With a focus on art galleries and studios, it’s NYC Gov’s NYC Media series $9.99 exploring Long Island City – there’s also a stop by burger joints, Dutch Kills bar, and other passing sights. Obviously given my explorations there are lots of things they missed, but they did a good job cramming what they did into a 20-odd minute segment (whereas I’ve been exploring for years on end): [via NYC Media]
click to embiggen I think I’d roll with the Bowery Boys, whose “activities” including volunteer firefighting and supporting nativist causes! When not brawling with the Dead Rabbits that is.
[FULL set on my Flickr] In between a couple meetings yesterday in Sunnyside and Woodside, I took some time to stroll through those neighborhoods, as well as skirt along Sunnyside Gardens, and stroll through Blissville – yes, there is a neighborhood called Blissville in New York City! Not to be boxed into the area only around the first four stops on the 7 train in Queens, I still consider all of these neighborhoods part of the “greater LIC” – I won’t go into why that makes sense to me now, but it’s all part of an ongoing series, and will be detailed someday. For now, enjoy the vantages, the juxtaposition of commercial and residential, and a peek at some of the best-kept secrets in all of NYC: Okay maybe not the “best” kept secret, this is a Queens prison. A “correctional facility” as they say. I don’t think I ever…Continue Reading
Film by Andrew Wonder starring Steve Duncan from Undercity, this is a luscious video with some wonderful perspectives and spaces in this giant city that go largely un-noticed or un-accessed. Seek to 3:07 for the defunct “secret” City Hall subway station, complete with NYPD station booth (which ironically – see TMNT fan-film of the day – served as the inspiration to the living quarters the Turtles reside in their second movie); and 24:30 for some climbing atop the Williamsburg Bridge:
NYC still has some incredible raw infrastructure, it’s not all glossed over and made into hip chic neighborhoods. However that’s what the plan is, actually. But for now the Sunnyside Yard sits exposed, and this year marks its 100th anniversary! One of my favorite areas of the city, of the borough, this yard is just down the block and across a bridge, and I visit it often. click for giganto-big image composite
While I always love my time in St. Louis, my people there, and having a deep familiarity with a city that is no longer mine, these shots from my return flight from St. Louis’s Lambert to New York’s LaGuardia help illuminate why I am so in love with the grandeur of New York City, a city of unimaginable size and scale: For starters there was the actual takeoff out of St. Louis. Now, first thing to note is that the airport is in the County, not the City (limits). Still, it’s all part of the St. Louis “region”. However it’s a distinguishing fact to keep in mind that when you land at LaGuardia you’re landing in Queens County, one of the five counties that constitute the boroughs of New York City. Also, look at how green this place is: So here’s a shot flying east over the Mississippi. That’s downtown…Continue Reading
if NYC were the male glands, little planes would land on the prostate, ferries would depart from the urethra, even as one external gland travel between north brooklyn and western queens would still be difficult (is the G train really the vas deferens of the testes?), and the MTA would charge you $2.50 per masturbatory session. Not much different than life today really. and poor Staten Island, what body fluid must it be composed of to make it on the map? via Cosmic Art Gallery
frickin amazing right? The Manhattan Bridge will be 100 years old this year. It opened to the public December 31, 1909. more info at its wikipedia article.
It seems all I have the time for lately is to collect for days on end loads of visual baggage and then offload it here for bots, feedreaders and humans alike to enjoy, I hope. I don’t think the organization or juxtaposition of any of these images or tidbits of text make any sense, but then again life itself is a pretty uncohesive experience. why one day was I standing above a model of the city I live in thinking about a bike trip I took two months back, then finding myself documenting instances of green-n-yellow all over the city? who knows. either way, have at it. Socrates Sculpture Movie Park: I really really recommend watching a movie in the park. Socrates Sculpture Park has a pretty fab summer schedule. Watched the Korean film “The Host” with my matey Martina. Great movie. The park experience was the real delight though:…Continue Reading
(will update this continually in the coming days) Google Map link Thursday 11 October: sorry everybody I am off work today, so I don’t have any updated photos at the moment. It is raining here at the moment so I don’t suspect they’ll get terribly far today, but I will post updates as I take them. Friday 12 October: you can see the scaffolding is missing from the left side now, so that side is done; the wires are hanging on the right side; they have to whitewash the wall first, then draw out the design before painting. they did the whitewash so fast! how to draw a billboard on the side of a building! the art is printed on some paper, they roll it out a couple feet at a time, line it up, and do a rubbing. sort of like a giant paint by numbers. by evening, nothing…Continue Reading
