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Above, globe slicers on Bowery -- oops, I mean below. Or maybe both, since the slick, ostentatious Sperone Westwater Gallery (above left) arrived to help the New Museum (above right) blaze the Luxury Trail down Bowery and connect the Soho luxury mall to the coming LES luxury mall.
Yes, seeing high-end art outposts preen on the Bowery, clueless as slumming debutantes (or clueless as the Vogue India editor who had "colorful" people at the bottom model luxury goods for people at the top, like she was dressing up monkeys) still pisses me off.
Sure, the top end of the art world has been a luxury industry since the Pharaohs, but it's galling to see supposedly sensitive art types help erase every trace of the Bowery with buildings and institutions that would fit in just fine with the luxury flagship stores up at 5th and 57th, or on the ground floors of any new luxury tower in NYC.
I don't care how many Salvation Army bunk beds Sperone can fit into the massive red elevator it flaunts on the street like a Rolls Royce hood ornament. I don't care what the New Museum shows, serving an already spoiled clientele a few feet away from a rescue mission that's likely destined to become a $1000 a night flophouse-themed boutique hotel sometime soon, for people who can afford to enjoy the warm glow radiated by misery and erased history, along the event horizon where places go "poof" as they're sucked into the stainless black hole of Luxury.
And further down Bowery, below, evil Anthony Hopkins looks happy as hell, no doubt imagining carrying out the rite the ad promises on the inhabitants of the new condos on Kenmare behind him.
