Scrutiny on the Bowery

The Bowery Goes To Hell
Nothing represents gentrification of the Bowery like the New Museum.

I finally visited a few weeks ago, and just noticed that an upcoming show will let you watch drugged young women sleep, as in the photo, left.  [via C-Monster; photo Henrike Schulte]

I'll leave you to figure out how close this idea can get to creepy without crossing the line.  I'm sure that, being under the control of art professionals, no harm will come to the volunteers -- beyond the YouTube video evidence of their nightmares, blurted confessions, and other nocturnal emissions.  And if you're squeamish about being part of a formal exercise, I'm sure you can still find drugged people sleeping nearby, outside the museum, for free.  But that's not art.

When I visited the museum, right, nothing struck me so much as how hard it tries to convey that "contemporary art museum" atmosphere, like the Guggenheim, where the art can seem secondary to what it really sells: a chance to share the world weary attitude borne of having too much money on too small a planet, and skipping from one exclusive island of wealth to another, each different but basically the same.  From the ticket lines to the luxury condo view on top, to the work of Elizabeth Peyton, who specializes in paintings of jaded pretty people -- everything's tuned to exude that empty, shiny atmosphere.

So yeah, I liked the New Museum better before it got rich and moved to the Bowery.

People who tout the architecture of the building -- like those who admire the luxury condo tower Blue, nearby on the Lower East Side -- not only ignore the context, but the purpose of these buildings.  The purpose of Blue is to house very rich people; it basks in the glow of history while it helps erase it.

And the purpose of the big new New Museum?  I didn't really sense one, beyond the desire for a higher profile, though I'd guess it fits right in with Blue and the luxury condo boom, and is helping turn another unique corner of New York into just another bland island in the global archipelago of wealth.

Bari's across the street, and a standout at the museum, its stairwell

Wall Street Crash is Great News!

The crash may be bad news for Wall Street types and the people who serve them, like chauffeurs, sex workers, artists, etc.

But it's great news for me.  All the Wall Street workers will cancel their luxury condo plans and retreat to the hills of Connecticut, where they will break into the wine cellar and start guzzling investment grade vintage like it's Mad Dog 20/20, then break out their "survival gear" -- bulletproof vests with car alarms attached to the shoulders, chrome shotguns, barrels of pharmaceuticals, and a virtual U.N. of blow up sex dolls -- and wait till their testosterone level has climbed back into the red, then go outside and skeet shoot their investment grade Franklin Mint plate collection.

Once they and their money have left the city, it will be left to the rest of us, the sullen zombies who lurk in the shadows fighting pigeons for scraps.

All the new luxury hotels and condos in the Bowery will turn into fetid flophouses for down & out condo brokers, ranting dementedly about the amenities they used to offer: "Live chinchilla shoe buffer in the lobby!  Squawk!!  Fresh virgin's milk spa on the deck!  Eeep!  Creative Artists Agency screening room just off the lobby, which is not a reproduction, but the actual Palace of the Swiss Guards' Fighting Eunuchs XXV-Corps, purchased from the Vatican in 1942!  Squawk!!"


Meanwhile all the luxury condos going up in Williamsburg will be turned into chicken farms, recycling centers, and solar powered hydroponic farms.

This means people like me, whose hands are untainted by money and not afraid of real work (like typing this post) will finally be able to live like royalty.

I plan to move into Karl Fischer's Ikon, pictured on top, where the bottom floor of the ant farm will be my bowling alley and driving range.  I also plan to move into his NV building, pictured just above.  There's something about its "plastic castle" look that appeals to me; not only does it afford an easily defensible, crenelated roof line, but it's close to the East River, and "tap water" will soon be a memory, like "FDIC insurance" and "government."

How will I pay for food?  That's easy -- pretty soon employers in China, Russia and India will be outsourcing their jobs, and that $3 an hour will make me a king compared to envious neighbors outside my NV castle.  All I have to do is figure out how to stay alive till those jobs show up.

You know, I bet there's a ton of food in the basement of that 20 Bayard condo, above right, where all those well fed Top Chef contestants are holed up...

In Search of Superfinger

The Finger Building was born in Williamsburg, but they exist wherever developers seek to lord over the existing skyline and poke the eye of God with luxury condos.