I forgot to mention this in passing last week, but in conversations with people its obvious that uncertainty still surrounds the future of Coney Island. For the time being, however, the Astroland park and all of its attractions will be kept open another year (MetroNY article). Plans originally called for development to start right about… now! I visited Coney Island about a month ago and you knew something was up when cloth banners appeared on the heretofore unmarked facade of the Childs Building: Obviously the thought of developing Coney Island and exploding its real estate value at the cost of losing carnival attractions and boardwalk shops and canteens makes me less-than-happy. But what is one to do and how is one to fight this process, really? If it’s another year it’s another year, and I’ll have to enjoy what I can while I still can, and call it quits. Sure…Continue Reading
Late last year US Transportation Secretary signed a $2.6billion Full Funding Grant Agreement to construct the East Side Access, which will provide a connection between the LIRR and Grand Central Terminal, and create a last-exit-in-Queens stop in Sunnyside, closer towards the city than the current Woodside stop. The PlanNYC website sums up the size of the yard: The property, which is owned by Amtrak and is primarily used by New Jersey Transit, is enormous. It runs from Laurel Hill Avenue on the east to Hunters Point Avenue on the west. To put it into perspective, if the property were in Manhattan, it would span 42nd to 59th Street, from Fifth Avenue to Lexington Avenue. Laurel Hill Avenue, otherwise known as 43rd Street, is where I currently live, and the Flux Factory site is located on the exact eastern edge of the development project. What does the future hold for our…Continue Reading
the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC) have online a series of Public Art (notice the Capitals there People!) podcasts audio walking tours of sites and works in – you guessed it! – lower Manhattan. The three thematic (thhhh thh!!) mpTHREEs available are presented by Perry Garvin (who works for the LMCC and also has his own blog) and William Smith, complete with NPR-style slow jazz background music (with the occasional AC/DC guitar riff), whose spoken word message is accented as much by the information presented as by the silence and breaths between the thoughts and sentences. You can download and enjoy the walking tour at your leisure – that’s the beauty of Public Art.
my matey Mikey B sent me this link to The Fireladders of SoHo. I work in the SoHo area so I’m pretty familiar with – and very fond of – this cast iron district. Around 200 drawings, all referenced apparently from really low-res camera phone images (click any drawing to get the reference photo section), the drawings show a diverse range of cast-iron escape ladders, from the grand double-sided multi-story ladder of 142 Mercer to the discreet side-of-the-building mounted 5-story single-drop vertical ladder of 113 Greene, from simple but elegant ladders found at 74 Wooster or 53 Mercer to the absolutely gargantuan 13-story monster found at 451 Broome! Potential favorites however may be ladders such as 27 Mercer (so simple!) or 55 Grand (it has it all, and only two stories tall!). The collection also includes the 101 Spring Street building (during its recent renovation time, wrapped and scaffolding-framed), bought…Continue Reading
New York City, whose population of nearly nine million consists of nearly one million – one in nine – financial services workers who generate “more than a third of business income tax revenues” for the city and state. There are fears that NYC is starting to slip on its competitive heels as other cities such as London and Dubai move more in step with the contemporary market, since their countries – culturally and legally – “far more effectively discourage frivolous litigation.” Uh huh. Even a tiny burst in the financial morale market could lead to a shift in the housing market, and drive real estate prices down. What does this mean for artists? Well, it means those condos and lofts they’re developing in Red Hook, Brooklyn might actually become a tenable purchase – since we all know no artist would be caught dead living in a place like Forest Hills,…Continue Reading
these openings are all slated for tomorrow, with the majority falling between 6-8pm. how the fuck they (gallerists, gallery associations, whatever) reckon we can attend even a small handful of these openings is beyond my mind. Thursday September 7 Natalie Jeremijenko OOZ at Postmasters Gallery, 459 West 19th Street, 6-8 Everest Hall “Axis Mundi“, +Project Room, Karen Dow at Bellwether, 134 Tenth Avenue, 6-8 Frank Magnotta at Cohan & Leslie, 138 10th Avenue, between 18th & 19th streets, 6-8 Gareth James + David Joselit at Elizabeth Dee Gallery, 545 West 20th Street, 6 pm Brian Calvin + Jim Lambie at Anton Kern, 532 West 20th Street, 6-8 Chris Morris, My America at Hasted Hunt, 529 West 20th Street, 3rd fl., 6-8 Maximo Gonzalez at Art & Idea, 529 West 20th Street, Floor 7, 6-9 Köster + Lueders + Wanker, KUNSTLICHT/Artificial Lighting at at Sara Tecchia Roma New York, 529 West…Continue Reading
Just another boring day in the outer borough:
