Happy Halloween

Photo: Bob Gruen

I love this photo so much. Mainly because this is the corner of 23rd street and 8th avenue back in the day when what's currently a BBQ was a bank, the ad in the background on the building that's only really appropriate for a pack of smokes was a pack of smokes, and diagonally across from where the awesome band for whom every day was Halloween is standing there was the bowling alley where I won a second-place trophy in 5th grade (I was playing against a bunch of chimpanzees, I'm sure) and the Lamston's where I bought my first Maybelline eyeliner pencil, etc., etc., stood.

But perhaps most of all, look at how Gene Simmons is dressed. Not only do I have clogs almost exactly like that, I would wear his whole dang outfit in a snap. Homey looks sharp!

The power of hyphenation

NYC rite of passage

Staring out the window of a subway's last car and watching the station you just left disappear from sight.

The dangers of recycling

Can you imagine the nervous breakdown this building's super has when he finds a greasy pizza box in the plastics bin?

You talkin' to me?

The Lost Tribes of New York City from Carolyn London on Vimeo.

"Urban Anthropologists Andy and Carolyn London interview some of New York City's more overlooked citizens."

Enjoy.

Slushy attempts at snow frivolity

Out tromping in the snowy, icy wonderland yesterday, I immediately noticed this pint-sized snowman in front of Cremebebe (a shop with cringingly high-priced, trendy clothing for kids, but it's both a small business owned by charming people and a lot of their stuff is homemade and awesome, so they won me over a long time ago). Note its penny eyes and buttons and pipe cleaner arms and expression!



When I got home, P had emailed me this pic. Is this guy putting the finishing touches on his creation, or is he a pedestrian who stopped to greet the icy little woofball?

Either way, it's quite life-affirming to see these examples of how people embraced the storm, despite mysteries like what the heck was the big deal anyway. My friend Spike deduced that Bloomby closed schools before a flake had touched down on Hizzoner's big dome because he's a businessman, and closing it all down saved money. Which means that mayors before him, even the Chief Creep of all Creeps Ghouliani, were more community minded than Bloomby. Whoa, man.

New York, you so pricey

On the corner of 2nd avenue there's a building that looks like it could collapse or implode any moment from some crazy NYC combo of neglect, shoddy renovations, and the passage of time. It's had the whimsical "Store 4 Rent/Call Crazy Landlord" sign up for ages now, even long before The Economic Troubles took hold and "For Rent" signs became such a common sight around town.



Way back in the day, I loved this particular stretch of 2nd avenue, from around 4th street down to Houston, because it was so deserted and had some kind of je nous se qua je ne sais quoi. I remember taking an achievement test in high school at La Salle on the corner of 2nd street, or going to Everybody's between 1st and 2nd street, and thinking, damn. I like this empty street thing. Everybody's was an arty hole-in-the-wall kind of restaurant that was as fascinating as any foreign country to me because my sisters had had such elder-sister fun there, meeting friends for brunch after their late-night clubbing shenanigans.


Of course you can't!

Alas, Everybody's is long gone. The narrow space it occupied is now either part of Urge, a scary looking club, or a karaoke bar (I haven't looked too closely). First street, which used to be weed-strewn and rat infested, has a spanking-new building on each side of the street now, including an alley that aspires to be a tourist-y shopping destination.

It ain't the same, I tell ya! And I know, it may be true that New York wouldn't be NY if it didn't change rapidly every five seconds. But I also think it's true NY wouldn't be what it is if some things didn't stay eggz-actly the same. In that sense, I'm glad the Mars bar is still stankin' up the corner of 1st street. You'd have to give me many stacks of bills to sit at its sticky bar, order one of its unquestionably unsanitary beverages, and weather its straight-out-of-the-nuthouse vibe from its clientele. But at least that environment is more interesting than humongous, glassy walls of unaffordable apartments. It might not smell as good, but it's certainly more inspired.

I guess I'm turning into kind of a grouchy New Yorker.

Boooo

I loved this building. I loved it, dammit!



