Broadway, February 2006

Someone's specialty is painting huge keys. This building, near Eighth Street, shows some particularly good examples, and they're several floors up. (I don't remember how many, but I know I was at maximum zoom. Click the photo if you want to make it bigger.) I guess the painter crawled around on that ledge, probably in the middle of the night. Yikes!

Jake Dobkin from Streetsy has taken several photos of such keys in other locations.

Wonder what the key means? What does it open?

UPDATE: I revisited this building, and it's actually at the corner of Broadway and Great Jones Street, several blocks south of Eighth. The keys are above the fourth floor.

Upper West Side, October 2006

Think about the uniqueness of shadows. They are ever-changing. Leaves fall, the sun's angle shifts, and tomorrow's shadows are different from today's. In fact, they're different from moment to moment.

This wall reminds me of a Dalmatian! Also, notice that the window bars are tipped with little metal flowers. Kind of funny.

Midtown East, Sept. 2006

Here's the grande dame of New York's skyscrapers, the Chrysler Building, reflected in the glass of its much less distinguished neighbor across 42nd Street. You can't see the distinctive spire because of the angle of the photo, but you can barely make out the eagle gargoyles that project from the building just below the spire.

The Chrysler Building, by William van Alen, was built in 1930 and was briefly the tallest building in New York, until the Empire State Building was finished in 1931. It's still the most elegant New York building, in my opinion. The Empire State Building is Johnny Weissmuller, all big muscle; the Chrysler Building is Jean Harlow.

I can see its shiny finial both from my office on West 43rd Street and the block where I live, at Lexington Avenue and 29th Street. It always adds to my day to look up and notice it: bright steel in the sun, a crown of lights at night.

Upper East Side, Sept. 2006

These cherubs adorn one of the expensive apartment buildings just south of the Guggenheim Museum on Fifth Avenue. Interesting, but a little creepy, in my opinion.

Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Sept. 2006

The artist who uses the name "Obey" posts big black-and-white images like this one, usually with a fierce-looking face as a trademark. (The face is inside the logo at the lower left of this image, which I think depicts Angela Davis.)

At least one passer-by doesn't think much of Obey's technique. ("Photoshop plus Kinko's does not equal Art.")

Lincoln Center, Sept. 2006

Henry Moore's "Reclining Figure," from 1964, casts amoebic shadows. The sculpture stands (reclines?) in the center of a large reflecting pool, north of the Metropolitan Opera and west of Avery Fisher Hall.

You can see the entire sculpture here.

East Village, Sept. 2006

Haculla is a graffiti artist whose mustachioed faces appear on walls in SoHo. Here, a few blocks north on Lafayette Street, he/she added some extra spice to an Apple advertisement.