Restless

Bridges and Alpine Sex

2009-11-06T07:30:00.008-05:00

Mating Beast Cave Painting, Williamsburg Bridge
I like walking across bridges; it satisfies what seems an inborn desire to see the world from on-high -- likely an artifact of my Alpine heritage.

I figure that highly adapted genetic heritage is a product of (1) the hyper-mutating effect of intense radiation at high altitude, (2) the lack of oxygen up there, which shrivels the gonads and induces genetic trauma, or (3) what I've heard was the "mating ritual" carried out by my prehistoric Swiss forebears:

Two strangers -- perhaps lost while gathering herbs, or exiled from their cave for "acting like a Neanderthal" -- meet on a narrow trail snaking over a jagged, icy summit as the sun sets and wolves start to howl.

There is just one small cave to sleep in, which means that by morning -- if they are oppositely sexed and close enough to human -- the mutating miracle of high altitude conception has occurred.

Alpine cave people couldn't afford to be picky.

In case you've thought of trying it -- walking across bridges, that is -- be forewarned: Bridge walkways are great places to freeze or boil to death, inhale exhaust and road debris, or -- when the weather's passable -- nearly get run over by speeding bikes.

Below, a Williamsburg Bridge diving platform and the refreshing East River far below.

[ Topic: Bridges ]

Update: Just noticed this nice 3 minute slideshow ode to walking in NYC at the NY Times.

The Shrinking Balcony

2009-11-05T07:24:00.004-05:00

Some "luxury condo" balconies look like you could actually use them for storing junk you are tired of looking at inside. Most of them are barely deep enough to inch yourself sideways along their length. But all of them are ornamental, intended to suggest class, like your own private box at the opera.

At the high end are ones like those on the new condos at 311 E 11th St., left. With structural glass held together by metal tubing, they are balcony jewelry, fat diamonds to wave at the peasants below.

The balconies on top here, at Manhattan & Newton in Greenpoint, are more typical. They are wide enough to hold potted plants, but announce their ornamental purpose with the topmost row (see upper right corner), which serves blank wall not condos. No doubt the architect did not want to disturb the rhythm of the design as it climbs toward heaven.

I've also seen new developments where the "balcony" is just a barred railing -- bolted flush against the side of the building in front of glass sliding doors -- like the window guards that keep kids and pets from falling out.

But the logical conclusion of this ornamental trend is displayed below, on the "luxury rentals" at 525 Union in Williamsburg. Here the rigorous architect (Karl Fischer himself!) has jumped right past the fraudulence of usability, though maybe not functionality, because if you look closely you can see the air conditioner grills underneath the "balcony" screens.

New Museum Hits the Fan

2009-11-04T13:37:00.012-05:00

I wondered months ago about the civic purpose of the New Museum. Now artist William Powhida has summed up complaints about it from inside the art world, above. [ via Modern Art Notes, C-Monster ]

The New Museum may be a hotbed of collusion between gallerists, collectors and curators, but -- like the new Sperone Westwater gallery going up further up Bowery -- looked at from outside the art world it is just a showcase for art bought during the luxury boom, and serves to connect the luxury shopping mall of Soho, the new luxury condos on the Lower East Side, and the luxury hotels further up Bowery -- helping turn yet another swath of NYC into a playground for aristocrats.

Questions of fairness within the moneyed upper reaches of the art world are sort of silly; money and status rule. Questions of collusion and hypocrisy are a lot more valid, especially if the institution in question poses as a guardian of culture, when in fact it's just part of the new global aristocracy that destroys everything it touches but its own shiny reflection.

[ Scrutiny on the Bowery ]
[ NY Times Endorses Tycoon Island ]
[ Yet Another Bauble on the Bowery, NYT ]

Info Awareness Report

2009-11-04T07:52:00.003-05:00

Rest Less Ornamental Letters
My contact at the Information Awareness Office also reports that the image above, which ran with this post, is popular.

And my contact confirmed long ago that Restless is a great name, because people scattered all over the world speak to their computer (or at least to Google) like they've seen people do in movies, issuing the one word directive for...

Computer: I am feeling restless. I instruct you to find something to quench this unquenchable thirst!

Widescreen Queens

2009-11-03T07:23:00.003-05:00

The only way to do these photos -- and the freeway approach through Queens -- justice was to present them in widescreen format.

I took the pictures from the Greenpoint Ave. overpass above the Long Island Expressway.

