Air Conditioned Vision

Yes, air conditioning pushes hot air outside for the rest of us to share, and a billion people in India and China are ready to buy their first unit.  But it's hard to think about how we're melting the planet -- or to appreciate the way buildings with window units can look like an organism or a boulder-strewn or industrial landscape -- when your brain is left unconditioned, stewing in its own juices.

On top and below left, at 340 57th St., one of the more impressive AC arrays I've seen.  Below right, on W 27th St. off Broadway.



Above l-r: (1) snow on Park Ave, South, (2) a brutal arrangement at Lexington & 23rd St., (3) a more pleasing sight on the opposite (SE) corner.  Below, a sideways industrial landscape on 47th St. between 5th & 6th Aves.

Fog

Above, the CitiBank Queens tower from the Pulaski Bridge.  Below l-r: (1) 47th St. east of 6th Ave., (2) the Helmsley Building from Vanderbilt Ave., (3) the Verizon tower next to the Brooklyn Bridge.

Bryant Park Ice Fountain

A week ago at Bryant Park.

Hurricane Irene Disappoints NYC

Did tired Irene [NYT] stop to rest in Trendy Corner's window at 6th & 37th?
Early Saturday morning a woman hustling a cart through Key Food gleefully announced "The End is here!"  Emergency shoppers had already cleared out the potato chip aisle, bought nearly all the canned sardine, and picked out all the single rolls of toilet paper, leaving bulk packages for the flood.  Streets were unnaturally quiet as people hunkered down inside; there's nothing like mass apprehension in a big city, waiting for the assault.

I was hoping that, before a satellite dish ripped from a roof came slicing through the blown-out window to chop me in half, I would have the satisfaction of knowing that luxury tower penthouses, with their invulnerable, weather-mocking owners still inside, had been sheared off and sent spinning north, to crash land on icebergs ruled by merciless inbred Vikings marooned centuries ago, and that the towers that house NYC's Feckless Lords of Finance had popped their glass and exploded, or at least got their feet wet.

But after a heart-pumping two day buildup, as our glorious, furious Doomsday Bride approached, ready to scourge, drown and then lift us, cleansed, into the sky...

Nothing.

So instead of being delivered into the loving arms of a wrathful god, we are left to face the dreary prospect of yet more life on earth: Washing the dishes (Didn't I just do that?), brushing our teeth (Didn't I just do that?), and leading shallow lives soothed by constant interruption and babbling screens that promise illumination but deliver just radiation.

Now I know how the Family Radio Worldwide believers felt when doomsday fizzled:

Keith Bauer, a doomsday believer who drove his family from Maryland to experience the Rapture at Family Radio's Oakland offices, told the News he was disappointed.

"I was hoping for it because I think heaven would be a lot better than this Earth," Bauer said.

From The Rapture to A Whimper, from the ultimate satisfaction of seeing your enemies crushed just before you retire to an eternity of bliss, to the realization that the only thing you have to look forward to is deciding which fugitive hope to spend your last $5 on: Caffeine or the New York State Lottery?

Now a chastened believer, I think I'll split my bet between the two...

Winter in Hell

On 3rd Ave. off St. Marks, it would be nice if cellphones seared the flesh off users' heads, like above, but the culprit here may be the "Chipotle BBQ Bacon Angus" and "5 shots of anything $10" advertised below the skull.


More food at 51st & Broadway, where snow turns the flying saucer in front of Mars 2112 into a cinnamon roll.


And at 51st & Broadway again, steam (and a Wicked billboard) over dirty snow conjures Winter in Hell.

I hear winter is the best time of year to visit hell.  For one thing, since everything is melting, you can ski and water ski at the same time!

Signs of Snow

In Queens again.  Above, a fresh snow carpet matches the whitewashed sign at the oil facility on the Queens side of the Greenpoint Ave. bridge.  Below left, the CitiBank Queens tower looms in the distance past the LIRR tracks near 50th Ave.


Meanwhile, above right and below, from 51st Ave. near 21st St., traffic climbs the LIE from the Midtown Tunnel under a mountain of signs.

Freezing Eagles

Above and to the left, on 5th Ave. looking west down 26th St., past the Croisic Building's corner eagle toward the St. James Building on Broadway.

Below, the matching eagle further north on 5th.

Cold Comfort Saints

Above and just below, frigid figures on St. Thomas' Church on 5th Ave. at 53rd St.


Below, looking warmer in spite of the snow, the spires of St. Patrick's Cathedral two blocks south.


[ St. Thomas Church Statues ]

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.

Surviving Siberia in Starbucks

One brutally cold day a few weeks ago, I stopped at the sidewalk grate above, on the side of the Municipal Building downtown, and felt heat rising -- from the portal to Hell below Bloomberg's office at City Hall, or maybe the Brooklyn Bridge subway station.

I thought it would be a good idea to make a Google Map of every heat vent in the city, in case I find myself living on the street.  I submitted the idea to Central Processing and fell back on my default strategy for cold -- walking faster.

Then I saw a guy in the Astor Place Starbucks a few days ago, methodically eating his way through a packaged, pink 12" x 12" frosted cake, dense as cheesecake, that he'd cut into a grid but not separated.  I would guess there were 10,000 calories of sugar and fat in that pinkness.  He was eating it with rapid, efficient strokes, shoveling coal into the furnace.

I stared for a whole minute, wondering if he would come up for air.  He didn't bother with air or coffee, and I didn't notice a coat.  By the time he finished the cake, he would have enough stored potential heat -- like a bear burpingly full of seal fat -- to make it to another deli in his t-shirt and buy another cake, then find another Starbucks to sit down in, and shovel that cake into the furnace.

And so on and so on...

With hundreds of Starbucks in NYC, and enough valiant delis holding-on in the chainstore wasteland in between, I see no reason why -- like a charmed hummingbird flying across Siberia -- he won't last until spring.

Sounds like he's got a much better plan than mine!