, for both Obama and America, is for him to go all the way with something he's already shown he can do: Talk to the public in an honest and adult way.  Repudiate the destructive "philosophy" the GOP's been selling since Reagan, top to bottom, and call on media to behave like real reporters and not tabloid gossips, spinning phony controversies that make facts immaterial and make the "news" networks a lot of money.

He should tell Americans it's time to grow up, that there's no such thing as government without taxes and regulations; that there's no civil society without government; and that you cannot have a civil society when a sizable proportion of voters and 99% of GOP politicians, for their own cynical reasons, claim that the instrument of order and civility -- government -- is the "enemy," somehow stealing their birthright.

Americans have been spoiled by lying demagogues who've convinced them they can "have it all" without lifting a finger or making the slightest compromise with the factual world (the world that other people can live in).

From the Wall Streeters who "innovate" new means of systematic theft and believe they have the born right to be billionaires, to Palin's phony "real Americans" who think the simple act of being born white in America, coupled with the ability to lift a gun and jerk their knee, makes them rightful heirs to the Founding Fathers' legacy, even as they make it clear their beliefs are a better fit for a two bit fascist dictatorship.

From one spoiled, self-serving brat to another -- and including all the congressional Democrats resigned to cynicism and consoling themselves on the lobbyists' gravy train -- they all need to be set straight in front of the whole world.

Update: I see Obama is having trouble motivating the "netroots" that helped get him elected (Health Debate Fails to Ignite Obama's Web).  How can he expect to get people pumped up, especially about something as complex as health care, when it seems like he's ready to give up the "public plan" -- the one thing that could simplify the issue and get people excited?

[ Paul Krugman: Republican Death Trip ]
[ The Persistence of Assholes ]

Unique Physiques

Two extremes in building body sculpting.  Above, the dead-airspace side of a building -- next to the Ziegfeld Theater on 54th -- looms like a warm, abstract waffle iron.  Below, a synchronized trio of mermaids on the high-dive platform at 91 5th Ave.

The Persistence of Assholes

America Takes a Leak (near 48th St. & 48th Ave., Queens)
Half of all people tend toward being assholes.  (Proved beyond doubt when this spoiled democracy RE-elected George Bush Jr.)  It has always been so, and always will be.  Humanity comes from nature, which spreads risk through Chance, delivering a potential asshole each time the coin flipped at conception lands tails.

Technology helps assholes amplify their effects on others.  (Proved by the existence of cable "news" networks, car alarms & chirpers, Wall St. CDOs and high-speed trading, etc.)  That is the double-edged nature of knowledge; it can expand your reach and even save your life, until assholes get their hands on it.

Every year it becomes more obvious that the world is split between those who are curious and seek meaning, because they love life, and those who find meaning in their brutal ability to dominate, because they hate life and people in particular.

They sneer at empathy; the only time they're willing to stand in someone else's shoes is after they've blown the wearer to smithereens.

They sneer at "regulations" -- the tedious details of Law put in place to balance the interests of the diverse individuals who make up society.

They sneer because all those sissified niceties just get in their way.

They play the political game just to get inside and poison government, then society -- spreading the ignorance, hate and cynicism that consumes and distracts the pitchfork crowd long enough to let the assholes keep on stealing until they've trucked everything away, right down to the pipes.

You thought these assholes would go away when Obama won?  They will never go away.  Looked at in the most positive way possible, they are our "worse half," conniving brutes installed by nature's random balancing act to test us, to help keep our critical judgment lean, sharp and clear eyed for the long voyage ahead.

The few headlines that triggered this screed:

On proto-fascist mobs rallying to the aid of angry Confederates and billionaires, and their Fox/GOP minions, at "health care town halls": Senator Goes Face to Face With Dissent

On the lucrative Torture Industry: 2 U.S. Architects of Harsh Tactics in 9/11's Wake

On the shocking revelation that Karl Rove -- the Conscience of the GOP -- could have done something bad: E-Mail Reveals Rove's Key Role in ’06 Dismissals

Update: A loaded weapon guarantees your right to be an asshole: Gunning for Health Care by Gail Collins

This screed has been brought to you by the head-boiling effects of a mini-heatwave and a heat trapping apartment, evil incarnate, and an economy bad enough to give me even more time to spout...

Great Jones Construction Dragon

At Lafayette and Great Jones, the Great Green Cement Proboscis feeds the red dragon.

Note that I've featured the rooftop hardware next door before.

Herald Towers

Here are the triple towers of Herald Towers, above Herald Square.

I took the photos over the past year-plus.  I like how some of them have that slightly phony antique-postcard coloration, harking back to the Towers' youth.

The length of the towers parallels 34th St. to the east of the Square, left and below left; the "asparagus tip" ends, on top and below right, are angled along Broadway south of 34th.  That's the tip of the Empire State Building peeking through the towers below right.


So long as you ignore the purely utilitarian shed on the roof, the closeup below shows that, though the building's decorated heights are maybe a little too ornate -- like an old-school plush armchair covered in paisley corduroy -- they are still beautiful.

Queens Skeletons

Above, the massive billboard skeleton at Queens Plaza and 29th would be right at home in a noir superhero landscape.  Meanwhile just below the billboard, below left, the rusty skeleton of the subway sits up from its grave.

And below right, on top of a building on Hunters Point Ave. near Dutch Kills, a spookily back-lit skeleton offers up a digital clock that seems to have died in 1888.


[ Previous Queens Billboards ]

Broadway Toy Facade

Again, in the right place at the right time to catch the light.

Picture-wise, the yellow and white front is close to being too toy-like, but the black fire escape comes through nicely.  I think the bluish window, below left, adds something -- but maybe too much, distracting from the light with arty placement.

The block is on the west side of Broadway south of 13th.

Water Towers of NYC (Maybe)

Strangely, I took all but one of these photos near the Manhattan end of the Queensboro Bridge -- a hotbed of styled rooftop enclosures.


A telltale curve -- like the one in the photo above left, taken at 8th Ave. & 56th St. -- lets you know a water tank hides inside the enclosure; building vintage is also a good indicator. 

But a lot of the time it's hard to tell.  You can see there's no tank in the picture on top; the building above right looks too new, but I would guess the two enclosures below, on older buildings, do house water tanks.