John Wick: After taking his wife off life support in the opening scenes, funeral services are held in some cemetery with sweeping views of the NYC (primarily Manhattan) skyline: The cemetery is First Calvary Cemetery, a Roman Catholic burial ground that is one of four parts of the greater Calvary Cemetery in Long Island City (the cemetery website is wrong, they’re not located in Woodside; they’re in the 11101 ZIP, which is Long Island City). The cemetery is a secret space, not nearly as popular – or fun, honestly – as Green-Wood, but also a lot quieter. Like some hills in Green-Wood though, it does offer some commanding perspectives of skylines and signature buildings. I especially appreciate the juxtaposition of gravestones with signifiers of Empire and World Trade: In a subsequent scene, John Wick gets assaulted in his extremely fancy New Jersey home, his dog gets murdered, and his car…Continue Reading
And Once Again #QNSboro Gets Screwed I don’t get it. Proponents and Opponents should be up in arms about this. But once again everything is so feverishly selfish and political that no one thinks about the real future. You’re going to build a streetcar system, great! I live two blocks from the apparent artery up/through/via Long Island City that, yes, I could see myself taking advantage of this system. When I need to get to Red Hook, for example, it’s either a 15-minute walk to the G followed by a 20+ minute walk into Red Hook, or a 15-minute walk to the first of two bus transfers, or a 55+ minute bike ride. The streetcar sounds like a lovely alternative where I can read and watch the world while I use my imagination. Which the Friends of BQX planners have not done in this instance. You just spent $2Billion on…Continue Reading
*assembled in Mexico with Milwaukee-made components (appears to be a version of the A700 series of plated steel round body padlocks)
Approaching the actual pier at the Louis Valentino, Jr. Park and Pier in Red Hook, Brooklyn, there are a few standard historical park signs. The two parts that really caught my eye were: the one about Fort Defiance (now gone), and the other which showed the still-operating Atlantic Basin, albeit from a different era for sure. In the first sign about Fort Defiance, I was unaware previously of the multiple locations of Mill Pond, the nearby Mill Dam, and what appears to be what is called Van Dyek’s Mill (commonly spelled Van Dyke now throughout NYC): The image on the left (below) shows the fort in yellow with the-then shoreline in red, and the current surrounding street map. The piers seem straightforward enough to build and design from an existing shoreline, but the land north of the fort that would need to be filled in between Fort Defiance and the…Continue Reading
While en route to Knockdown Center in Maspeth, Queens for an event I decided to buffer my journey with an extra 90 minutes or so, to give myself time to venture to a new cemetery; I’m finding cemeteries not only have good stories, but great views of the surrounding borough they reside within and possibly the Manhattan skyline – MT Olivet does not disappoint! And before we even get there, I encountered something there are far and few between in NYC, and especially in Queens: a significant hill! I decided to approach the cemetery via Remsen Place, so as to ride right into the location. But first I had to get there. I opted for 65th Place, as it connected nicely to right near where the new bike lane that runs along Queens Boulevard is now located; as you can the light that day was great – if chilly –…Continue Reading
The Carmine Swimming Pool inside the Tony Dapolito Recreation Center is a well-known remnant of Haring’s contributions to public art in NYC – indeed on a NYC parks website page ‘remembering’ Keith Haring the mural has the most photos of any singular work, showing it in progress & completion. It’s a great work – a blend of mer-creature and humanoid shapes with fishy friends: I have looked at the mural a lot – so I was well aware of who made it & from whence it came, but perhaps not its entire history. But that’s just the beginning of this adventure – the mural was just a stepping stone to a greater ‘huh, who knew!’ exploration. Walking up 7th Ave one evening, intentionally strolling as slow as possible to look at and take in as much texture as possible – buildings, architecture, light, artifacts – I noticed a sticker stuck…Continue Reading
Not to be confused with this. Here goes 60 seconds: UPDATE: the ambulance eventually got through, about ~12 minutes later… (and they say bicycle lanes are taking up too much space)
I’m nearly a full year behind editing photos and uploading them for…posterity? The impulse isn’t what it used to be, but it’s still interesting to consider some of the journeys along the way. This one was memorable for several reasons, especially considering some of the things that have happened *since* then *to* now (something I couldn’t have reflected upon immediately after the journey itself). The quick context is that for 2018’s New Year’s Eve (so December 31, 2017) I went on a pre-midnight walking tour with some mates and we saw some things. To celebrate the affair I made a Spotify playlist of all the musicians who passed in 2017 (embedded below or go to this link). The evening started out with a pretty wacky – if quick – tour of the Dyker Heights Xmas lights: With some pier, park, and graveyard views along the ~10-mile journey on foot: Early…Continue Reading
I bike alot. I train alot. Sometimes I need to know the train’s regs, and can’t find them online. So I’m backing up these docs here – OCR is enabled for search on Scribd:
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