Our Urban Odyssey » Inwood

Lost Unicorn in the Heights

ouo — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 00:14:18 +0000

C-mixto submitted this photograph near Dyckman Street. It’s a poster looking for a Lost Unicorn, Unicornio Perdido… C-mixto, being a poet at heart and music fan, noticed it was printed on blue paper, and immediately wondered if the person who posted it is calling out for Silvio Rodriguez’s Unicornio. Ah C-mixto. Here are the lyrics in Spanish and English:

Mi Unicornio azul ayer se me perdió,
pastando lo dejé y desapareció.
Cualquier información la voy bien a pagar,
las flores que dejó, no me han querido hablar.

Mi Unicornio azul ayer se me perdió,
no sé si se me fue, no sé si se extravió.
Y yo no tengo más que un Unicornio azul.
Si alguien sabe de él, le ruego información,
cien mil o un millón yo pagaré.
Mi Unicornio azul se me ha perdido ayer,
se fue…

Mi Unicornio y yo hicimos amistad,
un poco con amor, un poco con verdad.
Con su cuerno de añil pescaba una canción,
saberla compartir era su vocación.

Mi Unicornio azul ayer se me perdió,
y puede parecer acaso una obsesión,
pero no tengo más que un Unicornio azul
y aunque tuviera dos, yo solo quiero aquel.
Cualquier información la pagaré.
Mi Unicornio azul se me ha perdido ayer,
se fue…

My blue unicorn, I lost it yesterday.
I left it grazing and it disappeared.
Any information, I will pay for it well.
The flowers that it left behind don’t want to talk to me.

My blue unicorn, I lost it yesterday,
I don’t know if it left me, or if it got lost,
and I don’t have but one blue unicorn.
If anyone’s got any news, I beg to hear them.
A hundred thousand or a million, I will pay.
My blue unicorn, I lost it yesterday,
it went away.

My unicorn and I became friends,
a little bit with love, a little bit with truth.
With its indigo horn it was fishing for a song
knowing how to share it was its calling.

My blue unicorn, I lost it yesterday,
and it may seem perhaps like an obsession
but I don’t have but one blue unicorn
and even if I had two I only wanted that one.
Any information, I will pay for it,
My blue unicorn, I lost it yesterday,
it went away.

http://www.translatum.gr/forum/index.php?topic=915.0#ixzz14ju4fUam

If you have seen this person’s unicorn, a number is posted on the flyer.

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Inwood Crop Circles

Nova — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 01:49:06 +0000

In a fenced-off field of grass and other green things, there are patches of shiny grass that has been flattened.

Is this a growing technique of Parks and Rec?

Is this is a particular species of green?

Are people laying in these areas?

Have the aliens landed in Inwood? Is the grass shiny from the metal rub of a spaceship bottom?

Theories, please….

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The real Godfather of the PR Day Parade

Nova — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 01:59:43 +0000

Inwood, Manhattan, NYC 2010

This little grandpa doesn’t let age stop his Schwinn Bike Club need. He rolls around Inwood in his PR-pimped quadricycle blasting salsa classics and tooting a horn.

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Guess who’s back?

Nova — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 01:55:28 +0000

Those who followed the Elusive White Tiger hunting in an abandoned lot in Inwood, which then became a blog on a Scorched Earth policy here that turned the lot (and hunting grounds) to a wasteland, will be happy to know that the grass grew back and…. the tiger is back, still hunting! See that white dot in the back? That’s the tiger walking ever so stealthy through a jungle.

Who knows what our little tiger ate while the earth was poisoned? Who knows what our little tiger is eating NOW from a poisoned earth…! What kind of crazy toxins are in those deceptively green everglades? How long before Thanos comes back with his ghostbuster’s toxin backpack for another scorched earth wave?

Despite this, the hunt continues.

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Watch out WaHI, I’m starting a Schwinn Bike Club

Nova — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 02:06:41 +0000

What’s a Nova to do. Can’t drive a car. Can’t ride a motorcycle… Live in the North Pole of Manhattan and it’s tricky to move around….

I’ll start a Schwinn Bike Club.

I’ve seen one old school PR blessing the streets with his pimped out tricycle so I know there are some people up here who’ll understand. Perhaps I can start an on-2 cult up here if I blast salsa from its trunk.

Perhaps I am delirious from the first days of Spring and I’ve been sniffing too many Easter Hyacinths. But it’s that or I join a motorcycle gang.

