Lopsided Observations – Page 38

March 16, 2010April 4, 2019

Spoilt Rotten

Pete and Shelley live in a dead zone and they like it that way. There are no cell towers near by and the mountains block the distant ones. There’s no electricity or running water either so well meaning family members give them battery operated toys. Last time we were up there I took this photo of Pete preparing food with a head lamp. And we came home with some coasters that Shelley’s sister gave them.

I read a small piece in our local paper (most of the pieces are small) about the government’s efforts to provide Internet access to all Americans and much faster connections to those of us who already have it. The article finished by saying the FCC was facing stiff opposition from broadcasters. So what are we to think about the Time Warner arrangement in this area where a giant media company controls our internet access? That’s an open question.

We switched to Time Warner’s digital phone service a couple of years ago and it has been pretty reliable. When our internet connection goes down it is usually just confused so I reboot the cable modem and routers and we’re back in business. Last week though that routine didn’t work. I picked up the phone to call Time Warner and it was dead too. I called Time Warner on a phone company land line and only got a recording saying they were “experiencing difficulties”. (I remember when the tv used to do that) Without internet access our small company ground to a halt. The rush revisions to a job we were working on couldn’t get through. We took a walk.

The next day our lawyer called from San Francisco. We were chatting and the line went dead. This usually happens when someone is on a cell phone and the signal is dropped but this time it was phone and internet problems in SF. Luckily we had already covered important matters like pre-ordering the iPad and finishing “Willmaker”, the 2006 Nolo publication that walks you through creating a will. Fortune magazine says “Willmaker is such an easy-to-use program that users may never need to look at the manual.” Sounds pretty easy and I committed to finishing the project but I can’t find the Quicken PC cd that came with the book/manual. I want to go on record saying “I leave everything to Peggi”!

Jaffe sat in with Margaret Explosion at our last gig and Peggi and I felt like the sound got to crowded and the conversation was all run-on sentences. It’s not Jaffe’s fault, it’s just a delicate thing. We thought the night pretty much sucked until we heard the recording. Funny how perception seems to carry so much weight.

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March 15, 2010August 23, 2019

You’re Not Gonna Worry My Life Anymore

A few days have gone by without us even leaving the house. We did find some witch hazel on our last hike and I photographed it at night so there is life out there. I need to get my groove back. I almost forgot I was keeping a blog. No I didn’t. I started to say I was busy but that’s not exactly true. I mean it is true but how do you define “busy”? I get the sense that it has something to do with making money. I love that Lightnin’ Hopkins song where he stops mid sentence and says “I started to say . . ” It’s called “You’re Not Going To Worry My Life Anymore”. And I love how he refers to himself as “Sam” in his songs. I borrowed the Ornette Coleman box set, Beauty Is A Rare Thing” from Tom Kohn and ripped it and read the liner notes before falling asleep. (That last sentence is only interesting if you know that Tom Kohn owns a record store) I was thrilled to read the music critic, Robert Palmer, compare Ornette’s playing to Lightnin’s. What a wild comparison and so vivid.

I am putting the final touches on twenty new crime face paintings. These are sort of small, 11×14 each and all sort of rough and tumble like. I am trying to deliver attitude. After all, what else is there? Well, I guess there is the Plutocracy.

Peter Schjeldahl loves to use big words and I like trying to follow his deeply opinionated reviews in the New Yorker even when I disagree with him. When he tears something apart he levels it, Hiroshima style. In his review of Dakis Joannou’s (a Greek billionaire) collection at the New Museum he says”. . . big money, besides being just about the only money there is, brands the big-time art it buys — art that behaves, in economic terms, like a form of money itself. He calls Jeff Koons, the foundational artist of Joannou’s collection and curator of the show, “the creator of the boom era’s definitive art: perfectionist icons of lower class taste that advertise the jolly democratic sentiments of their loaded buyers.” He says this show “arrives on today’s downwardly mobile art scene like a bejeweled princess at a party that—opps—turns out to be a barn dance.

And I noted in this week’s 60 Minutes piece on the Wall Street robber barons that the fusion of money and government is so concentrated that only a handful of bankers understand what is going on.

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March 8, 2010August 23, 2019

12 Story Building

Did anybody else think Sandra Bullock’s lipstick was too red last night? Nothing stopping Ms. Bigalow though. And that “This Is Your Life” section, actors told other actors what they liked about them in front of the whole world, was really creepy. I liked Jeff Bridges in the Fabulous Baker Boys but I wasn’t buying his his country thing. Of course I haven’t seen the movie so I’m only basing that assessment on his appearance at the Oscars. I miss the streakers. That guy holding up the “Text Dolphin to 44144” sign was as close as we got to spontaneity. We haven’t seen any of the movies that were up except for Food Inc. We did put a few on our Netflix list today.

