Williamsburg Sights

Recent sights from Williamsburg and the Williamsburg Bridge.  Above, the view from the top of the bridge's south walkway.  Note the old-school Navy Yard cranes that echo the rooftop cubes in front.


Above left, I'm so used to this thing on N 7th that I believe it should be landmarked as-is.  Above right, I bet this building at Bedford & N 3rd will never look better than it does here.


Above left, the huge pit behind the Bedford & N 3rd building, that has warped spacetime and swallowed sidewalks.  Above right, a soft tank down on River St. near N 1st that fits right in with the gray day.


Above left, near the entry to the bridge's south walkway, Intel Outside.  Above right, from further up the north walkway of the bridge, a scrawl that proves we've moved past "the medium is the message" to "there is no message, just buzz."  I blame spray paint manufacturers, the Internet, and the idiots who post these pictures (oops) for this sad state of affairs.

And finally, below, up on the middle of the bridge, living proof that taggers operate in the armpit of the world -- a pink world at that.

Kitchen Breakthrough!

Actually, a kitchen accident -- funny how most great discoveries happen by accident -- led me to discover what you see to the left: cheese soap!

If you use Hot Pepper Jack cheese, as I have in this case, it exfoliates the top layer of skin before sealing the rest in a protective coating of wonderful cheese!

[ Frauds Who Claim to Have Invented Cheese Soap Before I Did ]

Visual Dessert

Haranguing without rewarding is cruel, so a few pictures.

Above, the view toward Broadway from Houston & Lafayette.  Left, from under the BQE in Williamsburg, the brownish monster that is 20 Bayard, caught between two left thumbs.

Bowery Extremes

Extreme examples a block apart on the upper end of Bowery.  Above, a repair shop at Great Jones, one of the neighborhood's last outposts of raw visual funk.

Left and below, a unit of the suburban "Edge City package" so popular with developers -- slick, context-free living above a bank branch -- plunked down on the corner of Bond.

I would guess the well-to-do tourists at nearby sidewalk cafes are thinking "The great thing about New York is: You feel like you never left home!"

Full Frontal Scaffolds

(Speaking of scaffolding...)  Frontal above, anyway.  The naked toothpick lattice gives all three of these a gauzy, web-like thickness, then the working planks bring another level of order.

Above, an older photo from Adams St. north of Tillary in Brooklyn.  Below left -- a little too subtle for my camera -- at 13th St. and 4th Ave. in Manhattan.  And below right, wrapping a big box of living units rising where they used to park the Brooklyn Brewery trucks at Berry and N. 13th in Williamsburg.


[ Scaffolding - Urban Shed Competition ]

High Line Show

Instead of launching into yet | another | screed -- complaining that the High Line is just an elevated causeway that allows celebrities and aristocrats to "drunk walk" between the clubs, hotels and condos woven into the line, high above the hoi polloi -- I will jump right to the money shot.

I figured I would eventually see something like this; it took less than 20 minutes into my first visit to the High Line, on Sunday, to capture it.  Show-goers enter the theater from the south, near 12th St., above.  The show took place on the north side of the Standard Hotel, below.  I assume the show is destined for TV, titled "Who's that Ass in the Window?"

Btw, I'd like to start a betting pool that pays out the first time a celebrity is arrested for peeing onto traffic from the High Line.

Urban Shed Competition

Something Is Going On Up There; 38th St. off Sixth Ave.
I got excited when saw a blurb about the Urban Shed Competition: I thought I'd finally be able to share my plans for a stylish shed with room for the moonshine still, an outhouse, and other stuff you either don't want indoors or don't want the Sheriff's boys to find in your possession.

But when I visited the Urban Shed website, I find out they're serious, and want suggestions on how to paint a Happy Face on the unbridled development required by Bloomberg's core constituency: the Masterds* of the Universe and the greedy developers who build condos for them and their legions of wannabe Masterds (who binge crawl all over the LES, East Village, and soon Williamsburg, doing their best to eject their soul along with their stomach contents and thus attain Masterdhood).

