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The real Godfather of the PR Day Parade
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.
Guess who’s back?
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.
Someone explain this…
Washington, DC March 2010
Someone tell me why this is on the building of the US Department of Agriculture (I am pretty sure it was that one, I know it was a federal building…. Was it the treasury?)
Star that helps guide the farmers in their crop (Bio-dynamic farming?)
Ode to Venus?
Ode to the Masons?
Oh a Mason mark?
Washington D.C. as the Alien Landing Site
DC is a nice place to see… Royal looking buildings that convey power, order and authority, museums that are testament to national identity, and long stretches of land with ancient Egyptian-looking monuments that give me the haunting feeling that really, the place is one elaborate landing site for aliens. On a recent Urban Odyssey there, I could not shake that so much of the air waves were probably soaked with chitter-chatter of messages from this branch of the government to that… How much scrambling of info must go on, how many spies must be lurking around? Would my DNA be altered by a stay there? DC is truly a great place to visit for those with a great imagination, sense of history and appetite for power.
Bad year for New York City Trees
As we weather another storm, I pass by yet more fallen trees. On Dyckman street, a tree branch (or tree- visibility was that bad) squashed a car. Newly budding branches enticed by the first warm breath of Spring are splayed out in pieces on the sidewalks. Was this a bad year for the NYC tree? We had the strange Upper West Side tornado that spun through the park like it was Oz, we had a winter wonderland of majestically ice-coated trees that crumbled down along the 5th avenue sidewalk of the Upper East Side… It just seems like trees took a real beating this year.
Tis the Season for Scum Bombs
Those urbanites who have subways and elevated train stations know the gross factor that cometh with melting snow. It’s the slowly dripping, murky droplets of liquid substances that drop onto your head (or life-ending incidents of landing in your eye) from the beams and ceilings of an aging rail system. Unlike the drops that fall with rain, these scum bombs are highly concentrated with grossness: the filth of the subway and all that hath accumulated in the old snow. What are they made of? Who knows? Human feces, dirt, rodent excrement, spit, toxic waste….? Survival tactics: Avoid the wet spots you see on the floor. They are usually the ground zero of falling globs. Tread like Indian Jones in a Peruvian ancient temple to avoid any unpleasant surprises.
A dollhouse in Murray Hill
This building in Murray Hill, Manhattan, caught my eye as a work of art. The black windows climb haphazardly along the walls and look almost like you can slide them from here to there with your finger. Still, it has a harmony pleasing to the eye. The building has a clean, earthen color, contrasted by the almost toy-like colorful newsstands and signs out front.
Because rollers are sexy
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.
The Phone Booth
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.
If Cuba had a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade…
Once again I was not able to get myself out of bed at the crack of dawn, shuffle to the packed train, and join the mass of out-of-towners with their spawn in tow and witness the spectacle of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. I’m not hating on the parade. My childhood memories are filled of being dragged out of bed to go to it (after staying up late having visited the balloon set up the night before). Really I just wanted to go because it meant a container of hot chocolate and perhaps a visit to a Greek diner for some scrambled eggs. And we didn’t go to the musical orgy on 34th street- we kept it real as a parade should be enjoyed: people passing you, you cheer hooray! and then you walk away.
That said I watched some of it on TV this morning, not with child wonder eyes but as an anthropologist. We all know this, but either this year’s new balloon additions drove the message home more or things are getting worse: it is a parade of raw Dinsey packaged consumerism! All I got from watching that parade was what movie is coming out soon (Smurfs, 2011), whose CD is coming out next (Andrea Bociello Christmas albums and a plug for the opening musical, White Christmas), what retro toys are making a comeback (Care Bears?!) and that Planter’s Peanuts (making a cameo in his Monopoly Man tux) is now being made with sea salt. The recipe Macy’s uses is the same witchcraft Disney utilizes to mesmerize our oh-too-innocent young seeds.
That said, I wondered what a Thanksgiving Day Parade might look like in Cuba:
If Cuba had a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade… – continue reading …