It was near fifty today and the snow will be gone soon so we’ll be able to clean up the mess in our street’s pool. We had a couple of trees come down with that heavy wet snow. Peggi and I are still the pool presidents for another few months so went down there today to take a closer look.

Ruth Kligman, the woman in Jackson Pollack’s 1950 Rocket 88 when he crashed, has joined Pollack in the great beyond. She was a painter too but she was more famous as an art groupie as she also had affairs with DeKooning and Kline. Franz Kline kind of steals her NYT obituary with this quote.

‘Art is my life,’ is my motto, ” Ms. Kligman wrote, and in an interview she once said that she knew better than many how hard such a life was. She recalled running into Kline at the Cedar bar and telling him that she had just finished what she thought was her best painting. He bought her a drink and told her, of the world: “They think it’s easy. They don’t know it’s like jumping off a 12-story building every day.”

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March 5, 2010August 23, 2019

You Can’t Complain

Peggi dreamed she was a contestant on “Dancing With The Stars” and then woke up to “Reality 4D“. We have been behind in couple of big jobs and we can’t seem to put them behind us. You can’t really complain when you don’t have to set the alarm or drive to work but every once in a while you get roped into doing a job that wasn’t defined properly in the beginning. So the scope of the job grows while you’re doing it and the client feels entitled to unlimited rounds of revisions while you’re stuck with the price you quoted. Like I said, you can’t complain.

I starred at a reproduction of a Luc Tuymans painting last night for about twenty minutes. It’s called “Lamproom” and it is deceptively simple looking but rich in wonder. I would love to see the painting in person at SFMOMA where Tuymans has a retrospective but I don’t think I’ll be out there before May 2nd. I only have the book which I ordered from Amazon and I finally had a chance to spend some time with it last night. I flipped through the whole book and can’t say I like all of his work. In fact I only liked about ten percent of it but the paintings I like just knock me out. So maybe I will warm up to the rest and maybe I won’t. Some artists only hit home runs like 300 . . . I started to use a baseball analogy but I’m confused. When a hitter has a batting average of 300 that means he gets on 30 percent of the time, right? So why do they call it 300 and not 30? Anyway, if the guy has a 300 average he probably only hits a home run 3 percent of the time? And that’s considered really good. So Luc Tuymans is a great artist. It’s not easy to paint like he does even though his paintings can look tossed off.

We celebrated my father’s birthday tonight. I picked up some Nino’s pizza and Peggi’s mom and we sat around my parents table for most of the evening. My brother, who works for Xerox, argued that “print is not dead”. I told him I like paying my bills online. I can’t imagine printing another photo because they look so good on my monitor. We plan to order an iPad on March 12th when they start taking orders and I’m looking forward to canceling a few magazine subscriptions. But I still like art books.

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February 28, 2010August 23, 2019

All Ears

Roger Ballen twins photo at George Eastman House in Rochester, NY — Roger Ballen twins at George Eastman House in Rochester, NY

We called the Eastman House to confirm that they were still having the opening for Roger Ballen’s photos on Friday night. The show went on but the heavy snow made for a small crowd. We had a delicious cup of hot cider, chatted with photographer, Brian Peterson, and dove into the show. I was looking forward to this show based on the few reproductions I had seen in the promo pieces (like the twins above) but the more we saw in the show the less I liked.

The Eastman’s website says, “Ballen creates visual ambiguities as universal metaphors of the human condition.” He forgoes a strictly documentary approach . . . collaborating directly with the subject to create the sculptures and drawings that appear in the photographs.” The arty wall drawings and staged positioning of slightly strange people left me feeling manipulated. I loved the square format black and whites but to me they they look better small online and they don’t hold up at two or three feet. And this collection which is billed as a retrospective of sorts has too much of the same thing. He has been compared to Diane Arbus and Arbus is always accused of manipulating her subjects but for me Arbus celebrates humanity while Ballen uses it as a prop.

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February 23, 2010August 23, 2019

Lights Out

Vic & Irvs at night. A salute to Vic Anuszkiewicz.

