Wall Street Flag

NYSE, Last Refuge of Scoundrels
What, you expected Wall Street to hide behind some other flag?

If you haven't been down by the New York Stock Exchange lately [map], it's still an interesting sight, with that giddy tourist-friendly anti-terror edge we just don't get enough of anymore.

There's some serious-looking security infrastructure -- its effect intensified by the narrow streets -- and at least one poor bomb-sniffing dog that looked tired of being on high alert.

There's the sculpted scene from Capitalist Heaven above the flag, left, where an apparently pregnant young woman (center) stands amid the naked rabble of industry while her mom (left) panhandles to keep them fully clothed.

Then there's the funny way that Wall Street's hustlers, free from regulation and responsibility, nearly wrecked the world economy all by themselves, without any help from Al Qaeda.  And the unfunny way they've been treated with kid gloves, while unemployment continues to grow.

Maybe most funny is the fact that -- now that any hustler with an Internet server can run their own stock exchange -- the NYSE is losing volume, and that massive flag may have to stay up permanently to hide the emptiness inside.


[ The Big Squander, Paul Krugman, NYT ]
[ Rivals Pose Threat to New York Stock Exchange, NYT ]

Facebook Confidential

Facebook is like an endless art opening, where social connections are more tribal (with many-to-many connections, like below left) than personal.  Personal connections mean a lot to me, tribal ones not so much.

In a room buzzing with tribal activity, at my worst I back you into a corner and treat you to a passionate monologue on something I find interesting.  At my best I'm the 8th Grade wallflower at the school dance, whose face flushes and knees knock whenever the buddingly buxom object of his desire nears.

I prayed Facebook would be different!  Not like Friendster, then MySpace -- social networks I entered, fouled and fled like an escaped circus freak searching for home, a deformed thing that -- though striking in silhouette as it scurries along the darkening horizon -- is better appreciated from a distance.

I could try to improve my networking skills, but at this point it might make more sense to ditch the human aspect altogether and become an idea or "brand" -- let's call it KS -- worthy of Facebook fan worship (like the red center of the many-to-one network, right).  The brand-fan relationship, while safely distant, is still personal, isn't it?

Once KS the brand has caught on, I -- it -- could hire someone halfway around the world to do its Facebook updates while it sleeps, so it becomes a 24/7 broadcast, a blinding hypnotic lighthouse that burns its brand onto fans' retinas, so they see it in their sleep, until there are legions upon legions of them chanting its name under their breath without even noticing, until it replaces the dead space between every utterance on earth and pushes the aether back another half mile into space.

Did I mention it may be easier to appreciate from a distance?

The more I think about it the more I like it; KS makes a good strong brand.

After all, it stands in for the whole state of Kansas and envelops each and every KisS -- and is there any kind of romance more romantic than prairie romance?

And now that it's arrived, I'd like to thank its mother for giving it the opportunity to become a living, breathing brand.  It more than makes up for the networking genes not quite ready for Facebook.

Downtown Optical

A nice optical building face at 42 Broadway, way downtown.

The photos came out soft and nearly monochrome, which likely heightens the optical effect.  It was a hazy day, and I was shooting toward the sun.

I like the softened details just below and, in the bottom photo, the diagonal fade from the cloudy reflected light, bottom left, up through the checkerboard to the washed out details upper right, as the building next door follows the curve of Broadway down to the base of Manhattan.

Widescreen Queens

The only way to do these photos -- and the freeway approach through Queens -- justice was to present them in widescreen format.

I took the pictures from the Greenpoint Ave. overpass above the Long Island Expressway.

Maspeth Horror Story

Giggling couples picnicked in the graveyard last summer.  Now ominous winds snap dead leaves from the trees, as Halloween descends on Maspeth, Queens.

The lonely weekend streets of Maspeth are lined with sleeping semi trucks.  I've lived and worked near truck yards, so I'm comfortable around them; I just wish I hadn't remembered that article about serial killer truck drivers as I walked through [map].

Then there's the DSNY garbage garage (left, at 47th St. & 58th Rd.) with all those bags full of who-knows-what.

Sanitation man: It ain't the stink -- a couple-ten beers will take care of that.  What bothers me is when I wake up sweatin' like a pig and the bed is full of garbage bags with zombie arms stickin' out, tryin' to get me!

Then the hyper-bright plant where they make concrete boots (right, on 49th St.).

Made man: Now listen Jimmy, they been doin' things this way since Columbus was bangin' Cleopatra.  How we gonna make this statue if you won't stand still in the garbage can?


Then the creepy ad at the deserted bus stop across from the Duane Reade warehouse (left, at 50th St. & 55th Ave.).

"There's Something Wrong with Esther."  For one thing, she hasn't got bus fare, and you do!

Then the graveyard right behind it (top, New Calvary Cemetery).

Where they buried all the people who died waiting for the bus, or waiting for a friend who's waiting for them at 55th St. & 50th Ave., not 50th St. & 55th Ave!

Then (right, at 48th St. & 54th Ave.) the huge billboards that reach for  freeway commuter eyeballs like sunflowers reaching for the sun...

...to escape the scattered bones at their feet, remnants of failed salesmen who couldn't return home empty handed, to face the wife and poor baby Esther, wailing in her misery, knotted like a scared snake around the bars of her crib.

Then finally, the campground for crazy people (below, on 47th St.).

In better lit parts of the city, people stay up all night, abuse substances and play at Crazy.  But the crew here quit playing long ago.  They sit circled around the fire, strumming broken guitars, roasting odd bits of meat, licking Bowie knives, and necking like reptiles in heat.  Screams from the hills -- the weed covered trash mounds that shelter the camp -- make their dogs whimper and move closer to the fire.

The crew bides its time, waiting for something to happen.  They won't know what until some stranger -- maybe you, when your car breaks down and your cellphone goes dead -- wanders up to the fire and asks something silly like "Hey guys, do you know where we are?"

[ Map of Maspeth for Trick-or-Treaters ]
[ Middle of Nowhere, Queens ]

Maya Lin to Atlantic Yards

Seeing Maya Lin's work, left, reminded me of my simplest design for the proposed Atlantic Yards Nets Arena.

I don't care if the Nets new Russian owner is ready to spend like Bloomberg going after a fifth term, the Yards site is architecturally cursed.

This design is guaranteed to invalidate all complaints about crappy architecture and how the arena might fit into the surrounding environment -- by burying the whole thing beneath a gigantic mound covered in grass, in a style the ancients referred to as "green architecture," below right.

Fans won't care that they're buried alive.  They'll be too busy watching the massive plasma TV screen hung above the court, with closeups of LeBron James diving into the laps of Siberian supermodels in court-side seats, wrapped in wolf pelts, nibbling caviar bagels, and pouring Stoli down their gullets like gas into a Hummer.

To pay off the bonds needed to complete the project, the mound can be covered with billboards, like any other arena.  Then the BQE can be re-routed by the mound so there's an audience for the billboards.  That swell, sustainable future is rendered below.