The point of the competition is to design a new system of scaffolding and "sidewalk sheds" (like the one to the left, at 2nd Ave. and 12th St.) -- a ridiculous idea, because the current scaffolds nearly always look better than the naked buildings, and the ad hoc, zigzagging sheds are some of the most interesting pedestrian passages in New York City.  (And most exciting: pedicab drivers could sell thrill rides through these twisting labyrinths, swerving around groaning cranes and whooshing I-beams, welding sparks and hungover construction workers.)

Not only is there no need for new scaffolding & sheds, but we get the insult of the Urban Shed website, a detailed propaganda exercise selling the idea that a jury headed by Dept. of Building officials, in a competition supported by the players who've brought us all these years of Masterdization, will somehow come up with something good for the city.

High Above Lexington at 48th
It's a little irritating for a creative type like me to see the respected architects and designers on the jury.  I know that's the way of the world -- rich people buy the art and develop the buildings that keep artists and architects afloat -- but the idea of tarting up passageways around construction sites -- usually the most interesting sights on our increasingly drab and uniform blocks -- just to make the Masterds, the developers, and their friends in office more comfortable is a bit too much.  I accept my place as an artist in the economy, a lapdog to wealth if lucky enough to sell work; but I draw the line at whimpering and licking its face like a neurotic toy poodle.

If the competition could come up with something guaranteed to withstand a semi-truck sideswiping a scaffold, I might be impressed.  As it is, I can almost guarantee the results of this needless exercise: A design that somehow complements the slick blandness of new construction, and is smooth enough in spots to sell to Cemusa as ad space.

Like the case of the "urban shed" that wraps the still-dead escalators at the Union Square subway entrance, right -- courtesy of a sweetheart development deal that cheats the public -- the perceived ugliness of the sheds is not the problem.  The sheds distract from the problem.  To turn urban sheds into something that fits in with the Cemusa newsstands, bus stops and "bike shelter" ad platforms that, thanks to Bloomberg, now bring that slick plastic corporate flavor to every corner of the city, just adds to the problem.

[ Union Square Subway Shed: A Tale of Two Entrances ]
[ Urban Shed Competition ]

* Excuse me, I just read about Quentin Tarantino's new movie "Inglourious Basterds"

What Obama Should Do

Tiresome, I know.  But since I started this, and read Paul Krugman's excellent piece this morning, I might as well finish it.

My question about Obama before the election was: Is he tough enough?  I think he's proved that he can be, but he's also shown a tendency to get over confident and sloppy, and forget just how dangerous and amoral the enemy is.

The #1 enemy of the United States is still the GOP and its media allies and enablers.

I think it was good of him to let go of the Clintonesque tit for tat war with the GOP.  Doing so could bring around voters who are not confirmed dead-enders ready to help Rush, Palin and the rest shove this teetering bus off the cliff.  And you can't win a war like that, with people living a lie, because you wind up fighting on their terms.  The GOP never argues the merits of an issue, and always seeks to invalidate civil discussion with emotional triggers based on distortions and lies.  It can't stop lying because it has nothing else, and arguing with a liar is a waste of time.

The only way out, for both Obama and America, is for him to go all the way with something he's already shown he can do: Talk to the public in an honest and adult way.  Repudiate the destructive "philosophy" the GOP's been selling since Reagan, top to bottom, and call on media to behave like real reporters and not tabloid gossips, spinning phony controversies that make facts immaterial and make the "news" networks a lot of money.

He should tell Americans it's time to grow up, that there's no such thing as government without taxes and regulations; that there's no civil society without government; and that you cannot have a civil society when a sizable proportion of voters and 99% of GOP politicians, for their own cynical reasons, claim that the instrument of order and civility -- government -- is the "enemy," somehow stealing their birthright.

Americans have been spoiled by lying demagogues who've convinced them they can "have it all" without lifting a finger or making the slightest compromise with the factual world (the world that other people can live in).

From the Wall Streeters who "innovate" new means of systematic theft and believe they have the born right to be billionaires, to Palin's phony "real Americans" who think the simple act of being born white in America, coupled with the ability to lift a gun and jerk their knee, makes them rightful heirs to the Founding Fathers' legacy, even as they make it clear their beliefs are a better fit for a two bit fascist dictatorship.

From one spoiled, self-serving brat to another -- and including all the congressional Democrats resigned to cynicism and consoling themselves on the lobbyists' gravy train -- they all need to be set straight in front of the whole world.