[ This Vista Previously Seen (at bottom) Here ]

Too Poetic Tagger

2009-11-02T07:35:00.006-05:00

Though I was encouraged by the budding literacy of lee lee go pee pee, the poem above -- on the east side of the Pulaski Bridge approach in Greenpoint -- makes me hope taggers quit before they get too poetic. For one thing, it's tedious to have to read all those words, delivered in tidy script that suggests a too-precious cafe reading.

And I know poetry is one of the few things easier to make fun of than art, but still, "baskets of fruit filled kisses?" I would be disgusted if someone kissed me with their mouth full of masticated grapes! And kemetic sounds too much like emetic to stir in with references to food.

The Brake Service monster around the corner on Clay, just above, is much more to my taste.

Political Blogging Note

2009-10-31T09:11:00.005-04:00

Attack Attack Monday Yogurt Yogurt, 23rd near Lexington
In case you wondered, Yes I do get tired of listening to myself go on about the GOP, etc. It's like kicking a dead horse, except that (1) the horse refuses to die, and (2) the horse is not a horse but a demonic mule, the ungodly spawn of a Trojan horse, a Texas jackass, and a Southern California used car salesman.

See, I am already starting to beat the miserable beast again, even as I apologize for beating it halfway to hell!

I have tried everything to escape this abusive relationship, this addiction to anger, but still -- even after ascending the 12 Steps of my local library's Anger Management Meet-up, and looking down from that serenely peaceful height -- I am compelled to jump off with both boots onto the bloated flank of the mule's gaseous undead corpse and stomp it again!

And by the way, don't forget to vote AGAINST Bloomberg Tuesday. Not only has he done his best to coat this city in plastic and himself in gold leaf, but I am hugely insulted that he has bought off nearly everyone but me!

For more reasons to vote, rigged election or not, see Lost City on Bloomberg, and Queens Crap on Bloomberg.

FOX Stands for Full Of Xhit

2009-10-30T09:05:00.028-04:00

Like ABC stands for A Big Corporation
Of course I don't watch FOX News -- I don't need any New York media elitists' help to keep my rage alive. And I agree with Obama that treating FOX like a legitimate news organization is a waste of time.

Otherwise he'd have to fully endorse the Big Lie that FOX and the other "news networks" keep afloat -- that the GOP is one pole in a bipartisan political system, even though it doesn't endorse the idea of government -- for the He Said She Said show they put on.

It makes perfect sense that Glenn Beck, former shock jock and future Mormon prophet, is FOX's premiere journalist. And I think it's great that the rancid heart of the GOP has moved to FOX, and given up playing at being anything but a propaganda operation.

Recently Frank Rich compared the Colorado balloon boy coverage with all the more dangerous frauds the networks have helped perpetrate by taking GOP fictions at face value. And a while ago Paul Krugman summed up FOX/GOP anger: These "real Americans" simply don't recognize anyone else's right to rule, elected or not. At heart they're wannabe warlords, represented most perversely by the warlord women Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Linda McMahon, etc., out to annihilate other tribes to make room for their teeming broods.

Funny how Reagan led the GOP into the desert decades ago -- toward their promised land, free of reason and responsibility -- and now nothing but assassins come riding out of the dunes, mad as hornets, with worldwide death and destruction their only relief.

As I've said before, when you start out with lies, you have to keep on lying. You have nowhere else to go but up in smoke. Trouble is, these bastards want to take everyone else with them.

[ Fox's Volley With Obama Intensifying, NYT ]
[ In Defense of the 'Balloon Boy' Dad, Frank Rich, NYT ]
[ The Politics of Spite, Paul Krugman, NYT ]
[ Fox Fascist News Poster ]

Ugly Is a Perception Problem

2009-10-29T07:28:00.013-04:00

It's your own fault that so many buildings are "ugly." You are looking at them from the wrong angle.

By walking blocks away and positioning yourself just-so, you can mitigate even the most massive eyesore by making it blend in with other buildings. See how much less painful it is to look at that hideous Philip Johnson thing at Madison & 55th, above on the left, when it's been merged with several other nondescript buildings? The lame "beetle pincer" top is barely noticeable.

And left, if you stand just-so on Cooper Square you can make that hideous blue thing on Astor Place look like no more than a bad haircut on the Carl Fischer Building in front.

[ Earlier in That Hideous Johnson ]

Cloud Tricks

2009-10-28T07:16:00.004-04:00

When a Greenpoint cloud got tired of sitting, below left, it started jumping rope, above.

And a voluptuous cloud, above right, waited until it was right behind the Union Building before it revealed itself as a genie, below. Or maybe a giant rabbit.

