9th Ave. & 42nd St.

Plenty of red, yellow & blue...


...near the Port Authority, past the blasted flag below left.

More Irritating NYC

Was it Wall Street Bike Your Son to Work Day on the Williamsburg Bridge?
NYC continues to lead the world in irritation innovation.  If I ruled NYC:

- Agile fakers who use a cane for show, then shoot through doors ahead of you, would have their cane pulled out from under them until they really need one.

- People who drag around a suitcase on wheels, hogging sidewalk space and blocking escalators, would have to pay an "axle fee," which could be used to widen sidewalks and escalators.

- People who rush in front of you to get on an escalator, then stop and block your way, would get their shoe laces caught in the teeth at the landing, fall on their face, and be turned into a welcome mat.

- People who let their dog do its "business" on subway grates, making the platform below reek, would be sedated and dressed in a St. Bernard costume, then sent to the pound.

- Since historic neighborhood names only serve to sell luxury condos at this point, I would rename neighborhoods after the wi-fi ID of the local Starbucks, and edit Wikipedia to claim, e.g., that "the LES" was named for Les Grille, the inventor of the Belgian Waffle Truck.

- I would still allow people to exit unattended gates at subway stations and trigger the alarms, but ...

... since who, outside of sociopaths like congressman Darrel Issa, the self-proclaimed inventor of the car alarm, still thinks that subjecting the public to pointless shrieking is a substitute for good design?  If your car alarm goes off, it should call your cell phone, not wake up the whole block just for spite, and if the MTA wants to control the gates it should find a solution instead of adding yet more fraudulent "emergency" noise to the city ...

... I would put the business end of the alarms inside MTA headquarters.

NYC Irritation Innovation

Sightseers swing past earth at Columbus Circle
NYC is a hotbed for innovating things that irritate.

Old irritation: Idling sightseeing buses.

New irritation: Idling sightseeing buses with huge ads exhorting people not sitting on their ass on the bus to get in shape, like above.

Old irritation: Door jumpers.  You open a door for yourself and someone a few lengths away jumps through it before you do.  They're parasitic ghosts who slip through space between real people, stealing muscle power, avoiding having to touch the filthy door (probably some of the same people who use a store restroom, don't wash their hands, then fondle merchandise or clamp their polluted hand on the escalator rail on the way out).

New irritation: Door jumpers using cellphones, who consider it only right that others open doors for them because they are busy on the phone.

Old irritation: Spatially oblivious people.  Like spaced-out tourist families that pick the most congested choke point in pedestrian traffic to stand around debating where to go next -- forcing everyone else to churn through their whirlpool of confusion.

New irritation: Spatially oblivious iPeople.  They notice you are about to collide, so they consult their cellphone -- they actually stutter-stop for a half second to study it as you converge -- as though they hope to flee into Cyber Phone Space and avoid your onrushing mass of molecules.

I have seen people do this at the most inappropriate moments -- stepping onto or off a train, in the middle of a busy doorway -- and suspect they really are split between worlds, too lazy to choose one.

And speaking of "inattention to surroundings," the article at the link below is a hoot.  It says that, even before cellphones, national park visitors would put their kids on a wild animal's back for a snapshot.  Now they use technology to extend their idiocy.  One quartet of hikers sent out high tech emergency signals three times -- each time sending a $3400 an hour helicopter into action -- and refused to fly out until forced.  Their second emergency?  They thought the local water "tasted salty."
- Technology Leads More Park Visitors Into Trouble, NYT

Gateway to Tourist Hell

Speaking of hell, summertime 8th Ave. above 42nd St. always seems like the gateway to tourist hell, with hot, humid exhaust blowing up 8th from the Port Authority Bus Terminal, a cluster of Soviet-scale package-tour hotels, and crowds of sweaty tourists lining up for tour buses or staggering out of nearby Times Square, blinded and wrung out from their journey to the Heart of Blandness and its scorching, Burger King-scented emptiness.

Greeting them here on 8th near 47th, left-to-right in the photo below right, and in the other photos: a tour company Statue of Liberty lost in a faded orange theater front (formerly Hollywood Twin Cinemas); a lonely porn holdout; a bar full of sharks in suits from nearby office towers; and on the right -- warping the photo below right, if not spacetime -- the Ismael Leyva designed winner of my Superfinger award.


The Leyva finger seeks to blend into the neighborhood at its base, above right, but still comes off like a plastic dominatrix.  And the rest of it, below, still looks like a place built by aliens to slice & dice humans, not house them.


[ Welcome to Hell ]
[ In Search of Superfinger ]

Welcome to Hell

I mean Welcome to Summer in NYC.  Above, the flag at Apex Tech on 19th St. at 6th Ave. signals defeat, brittle as a mummy.


