Times Square

Wearing 3-D glasses to make it look real?

Tourists are dwarfed by, and buildings disappear into, the advertising

Emerging from the light

Left, Show Folks Shoes; right, from Father Duffy and self-sacrifice
to Morgan Stanley and self-serving aristocrats

Up the steps into the light and... poof! ...off to another world
I throw out nearly all the pictures I take of Times Square.  There are a few interesting relics buried under the billboards, like the Show Folks Shoe Store facade, but the only interest beyond that is watching visitors figure out that Times Square is just a massive corporate branding experience, and that they themselves -- all the thousands converging on this pulsating emptiness -- are the only real attraction.  And who wants to look at their tired, sweaty, tourist self?

They find out what it feels like to live inside the TV, surrounded by corporate messages from all the wonderful brands -- from friendly banks to candy -- that give life meaning!

My favorite pictures are ones where people look dazed, or like they're about to step into another dimension.  Maybe the latter is just wishful thinking, the hope that there are other worlds we can't see where the plastic simulation of civilization we've let happen here would melt like the Wicked Witch of the West.

#1 NYC Pet Peeve

Ren, Also Peeved
Of course there are plenty of things I straight-up hate...

...basically anything, from cellphones to car horns & alarms to Wall Street money, that helps the clueless swaggering plastic assholes among us increase the radius of their broadcasts...

...that couldn't be called pet peeves unless the pet was the monster from Alien, but there are a few things that maybe peeve me more than they should.

Like the way the "green market" at Union Square, left, always steals the sidewalk and tries to force passersby through its precious gauntlet, like bran through the intestines during yoga class.

Like the spiffy kids who try to stop you on the sidewalk to listen to their "Save the Children" scams.  Save them for what?  Dessert?

But my #1 NYC pet peeve is those f*cking booster banners, like below.

Bright Shiny Yuppie Prayer Flags
I hate them, I Hate Them, I HATE THEM!!!

You can't take a picture in this city without those banners in it.  They are turning NYC into a Yuppie North Korea, with bright reminders every 100 feet that it is your DUTY to be HAPPY for the opportunity to trade your city and soul for the bland, ad-sponsored comfort of suburban emptiness, for the ability to pass through life unmolested by doubt, friction-free, like... bran through the intestines during yoga class.

Around Queens Plaza

The saving grace of Queens Plaza is its crusty pink spine, which is likely too expensive to replace, so all the banners, benches and condo glass in the world won't be able to yuppify it.

Above and to the left, at least during construction, the Batman Building, aka Gotham Center, fits right in.


Meanwhile at the other end of Queens Plaza, past the NYPD cruiser keeping an eye on the Scandals strip club above right, a graffitist tells us "cash smells" (or offers cash 4 smells?), below left.  Then below right -- trying to minimize the odor of money spent -- the new budget hotels share the same design, no matter what the brand.

If this insults your refined architectural taste, just remember that if the hotels were forced to come up with a brand new design every time they put up a pile of bricks -- that's strong enough to withstand 10 floors worth of sturdy maids stomping down halls and overweight tourists bouncing on beds -- they would have to move the hotel another quarter mile out from the plaza, and the drunken 4 AM walk back from Scandals would be twice as long.


[ Queens Plaza Playaz Club ]

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!"

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"

Cooper Union Cooper Square

Cooper Square is a hotbed of controversy, from the new Cooper Union building above and below left, to the Cooper Square Hotel in the remaining photos.

The NY Times' Nicolai Ouroussoff mainly admires the Cooper Union building, for its boldness and the way it wears its construction material on its sleeve.  The Times ran some excellent photos with the article, but I like the one I took yesterday, above, that captures the armored, war elephant essence of the building.


The Cooper Square Hotel wears its decadence on its sleeve.  I'd wondered what it would be like for the crotchety hold-out owners of the two old buildings at its base -- with cavorting jet setters and cocaine music thumping till dawn a few feet above -- until I figured out that they've been absorbed into the hotel.  Note the space-age awning that skewers out the side of the old building, below.

I've had mixed feelings about both buildings all along.  I agree with Ouroussoff that (thoughtfully) bold design is good, and I make a distinction between buildings built for schools and those built for Masters of the Universe.  With my weakness for spectacle, I've enjoyed watching the Union building's construction, especially the scythe-like shapes captured above left.  And I like the crumpled parts of its veil of steel.  But I miss the view of the beautifully colored buildings behind (east of) it, and from the east the Union building doesn't pretend to care -- I've seen more consideration in proposed garbage barn designs.


And though I see the hotel as a bookend to the New Museum further down Bowery -- anchoring the conversion of yet another distinctive swath of NYC into something (Bloomberg and) the yacht club set can enjoy -- I admire its fetishistic finish and space-age look, and the honesty of its arrogance.  Where Donald Trump's erections hide amid the skyscraper grass of Midtown, the Cooper Square lords over the puny East Village like a mammoth alien sexual appliance shot from space -- Battlestar Dildactica? -- a monument to the penile enhancing power of unapologetic greed, and decadence that is an end in itself.

[ Rome Burns at Cooper Sq. Hotel, Jeremiah's VNY ]
[ Civic Value of a Bold Statement, Nicolai Ouroussoff, NY Times ]

Visitors

I've had more friends visit New York this year than ever before.

Mike, Terri and Rocco were here not long ago, and I like these pictures so much I had to post them (and give them a title: The Active Family).

We went to the Met, to Central Park, to B&H; we stopped at places I pass by all the time.

I'm glad I live in a place discriminating people like to visit.  Let's just hope the luxury blandification of NYC is choked off before that changes.