My sister stopped by with her daughter. First time we’ve seen our niece since she got pregnant. She is still on probation and can’t drive and there is no father in the picture so the situation has caused some consternation in the family. It has all come to a head and in a very natural way and life will go on in a different fashion. I was long overdue for a haircut and I know my niece does that but she insisted she only does women’s hair. I would think men’s hair would be a hell of a lot easier. I usually just pull it upward in clumps and with my fingers and run the scissors under my fingers until I get most of the hair about the same size. I might have learned this technique from Bruce Anderson or possibly Steve Hoy. I struggle with the back though and usually ask Peggi for help but she was off picking up a big project for 4D. My sister volunteered and the whole job was finished in minutes. I don’t care if its all the same length because I never comb it. I’m a pretty easy customer.

When we came back in the computer room my niece was filing her taxes with TurboTax. She used our email address because she doesn’t have a computer. My sister sat down at my computer and did some banking with HSCB. She doesn’t have a computer either but they both have cell phones so they are a step ahead of us. I suggested we all go down to Vic & Irv’s for dinner and pay our respects to Vic Anuszkiewicz. It was snowing when we pulled up and the neon on the word “Vic” was out. Could this be deliberate. It was so perfect. “Perfect”. That reminds me of the song that has been stuck inside of head since the Olympics began. I asked our server (she calls me “Dear”) if the “lights out” thing was a tribute to the 95 year old Vic who died a few days ago. She laughed and said “Irv” was out on the other side.

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February 21, 2010August 23, 2019

Fanfare Please

The Bear Exchange at Boulder Coffee in Rochester, NY

I was really excited about seeing the Roger Ballen photography show at the Eastman, a little too excited. We got there a week early. The opening is next Friday! So we headed over Abilene and heard a few songs by a young band with a woman who sang like Janis. We ordered a Genny Bock beer and had them put in a glass. On to the Bop Shop where we caught a trio with guitar, bass and Gunther Schuller’s son on drums. I spent most of my time in the store and bought a cd in a jewel case and everything. I heard a song from this cd on Pandora so I guess they have a viable business model. It’s seductively entitled “Live at the Velvet Lounge” with Fred Anderson and Hamid Drake. Why aren’t these guys ever at the Rochester Jazz Fest? Or Joe McPhee? Or Ornette before he dies.

Brian Peterson suggested we follow him over to Boulder Coffee to see a band whose description had intrigued him. They were a Buffalo band called The Bear Exchange and they were impossibly young and primitive. They played an intriquing combination of low tech (toy accordion, melodica, trumpet, Fender Rhodes) and high tech (two Apple laptops). Very intriguing and dreamy. The lead singer wore big glasses and the keyboard player wore a tweed jacket. I couldn’t help but think how all these essential fashion elements, hoods, tight pants and vintage clothing, are going around again and they still look good.

We finished the night at Bill and Geri’s watching Women’s Curling. The Danish team was exotic as hell and the Canadians they were playing against held their own. We were transfixed on the high def makeup, hair styles and grunts of “hard, hard”. We were all laughing at the sexually charged nature of this arcane game (sport?) and we weren’t the only ones who noticed. Charles Isherwood, writing in this morning’s paper, “But the dream that excites me most is this inspiration, which came upon me as I sat transfixed by boredom and confusion for a couple of hours last week, watching the women’s curling competition. Fanfare please: drag queen curling.”

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February 19, 2010August 23, 2019

Stones Vs The Beatles

Nuuj emailed me something through Facebook. It was kind of a rant about a mutual acquaintance. I ran into him at Mex’s ten year bash and I apologized for not replying. I went into my own rant about fb. I don’t like how people email you through fb and then you have to respond through fb since it doesn’t show his email address. Facebook has that in the giant database they’re building. I joined fb when a client asked about the business generating possibilities of the network. That should have been a warning. I told him “I’ll get back to you” and I signed up.

I didn’t build my portfolio but one was being built for me. I have never put a photo up there yet I had over fifty photos in my profile. I just “untagged” most of them. People “friend” me so I have lots of friends but it is a little disturbing to not know who your friends are. And I get invited to all sorts of stuff.

I like fb alright though. Stan the man put an old photo I took of Vic from Vic & Irv’s up there because I was tagged I was cc’d in on a round of comments from Vic and Irv’s fans. Duane Sherwood emailed us today to say his sister had sent him a link to Vic’s obit.