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Give me some Arabian Formula

Nova — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 20:38:09 +0000

C-mixto spotted this uptown pharmaceutical in a local b odega. Who needs illegal over-the-bodega-counter viagra when you can down some Arabian Formula? Not only will it rub your genie the right way, it will turn your woman into a groveling harem sex slave. Available in any fine bodega that also carries beet dietary supplements (because in the Heights, beets cure everything).

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Because rollers are sexy

Nova — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 17:14:31 +0000

C- mixto stumbled upon this find on the Peralta Project blog (Tony is a talented WaHI artist, FYI check him out).

I love this because:

it is infectious
one of the lines is “I went to 1-82nd and Audubon just the other day”
I think the epitome of urban beauty is loud lipstick, rollers and high heels
She’s got gold beer cans as rollers.

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The Phone Booth

Nova — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 04:05:00 +0000

There was a phone booth at the corner of an Inwood block, right beside a mailbox, trash can and a few newspaper receptacles that flash passersby morning news. The phone booth was the first thing I noticed when I walked up that block for the very first time. It immediately became a marker of home, and contributed to why I moved there. It felt right. The phone booth was a cozy fixture, its location seemed so perfect, so residential, so reminiscent of pre-cell phone days. I imagined its use- a lover calling to see if their object of desire was home, a phone in a surrounding apartment being answered as a face peeked through curtains, looking for the caller who is hunched in the phone booth to escape the rain. Surely this phone booth would do some good, and I smiled every time I passed it.

Its phone had a yellow handle that blended so nicely with the fallen autumn leaves.

I suppose the phone might have had other, more diabolical uses. I suppose the logical question is also, had I ever seen anyone use it, outside my romantic fantasy? Perhaps once, but even that is not something I can say with certainty.

So the other week I heard horrible machine noises, buzz saws munching into metal and concrete. I didn’t peek through a curtain to see what was happening- (though that would flow nicely with the story)- I happened to be walking outside and saw Verizon chopping down the booth like a tree. It took something like two vans, a fire hydrant spilling out crystal cold water, and a whole lot of men to down the little phone booth. It seemed an expensive operation.

Why do I find the loss of the phone booth so sad, like I lost a good neighbor? Despite my admiration of it, I never offered it a hello. All that remains of it is a fresh patch of grey cement and a warning bar not to step there, like a tombstone.

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Scorched Earth Policy here at home

Nova — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 17:32:35 +0000

Last month, urban odyssey blogger C-mixto wrote an entry on the elusive white tiger of Inwood: a white cat that hunts pigeons in the grasslands of an abandoned lot on Broadway near Academy. Last week I passed by and saw a man with a chemical tank on his back hosing down the entire field. Didn’t look good. No chance of that being environmentally gentle liquid in that ghostbusters backpack.

So… how sad was it to walk by the lot today and see…. THIS!

Yes we have a scorched earth policy in Inwood, it seems. At first glance my heart glowed with a romantic hope that this vision was autumn’s hand painting the landscape a crisp gold. I told myself that it was a field of wheat swaying in the winds, not the corpses of a variety of plant life. Who would notice this, if you didn’t see that the field was green just a few days ago? Perhaps there is no relation between the man with the tank and the sudden death of every growing thing in that spacious lot, but chances are… It’s worth writing about.

Man-made apocalypse in an Inwood lot! Was it weeds he wanted to get rid of? The rats (as the sign advertises)? Sigh… should we now question every single natural beauty we see in our urban landscapes as being a man-made invention, a pot of contamination? Where will the white tiger hunt now?

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Our neighbor, the ? Finch

Nova — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 15:28:13 +0000

There is this little spice finch (?) who eats on a blade of uncut grass on a hill in Inwood Park that I’ve been seeing every day for the past week. At first I thought he was a sparrow, but noticed his coat had more of a chestnut shine, not a dusty brown. Then I saw his black little beak, and how he sat royally on top of a blade of grass eating its seeds. I stopped. I confirmed he wasn’t a sparrow after seeing his black and white speckled underbelly. He let’s you get close. He looks at you looking at him, then continues eating his seeds. I think of two things when I see him: why are you here, and, if the parks department had cut this part of the field in man’s obessessive quest to have trimmed grass, you wouldn’t have any food as it seems like your beak is made just for blade seeds. How a small act of not cutting the corners of the grass allowed for a spice finch to survive.

Now I’ve called the Audubon Society, emailed bird websites to see if I should catch him because I’m not sure if he’s an escaped pet (they told me NOT to do this). I really don’t know for sure if he is a spice finch. One resident who saw C-mixto looking at him claims that there are tons of them here. If anyone knows of finch colonies in Inwood, give a shout out. It’s such a curious urban sight.

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