Dada at the MOMA

I swung by the Museum of Modern Art this morning to catch up on the latest exhibitions, notably Abstract Expressionist New York and Weimar Cinema, 1919–1933: Daydreams and Nightmares. Here are a few snapshots of what I encountered.


The Abstract Expressionism exhibit, thataway.


"Gothic," a lesser-known Jackson Pollock.


One really must experience "One: Number 31, 1950" in person to understand the visceral assault of Pollock's atomic-powered technique. Replication does not do it justice.


Sorry, I just don't get you, Mark Rothko. I faintly recall painting a blurry television set just like this one in grade school.


Matthew Barney's attention-getting "Cremaster 3: Gary Gilmore."


Rousseau's "The Sleeping Gypsy" has always been a favorite. Placid and haunting.


Alexander Caulder and his patrons.


Daydreams & Nightmares of the Weimar Republic, kicking things off with Peter Lorre's disembodied hand.


Nosferatu emerges.


No Man's Land. Haven't seen this one, but looks like a predecessor to The Grand Illusion or All Quiet on the Western Front.


The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, a film I never tire of.


Das Alte Gesetz (The Ancient Law).


Mother Krause's Journey to Happiness and Faust.


Curtain call.

Toast

Sometimes when you're strolling to work one fine morning and you happen upon the charred remains of a firebombed minivan parked with almost nonchalance alongside the road, you gain a hint of insight as to what living in New York during the punk years may have been like.

Sheepshead Bay

Located northeast of Coney Island, Sheepshead Bay was named not after the leftovers at a local butcher shop, but rather a type of edible fish once found in its waters. Pollution soon put an end to that. Its golden age was the late 1800s, when opulent hotels were plenty and prosperous fishermen frequented the area. Later the bay became a haven for horseracing before finally settling into the modest residential and seafaring community it is today.


The blue wooden Ocean Avenue footbridge which connects Sheepshead Bay to Manhattan Beach. It actually lies slightly west of Ocean Avenue but who's to quibble?


Plenty of wildlife, but you'll notice no sheep.


One of the many piers that prod the north side of the bay.


A wintry Manhattan Beach.


Brighton Beach lies in the Russian sector, where English is decidedly not the dominant language overheard in the streets. Certain areas like these seem designed to make the Cold War refugee feel at home.


A park near Manhattan Beach.


This ornery swan tried to nab my wallet but I was too fast for him. I distracted him with a cookie and made my getaway.


The food at Roll-n-Roaster has nothing on Arbys, but few can compete with their snappy commercial jingles from the eighties.




Typical Brooklyn signage on this bait and tackle shop.


Many of the boats can be chartered, but taking their photo is free.


The bay, looking east from the Holocaust Memorial Park.


Interested in an unnecessary root canal? Give S&M Dental a call.


The Brighton Beach boardwalk, with the neglected amusements of Coney Island looming in the distance.

Hell Frozen Over

It had been snowing relentlessly for days and the cars parked along the streets of Hell's Kitchen were buried up to their side mirrors. Coming down the brownstone stoops, owners gripped their shovels with gloved hands and growled at the work that lie ahead. Scarfed and hatted pedestrians kept their heads low against the wind and tried to circumnavigate the pools of slush which formed at every intersection without getting a bootful of chilled water. Newscasters on the radio were having fun coming up with names for the storm that referenced the end of the world, then chuckling at their own wit.

Two children, exiled from a shuttered schoolhouse, busied themselves by building the snowfort to end all snowforts. It had taken them the better half of the day to burrow in from the bottom using an old coffee can, and out the top, forming a combination turret and observation post. Their little blue knit caps peeked conspicuously out from the mounds of white as they prepared to do battle with an invisible adversary. Their armory of snowballs was well-stocked. An ambitious photography student slipped on a patch of ice and broke her camera. She sat with her legs splayed, gazing mournfully at the wreckage.