Update: I see Obama is having trouble motivating the "netroots" that helped get him elected (Health Debate Fails to Ignite Obama's Web).  How can he expect to get people pumped up, especially about something as complex as health care, when it seems like he's ready to give up the "public plan" -- the one thing that could simplify the issue and get people excited?

[ Paul Krugman: Republican Death Trip ]
[ The Persistence of Assholes ]

The Persistence of Assholes

America Takes a Leak (near 48th St. & 48th Ave., Queens)
Half of all people tend toward being assholes.  (Proved beyond doubt when this spoiled democracy RE-elected George Bush Jr.)  It has always been so, and always will be.  Humanity comes from nature, which spreads risk through Chance, delivering a potential asshole each time the coin flipped at conception lands tails.

Technology helps assholes amplify their effects on others.  (Proved by the existence of cable "news" networks, car alarms & chirpers, Wall St. CDOs and high-speed trading, etc.)  That is the double-edged nature of knowledge; it can expand your reach and even save your life, until assholes get their hands on it.

Every year it becomes more obvious that the world is split between those who are curious and seek meaning, because they love life, and those who find meaning in their brutal ability to dominate, because they hate life and people in particular.

They sneer at empathy; the only time they're willing to stand in someone else's shoes is after they've blown the wearer to smithereens.

They sneer at "regulations" -- the tedious details of Law put in place to balance the interests of the diverse individuals who make up society.

They sneer because all those sissified niceties just get in their way.

They play the political game just to get inside and poison government, then society -- spreading the ignorance, hate and cynicism that consumes and distracts the pitchfork crowd long enough to let the assholes keep on stealing until they've trucked everything away, right down to the pipes.

You thought these assholes would go away when Obama won?  They will never go away.  Looked at in the most positive way possible, they are our "worse half," conniving brutes installed by nature's random balancing act to test us, to help keep our critical judgment lean, sharp and clear eyed for the long voyage ahead.

The few headlines that triggered this screed:

On proto-fascist mobs rallying to the aid of angry Confederates and billionaires, and their Fox/GOP minions, at "health care town halls": Senator Goes Face to Face With Dissent

On the lucrative Torture Industry: 2 U.S. Architects of Harsh Tactics in 9/11's Wake

On the shocking revelation that Karl Rove -- the Conscience of the GOP -- could have done something bad: E-Mail Reveals Rove's Key Role in ’06 Dismissals

Update: A loaded weapon guarantees your right to be an asshole: Gunning for Health Care by Gail Collins

This screed has been brought to you by the head-boiling effects of a mini-heatwave and a heat trapping apartment, evil incarnate, and an economy bad enough to give me even more time to spout...

Downtown Survivors

Above, a clock above a doorway at 28 Broadway demonstrates Einstein's curved spacetime; I'm not sure the time is correct, but who cares?

Left, the warm lights and stone of 115 Broadway, half of a near-twin set of buildings.  My camera can barely see the assorted gargoyles on sibling 111 Broadway, below left.  And note the concrete clouds in the rendering of the huge box once planned to squat over Trinity Church just south, below right.  [Courtesy Tom Fletcher's NY Architecture]


Further up Broadway just onto Fulton, left, the big stick-on letter sign is the most official looking thing on the old building.  It looks like the facade has been pulled off to reveal the "redevelopment era" concrete slab beneath it.

And below, further up some more, just past the Office of Unbridled Development (City Hall), the poor crippled Leaning Tower of Broadway at Reade St.

More Morsels

Tara Donovan at Lever House
Rubber stamping all that development was easy, but now Bloomberg's Dept. of Buildings is at a loss over how to test all the untested concrete without turning the buildings into Swiss cheese (before they fall apart all by themselves).  See New York Faces Huge Backlog in Concrete Retests.

"Threatened white elites try to mask their own anxieties by patronizingly adopting working-class whites as their pet political surrogates — Joe the Plumber, New Haven firemen, a Cambridge police officer.  Call it Village People populism."  See Frank Rich's Small Beer, Big Hangover.

And Paul Krugman thinks high-speed trading is a crock, too.  See Rewarding Bad Actors.