Upper West Side, July 2006

I believe this was on 103rd Street just west of Amsterdam Avenue. Looks a bit confused, doesn't he?

Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, June 2006

Sometimes, several random pieces of adjacent buildings come together in a way that seems perfectly color-coordinated.

Chelsea, July 2006

This wall, on W. 27th Street near the West Side Highway, is a photographer's dream!

Dead bicycle, W. 28th Street, 2006

I took this a day or two after our big mid-February blizzard. I was walking home from the subway after being out of town and thought it was kind of amusing that this bike had been buried in the snow.

Problem is, a few weeks later, the bike was still there. It never really moved again, except to dwindle away piece by piece. By June, it looked like this:


Apparently, I had stumbled onto one of New York's many abandoned bicycles. Rusty and forgotten, they remain locked to signs, bike racks, and other immobile objects for all eternity. Unless someone intervenes.

In mid-July, I decided to do something about this bicycle. I had no idea who to call, so I called 311, the city's all-purpose service line. The helpful but somewhat confused operator eventually decided to report my dead bicycle to the local police precinct as a "quality of life issue." I figured nothing would ever come of it.

But then, on Monday, this is all that was left:


Who says the city isn't responsive? OK, so it might not have been my call that made the difference. But we'll never know, will we?

(For an entire photo gallery of abandoned bicycles, courtesy of Joe Schumacher, click here.)

E. 29th Street, July 2006

Angles and curves on a wall near my apartment.

Upper West Side, July 2006

The West Park Presbyterian Church at Amsterdam Avenue and 86th Street was surrounded by a scaffold when I walked by last month. The scaffold created interesting shadows on the front door.


The church itself is from about 1890. My AIA guide calls it "dour brownstone Romanesque Revival," but adds that it's "one of the West Side's loveliest landmarks."

Financial District, July 2006

In a small park at the south end of Greenwich Street, near the entrance to the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, are a cluster of huge red flowerpots. I liked their mottled surfaces, especially when streaked with shadows from the red flowers.