As the clouded sun quietly toddled off to bed, the blankets of snow took up the task of reflecting the city lights with enough intensity that the sun was hardly missed. The evening sidewalks were lit by a moonglow, as though they had somehow become gently radioactive. A stooped woman in a green parka took her dachshund for a walk. The dachshund sniffed the frozen ground at the base of a tree, uncertain. It lifted a hindleg without much enthusiasm, but conditions didn't seem right. The dog abandoned this attempt and continued along in hopes of finding a more suitable spot to conduct its business farther ahead. The stooped woman just wanted to get it over with so she could go inside and bathe her feet in scalding water.

An Irish youth came bursting out the entrance of the corner pub. Without hesitation he bounded across the icy sidewalk and dove headfirst into the snowbank with a muffled crunch. His short legs flailed in the air, like a vaudeville clown wedged in a barrel. His companions who followed him out of the pub doubled with laughter at his sudden lunacy. He pulled himself out, shook the snow from his wet hair and grinned.

"What if there'd been a hydrant there?" a laughing girl exclaimed.

He shrugged. "There wasn't."

Swing Street

Strolling down 52nd Street between Fifth and Seventh Avenues, one notices the plate glass windows and steel frames of banks and hotels, the numerous revolving doors and loading docks. Though the signpost on the corner designates this as "Swing Street," even the casual observer must note that there is nothing remotely swinging about this particular stretch of concrete and steel. Aside from the banks there are a few clothing shops, a FedEx store, a Sheraton Executive Conference Center, The Paley Center for Media, and a certain well-known coffeeshop whose origin can be traced to the northwest coast. The only thing within sight that seems even mildly historic is the 21 Club, a former speakeasy, with its balcony of cast iron lawn jockeys.

From the nineteen thirties to the fifties it was a different story. The streets were lined with Victorian brownstones ablaze with ghostly neon, thriving nightclubs with names like The Onyx, The Three Deuces, The Famous Door, the Downbeat, the Yacht Club, Jimmy Ryan's, and, later, Birdland. On any given night one could drift from venue to venue, falling under the spell of such jazz legends as Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Billie Holiday, Sidney Bechet, Lennie Tristano, Art Tatum, Thelonious Monk, Coleman Hawkins, and Lester Young, a pantheon of the greats. Bird's tortured flights of freedom. Monk staggering over broken keys. Tristano's tempered trapezoids. Dizzy's musical puns. Every night up and down the block it all came pouring from the entrances.

As bebop gradually infiltrated mass consciousness, 52nd Street was its headquarters. This was serious music to be listened to, to be studied and understood. Never mind that corny dance jive of yesterday, the syncopated high hat seemed to proclaim, the real questions were being asked right here. Glenn Miller had been lost during the war and this was his replacement. And it spoke in a language better equipped to deal with postwar existential terror, a jagged dialogue of flatted fifths, not known for nothing as the Devil's Interval. Blackclad femmes with cocaine eyes watching from the front tables. An audience of hornrims and goatees, nodding in rhythmic conspiracy. A few undercover narcotics agents towards the back attempting a low profile. Where there's smoke there's fire, and the room is smouldering. A tousle-haired trumpet player comes tottering off the bandstand in a heroin haze, beats a fast exit up the fire escape as a cigarette girl creates a diversion. But everyone listens.

By the mid-fifties the street was in decline. Many of the clubs had adapted into strip joints where the music decidedly took a backseat to the action. Rock 'n' roll was the new kid in town. Jazz was doomed to be usurped by rock, as youth discovered it didn't want to analyze from its chair, it wanted to shake, rattle, and if possible, roll. And youth has in its possession the disposable income, so naturally it will be targeted by those whose business it is to dispose of it. Ma and pa still remember the Depression. They're going to be much harder to separate from their savings. But their affluent offspring are ripe for the taking. So if it's a simple beat and a curled lip the kids want, a simple beat and a curled lip is what they'll get.

In 1959, Miles Davis made headlines after getting roughed up by a cop in front of Birdland for refusing to be pushed around. Miles' name happened to be on the marquee but the cop was more concerned with the white woman at Miles' side. A photo circulated showing the musician bleeding from a head wound as the police took him into custody. A decade later he was to corner rock music on his own turf and have his way with it on the infamous Bitches Brew album.

