The tools of progress

This is the condo they're building next to where I live. Eventually I'll have a really complete soup-to-nuts series.

Snake road

Lower East Side housing viewed from the Williamsburg Bridge. I'm not totally sold on this composition but the road loses some of its snakiness when I crop out the street light on the right.

Rescue me

Well, at least someone's finding a use for that building.

Maggie's Place

I almost never go out in midtown so all those Irish pubs are a mystery to me. When I'm in midtown it's on the weekend so these places are empty. Who goes to them, tourists? Turns out, on a Thursday starting at happy hour the place is packed with suits. It's 47th near Madison, so what's that advertising?

Looks like our man 27 has caught a beef

I saw that one of the Deuce Seven pieces had been defaced so I went out to make sure I had a picture of that big one before it too was gone (again).

So this guy is accusing him of snitching in 2000? The Village Voice article said he's 21, so in 2000 he'd have been 14... and living in Minneapolis. Are we to believe that a childhood friend has come to New York from Minnesota to harrass the artist by writing lame-ass initials on top of all the pieces? Clearly I'm missing something.


This would appear to be the response:

While out I saw that others, though not all of them, had also been defaced by the same guy.

This one says "go home" which makes more sense to me in terms of why someone would resent him. It's pretty audacious to come to Brooklyn and write "Minneapolis" on the wall and be hailed as the new kind of NYC street art. If nothing else, this shows how silly the whole "splasher" drama was. Street Art by its nature is transient and contains elements of this kind of over-writing one-upsmanship. The artist is surely aware of this.

I wasn't the only one who wanted to grab a shot before it's gone...

Party hats

Williamsburg, Brooklyn

Everybody's heard about the Word

It's not exactly breaking news at this point that there's a new bookstore on Franklin near Noble in Greenpoint. I have a before picture somewhere but I'll wait until the neighboring storefront is also occupied before I go hunt for it.

Subway embrace

E Train, 42nd Street

Downtown W hotel

Construction has required a brace be set up to make sure 120 Greenwich doesn't fall over into the hole they're digging for the new W Hotel. The winter sun drew some cool lines.

Memorial at De Marco's

Sullivan and Houston, where that shooting took place.

War anniversary candle light vigil in Union Square

Interesting test of the new camera in low light. I'm pretty pleased. Wide shots like this are probably not the best way to shoot this event, but a good test for the camera.

Pinwheels and water tower

Soho

Ground Zero: Land of the cranes

Lower Broadway ripped

The few blocks of Broadway where the new transit hub is going in is seriously torn up. It's amazing how a neighborhood can survive terrorist destruction only to be decimated by Port Authority construction.

Frank's place

I haven't seen much about it but the site of the downtown Frank Gehry building is making progress. From when it was a parking lot last May: http://testofwill.blogspot.com/2006/05/franks-place.html

New Yorkers are happy

This is at the end of the Brooklyn Bridge. I don't know what they're smiling about.

Fire escape equinox

I think buildings should be described as having an equinox - when the casts a shadow at the opposite angle of the stairs on the fire escape.
Chinatown

Canal crowds

The latest in my ongoing effort to take a picture of what it's like to walk down Canal Street. I don't particularly like this photo because it's not of anything but I do like how it shows the mix of people.

Local - coming soon

Sullivan Street near Houston. I happened by just as he was closing the gate. He says they open on Friday after one more health inspection. Since I was on the way to Porto Rico on Bleeker to buy this week's coffee beans, I was excited to see another Starbucks alternative coming soon.

Suspended sleep

JFK - But this isn't a snow storm strandee, this is just a regular plane waiter.

Window shopping

Even from across the street she was strikingly pretty so you can't really blame these guys.

What glove?

These guys play here all the time and I've taken a few pictures of them before. I don't know what they're talking about but out of context, as a stand-alone photo there does seem to be a bit of controntation there.

Florida moon

The noiseyness of this one isn't entirely the fault of the camera because I took it with the new one before I learned how to set the long exposure. Still I like the texture of it.

Colorbox

That's the Whitney on 42nd.
I had a hard time trying to figure out where to put the colors in terms of framing. The midtown palette is so earthy and gray that the colors really jump.