May 29, 2009
W 8th Rd and Cross Bay Blvd.
What do you call those noisy birds that fly over the ocean? Sea gulls. And the noisy birds that fly over the Rockaways?... Read more
May 25, 2009
Yesterday, Today: in which Times Square becomes even more pedestrian
Today I rode through Times Square. vs. The difference is not palpable, surprisingly: the sight of people lazing in deck chairs, of throngs passing through each intersection, all still blends with the oversized open-top tour buses and the yellow taxicabs. Everything is in its right place.... Read more
May 15, 2009
2nd St and Ave B
This GG Allin "throbblehead" action figure is pretty remarkable. GG Allin's last show was at the Space 2B, which is somewhere under the rubble in this photograph. — which survives in this AOL Cityguide listing. Aram steered me to Derek Erdman, repository of all the cool. Here's a shot of GG Allin's grave site.... Read more
May 4, 2009
West Broadway and Reade Street
This corner caught my eye for the faded advertisement on the façade: The building itself has landmark status, but may be demolished due to its decrepit state.... Read more
April 19, 2009
10th and Stuyvesant Streets and 2nd Avenue
St.-Marks-In-The-Bowery, at the intersection of 10th and Stuyvesant Streets and 2nd Avenue, often has something happening in front of it. A group of young women, all wearing similar white blouses, medium-length black skirts, and bright safety orange face masks, stood in the square outside the church, calmly marching in place. As we watched, a similarly-attired woman opened the box and walked in; the man in front of me helpfully said that this was her work. Her dance? Her performance? Her political statement? He did not know, but expressed admiration and fascination.... Read more
March 16, 2009
James and Madison
James Street is also known as "Ancient Order of the Hibernians Way". It meets Madison Street (not Madison Ave.!) in a down-at-the-heels stretch of Manhattan just aft of the Brooklyn Bridge.... Read more
March 6, 2009
In which the streets have no name
Today, the City Room blog of The New York Times offers a pop quiz: ... what, exactly, is a flat bush? “The English word Flatbush is likely a corruption of the Dutch ‘vlackebos,’ meaning ‘wooded plain.’” The accompanying picture is an old postcard of the Rialto Theater on Flatbush Avenue. There are dozens of entries like that. That got us to thinking about street names all around the city, which seemed to be a good excuse for a quiz. So here it is: 20 unidentified images of people, places and things; most accompanied by a hint or two. Tell us which streets bear their names. The reference may be direct or a bit oblique. The streets are in every borough of New York City." This by way of announcing Brooklyn Revealed, a site about the streets of Brooklyn.... Read more
March 4, 2009
Avenue B and 2nd St
I want to see this picture, published Friday, November 9, 1990: Photo: A sculpture made from scrap materials now occupies the corner of Avenue B and Second Street in Manhattan. "If you live in the country, you use wood if you're a sculptor, but we live in the city sowe use the materials around us," said Ruben Garcia, who describes himself as curator of the open-air gallery that is home to "Space 2B Gas Station," which was crafted by Johnny Swing and Linus Coraggio. (Jack Manning/The New York Times) which predates this photograph.... Read more
January 10, 2009
On listening to Albert Ayler while walking down West 22nd St
At Ninth Avenue, my iPhone crashed; I did not realise it, as I was enraptured by the Albert Ayler improvisational piece playing at the moment. I did notice the crash, as the on-screen photograph (above) still showed; and because the Ayler composition was looping, imperceptibly, in just the right way. The blurting saxophone suited the piece, but after a half-minute I figured out that the phone was playing whatever had been in its buffer at the time of the crash, repeatedly. Such beauty in decay: as the phone crashed, it continued playing; as the mouse died, it enlivened a block of pavement with colour.... Read more
January 6, 2009
In which I commodify my dissent
At the corner of Lafayette and Great Jones St., I saw this billboard: and two thoughts occurred to me in the chill morning air: "Bad Brains!!!"; and "Wait: haven't I seen their logo somewhere else recently?" Yes: shilling for our President-elect. Despite these generally positive associations (comfortable skater shoes, progressive American politics), I figured that the Bad Brains publicity machine has been working in overdrive lately, and suddenly I missed The Baffler. That magazine put on paper the words in my mind, and then some, and all quite witty.... Read more