But by then the last jazz club had boarded its doors and the whole place sentenced to the bulldozer. Swing Street in any recognizable form disappeared without a trace. Its heyday can only be glimpsed in surviving photographs of the period, and as a fondly recreated set in Clint Eastwood's tribute to Charlie Parker, Bird. Some shots of a washed-up Swing Street can be spotted in the film Sweet Smell of Success, as Lancaster and Curtis are leaving the 21 Club. The western end of the row is now affectionately known as "W.C. Handy's Place," though who in midtown today even remembers who W.C. Handy was?

Maestro of the Maelstrom

He makes his entrance. Sxip Shirey, the mad impresario in the pinstriped suit. The great maestro of the maelstrom. An unholy alliance between Dr Caligari and Archimedes, between Svengali and Gyro Gearloose. Equal parts lion tamer, carnival barker, vaudeville buffoon, gypsy fortuneteller, madcap inventor, and serious composer. A table at his side contains a hodgepodge of junkyard toys transformed into musical instruments through some devious form of alchemy. Mutant harmonicas, dented music boxes, marbles spun in a bowl, dinner bells, bicycle chimes, a megaphone, pennywhistles duct-taped together. When piped through his assortment of pitchshifters and echo units the most docile of flutes becomes a catastrophic pipe organ, bellowing straight from the bowels of a demon.



Sxip Shirey has been a fixture on the New York avant-garde music scene since the glory days of Coney Island, where he entertained the rubes at Steeplechase Park. As a dashing young snake oil peddler, Sxip offered the gathering crowds a mysterious elixir which for mere pennies would cure both halitosis and impotence. He befriended the local fire eaters and stiltwalkers, and palled around with Gummo and Chico Marx before they struck it big. Some claim to have been present at afterhours jam sessions featuring Chico on piano and Sxip on a secondhand accordion. Some have even suggested Sxip had a hand in originating Chico's signature shoot-the-keys trick. He performed for such luminaries as Roosevelt and Freud while sultry gangster's molls watched from the wings. At night he slept behind the carousel and dreamt of bigger things.

Sxip firmly aligned himself with Nikola Tesla during the great debate between alternating and direct current. On catching wind of Edison's infernal plot to electrocute an elephant and therefore demonstrate the alleged danger of Tesla's alternating current, Sxip rushed down to the boardwalk just in time to witness the poor creature collapse in a sizzling heap. He had been too late to stop it. Glowering, he cursed Edison soundly and ever since has harbored a disdain for the electric lightbulb. To this day he prefers candlelight.

During the twenties Sxip visited Berlin to absorb the thriving cabaret scene. He stayed in the same hotel as Christopher Isherwood and in fact makes a small appearance in the novel Goodbye to Berlin. He once notably performed a birthday toast to Marlene Dietrich at the Wintergarten. In return she gave him his first ocarina, which he still cherishes. Although Sxip felt at home in the decadent Weimar Republic among the flappers, transvestites, and dope fiends, he was convinced by an apprehensive Fritz Lang that the political situation was getting out of hand. He soon returned by steamship to America.

Sxip settled in Hollywood in the early fifties to compose soundtracks to various science fiction films. Some of his scores include instrumentation commonly assumed to be the theremin (predating Bernard Herrmann's landmark use of one in The Day the Earth Stood Still), but which are actually conventional horns recorded with varispeed techniques. Though proud of his work in film, Sxip left Hollywood embittered by the assembly line mentality of the studio system which he felt devalued the artist. Nor did he like what the California sun did to his complexion. However, his lengthy correspondence with electronic pioneer Raymond Scott dating to this period is due to be published next year by Oscillator Books.

