Zombies Eat American Dream

Egalitarian dream come true: Now anyone can be a celebrity slut!
Thanks to everyone who looked at or linked to Restless in 2010 -- I hope next year brings you something wonderful!  That said, it was a brutal year in most ways, and I'd like to throw out a few thoughts along with it, so I can start fresh Monday.

Atlas' Loin in Winter

Maybe it's the angle, or the strategic location of the snow, but doesn't the original Atlas above, on 5th Ave. in front of Rockefeller Center, somehow look more virile than the one on the recent New Yorker cover to the left?

Cold Water Tanks

A few water tank shots from Sunday, just before the blizzard hit.  Above, an icy tank west of Union Square.  Below, snow falls on tanks south of 32nd St. between 6th & 7th Aves.  And to the left, just because they were right there, Jack's World and the Gimbels Bridge on 32nd.

Alwyn Court Detail

Alwyn Court detail revealed by Christmas morning's even light.  Note the pine cones and ornaments at the bottom, above.

A New York Christmas

A few Christmas morning sights.  Above -- you have time for the kids, the wife and the in-laws, but what about the Hustler Honeys, you selfish bastard?! -- next to the Greenpoint approach to the Pulaski Bridge.

Below left, the lobster tank at the Union Square Food Emporium looked more festive than the tourist tank at Times Square (below right), aka America's Big Screen TV Living Room.


Luckily, thanks to the morning's even light, I did see something great at the Alwyn Court.

A Curse on Rupert Murdoch

With the world up to its neck in a cesspool of evil, and not a lifeboat in sight, I've been forced to take supernatural measures, to pray like hell for a Savage Christmas Miracle and conjure Dark Forces with an assortment of hexes, curses and spells, to serve my enemies the slow and painful justice they've earned!

The target of my first curse is Rupert Murdoch.  Seldom has the gift of life been squandered with the gusto spent on this evil pile of flesh.  On to the cursing!

Please groan the following chorus (of two anagrams for "Rupert Murdoch" generated by the Internet Curse Server) over and over while you read the curses below: Cur Turd He Romp, Rec Duh Rump Rot

Stacked Biking Debate

Williamsburg Bridge

My quick review of each "debater" in today's NY Times Room for Debate feature Are New York's Bike Lanes Working?

Better Ways to Help Bike Transit by Alex Marshall, Governing magazine
- A biker, he frames the issue as bikes vs. cars, as usual, and ignores pedestrians.  Sadly, the city will probably take up his call to "Start an annual fashion award for the best-dressed man or woman on a bike."  Even sadder, he sees biking in NYC as a "revolution."  But just who are the aristocrats in this case?

Landmark Galleries

Window displays were a disappointment this holiday season until I took a look at Landmark Galleries, on 57th St. west of 6th Ave.

The big window, below left, reminded me of fair/carnival booths with dishes and figurines you can (supposedly) win by tossing coins onto them.  Except that the figurines here are much higher class, at least according to the price tags, which also include artists' names.

And the subject matter here is racier than what you get at a fair.  From the Viagra Angel on top, to the milky Louis XIV cleavage clock above right, to the innocent-as-Roman Polanski tableaux below right, everything needed to furnish the lecher's living room is here!


And who can resist the innocent "artist at work" scene below?  So innocent that even the saintly San Pio -- the bearded figure to the left who looks evil only because he's been dipped in silver -- isn't paying attention.

Bergdorf Windows 2010

In the windows at Bergdorf Goodman, at 5th Ave. & 57th St.

Above, of course she's happy, her Russian billionaire boyfriend bought her furs, a jeweled bird, and a basketball team.  Now she just has to hope they don't piss off Putin.

To the left, a veteran Bergdorf grinch monkey jumps over a model's head.



Above left, a horse with a pompadour looks like a French poodle camel.  Above right, an octopus too weighted down in silver lame to move.  And finally, below, an alligator with a mouthful of diamonds, all the better to blind you with.

Bloomberg's No-Nothings

Why do I pick on bike zealots?  Because Paul Krugman, Frank Rich, and Gail Collins are too busy taking on big-time con men to bother with small-timers like the zealots.

This morning Frank Rich ripped The Bipartisanship Racket, epitomized by Bloomberg's new "No Label" party.

In Wall Street Whitewash, Paul Krugman rips the GOP for rewriting the history of the recent financial meltdown -- so it's clients get another shot at looting the system in a matter of months, not years.

And Gail Collins, in The Gingrich Who Stole Christmas, rips GOP 2012 presidential hopefuls, though none of them stand a chance because, as I've already pointed out, not one of them could lift Sarah Palin's jockstrap.

Yes, I've used the crappy images above several times -- and I plan to keep on using them, like pixel voodoo dolls, until the curses I've saturated them with work, and my enemies are vanquished!

Adding to Bike Lanes

Shakedown Street, Bruce McCall, NYT
Bruce McCall stole my idea!  Mine had a cellphone/texting lane and a limo lane, but I guess his "bridle lane" could handle horse drawn carriages in place of limos, to ferry our modern luxury class in the manner their feudal forebears were accustomed to.  And he turned his added special-purpose lanes into money makers, so his is more likely to get built, since our fearless leaders prefer fines and casinos to any kind of frank tax talk.  Note McCall's line:

G — BICYCLE LANE.  As many as seven cyclists per hour are expected to exploit this lane.

Then again, nothing is too good for our environmental saviors on two wheels!