June 24, 2008
Ayveq
Ayveq died yesterday (this last story uses a photograph of mine as the illustration). Ayveq the Walrus Photographs of Ayveq, which, curiously, I have never uploaded to flickr.... Read more
May 5, 2008
In which we see a clam in a jam
Emily Jo Cureton takes a few clues from each day's New York Times crossword puzzle and illustrates the resulting, sometimes fragmentary phrase. Favorites, though I needn't pick: bonsai egret, lets dropit, and ALIEN SOUSA.... Read more
April 13, 2008
Gansevoort and Little W. 12th Street
The name Little W. 12th Street has stuck in my mind as both quaint and appealing. No longer: the city has undertaken to insult the cobbles of adjacent Gansevoort with heavy concrete blocks and odd bollards, (lest you think that the latter are reminiscent of chocolate truffles, the whole ensemble brings to mind East German public space circa 1976, in a particularly grey and dreary rainfall). I have no idea what the city expects to accomplish: the heavy blocks will indeed prevent traffic from passing through and coerce speeding limousines into a meek line, but the overall effect is the opposite of what this pleasant space deserves. With the mixture of mid-rise hotel and several low-rise brick ateliers (n�e warehouses), some sort of low cement pedestal and brightly-coloured sculpture would fit, or a small plaza with a few honey locust or flowering dogwood trees.... Read more
April 12, 2008
MADison and 56th
View Larger Map The unusual engraving on the surface of Michael Heizer's Levitated Mass show the location of the piece: 590 MADison Avenue. A-propos: within minutes of my having posted these photographs on flickr, web search through Google had indexed them (well, the text at least). The complete set is available; I took them in part because I have not been able to uncover good, publicly-available photographs of this sculpture.... Read more
January 15, 2008
18th and Valencia / Steiner
Walking past the vacant lot at the corner of the 18th and Valencia, I saw a woman stooping to scoop the poop her dog left along the chainlink fence. As she stooped, a voice said, "You don't need to clean that up." (You do.) The voice came from a disheveled young man sitting on the sidewalk, a few feet away from the poop. This photograph, misleadingly, is from Steiner between Haight and Waller. New York City's famous 1978 Pooper Scooper law certainly set a standard, but how and why is it more well-enforced than similar laws in San Francisco? On a related note, the fine folks at Blue Bottle Coffee note that even new developments in San Francisco are prone to mediaeval nastiness: "Some time between Thanksgiving 2007 and the closing ceremonies of the Beijing Olympic Games, we will be opening our first café! We will be opening on a formerly pee-smelling alley on the corner of Mint and Jessie in downtown San Francisco now excitingly called Mint Plaza. We will be serving toast, a few snacks, maybe a glass of wine in the evening. Oh, and coffee." Mint Plaza, once a Golden Gate Transit turnaround, now an urban oasis! Note: two years earlier, during the same large event in San Francisco, another New Yorker made a similar observation.... Read more
January 5, 2008
North Henry and Greenpoint Ave
imnotsayin has a useful summary of the Newtown Creek Water Pollution Control Plant's renovation. In light of what I learned while reading Elizabeth Royte’s Garbage Land last year, most of New York City's solid waste comes through the sewer system to these plants. The plants also separate and treat the waste that flows through the storm drains, except when the volume would overwhelm the treatment facilities: it then flows out into the Harlem River, the Long Island Sound, and the East River (I think), untreated. The solid waste, once separated from the fluid, becomes fertilizer for orange groves in Florida. The summary's author posted some excellent photographs of the Newtown Creek facility. The photos show off the beautiful tiles, especially the dominant green, that drew my attention to the plant in the first place. My photographs did not come out with such clarity, alas!... Read more
January 4, 2008
W 36th and 10th Ave
