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

Cluster Faves

A few of my favorite clusters of stuff.  Above, looking down Broadway from in front of the Fifth Avenue Building at Madison Square.

It's nice that the Levi's ad, left of the clock, sinks into the surrounding brown.  Too bad they had to insult us with "Everybody's work is equally important," here in the land of banker bonuses.  Are the workers in the ads socialists, or have their brains evaporated from too many 12 hour shifts in the denim mines?

Below left, the southwest corner of West Broadway and Watts.


Above right, looking west on Metropolitan Ave. from next to the BQE in Williamsburg.  And below, looking north on 1st Ave. from below 33rd St.

Noir Double Bill

Robert Mitchum is a modest medical professional with a perfectly decent, true-blue girlfriend.  He should be satisfied, but one whiff of expensive perfume and he throws in with an about-to-be heiress whose screws have come loose.  Twice! -- in two movies I watched a few weeks apart:


Above left, Jean Simmons in Angel Face, 1952.  Above right, Faith Domergue in Where Danger Lives, 1950 (on a DVD with the also worthy Tension).

One movie has a "happy ending."  Find out which one!

Film still capture credits: Only the Cinema, Some Came Running and tubeonline.info.

New Bloomberg City

Like wide screen TV, but $1000 a month to maintain
I think it's time we quit fooling ourselves, and rename NYC New Bloomberg City, or NBC.

Rinse off the stench of
wealth at ABC Home

The city's transformation is nearly complete, as Bloomberg Preferred Citizens^TM -- bankers, developers, and other people with Wall Street incomes, and the drones who furnish them with the regular and stainless amenities formerly found only in upscale suburbs -- have firmly taken control and, like arrogant weeds, are sucking up all the air that used to allow for the cultural and economic breadth and depth that made this huge village special.

Today's reminder that we live in two worlds: People who spend six figures on aquariums for their $16.9 million apartment as an alternative to a big screen TV.  Watching the bright, swirling trails of captive fish soothes the owner, and lets them imagine they are rinsing the filthiness off their wealth, transforming it to beauty and meaning.

Spend to Transcend ^TM*

I suspect that washing off filth via home furnishings and improvement is what a lot of people with too much money do.

From the window displays at ABC Home (above and right), where Spending is Transcending ^TM, to Jean Nouvel's "Vision" luxury tower in Chelsea, that had the normally egalitarian critic Nicolai Ouroussoff enthusing over interior details, as if the city is enhanced -- not by what anyone can see from the outside and the way a building meets the sidewalk but -- by imagining we were invited into one of those luxury apartments to enjoy the precious details and the way they express the owners' sensitive and complicated relationship to wealth.

And now, as usual, the rest of us are left to watch the Elect, those who gave their souls to Mammon, live the high life in their pretty fish tanks strung like pearls along the High Line, and let the enjoyment trickle down on our imaginations.

[ Previously: A Tale of Two Economies ]

* This ABC Home display, though up during Black History month, always made me think of a home makeover by the Manson Family.

Leaning Tower of Confucius Plaza

Some pictures of the Confucius Plaza Apartments tower.  I liked the way the ropes seem to be pulling the tower and the white building at its feet together so much that I preserved the crookedness in these photos.

1) Above, the ropes pull the tower over like a loose fence post.
2) Below left, the tower pulls back a bit.


3) Above right, the arched back of the tower as it pulls itself up.
4) Below, the puny white building is ripped out of the ground.

Wanamaker Store Annex 2

Different day, different light, different skin at Wanamaker Annex (home of the Astor Place Kmart).  I'd like to thank the sun for the nice flare above.


And again, it mystifies me how such a humble surface can look so good.  Compare the color and temperature here with the previous photos.


[ Wanamaker Store Annex 1 ]