Surprisingly, Sxip mostly sat out the sixties. One would assume his often eccentric and irreverent stylings would fit in seamlessly with the psychedelic aesthetics of the time period. But Sxip took that decade to lay down his tools and do some serious soul searching. He traveled extensively in Eastern Europe and became fascinated with the Balkan and klezmer cultures he encountered there. On returning to New York he drew on these influences to form the Luminescent Orchestrii, a popular attraction on the Lower East Side with their unique brand of Romanian gypsy punk.

Which brings us back to today, with Sxip in the role of master of ceremonies for the strange and wonderful Evelyn Evelyn sisters at the Lucille Lortel Theater deep in the groin of the Village. He entertains the crowd with tales of sharing a toilet seat with Bertolt Brecht and displays his talents at silhouette puppetry. Then he lifts an instrument from his wunderkammer and erupts into another tune. He is an urban witchdoctor, dancing on footpedals and conjuring locomotives out of the stage and jet engines out of the baffles. Images of whirling carousels and gold teeth fill the theater, of bellydancers and swordswallowers, of vapor trails and teakettles and lids of steamer trunks slamming. And with his blessing he sends us back out into the streets of New York, a little better prepared for what we will find there.

A Wandering Space Mutant

The great electric worm burrows beneath the East River in the direction of the city. Morning commuters try their damndest to avoid eye contact with each other, hiding behind newspapers, novels, makeup kits, and eyelids. An ageless woman wrapped in a blanket tosses pistachio shells on the floor underneath her seat. Three separate people are wearing eyepatches, unrelated. A mustachioed businessman stands with his crotch as conspicuously close as possible to the face of a seated girl who closes her eyes and wishes herself elsewhere.

The door at the far end of the subway car slides open and the roar of the tunnel comes whooshing in. A character has arrived. He wears a shimmering spacesuit with antennae on his head and carries a gleaming saxophone made from an unearthly metal. The genetic result of George Clinton of Parliament-Funkadelic mating with a Teletubby. He pushes back his cape and speaks.

"People of Earth, I have come bearing a message and the message is this."

Then he presses the instrument to his lips and unleashes a cascade of cacophony. It sounds like a madman driving a jeep through a cheese grater. Those unprotected by earbuds or headphones hastily cover their ears. Those with some kind of prop quickly bury themselves deeper in it. At the other end of the car, two resourceful young commuters escape through the emergency door into the successive car. After nearly a minute of this, the unendurable squawking mercifully lets up and the interloper announces, "Now, if all of you will contribute some money I will promise to stop playing."

Hands dart into change purses and wallets, prayers there is enough change to send this wandering space mutant back to the planet from which he came.

The Disorderly House

The Bridge Cafe gets its name from being located in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge. In one form or another the wood-frame building has been serving drinks since 1794. First as a grocery, then as a "disorderly house," which was a polite way of referring to a brothel, then as a series of taverns and watering holes. The interior still retains a twenties' speakeasy atmosphere. It is one of several bars in Manhattan that lays claim to the title of "New York's Oldest Drinking Establishment." And it is reportedly haunted by the ghost of Gallus Mag, the notorious bouncer who kept a jar of severed ears she'd bitten off some of the more unruly patrons.

An old man hunches over a corner table beside a family of tourists, chatting at them over his steak dinner with a little too much aggression than the setting calls for. The young daughter performs ballet pirouettes for her own amusement, often using the far wall to brake her momentum. Sepia photos of old New York threaten to drop from their mountings. The old coot watches the girl with a little too much interest. Police have been summoned for less instigation than the glint in his eye. The mother looks concerned. The father hastily signals for the check. The daughter is lost in her twirls. They escape to the safety of South Seaport and the salty old lech returns his attention to his steak, stabbing it with glee. Somehow he suits the cafe's decor perfectly. He may well have occupied that table since the days of bootleggers and bathtub gin, a river pirate with gold teeth and a knife tucked in his boot.