And I loved what some of the Cooper students posted in the windows just before it was demolished. See it? I miss the old NY. My sentiments exactly. I know, the old New York was full of abandoned buildings and weed- and garbage-strewn vacant lots, dark, empty avenues and crime stats were bad, real bad...but it was awesome.



Cooper erased the words in the windows, which struck me as very spoilsport-y of them. Especially since they were going to knock the whole thing down within days anyway.



This is the crazy thing shadowing our lives now. It's huge, it looks like it was attacked by a hook-handed pirate, and from what I hear, it's more a display of ego on the architect's part than useful for the students and faculty of Cooper Union.

Boooo.

Oh what a night

P and I spent an evening at the new Standard hotel in the meatpacking district this week. I was curious about the building as it stands over the newly open highline park and OK, from an architectural perspective at least, its not as super ugly and out of place as, say, the purplish Hotel Gansevoort on Hudson, which would look better in Miami or at the other end of a wrecking ball. Not that there aren't a lot of disconcerting things in that neighborhood these days already, especially for an old broad like myself who, I guess, relates more to the now-absent racks of hanging cow carcasses by day and streetwalkin' trannies by night than $400 haircuts and "Jeffrey."



But strangely, I felt right at home crashing for free in one of the Standard's deluxe rooms. (We were there as part of a press event for an intriguing new sleep product.) Here's the mysterious P getting to know the door hardware of our room.



It was a foggy night after a thoroughly rainy day and from our window it looked as if the top half of the Empire State Building disappeared.



But it was back the next morning. Phew!



I highly recommend taking advantage of anything that helps shake up your everyday perspective. It was fun being a tourist in my hometown, if only for a tiny blip of time.

What to do when you get tired of staring at your Vermeers

Perhaps you already saw one of the few articles published recently about the bowling alley in the basement of the Frick mansion.



But if you haven't, check it owt! This is exactly what I've always suspected are hidden in these grand old museums and former homes. I've long wondered why we can't see the art AND the private rooms the old timey rich folks. (I know, because in most cases they've been turned into the museums' offices. Bor-rang.)

In the case of the Frick game room, according to the Times, which has a great panorama of the lanes, the public isn't allowed in because there's only a single narrow staircase leading down to it and blah blah safety, fire hazard yak yak. I guess I'm going to have to befriend a Frick employee who will then feel a terrible stab of betrayal when they realize my interest in them was only about gaining entry to the ancient bowling alley but by then I'll realize I'm really fond of the Frick employee actually and will have to win their trust and affection back before the end of the movie.



I wonder what nutty rooms that grumpy old assassination-inspirin' industrialist had in Eagle Rock, his summer estate. We'll never know, sadly, as this wee 'lil manse was razed 40 years ago.

For the love of Legos

You might have seen this already in the NY Times today, but in case you didn't, check it out now. Enjoy!

Goodbye, trees

Isn't it so sad and bittersweet to see all the Xmas trees in the garbage, in the gutter, with bags on their heads, etc., these days? Picture courtesy of Last Night's Garbage.

What a perfect answer it would be, then, don't you think, if the city were overrun by small hungry elephants to perform the clean up? Yes, the NYC sanitation department has a whole tree-recycling program already in place, and that's great, but come on...little elephants.

Seasonz Greetingz

Was there ever, or has there been since, a better urban photographer than Berenice Abbott? I don't think so.

Fr-fr-frightening

There have been scary monster buildings popping up all over this city for years now. And I mean years! But in the last few years? Holy crap. This one really knocked the wind out of me when I first saw it looming over Madison Avenue at 23rd street. Oh what a crazy long shadow this sucker is going to cast.



It ate these two little buildings.



You think I'm kidding? Well, where are they?! Before (June):



After (November):



O.K., I guess I'm kind of obsessed with this building. Wouldn't you be, if you saw this growing in what used to be a perfectly pleasant neighborhood? It's in the trendy box style that was such a hit for the New Museum on the Bowery recently. And it has that spooky overhang that just lends to its fearsomeness. How does that work, I wonder? But it's just so damn tall. It's sooooo tall. If I was going to take all the ogre-ish aspects away from it, and just see it for what it is, it would still look to me, at the very least, like it was a weird, skinny building that showed up one day to bug the two cool old buildings on the corner of Madison Avenue and 23rd street and won't leave them alone anytime soon. 