Just as it looks: a smash-up with the NYPD on one side, and a "Traffic" van no less. Must have made a pretty sound, with the amount of shattered headlamp plastic everywhere.... Read more
E 55th St and 2nd Ave
While running an errand, I saw this sign. I have always wondered what would happen if I did something like this, mistakenly dropping an un-addressed manila envelope or an interoffice mailer into a USPS box, or absent-mindedly putting a library book or my wallet instead of the letters into the slot. Other than patiently waiting near the box for the postie, the sign seems a sensible approach. When I passed by the box a half-hour later, the sign was gone.... Read more
December 18, 2007
Suffolk and E Houston
Gothamist on the mystery bench; more photographs of the mysterious high-bench, from Lev2k7.... Read more
December 5, 2007
Mandela Parkway and Peralta
The Chronicle printed a picture by Paul Chinn that makes an especially desolate part of Oakland look unusually beautiful: Aram and I found a handsome dog all alone in this median a few years ago, while the green area was yet under development. It appeared well-fed and was quite well-behaved, but it wouldn't leave us alone. We were heading to Chicago that same morning and could not take it with us.... Read more
November 24, 2007
Bransfield Strait and King George Island (approximately)
View Larger Map A cruise ship foundered and sank in the Bransfield Strait yesterday. Thrilling stuff. The New York Times has this stunning photograph, in which the scene looks surprisingly calm.... Read more
November 14, 2007
October 7, 2007
Sixth and Market
San Francisco, you are so dirty. I caught a cab down Market Street yesterday evening, and as the cabby skidded around the human obstacle course at the intersection of Sixth Street he muttered, "We are going through the Interzone." I started to chuckle, and he realised that he had spoken his mind aloud. He began to explain that he took the idea from William S. Burroughs's novel -- "Which one was that?" about the lawless region based on Tangier's international zone. And that's what we were driving through. Walking around Union Square and the Tenderloin today has revolted me: the number of people literally on the streets, simply standing around and blocking one's path, crowding one's nose, are more than a blot on the landscape — and why the fountain at UN Plaza — is repulsive; the people are a symbol of how lackadaisical San Francisco is about vagrancy. Care not cash?... Read more
September 13, 2007
Broadway and Bowling Green
The overlay in this map comes from the Castello Plan, a detailed drawing of New Amsterdam in the 1660s. At a publisher's cocktail mixer several years ago, I proposed a large (very large!) format book that overlaid pre-Gold Rush maps of San Francisco with modern street plans, showing the infill and development along the waterfront. The internets make this easier.... Read more
September 4, 2007
6th and W 17th
New York City streets look like an Oreo, a delectable sandwich of cooky-coloured asphalt, white stone, more asphalt, and a mysterious and appetizing chocolate (or coffee?) creme filling.... Read more
August 24, 2007
Ghosts / Willow St. and Orange St.
View Larger Map Ghosts is the second novella in Paul Auster's New York Trilogy, and the most accomplished. With a remarkable narrator and a deft plot (once you accept the premise, that is), Ghosts follows a pair of young men in late '40s Brooklyn as one, a private investigator, shadows the other from across Orange St in Brooklyn Heights. The history of the neighbourhood dances through the plot: Walt Whitman , Henry Ward Beecher (including an apt description of the statue commemorating his abolitionism), and the buildings themselves.... Read more
August 17, 2007
St Mark's and Avenue A
On Sunday mornings, one can find really tasty local produce here. "Local" means from roughly a 90-mile radius, which includes parts of several states; the same radius in the Bay Area gets one out to the Central Valley, where something like 90% of America's fruit and vegetables (varieties or quantity, or both, I don't know) grow. Last week-end Anna and I picked up some ridiculously sweet tomatoes, still covered in flowers and suitably covered in grime. They have a subtly caramel taste, with lots of fantastic, earthy sweetness. A good accompaniment is Yo La Tengo's Fakebook, which happened to be playing while we made dinner this evening. I must emphasize how awesomely tasty the tomatoes are. They were on a side-table at the produce stand — the one with the brash bushels of basil, not the demure bunches — and I had no idea what they were, so I asked one of the guys working at the stand. He responded by peeling one and offering it to me. I had never tasted anything like it.... Read more
