Stanton Street, February and April 2007

Here's another before-and-after comparison. This doorway on Stanton Street caught my eye in February, with the interesting light, the face by Haculla and the Pentagram by Neck Face.

(For some reason, graffiti artists and taggers always target doors. I've wondered why this happens. Maybe people are more likely to notice the art as they go in and out? Maybe repainting a door is cheaper than painting a wall - and thus easier to deal with if they get caught? Or maybe the door is just the natural focus of a building's facade, and so draws the tagger's eye, just as it draws mine?)


In any event, when I walked past this particular door on Saturday, it looked like this. Strange that someone went to the trouble of painting over Neck Face, but left Haculla and indeed allowed the rest of the graffiti on the door to proliferate.

Maybe they just didn't like that Pentagram.

Ludlow Street, April 2007

Remember Lister's terrific mural, which I first posted here? Well, time has not been kind. It's been defaced by taggers and, perhaps most heinously, partly obliterated by the installation of a metal security gate.

I have to remind myself that street artists create works like this knowing they're temporary. They don't expect them to last. Still, it's a crime what can happen in just a few short months.

My friend Jesse told me yesterday that he likes my shadow photos more than my street art and graffiti photos, because the shadows involve more artistry on my part - more evidence of my photographic eye. (My friend Kevin has made similar comments - he once called my street art photos "stealing other people's art.")

But as I told Jesse, I think it's important to shoot the street art for documentary purposes, because it doesn't last long. Putting it up on Flickr (as many photographers do) gives us a library of this ephemeral work. And I try to be careful about framing and such, so that I don't just take snapshots.

Anyway, I seem to be in a bit of a street art phase right now, especially on Flickr. Bear with me!

Upper East Side, April 2007

Neil's Coffee Shop at Lexington Avenue and 70th Street is a great old-fashioned diner. It has fake marble painted onto the interior walls and a greasy-spoon kind of feel. It's exactly the kind of diner I love. I pop in there for pancakes if I happen to be in the neighborhood on a picture-taking (or some other) expedition.

It looks like the owner bricked in a couple of windows on the side wall of Neil's, and the paint doesn't quite match. Which makes it all the more beautiful!

Saw "Year of the Dog" last night - a VERY good movie, though also a little unsettling. It's about loving animals and loving people, and finding the balance between those two different loves. Molly Shannon and Peter Sarsgaard are GREAT.

E. 38th Street, April 2007

The New York Times had a funny article yesterday about tensions that develop between neighbors over the use of the hallway. Some neighbors have a tendency to leave umbrellas, shoes and even strollers outside their apartments, which can make others a little crazy.

In my building, we usually don't have this problem. My neighbor next door sometimes leaves umbrellas in the hall for days after a rain, but only once has it stayed there so long that I felt obligated to fold it and hang it on his doorknob. (After which it promptly disappeared.)

I get along OK with all my neighbors, thankfully. I exchange friendly chats with Frank, the lawyer across the hall, and occasionally see Jonathan, Frank's next door neighbor, at the gym. My neighbor Dennis keeps the noise down and never causes any trouble. The fifth apartment on my floor is inhabited by a ghost - it's rented to Carol, but I've only seen her once or twice in the five years I've lived here, and in fact I'm pretty sure she lives elsewhere. I always wonder what's behind the door of that apartment.

My upstairs neighbor tends to be awake at odd hours and sometimes clunks around in the middle of the night, apparently moving furniture - she's up there right now, clunking around, which is what brought this topic to mind. My downstairs neighbor sometimes gets a little enthusiastic with her music. But I think in both cases the noise is due more to the construction of the building than any offense on their part. I think we have thin ceilings, acoustically if not structurally.

We're all in such close quarters in this town that I've found it pays to just let things slide. I've complained once to the downstairs neighbor about music, and once to a neighbor on my floor who had his stereo cranked up REALLY loud while he was in the shower. Otherwise, I liken all the sounds around me to the television I could always hear in the living room as I lay in bed as a child - a comforting presence, a sign of companionship.

Chelsea, April 2007

One of my blogging friends has started a "guest blogger" feature, a kind of Merv Griffin approach to blogging in which guests get to come on and say what they feel needs to be said. It's kind of a neat idea - when I invoke Merv's name I'm not being dismissive - and I've been thinking about what needs to be said.

But honestly, and ironically, I think we all need to say less! I'm a believer in silence and careful expression, and I think as a society one of our unfortunate modern tendencies is to run on without regard for how valuable or constructive we're being. In fact, much of our human blathering - witness Don Imus - is destructive.

What I'm really thinking of here is talk radio. I've never understood the popularity of talk radio. Even talk radio that conforms to my political opinions just gives me a headache. Or those overproduced TV shows where pundits wind up arguing with each other - this kind of exhange fosters incivility, not to mention ADD.

I'm going to sound like a shill for my industry, but I prefer clear, concise delivery of news and, occasionally, opinion on one topic at a time - like you'd get in a newspaper article. (Or on a well-written blog.)

I wish human beings had better filters. I sometimes say things I shouldn't, of course, and I include myself in that wish. I think, in general, what needs to be said is "listen!"

Boston Road, Bronx, April 2007

I took this on the day I went to the Bronx Zoo. The bright purple of this wall outside a supermarket caught my eye, as well as the shadow, but I also liked the dirt and decay. There's some kind of weird white seepage coming out of the concrete, and filth on the wall and trash on the ground. It's disgusting, and yet beautiful at the same time. You don't often find that combination!

The cat and I have mostly returned to our normal routines after her radioactive iodine treatment. Technically I have to continue our special precautions until Friday, but I've stopped locking her in the bathroom to sleep - my guilt over that little cruelty outweighs any sense of danger I have about her mild radioactivity. At this point, she should be pretty much back to normal. She's lying next to me, happy as a clam, having just dined on a foul-smelling fish concoction produced by Fancy Feast. (The Fancy Feast is the one holdover from this whole experience - I had been using it to conceal her thyroid medicine, but now that she doesn't get the medicine, I give it to her just because she likes it so much!)

W. 31st Street, April 2007

As I was waxing on yesterday about the beauty in Huntington at this time of year, I failed to mention that Manhattan has finally embraced springtime too. The ornamental pear trees that line many streets have all exploded into clouds of white, and though our magnolias are beginning to fade, we still have daffodils, tulips and hyacinths. A set of scrappy tulips comes up every year in front of the apartment building next door, from an inhospitable-looking planter on the sidewalk, and I'm always amazed they've survived there to make another annual appearance.

Once again, just like yesterday, a chorus of birds can be heard from the courtyard behind my building. The temperatures have finally gone up enough that I went out yesterday with no jacket - nothing! Such freedom!

And last night, as I sat at the Zendo, spring seeped in through every open window. The Zendo is on the ninth floor of a building in SoHo, a neighborhood of mostly low-rise buildings, and the windows face east. We can see out over NoLIta, Little Italy and the Lower East Side toward the East River, and last night, the view glowed with the unmistakable soft light of a summery evening, the treetops brilliant green down among the concrete. For some reason, a marching band was playing, and that added a surreal sort of festivity to sitting. I imagined that everyone was celebrating, finally, the release of winter's grip.

I walked home enjoying the warm night, the flowers, the enthusiasm and glow of the other pedestrians. So all that stuff I wrote yesterday about someday moving to suburbia? Forget it. I'm not going anywhere.