More New Nice-y (NYC)

Clouds pass over 11th Ave. & 28th St.  Sadly, the wide open space of "Hudson Yards," just north, is destined to be more of the same we've seen for the past decade, a massive antiseptic hive for all the corporate drones drawn to wi-fi / bike lane / luxury service industry NYC, now pronounced "nice-y."  It's sad to see a city once worthy of dreams, of stories that sought meaning, happily succumb to a living death where the narrative is under corporate control, and meaning equals money.


I guess it's good I've been in brain-dead economic survival mode for months now, without time to fret over the fate of the world, much less this easily seduced city.  I am turning into a drone, and by the time my transformation is complete, the city's will be too, and we will all live happily ever after in a massive iPhone Puppet Show -- tracked and guided by caring corporate voices through the aisles of life, friction and worry free -- free at last of the need to decide which way the story goes, free at last of the burden of meaning.

Liberty Tower Light

Back at Liberty Tower at, Liberty & Nassau Sts.

Bennett Building

The Bennett Building at Ann & Nassau Sts., "perhaps the tallest cast-iron building in the world."

Rolls Royce Car Wash

Another yellow car one story closer to heaven, on top of the car wash / repair shop at Union Ave. & Meserole St. in Williamsburg.  This junker is a Rolls Royce, which reminds me that the soundtrack to one of my favorite stupid movies, Car Wash, was done by Rose Royce.

E 27th St. off 5th Ave.

Giant glowing things drip down the Gershwin Hotel.


While the middle of the block bathes in light, below.

Plaza Arcade Signs

The 47th St. end of the arcade
Plaza Arcade cuts through the middle of the block from the 48th St. side of Rockefeller Plaza to the "diamond district" on 47th St. between 5th & 6th Aves.  Its main tenant is Ross Metals, and (beyond the beaded witnesses in the window, left) its main attraction is the signs.



There's the fetching Arcade Coffee signs above.


And the Ross Metal signs above and below, whose strong (mystical system?) style reminds me of Paul Laffoley's work.


And then there's the best NO sign I've ever seen on Ross Metal's door: NO DRINKS, NO CARRIAGES, NO FOOD, NO RADIOS, NO SMOKING, NO UMBRELLAS, NO SOLICITING, NO LOITERING!

Note: First Illusions

For the record, I just added three paintings I did back in prehistory, in the early 1990s.

56th & Park Construction

They've torn down the building in the middle since the earlier photo, leaving just the beams.


But the world's longest exhaust is still there, above right.

Cattelan Conglomeration

Friends took me to the Maurizio Cattelan show at the Guggenheim the day before it closed; here are some photos in case you missed it.  Roberta Smith panned the show and artist in her review A Suspension of Willful Disbelief:

The effect is initially startling, but ultimately disrespectful and perverse ... the show suggests that Mr. Cattelan knows what he’s about: he’s always been uneven and now he is running out of ideas.


Still, the show was a crowd-pleaser, stringing up the artist's "lifetime" output -- pieces normally shown isolated in plenty of space -- like ornaments on a Christmas tree.  Whatever its merit as retrospective, it was interesting to see how sculpture normally planted on the ground looks floating in space, from above and below.

Port Authority Ventilation

Above and below, exhaust systems in between the halves of the Port Authority Bus Terminal on 41st St.

To the left, at 40th & Dwyer, yet another bus winds its way up the ramps to deliver its fumes (and passengers).