June 23, 2007
Mass Ave and Harvard Square
Under the heading of "Jacked Up? No More!", we find these old houses moving aside in the name of progress, along Mass Ave and away from Harvard Square.... Read more
November 28, 2006
In which we go in circles
Some might sing, 'Get me off of this East Bay Roundabout': Berkeley plans to codify its traffic circles, as part of its city-wide traffic calming. The antithesis of traffic calming is probably the weaving area, as described in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's Travel section (but, still, about Pittsburgh).... Read more
September 21, 2006
Oak and Scott
jimg did some crackerjack research about this photo of a sign requesting information about a bicycle accident, and found that A 64-year-old woman riding her bicycle on a San Francisco street was badly hurt when she collided with another bicyclist as she pulled out from between parked cars and was struck by a cyclist travelling at the speed of rush-hour traffic on Oak, just past Scott.... Read more
September 2, 2006
August 28, 2006
Octavia Boulevard and Rose
This sign presents the passer-by with two options: risk certain injury and stand in the road; or trample the flowers and stand in the foliage. To read it, I walked around the other side, where the text is duplicated, and wondered: why bother installing the sign in this position? Why not rotate it ninety degrees, so that both faces are easily visible to pedestrians? The art which it describes are the ghinlon / transcopes of Po Shu Wang. I do enjoy sitting in the median amongst start-stop city traffic, sucking in the exhaust and contemplating light refracting through the 'scopes.... Read more
August 4, 2006
Market and Hyde / 8th
Two of my favourite pieces of agit-prop art have disappeared: painted over. And I never did get a decent shot of them; both of these were taken with a point-and-shoot pocket camera, using a digital zoom.... Read more
June 19, 2006
15th and Valencia
In between Zeitgeist and Dolores Park, the regular flow of emo stencil graffiti on the sidewalk encounters a rejoinder.... Read more
Waller and Steiner
Across from the café is a utility pole: attached to the utiliity pole is a box, clear on two sides: The box bears the hopeful legend "Take Something, Leave Something". Most of the transactions to date appear to be trash, even though the height (just above eye level) of the box should discourage this.... Read more
November 27, 2005
In which I revel in being contrary; Or, Turk and Hyde
I appreciate the bustle of the (big) city as much as the next condo-dweller, but I especially like the quiet moments when the city sleeps. I revel in seeing which other lights are on, who is walking down the streets (insomniac joggers and groggy dog-owners, mostly, of a Sunday morning). In the interrgenum between the time that bars shut down and greasy-spoons open, the newspapers noisily arrive, thumping on stoops whacking against iron gates. Between last call and day-break, city crews patrol the streets, picking up trash from the night before. Between four and five this morning, a pile of old clothes and a cracked coffee maker appeared and disappeared from the corner. I even caught sight of a MUNI Owl bus service, ponderously making its way west'ards. What shops are open in the early hours? Nothing, in this neighbourhood: the grates drawn across the windows belie the bright neon signs and wheezing air conditioners of the bodega across the street. A few blocks and a few hours away, the café-owner, clad in a beret and crisp blue shirt, shakes his head and says, "I never thought that anyone will be here first thing on a week-end, but you always are!". The croissants are still warm from the bakery, and the espresso machine is yet warming up. I have never seen the corner of Turk and Hyde as cheery as in this photograph of Felipe Dulzaides's "incidental vista", part of the Double Take installation art project.... Read more
October 23, 2005
Mandela Parkway and 14th
A West Oakland park commemorates the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake and the fallen Cypress Parkway in West Oakland.... Read more
September 12, 2005
In which we are not equal under the law.