Outside the cobblestone streets are slick with rain. They seemingly haven't changed much since the days when Herman Melville strode them in search of a ship leaving port. Nearby is the location of the mansion George Washington lived in while he was President and New York the temporary Capitol. The mansion no longer stands, as it was stepped on by one of the Brooklyn Bridge pilings. As I understand it, there is a plaque commemorating the site, though it is blocked off by a construction fence and no longer accessible to the public. Some wish to have the plaque moved to a more visible location, but so far their request has been ignored on grounds that the plaque should mark the exact spot regardless of whether anyone can see it or not. Until that situation gets sorted, those longing for a whiff of Washington's spectral presence will have to make due with the Fraunces Tavern, where the former general did much of his presidential carousing.


[Oil painting by Janet Ternoff]

The Abandoned City Hall Station

"This is the last stop," calls out the train operator in a tone not to be trifled with. But myself and a light sprinkling of curiosity seekers remain seated. We know better and will not be daunted. She calls out again but we sit firmly in silent protest. An amiable college student approaches her to ask if he might be allowed to remain aboard as the train loops back to make its return trip uptown. But she's not having it. He can very well take his puppy eyes and pleading tone and get the hell off her train. And that goes for the rest of us too. A standoff. Then an orange-vested worker comes to the rescue. He pokes his head through the doors and urges her to let us ride the loop. The train operator shrugs and steps back into her compartment. A moment later the train jolts to life. The stubborn passengers smile to themselves, a bloodless battle won. Collectively yet independently we keep watch out the right side windows, seized with a giddy anticipation that we are soon to witness something rare.

The subway station located beneath New York's City Hall first opened in 1904 and was abandoned in 1945. The powers that be determined the station didn't receive enough traffic to pull its own weight. A pity because its elegance put all other stations to shame. This was the dinstinguished gentleman's means of travel—brass chandeliers, stained glass skylights, tiled archways, brass fixtures. Everything but a grand piano. A Roman bathhouse of a station, by all accounts.

One intrepid young adventurer has his point-n-click readied. How he intends to get a decent shot of anything but his own reflection in the grimy window is beyond me, but who am I to discourage? The train slows as it heads into a curve and we are rewarded with our first glimpse of the forgotten station. From the perspective on board the train it is impossible to glimpse much of the station's rumored splendor. The chandeliers and skylights are above the range of sight. The dusty platform itself, illuminated by the murky glow of a series of lightbulbs that look straight from Edison's workbench, could pass as the lair of some unknown breed of subterranean prowler. A flight of stairs lead up into mystery. There are no visible footprints in the dust.

And then it is over. The train passes through several yards of darkened tunnel then emerges in the brightly-lit Brooklyn Bridge station, poised for its uptown run. We stagger out as though from a sinister carnival ride into the daylight, emotions stirred by what we have seen. Or did we see it? The kid with the camera is fidgeting with the playback mechanism, eager for evidence that it wasn't some sort of fleeting hallucination. He managed to capture a blurred image of a green tiled sign that can just be discerned to read "City Hall." It was there after all.

To be honest, the City Hall station is far from forgotten. Photos are in abundance all over the Internet. To the train operators who pass through it everyday as part of their route it is just another tedious part of the workday, much like an elevator or a water cooler or the gated entrance to a parking ramp. If anything, a nuisance to attract goggle-eyed history buffs with their cameras and persistence. To those of us with limited access, though, it remains an urban Atlantis, its existence spoken of in hushed reverence like a closely guarded secret.

Brooklyn Transit Museum

The Brooklyn Transit Museum in downtown Brooklyn, housed inside a former subway station. Where old trains go after they die to be preserved like mechanical mummies. Worth a trip if you're into vintage New Yorkia.


A 5443 Lo-V from 1924. Like riding in a German tank.


And interior.


A BMT 1407 dating from 1907. Classy ride, eh?


An R-11 #8013 prototype from 1949. Looks like the interior of an aqua-submarine. Note the portholes.


A BMT Q-Type #1612C. Originally from 1907, rebuilt in 1938. Paint job by the Crayola Factory, presumably.


Advertising was so quaintly earnest in those days.


The IRT R-15 from 1950, the first to contain an air conditioning unit.


