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Tag Archive for 'public-space'
Tags: history, new york, projects, public space, religion
Tags: art, development, projects, public space, redhook
There’s so much to write about. Traveling to the midwest. Visiting the Miss Rockaway Armada. Playing a square dance upstate with folks from the Germantown Community Farm…but I’m sleepy and busy learning Spanish, sewing, mulling over the decision to move to Troy, NY for the next two years, and thinking about doors. Yes. Doors.
Yesterday after a nice afternoon with some friends, the light in my neighborhood was as it usually is around 6pm in the summertime: golden, shimmery, and kind of magical really. As I’m feeling particularly attached to Red Hook right now– partly because it seems like the sale of our block (to someone other than us) is imminent and partly because I may be here rather infrequently if I move to Troy– it seemed like a nice thing to ride around and take some pictures.
I took some photos of the lovely Ikea construction site. Some weeds. Some nice old buildings. And then I saw this door. The one up above. Then I thought that I should take photos of ALL the doors in my neighborhood, block by block. I don’t know how far I’ll get with it, but there’s something about the doors– beautiful ivy covered, rusty chained abandoned doors; newly constructed gawdy condo doors; and old beaten doors that still get a lot of use from the same people who’ve been using them for decades– that says a lot about the changing character of the neighborhood.
Here’s the first batch covering the two block stretch of Van Dyke Street between Otsego and Richards (it’s missing 2 doors right now…soon to come). CLICK.
Tags: art, projects, public space, travel
The bus was long and painful and beautiful. I met some amazing people and got very little sleep. I don’t have much time in front of a computer to write anything coherent. Here are a few photos. in Pittsburgh, PA, Amarillo, TX, Joplin, MO, and Harrisburg, PA. More soon.
Tags: art, culture, journalism, projects, public space, travel
Next week I’m taking a Greyhound bus 3.5 days from New York to Seattle. These days it’s cheaper and faster to fly (although Greyhound tickets are still possible to forge, I think). I’m taking this trip because I want to make a film about a cross-country bus ride. These 3000 miles are a kind of research for the film– a way to ‘find’ the story.
I’m fascinated by the intersections of people and the temporary intimacy and how utterly American the bus is in a non-Patriot Act, non-flag-waving kind of way. On the bus that it becomes very apparent who is fighting the United States’ wars, who is being criminalized, incarcerated, institutionalized. It’s on the bus that I’ve met Vietnam vets, fresh faced army-recruits en route to basic training, and folks just out of prison– as well as retired bureaucrats, English teachers, and entire families on their way to weddings and funerals. It’s on the bus that I’ve divulged secrets about myself that almost no one else knows– and it’s on the bus that I’ve listened to the most intimate confessions of strangers whom I’ll never meet again.
Of course, I know it’s not all romantic and gushy like I’ve just described. It’s uncomfortable and stinky and boring and people are annoying and loud and the only hot food around is Arby’s and McDonalds…and sometimes you just don’t want to talk to your neighbor or they don’t want to talk to you, so you both just watch the landscape of the interstate roll by or stand awkwardly under the florescent lights of a rest stop stop in Elk City, Oklahoma smoking cigarettes at 3:00 A.M.. But I think that’s part of it too.
Everyone I talk to about this film project gets excited to share their own amazing story about riding the bus. It’s pretty universal. So, I’m making a zine of these stories. And I’d love yours to be part of it.
The only requirement is that your story be about an experience you had riding a Greyhound bus (or some other U.S./Canada-based bus line).
Write about the time you had to wait in the station for 13 hours. What about the time someone got drunk and belligerent in the back seats and the driver tried, unsuccessfully, to throw them off? The 8-hour love affair you had on the way to Cleveland? Or when you woke up as the sun was rising over the Rocky Mountains and your neighbor, the soft-spoken 70-year old train conductor, was leaned gently up against you, still asleep. Or write about the boredom, or the time you scammed your way across the country with a fake ticket. Anything related goes. Please forward this email to others who have stories to tell.
I’m also looking for art and illustrations that are on topic.
Please let me know if you’re interested and email (or mail) all stories / art to me by April 16th. I’m going to be compiling and laying out that following week.
toddchandler [at] gmail.com
Todd Chandler
17 Dikeman Street
Brooklyn, NY 11231
Thanks. Happy trails.
XO
photos by:
Steven Bao
Henk and Anna
Tags: new york, public space
Yesterday a few of us took a walk on the High Line– the abandoned elevated train tracks that stretches for 22 blocks on the West side of Manhattan.
Yesterday a few of us took a walk on the High Line– the abandoned elevated train tracks that stretches for 22 blocks on the West side of Manhattan.
It will soon become a park. Development has already begun. A park is better than a bunch of overpriced condos, which would have inevitably sprung up had the High Line been destroyed (Rudy Giuliani tried his best). But still, it’s hard not to be skeptical. So often, parks are at best sterile, inhospitable and underused- and at worst ill-planned and unsafe. Mostly, it’s that the High Line, like Coney Island, like the Red Hook waterfront, is a piece of an older, very different New York City that is disappearing piece by piece.
Conventionally, neighborhood parks or park-like open spaces are considered boons conferred on the deprived populations of cities. Let us turn this thought around, and consider city parks deprived places that need the boon of life and appreciation conferred on them. This is more nearly in accord with reality, for people do confer use on parks and make them successes - or else withhold use and doom parks to rejection and failure.
Jane Jacobs, Death and Life of Great American Cities
Tags: art, culture, friends, new york, public space
Movies on the subway! About 20 of us met on the platform of the Jay Street F train at 10:30pm. We jumped on the last car, wheeled on the projector and taped over the lights with craft paper as people took their seats. Refreshments were served (Junior Mints, popcorn, etc). “Coming Attractions” and “Now Playing” posters were put up on the walls. Movies were generally subway-themed, including Michael Jackson’s “Bad” video, a Buster Keaton film called “Cops,” a 1940’s educational film about the New York City subway, and the segment from the Borat movie where Borat lets the chicken loose on the subway.
Some passengers didn’t know what to make of it and kept their distance by sitting at the front of the car. Most, though, started munching on jujubees and enjoyed the show. i talked with an elderly woman and a teenage kid, both of whom said it was the coolest use of public space they’d seen in a while. I would have to agree.
Thanks Jeff. You have great ideas and pull them off with style…totally inspiring.
Flash Video: 