Today's Examiner discusses community-planned intersections: Most importantly, the studies will seek input from the community on those improvements and then offer suggestions on how to make them a reality within five years, by identifying funding and resources for the project, said project manager Julie Kirschbaum, who works with San Francisco County Transportation Authority. "We want to create a tool kit so neighborhoods can help themselves," said Kirschbaum, adding that there could be many more similar projects in the future. "And we want to focus on showing real returns for implementation." Supervisor Gerardo Sandoval, whose district includes Mission Terrace and the Excelsior, has lobbied hard for the project and other traffic-calming measures. He said the area is especially dangerous because both Mission and Geneva streets are used as thoroughfares. Five years? That's all we've got? I mean: that's how long it takes to implement traffic-calming solutions? In other intersection-related news, an Oregon bicyclist was charged with manslaughter: A bicyclist was charged with manslaughter after he ran through a stop sign and struck and killed a 71-year-old woman, police said Monday. Jean Calder died at Good Samaritan Hospital after she was struck Friday night as she crossed a street at an unmarked crosswalk, Corvallis police Capt. Ron Noble said. Christopher A. Lightning, 51, was charged with manslaughter and reckless driving. "A car and a bicycle are both vehicles and if they are operated in a way that could be criminal, then charges are filed equally in both situations," Noble said. "He was going right through a stop sign." Lightning was being housed in Benton County jail with bail set at $57,500. He will be given a court-appointed lawyer at his arraignment in Benton County. I do not believe that a motorist would be incarcerated or even charged for a similar offence. I know this to be fact in San Francisco, Marin, and San Mateo counties.... Read more
August 18, 2005
In which I request bicycle parking at Waller and Fillmore
After seeing the bicycle rack at the south-east corner of Fillmore and Waller vandalized (probably during a theft: the bolts securing the u-rack to the concrete sidewalk were pulled completely out on one side!) and subsequently removed, I began to wonder how the city of San Francisco treats these racks. I requested a replacement rack via the San Francisco Department of Parking and Traffic's Bicycle program site. About two years ago, I placed a similar request (over the telephone: the web site had not yet appeared) when a speeding car took out the bicycle-rack outside Jack's Oak Fair Market at the corner of Oak and Scott. The replacement rack did not arrive for almost six months, but Jack was gracious enough to allow me to leave the bicycle inside while I shopped (invariably for Mexi-Snax tortilla chips, coffee ice cream, or Payday candy bars).... Read more
May 22, 2005
Waller and Fillmore
Just a few weeks after workers tore out the ersatz Picasso mural(e)s, the storefront at the corner of Waller and Fillmore boasts a new design: Cafe du Soleil. A young boy was splashing red paint onto the concrete threshold this afternoon when I walked past. A man -- Mustapha Akhou, the managing partner of this shop? -- spoke from inside the door and told me that the café will open on Tuesday morning at 7, and stay open 'til 10, 11 -- "as long as there is demand". And tables will be placed outside, on the broad and sunny sidewalk on the north side of Waller. This café is another in the rapidly-expanding chain begun by the Boulangerie on Pine, near Fillmore. That shop had a certain je ne sais quoi, but now that one finds that shade of blue everywhere -- just so! -- the ridiculously high prices become less interesting. Rigolo on California and the café in the former Tassajara Bakery on Cole are also part of this enterprise, as is another sandwich-and-salad shop downtown. Pascal Rigo, the man behind Bay Bread and all this Francophilia, also runs a handful of restaurants (Chez Nous, Cortez, Petit Robert ... the list goes on) in San Francisco. No word on why the Movida Lounge closed down. Perhaps their vision of being the wine bar where everyone waited for their table at Thep Phanom and the Indian Oven across the street never materialised? The several times I stopped in, the tables were humming but never crowded. As for the Café de Soleil, it will continue to serve sangria, but not any hard liquor. The chalkboard inside listed a long list of bieres à pression, and the pretty counter-top had racks waiting to burst forth with buttery pastry and tasty sandwiches. Just like all of Rigo's other shops.... Read more
April 22, 2005
the 404
has the mother of all interchanges. Somewhere I have a sadly-unread copy of the intimidating, scholarly Houston Freeways, Erik Slotboom's labour of love. It too has many impressive photographs, as well as interestingly detailed accounts of many roads, flyovers, and intersections.... Read more
April 10, 2005
Mission and 24th / Valencia and 16th