Inside an IND R-7A / R-10 1575 from 1938.

The Authors

The Rules: Don't take too long to think about it. Fifteen authors (poets included) who have always influenced you and will always stick with you. List the first 15 you can recall in no more than 15 minutes, and they don't have to be listed in order of relevance to you.

Alright fine. (Like I don't have better things to do... grumble... gripe...)

In chronological order:

Carl Barks
Margaret Sutton
Robert Arthur
Arthur Conan Doyle
Dashiell Hammett
Raymond Chandler
Jack Kerouac
Henry Miller
Ernest Hemingway
Franz Kafka
James Joyce
Thomas Pynchon
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Louis-Ferdinand Celine
David Foster Wallace

Brainstorming Session

Considered titles for my novel:

The Happy Dirigible
Entertain My Fiasco
Womb Puppet
Empire State Bildungsroman
The Man Who Shat in a Minefield and Blew His Ass Off
The Elephant Chair
The Mexican Hat Rack
Blind Man in a Lightbulb Factory
Tubercular Bells

Also in the works, an off-Broadway musical about the rise of Lynyrd Skynyrd, tentatively entitled Don't Cry For Me, Alabama.

Hollywood Formula #76

HERO: I discovered your secret hideout and found out all about your nefarious scheme. You're not going to get away with it.

VILLAIN: Then I guess I'm going to have to kill you before you reveal my secret. [Pulls out revolver]

HERO: [muses] Perhaps I should have thought this through a little better.

VILLAIN: So long, chump. [Fires]

HERO: [clutching chest] Wait, I already sent copies of the evidence to all the major newspapers. [Collapses]

VILLAIN: Well, you probably should have told me that first.

Greenwood Cemetery

The imposing entrance to Greenwood Cemetery in the Kensington area of Brooklyn. Notable residents include Horace Greeley, Henry Ward Beecher, Samuel Morse, William M Tweed, Leonard Bernstein, William S Hart, & Jean-Michel Basquiat.


Valley Water.


Boss Tweed's gravesite. Wonder how much of the construction cost went to line the pockets of the fat cats.






The luminous morning sun made these a little too cheerful for my taste. I'll have to return on a gloomier day.


As good a name as any for an avenue.

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Corpse

My first album is a set of youthful, energetic songs celebrating youth and energy. Boys copy my hairstyle and girls mail themselves in packages to my hotel room. The whole world is a feast of Dionysian delights.

My second album is loaded with weary songs about life on the road, drug addiction, and sketches of the eccentric characters encountered along the way. The word "mature" is the common denominator in reviews. Sales are high. So is the band. I fire my drummer for substance abuse.

My third album is a self-produced concept album entitled Bok and the Toad People, ostensibly about the role of a musician in society but most listeners find the plot largely impenetrable. Epic in scope, soaked in obscure metaphors, it was dubbed "commercial suicide" by the record company and critics alike. Frequently used in elitist circles as a device to shun undesirables who do not "get" it. More talked about than listened to.

My fourth album is an attempt to return to my roots. Critically lauded, commercially modest, quickly forgotten. Soon to be a deleted title.

My fifth album is a contractually fulfilling greatest hits package. Soon afterward I retreat from the spotlight into an extended retirement of woodcraft and botany. I spend ten years crafting my memoirs which, at the time of my demise, remain unpublished. A month later a box set retrospective hits the shelves. A memorial concert hosted by the ghost of Elton John is aired on TV. Sales of my back catalog skyrocket.

Is it Art?

-Is it Art?
-Depends. How much did you pay for it?

Har-Money

Hunched at my desk, listening to the twilit chaos of the metropolis far below sieved through the slats of the music in my headphones. A firetruck careens down the avenue, its siren rising to perfect pitch with the song, its pulse in perfect syncopation. Today the universe is harmonious. Tomorrow will be a different story.

Choice Quotes

"Mirrors are the doors through which death comes and goes. Look at yourself in a mirror all your life, and you'll see death at work, like bees in a hive of glass."