[ Cloud Support ]
[ Topic: Clouds ]

Union Building, Union Square

2009-10-27T08:10:00.000-04:00

The Union Building is one of my favorites, at 14th & Broadway on Union Square. I didn't like a single one of several full height shots I took -- the leaning ones here are as close as I could get. So it's not the shape of the building that draws my eye, it's the building's modest but sensitive skin, that changes color with the light.

Maspeth Horror Story

2009-10-26T07:28:00.003-04:00

Giggling couples picnicked in the graveyard last summer. Now ominous winds snap dead leaves from the trees, as Halloween descends on Maspeth, Queens.

The lonely weekend streets of Maspeth are lined with sleeping semi trucks. I've lived and worked near truck yards, so I'm comfortable around them; I just wish I hadn't remembered that article about serial killer truck drivers as I walked through [map].

Then there's the DSNY garbage garage (left, at 47th St. & 58th Rd.) with all those bags full of who-knows-what.

"San Man": It ain't the stink -- a couple-ten beers will take care of that. What bothers me is when I wake up sweatin' like a pig and the bed is full of garbage bags with zombie arms stickin' out, tryin' to get me!

Then the hyper-bright plant where they make concrete boots (right, on 49th St.).

Now listen Jimmy, they been doin' things this way since Columbus was bangin' Cleopatra. How we gonna make this statue if you won't stand still in the garbage can?

Then the creepy ad at the deserted bus stop across from the Duane Reade warehouse (left, at 50th St. & 55th Ave.).

"There's Something Wrong with Esther." For one thing, she hasn't got bus fare, and you do!

Then the graveyard right behind it (top, New Calvary Cemetery).

Where they buried all the people who died waiting for the bus, or waiting for a friend who's waiting for them at 55th St. & 50th Ave., not 50th St. & 55th Ave!

Then (right, at 48th St. & 54th Ave.) the huge billboards that reach for the freeway like sunflowers reach for the sun...

...to escape the scattered bones at their feet, remnants of failed salesmen who couldn't return home empty handed, to face the wife and poor baby Esther, wailing in her misery, knotted like a scared snake around the bars of her crib.

Then finally, the campground for crazy people (below, on 47th St.).

In better lit parts of the city, people stay up all night, abuse substances and play at Crazy. But the crew here quit playing long ago. They sit circled around the fire, strumming broken guitars, roasting odd bits of meat, licking Bowie knives, and necking like reptiles. Screams from the hills -- the weed covered trash mounds that shelter the camp -- make their dogs whimper and move closer to the fire.

The crew bides its time, waiting for something to happen. They won't know what until some stranger -- maybe you, when your car breaks down and your cellphone goes dead -- wanders up to the fire and asks something silly like "Hey guys, do you know where we are?"

[ Map of Maspeth for Trick-or-Treaters ]
[ Middle of Nowhere, Queens ]

Pulaski Bike Sidewalk Yuppie Graffiti

2009-10-25T07:59:00.004-04:00

Bouncing Kids Off the Sidewalk Is Fun!
The city, perhaps feeling that the wonderfulness of its turning the Pulaski Bridge sidewalk into a bike lane is being misperceived, sent out its cosmetic remediation crew to add some yuppie / preschool graffiti to the bike lane stripes and glyphs already there.

Above: A kid could get run over by another kid, or get kicked in the head by a jogger, so what's the big deal about bikes?

Below, at the Long Island City end of the bridge, there's a jogger, a bike, the kid with the yin-yang haircut, and a couple in heels. This will teach kids that Bikes Are People Too!

As an artist I can understand the desperate logic of adding more paint to mask a fatal flaw -- in this case the city's taking the sidewalk away from pedestrians instead of having the nerve to take a lane from traffic -- but won't the graffiti distract bikers as they speed through?

[ Bikes Push Pedestrians Off Bridge ]

NY Times Endorses Tycoon Island

2009-10-24T08:22:00.006-04:00

His Majesty MIKE III
From today's NY Times' endorsement of Bloomberg:

His plans suit the times. With little city money to spend, Mr. Bloomberg wants to focus more on helping working-class and middle-class residents with cheap banking or aid in fighting foreclosures or finding jobs and housing. He wants to give a lift to small businesses.

What a crock. Bloomberg, by favoring any and all luxury development, has done more than anyone else to turn Manhattan into Tycoon Island and hand New York over to his peers, the aristocrats whose ever-increasing wealth is based on pushing everyone else further down the class scale, and further from this city.