BART stations drew violence yesterday: at 24th Street, a youth wielding a machete (!! -- where had he concealed it? down his baggy pants?) chased a man off a Razr Scootr and around a truck parked next to the McDonalds. Other youth, perhaps a third party to the fray, threw filled bottles of beer noisily into the street as they drove past. A few hours later, at 16th Street, a lanky young man kept sticking his head in the corner store and hollering crude obscenities at the shop-keeper. Eventually he goaded the shop-keeper into coming out of the store and assailing him, while he pretended to dial 911. A tattooed man came along and very calmly separated the two, while the instigator kept screaming obscenities interspersed with an imaginary conversation with the police. And to avoid it all, we hopped into a cab. The hackie told us that we could go anywhere except where those rambunctious Tiburon folk were: someone had just shot a tollbooth operator on the Golden Gate Bridge... Read more
April 6, 2005
Scott and Haight, Part II
Eastbound cyclists and skateboarders rarely heed the stop sign at the bottom of Haight, where the street meets Scott. Sometimes this has dire consequences. The car did not fare well, either. Three prowlers, two police motorcycles, two hook-and-ladder trucks, and one ambulance later, the cyclist was taken to hospital. He was at least alive: five years ago, I saw a cyclist receive severe cranial injuries at this same intersection.... Read more
March 14, 2005
Scott and Haight
Pasted at the northwest corner of Scott and Haight was this poster:... Read more
January 12, 2005
Masonic and Fell
At the Board of Supervisors' Land Use Committee meeting, the Fell St. bike lane became a fixture, and the Board now moves on to consider the long-overdue improvements to the Masonic intersection At the Board of Supervisors' Land Use Committee on Monday, the much-loved Fell St. bike lane between Scott and Baker Streets was made permanent, a final victory for a campaign that has lasted more than 10 years. In addition, on Tuesday, the Board approved the removal of three parking spaces on Fell St. at Masonic to improve visibility between cars and bikes. This approval will allow for implementation of other Phase I improvements for the Fell/ Masonic intersection, such as ladder crosswalk striping, advanced phase for bikes/ peds, and advanced stop line, all expected in February. Stay tuned for news on our push for additional improvements down the road. If you are interested in volunteering with the SFBC's Panhandle Xing Guard effort, send an e-mail to xing-guard@sfbike.org... Read more
January 7, 2005
Fell and Divisadero
Dino had his first opening in ess-eff tonight, as part of a show called Monster at Madrone Lounge. Now, this is a storied space: at the corner of Fell and Divisadero, a decaying Victorian with an old pharmacy space on the ground floor. When I moved to the Lower Haight in 1997, a deli called Mr Falafel occupied the space. It closed shortly after I moved, and the developer famous for opening a Burger King in the Inner Sunset bought an interest in the space. Sure enough, he was planning another 900-square foot fast-food joint in this neighbourhood. Local civic leaders and business people raised a ruckus, and the fight went to City Hall and back. And forth. And back and forth for three or four years, during which the space was covered with graffiti, taken down to the joists, and had all its windows broken. With the space still unoccupied, the building became an emblem of the neighbourhood's lack of development focus (cf. the next corner, which has been vacant for 2+ years). After another year, another developer (also from the Sunset, if word on the street is to be believed) secured a liquor licence and proposed to open art bar. Tempers on Divisadero flared: why can't we have a full liquor licence, wondered the other bar owners who have meagre beer-and-wine licences. Eventually (2 October 2004), Madrone opened. I'd stuck my head in once, but never had a drink there before tonight. They stock second-rate gin for their $8 Martini.... Read more
December 1, 2004
I need a kamera
.flickr-photo { border: solid 1px #000000; } .flickr-frame { float: right; text-align: center; margin-left: 15px; margin-bottom: 15px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Lost Camera advertisement, originally uploaded by Lasagna Boy. On the window of a hair salon, at the corner of Scott and Haight streets in San Francisco.... Read more
October 29, 2004
October 28, 2004
Sanchez, Steiner, and Duboce
.flickr-photo { border: solid 1px #000000; } .flickr-frame { float: right; text-align: center; margin-left: 15px; margin-bottom: 15px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Picture(3).jpg, originally uploaded by sprout.virji.... Read more
September 19, 2004
Waller and Steiner: "The more you buy, the more you save!"
For the past month, I have not seen the Santa-hat-wearing fellow who sells books each Sunday mid-day at the corner of Waller and Steiner. He stopped me one morning out on the stoop, while he was negotiating three shopping carts laden with his stock-in-trade, and asked if I wanted to sell him the stuff I was putting out onto the sidewalk. I told him he could take it all in exchange for three books. I wonder if he's moved to another intersection? Have we fallen from favour? (He brought levity to the oddly grimy corner, and also kept it neatly swept. He gave picture-books to kids.)... Read more
September 10, 2004
Haight and Pierce
On the southwest corner, attached to a utility pole:... Read more