I guess you can tell, I don't have any great pictures of this damn monstrosity. THAT'S how big it is. Here it is with all the little people, scurrying around on 23rd street. Poor little people! Run, run!

Guess what

One guess.



What does this tell you.



That's right: I got a cell phone. And yes, that's correct: I've never had one in all the cell-phony years gone by. The more time passed, and the more cell phones proliferated across the country like horde upon horde of skittery bugs, the more I seemed to enjoy not carrying around anything that beeped or buzzed. But, alas. Especially recently, moments have cropped up where it would have been much more convenient to reach for something at least somewhat clean and that I could dial that was in my bag, as opposed to using one of the garbage-strewn, sticky, leaning-like-the-tower-of-Pisa, and frequently peed-upon remaining NYC phone booths.

(Have you stepped into a public phone booth lately? I hope not. It is kind of interesting, though, to see a part of the city that was of use for so long, fall into such neglect and disrepair. In a sort of Planet-of-the-Apes kind of way.)



So anyway, I finally did it, I joined the masses. I thought I was joining the masses when I started a blog. But no: every single soul out there does not have a blog. Every single soul out there does, however, have a cell phone. I mean, I almost got hit by a nun driving a van and talking on a cell phone recently, and no, it wasn't Halloween or even the days leading up to Halloween. A real nun! Ignoring the stop sign on the FDR drive and banging an incredibly careless, high-speed right onto Houston street!



Anyway. I've always loved the above street art by skullphone. I think it's a brilliantly dark and funny, not to mention accurate, image. Sigh.

Walk this Way

Now this is a great New York Times article, written by my old friend-in-passing David Rakoff. But I don't understand why it wasn't on the front page of all the New York editions, in a taking-up-the-entire-front-page kind of way. I'm going to post it here, and if you don't hear from me for a while, it's because I'm out on the street handing out xeroxed copies of it, too. Enjoy!

Spooky city

There are all sorts of reasons to find yourself spooked in this city. Like when you're walking past the Fairway on 125th street near the river to get to some crazy new restaurant and you say to your companion, "THERE ARE RATS AROUND HERE, I JUST KNOW IT!" and your companion replies "OH GOODIE, RATS ARE CUTE!" and then you see A BIG HAIRY, GREASY ONE and your heart stops because you know it means 100 others just like it are milling around so you run shrieking into the dining establishment before a scary and assuredly life changing rat battle ensues.

OR

You find yourself strolling down First Avenue, uptown in the 40s, one night, having just enjoyed a dinner at a Turkish restaurant that would sadly and inexplicably close a few days later despite the fact that this place made you fervently decide you absolutely LOVE Turkish food, when suddenly, you look to your left and GASP WITH HORROR because something incredibly scary and dramatic is happening in the park near the UN! Oh my god!! And you might have to click on the image below to see what I mean.



"CALM DOWN, THAT'S JUST ST. GEORGE SLAYING THE DRAGON," your companion says, but you're still in shock and can only mutter "WHAT? WHY? WHO?" In response your companion yawns and basically tells you to "just bleeping google it." When you finally get around to doing just that, you realize this particular "mammoth statue" is actually called the Good Defeats Evil monument, and then it's like ohhhhhhhh, that's why it's a good thing to have right next to the UN.

It's still really spooky though, when you look at it at night, whether or not you know what it is.

A big flowery eyeball

Sometimes you just have to stop and listen when you hear a big flowery eyeball talking to you. It must have something very important to say if you can hear its words so clearly, even through the glass of the optician's window where it resides in all its awesomeness.

"You're working on a drawing of two antelopes playing cards. You're also thinking about starting to work on a drawing of some frogs in a busy kitchen. But you and I both know what you're really preoccupied with is your new play, and solving the problem of the second act. Sure, it'd be great if you could forget about these projects for now and instead finish the pink fur shrug you're making for Hazy for Christmas--"

You stopped standing there placidly, grinning, and turned to the big flowery eyeball. "What are you getting at?"

"You've got real multi-tasking issues," it said.