~ Jean Cocteau, Orpheus

"There's the Devil to pay and he can keep the change."

~ J.G. Thirwell

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."

~ Upton Sinclair

"The techniques of opening conversation are universal. I knew long ago and rediscovered that the best way to attract attention, help, and conversation is to be lost. A man who seeing his mother starving to death on a path kicks her in the stomach to clear the way, will cheerfully devote several hours of his time giving wrong directions to a total stranger who claims to be lost."

~ John Steinbeck, Travels With Charley

"Her father was not a coherent human being, he was a roomful of old echoes."

~ DH Lawrence, Women in Love

"There is a rumour going around that I have found God. I think this is unlikely because I have enough difficulty finding my keys, and there is empirical evidence that they exist."

~ Terry Pratchett

"I shit on God, on Jesus, on the cross, on the carpenter who made the cross, and on the son of a whore who planted the pine."

~ Old Catalan Curse

"Genius is the recovery of childhood at will."

~ Arthur Rimbaud

"The future is already here; it's just not evenly distributed."

~ William Gibson

"Happiness isn't something you experience; it's something you remember."

~ Oscar Levant

"Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it."

~ Mark Twain

"The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one."

~ George Bernard Shaw

"Every snowflake in an avalanche pleads not guilty."

~ Stanislaw J. Lec

"Don't ever take a fence down until you know the reason it was put up."

~ GK Chesterton

"Drown in a cold vat of whiskey? Death, where is thy sting?"

~ WC Fields

"We've heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could produce the complete works of Shakespeare; now, thanks to the Internet, we know that is not true."

~ Robert Wilensky

The iCar

Automobiles in the fifties aimed for a space-age design — sharp angles, tailfins, a built-for-speed aesthetic, anticipating a future of jetpacks, conveyor belt skyways, transparent domes, moon patrols, and personal android servants. Today our autos are functional but shapeless and drab. What happened to the Jetsonian future we were promised?


Not all of our technology is a disappointment though. iPads are reasonably futuristic. You can whip one of those out for some quick calculations traced on a fluid screen, a sleek little device Buck Rodgers himself might have endorsed. But Apple probably should stay out of the automobile industry. You would look very fashionable driving your iCar to, say, Miami, but as soon as you pointed it toward mountainous terrain your request would be flatly denied.

"We don't do uphill."

"But I want to go to Denver."

"Sorry, uphill was deemed too dangerous by our designer."

"Don't you think as owner I should be the one to weigh the risks and make the decision?"

"No, and furthermore due to your insolent manner your driving privileges are revoked until further notice."

On second thought that does rather sound like the future I've come to expect.

Vinegar Hill

Found myself with some unexpected time off the other day so I crossed the river into Dumbo and ventured into a quaint section called Vinegar Hill, where I remembered I was carrying a camera and so emerged with the following...


Dumbo from the Brooklyn Bridge. DUMBO is an acronym for "Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass" and as far as I can tell has little to do with flying elephants.


A quiet street on Vinegar Hill.


The Commandant's House overlooking the Brooklyn Navy Yard. This was about as close as I could get to it without having bloodthirsty hellhounds unleashed on me.


A storefront on Vinegar Hill.


Manhattan Bridge as seen from the Brooklyn Bridge walkway.


Brooklyn Heights and suspension cables.

St Vincent in Central Park

St Vincent live sounded not unlike Regina Spektor and Sufjan Stevens crumpled into a spitwad and aimed at the head of Thurston Moore. The set started out a little bass-heavy but the capable soundperson soon got the thunderous WOOMPF under control. Meanwhile the thunderstorm was courteous enough to hold off until after the show.



Half the audience appeared to be bona fide St Vincent fans, gathering near the stage. The other half must have wandered in from their leisurely weekend parkgoing to find out what all the rhubarb was about. One enthused fan veered through the crowd, shirtless and wielding a fly swatter, which quickly attracted the attention of several security members who either suspected him of being under the influence of unnatural stimulants or disapproved of him for having so much fun.