"He wants to give a lift to small businesses;" a new art boutique for the filthy rich, with an elevator that could accommodate 240 people, goes up on Bowery. It's just another day on Tycoon Island.

A poem for those pushed out:

Four years from now
Where will you be?
(Nothing against it, but)
Schenectady?

[ Yet Another Bauble on the Bowery ]
[ Scrutiny on the Bowery ]
[ Thank You MIKE Bloomberg ]

Halloween Picture

2009-10-23T09:33:00.005-04:00

From an old post, one of my dead paintings.

3 Columbus Circle Facelift

2009-10-22T07:53:00.013-04:00

"Redevelopment" is what they call it on the 3 Columbus Circle website. They are spending $60 million to bring the building -- which dates from 1923, was GM headquarters for a while, and fills the block between 8th Ave., Broadway, 57th and 58th -- up to current standards of mediocrity by installing glass over the existing brick.

The building is not actually on Columbus Circle, but after a radical facelift you might as well tighten up your name too. It used to house Newsweek Magazine, Coliseum Books, and CompUSA, before all those lines of business were eaten by the Internet; last time I walked by it seemed there was at least one Chase branch on each side of the block.

Too bad the owners didn't consult me before they started the project -- I'm sure I could have brought the glazing in a lot cheaper.

I would have hired a fleet of heavy-lifting Soviet Army helicopters -- the kind designed to deliver a prefab factory town to the windswept steppes overnight, complete with lead bottle-cap factory, Commissar's commissary, and nuclear powered laundromat / vodka distillery.

The copters would ferry tanks full of molten glass (with metal flakes, so it glitters) from Pittsburgh, PA. Then -- lined up diagonally along the length of Central Park -- they would move into position one by one and pour their hot cargo over the building like maple syrup over waffles.

According to my cocktail napkin calculations, the job wouldn't have taken more than 2 days tops, weather permitting.

As it is, the outfit that got the job opted for the most tedious process possible -- see all those huge pieces of double sided tape stuck on the building, below?

[ Meanwhile, in Architectural Abominations; Curbed ]

The UN, LIC & Tudor City Too

2009-10-21T08:05:00.006-04:00

Base of the Secretariat Building
Some pictures of U.N. Headquarters, at the east end of 42nd St., taken the day its recent session closed (10/2).

The Secretariat Building, completed in 1952, still looks great. The photos of it above and below left are from Tudor City; the photo below right is from the Pulaski Bridge between Greenpoint and Long Island City.

Below left, the view of Long Island City from Tudor City. And below right, the wealthy Tudors can gaze out their windows past World Headquarters and see (to the right of the buildings across the river) the end point of their "waste stream," the domes of the Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant. As befits their status, they cannot smell it.

[ Earlier on the Pulaski Bridge ]
[ Topic: Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant ]

Cough Baby Cough Tuesday

2009-10-20T08:57:00.011-04:00

Toxic Asset Truck Blends Into Greenpoint
I read* a good one-two punch from Frank Rich and Paul Krugman, comparing the sad shape of Main Street -- the part of the economy that creates jobs -- to the glittering shape of Wall Street winners, who've used taxpayer guarantees to keep on gambling and get yet filthier rich.

Exchanges splinter and billions slosh around in "dark pools" as high finance moves further into the shadows each week. In between Reaganist deregulation, the corruption known as lobbying, and technology that lets financial types make smoke look solid -- the only way out is to, as Krugman said months ago, "make banking boring again," and force Wall Street onto the straight and narrow.

Rich and Krugman (and I) wonder if Obama or the Democratic Congress has the conviction to pull the plug on the casino economy before it consumes us, or if they've resigned themselves to our continuing descent into the ungovernable feudal state the FOX Noose Nation pines for.

[ Goldman Can Spare You a Dime, Frank Rich, NYT ]
[ The Banks Are Not All Right, Paul Krugman, NYT ]
[ Rivals Pose Threat to New York Stock Exchange, NYT ]

* Barely, somehow, through a cold-weakened brain. To all those slobs who sneezed at me on the subway last week: I hope your eyes are burning and your nose is running!

Scaffold Camouflage

2009-10-19T07:46:00.004-04:00

Above left, it's the summer shadows that turned a Tribeca scaffold into camouflage.

Above right, it's the junk behind the veil that made the scaffold on Berry at N 10th in Williamsburg so confusing -- did someone put up a phony building site just to fill it with toxic garbage from Europe?

And below, Queens takes the cake with a scaffold outside the Queens Plaza subway station that nearly makes Citibank's Turquoise Tower disappear.