Manhattan has a few new ones you can't help but notice, even though it's already chock full'o fingers.  (And even though its fingers must feel totally emasculated by the vertical pipe being laid in Dubai, like the Burjfinger.  [via C-Monster])

I've been looking at One Madison Park, above right, for months and -- forgetting for a moment that it's destined to house a few hundred people so rancidly rich (min. $7.5 mil. move-in) that they expect to have a self-cleaning chrome toilet in the park across the street -- I like what I see.  If you're going to build 60 stories, skinny is a good way to go.  (I take that back if it winds up looking as crappy as the rendering, right.)

But I have to give my Superfinger Award to the relatively puny 42 floor Ismael Leyva design at 785 8th Ave., top left, left, and below, for being the scariest finger in town, like a malevolent alien spaceship, a gargantuan Gillette razor, or the creepy condo tower in the Sharon Stone bomb Sliver.  And especially for looking like a dark, futuristic illustration, even in real life -- I haven't doctored the photos here at all.

Map of Karl Fischer City

If you live in or near Williamsburg and feel like your world is turning plastic, it's no illusion -- Karl Fischer buildings are springing up all over.

Seems I deleted my copy of the KFC map; here's the copy at Curbed.

Fixing Karl Fischer 2

Here we cloak the slobbering big brother of Karl Fischer Row (20 Bayard) in a Frank Gehry outfit.

Note below that I've made sure the empty clock-face / eyeball -- the signature element of Karl's design -- still peeks out the hood.



[ Fixing Karl Fischer 1 ]

Fixing Karl Fischer 1

To fix this Karl Fischer monstrosity, lurking like a one eyed pervert at the edge of McCarren Park:

Find the oiliest strain of ivy you can find, plant it on top, and grow a massive, verdant Jheri curl (plus extensions on the side).

Sorry, I know it's not the greatest illustration.  But digital animators in Hollywood have spent billions trying to simulate realistic hair and it still looks phony, so I would be an idiot to waste any more time on this than I already have.

[ Fixing Karl Fischer 2 ]
[ Karl Fischer in The Showerhead ]

LIC's Taste of Brazil

I couldn't help but notice Long Island City's "mystery condo" (now known as "L Haus," pronounced "Hell House") from a mile away.  It shrieks for attention.

Nearly everything else -- including the Manhattan skyline featuring Donald Trump's Big Black Thing and Citibank HQ (flanking the building, below left) -- is a wallflower compared to this building.  Only the powerful accumulation of junk that is Newtown Creek (below right) can compete.

It looks like a fat parrot, and turns the LIC skyline (on top) into something straight out of Brazil -- in fact brighter than the Brazilian flag.  Let's hope the developer runs out of money before the parrot plumage is hidden under drab condo cladding and the building becomes just another "suit," another turkey.

Karl Fischer in `The Showerhead`

Every time I walk by architect Karl Fischer's timeless Empty Clockface building on McCarren Park, I think: I know I've seen that look somewhere.  I believe I am getting closer to the source of his inspiration with the picture above.

Having recently watched The Fountainhead, and watched Karl help turn this area into a luxury condo theme park, I'd guess it's only a matter of time before his life story is immortalized on film; let's call it The Showerhead.

The Showerhead will tell the story of the architect "who could not say NO," who brought the soul-deadening plastic of the suburbs to the city, and designed buildings that make you wish The Fountainhead's Gary Cooper would blow them up.

Developers couldn't care less about what the rest of us have to look at, and condo owners live inside the hideous creation, the one place where they don't have to look at it.  It's up to supposedly high-minded architects to save us, and Karl's just not getting the job done.


The fantasy boulevard setting of Karl's Warehouse 11 promo picture, above left (compare it to the less spacious reality, right), betrays its purely suburban origin, designed for a world where people drive everywhere, and where a home is not part of some organic neighborhood rich with diversity and history, but just a garage where residents park the alienated corporate work-unit their soul has become.

The only good looking building Karl's produced is the Ikon, left; they are not done yet, so they still have time to wreck it.

It looks like a slick Swedish ant farm, the perfect setting for another movie or reality TV show -- call it The Glass House -- about the problems of Wall Street worker ants so filthy rich and hollow it hurts, and leaves them wondering if their life of shuffling other people's money from one esoteric financial instrument to another has lost all meaning, so they spend their nights in drug-fueled debauchery, and greet the dawn with their naked bodies stuck to the Ikon glass like suction toys stuck inside a car window.

If only Karl could return to the inspiration for that one.

[ Critical Fountainhead ]