Bike Zealot Future

Roadmap to the Future, OnEarth Magazine, NRDC
From the comments on my last bike zealot post:

Anonymous: Also, let's say, as you assert early on, that biking only displaces transit trips, no auto trips.  This is like being a chess player who thinks only one move ahead, but let's run with this for now.  It's still more environmentally efficient than transit in terms of energy input, wear and tear on infrastructure, etc.

My reply: I don't see how a flashy bike network plunked down in the middle of NYC -- that does nothing to ensure the orderly bike traffic necessary to scale-up bike use -- does anything but put on a show. The U.S. grew on and will choke on cheap energy, and the heart of the problem is in the suburbs, not in city centers served by mass transit.

To elaborate a little, arguments like "It's still more environmentally efficient" make no sense.  The environmental benefits of urban biking are essentially zero now, and bike use would have to radically increase for it to make a measurable dent in energy use.

But how can urban biking scale-up when bikers refuse to be held to the same standard of behavior as other vehicle users, like motorcyclists?  The idea that bikers deserve special treatment because their personal vehicles don't pollute is ridiculous -- congested cities should not encourage personal vehicle use, tailpipe or not.

As for the "chess" argument, my favorite environmental organization for years has been the National Resources Defense Council, or NRDC.  It's a dogged and hard-headed group that's been happy to do the hard work -- getting governments and manufacturers to live up to their responsibilities and adhere to tighter standards -- while groups like Greenpeace work the headlines and the Sierra Club dabbles in tourism.

At any rate, I just happened to see the NRDC magazine's "Roadmap to the Future" feature on reducing energy use a few days ago, pictured above, and looked for bikes.


Bikes do play a part, but a tiny one, in the last panel of the story (closeup above left).  And I'm sad to say that even the NRDC did not think things through, because the bikes appear to be whizzing right through pedestrians boarding a train, just like New Bloomberg City has bikers slicing through tourists on the Brooklyn Bridge, above right.

Still, in the Roadmap to the Future, bikes barely beat out the gnat-sized Segway contingent.

Note: The same issue of OnEarth also has a great interview with E.O. Wilson.

Anselm Kiefer at Gagosian

Did she know before she came her hair would match?
A friend read a review -- I assume A Spectacle With a Message, Roberta Smith, NYT -- and requested a report.

The show does feel like a spectacle -- the huge, unpolished vitrines could just as well hold the remains of a crashed alien armada.  And a few things look like they came from space, like the hanging garden of ghostly sunflowers (below right) Smith calls "mysterious creature-plants."


Above left, a leaden barn full of leftover Nazi salutes.  Above right, the giant ghost flowers probe cracked earth.

In spite of the scale of the show and the huge amount of calculation and manufacturing that had to go into it -- not to mention the eight or so guards who add a slight Fort Knox feel -- it doesn't feel overblown, and some of the pieces still have the raw energy Kiefer seems to shoot for.  The show, at Gagosian's 24th St. outpost, closes this Saturday.


Above left, a nice ad hoc roof on a twig mountain at the bottom.  Above right, an exploding glass shard wedding dress, raw as student work.

Like an unheated, slightly creepy museum

St. Regis Surface

The front of the St. Regis, on 55th St. at 5th Ave., from before recent work started.  I assume the crew, which is applying a paint-like coating, knows what it's doing, and the surface will be sublime as before after a little weathering.



[ St. Regis in my first Building Faces post: Faces of New York ]
[ St. Regis Street Steam ]

Williamsburg Bridge View

From the Lower East Side end of the bridge.  Above, 7 WTC on a dark morning; left, Gehry's Beekman Tower and the Woolworth Building.

From the Williamsburg end of the bridge.  Below: the Gehry, Woolworth, and Municipal buildings, and 7 WTC.  The Gehry was throwing a massive glare spot onto the East River near the Brooklyn Bridge that morning, which my puny camera could not capture.  The spot was so bright I half expected the river to start boiling beneath it.

Bike Zealots Con Council

I think the markings on the left mean "Bikes Run Intersections"
Bike zealots are now spreading their tired propaganda at City Council meetings [NYT].  "A group of cycling advocates wondered why the city would reject a nimble, environmentally friendly mode of transportation in favor of bulky, polluting automobiles."

Biking in NYC has zero environmental benefit, and adds bikes without subtracting cars because nearly all riders come off mass transit, not out of cars.  And "nimble" is right -- bikers typically ignore vehicle traffic rules and behave like high speed pedestrians.

Flag Foundation View 2

More from the Flag Art Foundation on 25th St. in Chelsea.  Above, looking straight down from the ninth floor patio.  Below left, the magnificent Starrett-Lehigh Building to the west.


Above right, the top of the huge Post Office facility on 11th Ave., with New Jersey across the Hudson.  And below, a woman stops a respectful distance away from the sun-blasted ghost tree on the patio.

Bloomberg for President!

Bloomberg kicked off his presidential campaign with a speech along the Brooklyn waterfront.

He claims the problem with Washington is the way it's "vilified success in corporate America."  "It's time to take a step back," he said, "and ask ourselves, 'When did success become a bad word in America?'"

What?  Now I'm supposed to feel sorry for him?  He feels that in spite of his billions he's not getting the respect he deserves?

Flag Foundation View 1

The water tank-populated view from the Flag Art Foundation patio, nine floors above 25th St. in Chelsea.

I guess it shouldn't be surprising that Chelsea -- after first drawing good, serious galleries, then blue chip galleries, then schlock galleries, then the raised, luxury condo-connecting High Line -- finally hit the sour spot where it attracts brutally ugly luxury condos, especially on 24th St.


Luckily, you can't see those here, and I have hidden a flattering photo of an unusually ugly one -- based on a chrome-tube bathroom cabinet, I believe -- here.