Most Popular Recent Photo

2009-10-16T08:06:00.002-04:00

Cooper Union Armored Elephant
My contact at the Information Awareness Office, which tracks your every mouse click (and eye movement and Psychological Heat Signature if you have a webcam) informs me that my most popular recent photo is the one above, which ran with my Cooper Union Cooper Square post.

I wish I could take all the credit, but I think the subject has something to do with it.

Penn Station Water Tanks

2009-10-15T07:33:00.017-04:00

Above, a crew putting up two new water tanks (lower left) beyond some existing ones, seen last week from in front of Penn Station on 7th Ave. The parts are split below; excuse the digital-zoom blurriness on the left, it's the best direct shot I could get.

And below left, a photo from last winter that shows more water tanks further down W 31st, seen over a construction tent at the corner of 7th Ave. Below right I've zoomed in on the odd building sticking up to the left of the tanks.

Here's a City Room item with a nice slide show, about the Rosenwach Tank Company building a tank 10 blocks north, on W 40th, earlier this year. And here's a Gothamist item about the fire in July at Rosenwach's Williamsburg facility, that says "according to local custom, everyone's blaming the hipsters" for the fire.

I would discount this as knee-jerk prejudice, except I've noticed that more and more of these apparent hipsters live life once-removed -- constantly consulting their iPhones, sniffing for something that's piqued the interest of other units of the swarming, always-connected colony -- so it makes sense they might forget Cause and Effect in what used to be the real world, and shoot fireworks into a dark lot just to see what blows up.

[ Topic: Water Towers NYC ]

Trump Parc Cornrow Roof

2009-10-14T07:57:00.002-04:00

The Trump Parc, seen here from 58th near 6th Ave., was built in 1930 as the Barbizon Plaza Hotel; it's now condos. Strangely, the stunning corn-colored cornrowed roof is not the original. (More at CityRealty.)

The building's good skin makes the trio of High Culture tatoos below, above an entrance, look good no matter how jaded the passing Age.

On Delancey

2009-10-13T07:28:00.010-04:00

Some recent photos from Delancey St. Above, a quality liquor sign that's "as old as hills."

Below left, it was embarrassing to be seen taking the picture, but I couldn't pass up the Schlock Conceptual Art of "high gravity" liquor meeting its fate on the sidewalk. Then after a good bottle there's nothing like a good smoke, maybe with what looks like an exhaust pipe sticking out the side of the SVA dorm at Ludlow, below right. Is the Student Medicinal Marijuana Hookah Rathskeller in the basement?

And leaving the LES, below, construction and tarps at Chrystie help create a dramatic base for the new crap lording over the Bowery.

[ Earlier on the SVA Dorm ]
[ Earlier on the Bowery ]

Burn Baby Burn Monday

2009-10-12T08:22:00.009-04:00

Solution to Our Energy Problems?
Some heat to warm you on this cold Monday morning.

Above, a tagger proposes we burn the rich. I'd be happy if we just taxed the crap out of people making tens of millions a year. It would remove some of the incentive for sociopathic greed -- and be just as satisfying to us bitter peons, because the filthy rich would scream like they were burning anyway!

Then above left, I can't tell you how much pleasure it's brought me to see this tidy gift wrapped package of NYC boutique real estate sit there for months (on Broadway below 22nd), all dressed up with nowhere to go. The "Lease me now, love me forever" line in the window sounds straight out a streetwalker's mouth.

And to the right (image courtesy of the Internet), the official Glenn Beck Suicide Bomber Countdown T-Shirt. I am hoping he reaches his logical conclusion, live on the FOX Noose Network set, before I waste any time thinking about him. For now, I'll just refer back to my pleasant fantasy about the destiny of Sarah Palin's tribe, in North to Alaska.

If you need yet more heat, check out Joe Nocera's excellent Have Banks No Shame? Or check out Frank Rich's great Two Wrongs Make Another Fiasco, about how some of the same frauds who brought us Iraq are beating the drum for a repeat in Afghanistan.

The genius of the FOX/GOP philosophy is that, by helping to make the world a more brutal and ignorant place, it makes its phony photo-op strength -- cynicism and viciousness posing as principle -- more attractive. It wants you to become a mindless savage to defeat the other mindless savages it's helped create -- all so the frauds on top can live large, like warlords.

Queens Clouds

2009-10-09T09:00:00.000-04:00

Two remarkable clouds lumbering across Queens. The first, above and below left, is seen from the Pulaski Bridge. The one below right hangs darkly over the far end of Dutch Kills.