There was a witty remark hidden somewhere between when two people pulled out their cameras and started snapping. But there are many forgotten witty remarks, and better still, many dirty subway stations to forget them in.
[update: And I should add here that those two people were myself and a newly shaven Michael].
I thought I had the shot of the day when I snapped the first one. But its almost always better to be lucky than to be good, and a few seconds later I snapped the second shot. The woman pictured seemed to be both confused and entertained by the fact that there was someone standing in the middle of the street snapping pictures of a phone booth.
The last 262 C coupé that Volvo made was in ’81, and styled by Bertone. I didn’t catch the year of this model, but check out the crown logo on the side. Seeing this car on the street, then ogling it as I did, reminded me once again that in cars it’s always mo’ classy to go old school. Suckas take note.
This gentleman did not lumber down the stairs so much as he oozed down them. He’s reached the stage in life where he only uses his left leg to step down, but he does it with so much style that it calls into question any other stairway descending technique. Younger citizens swished past in their hurried urban way of course, but our subject’s pace remained deliberate.
What always strikes me about older folks, when I see them swallowing up the same sidewalks as the people my age, is that they haven’t lost a step at all. They’ve been high-stepping these avenues long enough to know who’s lost what, thank you very much. And if they’re still here, fighting each step down to the 57th St Q, then it’s because they want to be here, not because the rest of us are looking for someone to push past on the platform. Maybe some of all of the buzz that makes a place like this work is just the energy of youth, spent (but not wasted) on keeping the sidewalks bustling — keeping the ball in the air, so to speak. That, and leaving just enough room for the oozers among us — even if we have to brush against them sometimes.
Who will mythologize these places?
I think my best skill as an architect is the achievement of hand-to-eye coordination; I am able to transfer a sketch into a model into the building.
-Frank Gehry from arcspace
There is a magic inside of creativity that inspires long after we get beneath the veil. Right now, in the case of Frank Gehry’s new building on 11th Avenue, we can see just enough of the cinderblocks and inefficiencies behind the candy-coating to learn some of the magic first hand. Two blocks away is the Graffiti Research Lab. There, Evan and James talk about using open source to free BORF, and the circuitry behind urban communication. Eyebeam’s OpenLab is an art lovin’ geek’s paradise, and the GRL cuts right to the heart of a guy who’s spent 15 years perfecting the letters s-t-y-l-e in notebooks and on the backs of superfluous pieces of paper. Heck, I even spent fifteen minutes with my post-it pad after yesterday’s Times piece.
Evan’s earlier Graffiti Analysis project, and the lab’s Drip Sessions use video captures of graffiti tags to preserve some of the whimsical gestures that have put guys like AVONE behind bars. Ironically, it is Gehry’s facility and freedom with whimsical gestures that is precisely the reason he is so esteemed.
