Street performance "art" in Soho.
Viewing entries in
NYC
I'm just glad he's on top of the cow and not behind the cow. Big diff.
I looked up "tourist" in the dictionary and found the following visual definition:
Roberta Smith reviews Olafur Eliasson's waterfall installation, officially titled "The New York City Waterfalls," (previously blogged here) for the New York Times Arts Review and gives it some TLC or tender, loving, care.
Smith states that despite its arguable status as "also one of the largest works of art, public or otherwise, of our modern era," "they are also actually relatively unobtrusive and brilliantly insidious." Indeed, on the first "official" opening, if you will, which was yesterday, I noticed that only a few people on my train noticed these artificial waterfalls. I had to point it out to my fellow strap hanger.
Sometimes Mr. Eliasson’s falls are almost miragelike, especially after dark, when unobtrusive lighting makes them shimmer white against the muffled cityscape. It is at night that you have the greatest chance of hearing them from a distance, otherwise the rush of water is drowned out by the city. But their quiet heightens their strangeness, day or night. It is as if they were in their own movie, a silent one. And in a way they are.
Even from the train's elevated point of view and distance, Eliasson's public art installation is amazing. I have yet to see it at night and am looking forward to doing so.
Perhaps the artist was inspired by this brilliant passage written by Bertrand Russell:
But in London or New York, where people are many and rabbits are few, some other means must be found to gratify primitive impulse. I think every big town should contain artificial water falls that people could descend in very fragile canoes, and they should contain bathing-pools full of mechanical sharks. Any person advocating a preventive war should be condemned to two hours a day with these ingenious monsters. More seriously, pains should be taken to provide constructive outlets for the love of excitement.
Starting at 2 pm today go to your nearest Au Bon Pain for free iced coffee. Yum.
[Via]
[Two older men, one South Asian and other Chinese, talking about the new comedy The Love Guru.] Guy 1: It has Mini-Me in it.
Guy 2: Who's that?
Guy 1: From the Austin Powers movie.
Guy 2: Shorty.
Guy 1: He's not a midget.
(Beat.)
Guy 2. Dwarf.
Ko may have Frank Bruni's ringing endorsement, but the "Best pizza in NYC" award has already been decided and etched in stone, er sticky note.
What about the plural option?
I just may have to dust off the ol' long board for this event. Or does someone have a bike I can borrow?
Emulating similar experiments in Paris, London, and Bogotá, Colombia, New York City will close off to traffic a 6.9-mile route from the Brooklyn Bridge to East 72nd Street on three consecutive Saturdays, giving New Yorkers to a chance to explore and enjoy “car-free recreation corridors” — well, for six hours a stretch, at least.[...]
The route will run from Lower Manhattan to East 72nd Street via Centre Street, Lafayette Street, Fourth Avenue and Park Avenue. Major crosstown routes — including Chambers, Canal, East Houston, 14th, 23rd and 59th Streets — will remain open to traffic. Buses that ride along the 6.9-mile route will be rerouted during the street closings — which have been scheduled for Aug. 9, 16, and 23, from 7 a.m. until 1 p.m.
I think it's about time the government aggressively explore ways to make this City more friendly for pedestrians and non-internal combustion engine operated modes of transportation such as bicycles, skateboards, roller blades, and for Ben and his new girl, tandem bikes.
The question is how do we do this without penalizing the working and lower-middle class who are responsible for transporting the goods and products that keeps everyone happy in this city? I know this is a complex issue, but I want a SOLUTION NOW! RIGHT NOW! AND WHERE ARE THOSE GODDAMN HOVERBOARDS?!?!
Read more here.
Joystiq reports on a Wii promotion that recently occurred at the bar Sutton Place where women battled each each in a Wii Sports boxing tournament TO THE DEATH with the winner taking home the Nintendo Wii gaming system.
And even though she had never played the Wii before, the Asian girl won, natch.
Read more here.
That was quite a hellacious thunderstorm yesterday afternoon and night in New York City. Earlier in the day I watched from my friend Stan's apartment window and mocked the people sprinting to escape the torrential downpour. I received my comeuppance later that night when I found myself dashing across the street to find shelter in a bank ATM vestibule.
Stan and I were in complete agreement that there is something incredibly sexy however about girls being caught in the rain while wearing white summer dresses.
Brown Bunny sucked. Literally.
This edited Uniqlo poster can be found at Botanica.
This restaurant I passed in the low 100s on the East Side has it all. The only thing missing is sushi.
I'm pretty excited about this summer's large public art installation.
[Olafur Eliasson's] much-publicized $15 million initiative is to create four waterfalls ranging from 90 to 120 feet in height that will appear from June 26 to Oct. 13 and run from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. In addition to the waterfall at Pier 35, just north of the Manhattan Bridge, there will be one in Brooklyn at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge, another between Piers 4 and 5 near the Brooklyn Heights Promenade and a fourth on the north shore of Governors Island.
Read more here.
Update: Looks like one of Eliassons's waterfalls had a test run the other day according to a tip sent to Curbed:
This Alaska boy CANNOT WAIT TO SEE THIS! I love nature! Er, nature in a 100 percent controlled environment that is.
Curbed says:
Per a Parks Department press release that just hit the inbox, this Saturday from noon to 4pm a 70-foot waterslide will be set up near the Naumburg Bandshell in Central Park.
When I read this my inner voice went into an operatic falsetto and said, "Awweeesommeeee!"
I'm quite not sure why this isn't on the front page of the New York Times right now.
Although bringing no respite from the recent early summer heat wave, over the past few days New York City has experienced a couple brilliant but short thunderstorms. My friend Paul took some great photographs of them from his rooftop (maybe not the safest thing to do in the world...). These are a few of my favorites:
View more here.
[Thanks Paul!]
Pretty much my favorite book when I was a kid: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWIdkYk9fQM]
According to Wikipedia:
The original concept for the book featured horses instead of monsters. Sendak said he switched when he discovered that he could not draw horses.
The Wild Things (except "Goat Boy", of course) were named after (and are presumably caricatures of) Maurice's aunts and uncles.
An amazing New York Times article: Kyle Hausmann, a 24-year-old Bed Stuy resident and paralegal found himself recently trapped at the Trophy Bar in Williamsburg, Brooklyn after employees not realizing he was still there (he had imbibed more than a few) locked up for the night. One would think it would be a simple matter of making a couple phone calls, but it was a bit more complicated than that.
Calling the police seemed extreme, so instead he dialed up friends on his cellphone. But no one picked up — it was 6 a.m. Finally, a friend who was staying at his apartment in Bedford-Stuyvesant answered and tried to shake Mr. Hausmann’s roommate awake. “Kyle’s stuck somewhere; he needs your help,” the friend mumbled. But the roommate slept on and the friend fell back asleep.[...]
So he tried another round of phone calls. Finally, he reached a friend who agreed to come to the bar. The plan was for Mr. Hausmann to slip the keys under the security gate, and for the friend to open the padlock. The friend showed up, and began calling Mr. Hausmann’s cellphone and banging on the security gate. But by that time Mr. Hausmann had fallen asleep on a bench out back.
Mr. Hausmann eventually woke up and again called his friend, who agreed to come back. It was around 8:30 a.m., 12 ½ hours after his night at the bar began.
An experience like this really defines the definition of a true friendship. Which of your friends would do this for you? Maybe I should start sleeping with my phone on just in case one of my buddies becomes trapped in a bar or elevator. At the least, Hausmann owes his buddy a beer or two.
Read more here and check out the bar's own blog coverage of the incident, including a note Hausmann wrote them.