Above left, on Delancey, the Bedbug Express Van heads for the Hamptons again.  Above right, phone lines are sacrificed to the sweaty buzzards that circle above Provost in Greenpoint.

Below, at the Court Square subway station in Long Island City, the crew puts out the battle-tested communications equipment, in case the high tech stuff wilts in the heat.


And below, on the West Side Highway in Chelsea, maybe the way Frank Gehry's building "meets" the sidewalk like a cheap windshield makes sense.  It seals out the heat along with the humans, and is consistent with what the building as a whole suggests: a plastic iceberg, proud to be likely the last iceberg on earth.

#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.

Return Visit

Pop, when they do that you're supposed to say
"What the f*ck are you looking at?!"

Back in town in December, the young visitor went sledding in Central Park, then traded his cardboard sled for a giant "magic pod," above right.  After carrying it around for 20 minutes in the freezing cold, he tossed it aside and muttered "Mom, I ain't feelin' a thing... that little twerp burned me!"


Feeling stultified by the wholesomeness of his tourist experience, he went undercover, above left, then headed west until he spied the crippled neon of the "Sin Will Find You Out" cross.  "This looks promising," he said, then asked people loitering in shadows we passed "Anything happening around here, friend?"

[ Visitors ]

Frigid Fingers Plus Parking Mystery

Now that the weather's hinting at spring, some snow photos from 2 weeks ago.  Above, the frigid fingers of Madame Tussauds on 42nd.

Below left, snow cuffs on garbage cans at Herald Square.

And below right, one of those mysteries I shouldn't waste time on, but: Here we have an SUV parked overnight at an exclusive spot in the middle of Broadway, a few blocks below 42nd, under a sign that says "No Standing Anytime except vehicles with NYP plates."  Apparently NYP plates are press plates, and the SUV plates do have an NYP, but from Pennsylvania.


Meanwhile, below left, the red & white Williamsburg Bridge -- pocked with the tags that serve as banner ads of the Outernet -- looks like Santa with tattoos.  And from the looks of the bridge's mini high-ranger, below right, tagger elves have been more busy than usual, eating away at the solid of surface of reality, like wolves pissing on ice.

Plastic-Induced Paranoia

Poison Molecule Emitted By That Plastic Building in Back
I can hear worms scrape through the dirt under the sidewalk, and both ends of cellphone conversations a block away.  Everyone's laughing at me... my blood vessels are sticking out like rope, throbbing, about to explode!

I know something's wrong.  The glue and plastic fumes from all the shiny new buildings is poisoning me, making me super sensitive, like a spider.

You see what I mean, above?  My eyes are so powerful I can pick out individual molecules in midair!  And I can hear those two-faced signs, below, laughing at me and calling me names, "U ho!  U mad!  You pathetic, ass-face freak!  Ah... ha ha ha!"


I just stole a couple 3-packs of that new instant coffee from Starbucks and poured it in my beer.  Once it kicks in and I'm back in the flow, invisible, I'm heading for Grand Central to jump a train north -- the air up there will fix me up.  I know it's cold and I only got this t-shirt, but I've been sweatin' like a pig, so I ain't worried at all...

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.

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"

Queens Plaza Playaz Club

I just wiggle my toes on a mink rug
and press Play on the remote, at the Playaz Club
- Rappin' 4-Tay

Last time I was on the platform at the Queens Plaza subway station I noticed the exclusive "gentlemen's club" pictured here.  You know you're headed for a class experience when it's above a Blimpie, as above.


A tour of the facilities: Above left, the swank building that houses the City Scape (or Cityscapes, depending on the sign you read) Gentlemen's Club.  Above right, fine dining is free at the club's rooftop BBQ, so you don't have to wander outside to the Blimpie or Taco King.  Below left, the penthouse VIP lounge.  And below right, I'd guess there's a hot tub in there somewhere, where high rollers can gaze at the stars, smoke cigars, and feed their brain the high class cognac oblivion it craves.


The stretch limo that brings you to the club is, of course, a subway train arriving at Queens Plaza Station, in all its pinkness below.

Street Steam

A cauldron boils beneath New York City.

I like the steam shooting out the woman's head, to the left.  But my favorite steam incident, shown in the other photos, was in front of the St. Regis Hotel on 55th.

Sure geysers and natural vents are nice, but nothing says "Hell" like men breaking rock in the middle of hissing, wraith-like billows of scalding steam.


The curly plants, candy cane vent, and elfish doorman costume in the shot on top don't hurt either.

Welcome to the St. Regis, ma'am.  One of Lucifer's lackeys -- I mean one of our bell staff! -- will be right with you.