Flag Foundation View 2

More from the Flag Art Foundation on 25th St. in Chelsea.  Above, looking straight down from the ninth floor patio.  Below left, the magnificent Starrett-Lehigh Building to the west.


Above right, the top of the huge Post Office facility on 11th Ave., with New Jersey across the Hudson.  And below, a woman stops a respectful distance away from the sun-blasted ghost tree on the patio.

Palin for President!

I am so sick of the world we've let happen...

...of NYC turning to plastic, phony as a high-rent hooker's smile, as it services the Wall Street party-til-you-puke aristocracy ...of cellphones, wi-fi, and shiny people infesting every corner of public space, broadcasting their emptiness ...of people "following" people on Twitter, "real" people on reality TV, "friendship" on Facebook, and all the other noise that helps us forget the difference between going somewhere and going nowhere.

It can all go burn in hell.

We have reached the End of Democracy, and found that freedom is more than we can handle. We are idiots in diapers, O Lord, who have fouled everything you gave us.  The universe would be better off if earth was replaced with a dirty black hole, sucking in garbage tossed off other planets.


Sarah Palin morphs to Jim Jones
So I hereby endorse Sarah Palin for president in 2012, and offer the following campaign slogan.

Palin for President:
Let's just get it over with!

The sooner she gets to work, the sooner all this crap will be erased and we can return to the Eden our Founding Fathers knew, savoring the flavor of our fingers as we rubbed our hair with possum fat to make it shine, and enjoying the simplicity of a world where, when you noticed someone "following" you, you detoured into the woods and snuck up behind them, then hit them over the head with a club.


Don't laugh, she could win.  Politically cunning, and burning with hatred for anyone who's dissed her, she makes other GOP hopefuls look like the tired hacks they are.  Our arrogant prince of a mayor will run on his own billions and split the vote with Obama, leaving Palin the winner.  I always figured she'd make a decent banana republic dictator, and it won't be long before we find out.

Astor Place Light

The way the light outlined the tree, above and below, was pretty stunning.  It wasn't obvious where the light came from, but a few days later I saw the light on Cooper Union, left, reflected from that glassy pile of solid geometry on the right.  I always feel a little better when an ugly building at least throws nice light.

Manhattan Bridge View

Above, downtown looks squeezed, with Gehry's wavy tower on the left and the curvaceous Chatham Green Houses below it, expanding toward the tanks and towers on the right.


Above left, the Gehry tower throws a big shadow on the Woolworth Building.  Above right, work goes on under the Brooklyn tower of the Brooklyn Bridge, and the white curtains outside the chutes I visited earlier hang along the middle of the bridge.

And below, the Gehry tower looks puny enough to be a muffler on the HVAC unit on top of a building on the Brooklyn end of the bridge.

Scaffold Light

The surface of this building at the southwest corner of Broadway & 12th St. is just dirty enough to have defeated my attempts to capture its detail.  Then I had a lucky breakthrough a few days ago, thanks to the sun and the scaffold across the street.

Blast of Silence

No love lost on 125th St.
Blast of Silence is another NYC film noir worth renting.  As the trailer [YouTube] puts it, "Your hands will sweat with his fear!"


Above left, the Valencia Hotel (now St. Marks Hotel) on St. Marks near 3rd Ave.  Above right, at Caffe Reggio in the Village (confirmed by this photo from the cafe's website).

I was thinking "Martin Scorsese had to see this before he did Taxi Driver," and this Criterion Collection article confirms it.   The protagonist here is a hit man from Cleveland, but he's got a lot of Travis Bickle to him, from his alienation to his awkward way with women -- he even looks a lot like DeNiro (with some George C. Scott thrown in).

The movie features a crusty old New Yorker narrating inside our hit man's head, a hokey twist that works fine.  Plenty of black & white scenes from all over the city, from 125th St. down to the Staten Island ferry.  There's some jazz beatnik action from the Village, and one of the most interesting characters keeps pet rats.


Above left, 34th St. between Lexington and Park.  Above right, walking past the Rockefeller Center holiday tree (looking much better than recent incarnations).  And finally, below, running out of sidewalk in East New York.