My brothers and I used to ride our bikes down to the lake when we were in grade school. We’d take a few rides at Sea Breeze, run through the funny house and sit at the counter at Vic and Irv’s. In high school we drive down there with our dates for late night snacks. I’ve been going down there on my birthday for years. I used to love watching the teenage help. I loved how sloppy they were, the music they played behind the grill, the “I could care less” serving style. The workers seem older than they did in the past when you’d think they would be looking younger to me now. It’s probably today’s economy. Some people like “Don and Bob’s” better (or “Don’s Original” as it is called now). I always looked at it like a Stones vs. Beatles kind of thing and I knew exactly where I came down. That may have been a young Keith out back peeling the potatoes but it sure wasn’t Paul McCartney.

The D&C article on Vic called it the “end of an era.” Hardly. I’ll bet a lot of people are down there right now paying him their respects. I only eat beef on special occasions so it will be a while before I get down there. I went through my photos of the palce today and found this one of the bathrooms, which you can only get to by leaving the restaurant and going around back where the rats scamper around.

I guess I going to have to cross post this to Facebook.

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February 18, 2010August 23, 2019

Perfect Day

One of the best things about the Winter Olympics is the A&T commercial with Lou Reed’s “Perfect Day”. Another good thing is the snowboarding. It’s the punk rock of sports and the punks are taking it to the bank this time. With school out this week we’ve noticed a lot more snowboarding in the park. They really pack down the trails making them more like bob sled runs. As Kevin Williams explained on the news last night, the recent snowflakes are small with lots of moisture instead of big and fluffy. So they stuck to the branches for the winter wonderland effect you see in the picture above.

I stopped in the woods the other day and looked back to see how Peggi was doing. When I turned my head my skies went right out from under me. I knew I was going to fall hard so I tucked my head up but I landed on my shoulder blades and whipped my head to the ground. Things went black for a slit second and then a pretty good headache settled in. It’s amazing how quickly something like that can happen. But it left me wondering if something like that would ever happen to a younger guy. My mom fell a few weeks ago in a dark parking garage downtown. She whacked her head on the pavement and had one her eyes swell shut. It could have been much worse but almost doesn’t count exceptin horseshoes. We designed a book by Betty Perkins Carpenter many years ago. It’s called “How To Prevent Falls” and we sort thought it was hoot at the time. I’m not laughing any more.

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February 15, 2010August 23, 2019

Roots Are Showing

Shelley skating on marsh in the Adirondacks

We found Shelley wearing her Refrigerator Hat while skating on the marsh when we arrived at their home in the Adirondacks. She looked every bit as good as the Olympian figure skaters we watched tonight on TV. I don’t think Channel 10 is doing itself any favors running their weatherman commercials with the global warming denier/meteorologist, Kevin Williams while it rains in Vancouver. And Bob Costa’s wig looks pretty bad in hi def. Speedskater Apolo Ohno looked damned good though. The Short-track has been our favorite event so far.

We tried skiing like the mogul skiers today, holding our knees together as we zipped through the woods. We need some more snow. The roots are starting show through the snow.

I finally gave in and ordered the Luc Tuyman book from his show at SFMOMA. I’ve been obsessing over it for weeks now. Amazon had it for thirty seven bucks. I’m wondering how the pages of art books are going to look on the iPad. This may be the last art book I buy.

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February 11, 2010August 23, 2019

Freeze Or Die

I took this shot from the driver’s seat of our car. I stopped right in the middle of the road to grab it. We were somewhere between Keene and Keene Valley, just south of Lake Placid in the mountains and I glanced up at the frozen waterfall on the mountain to our left and spotted this moving figure!

I’m guessing this guy started at the bottom and was trying to get to the top without dying. In the full photo I can see another figure at the bottom and there are some ropes visible. If that was me up there I would be frozen in sheer terror.

Speaking of extreme activities – there is a new wireless network in our neighborhood. It shows up as “Corpus Silicosum “and I’m guessing it belongs to the skateboarder down the hill. I goggled it but it is that rare combination of words, unique and unindexed, left completely to the imagination.

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February 10, 2010August 23, 2019

Don’t Fear The Reaper

Dog sled on Mirror Lake in Lake Placid New York

We celebrated Peggi’s birthday with Pete and Shelley in the mountains and for some reason we got fixed on the BOC song. I really never paid much attention to the lyrics. I never do. I guess I look for other stuff in a song. Shelley pointed out how powerful this line is. “Seasons don’t fear the reaper. Nor do the wind, the sun or the rain..we can be like they are. We can! “None of us could come up with the rest of the lyrics but that didn’t stop Pete from banging out a version on acoustic guitar. We had such a good time we forgot our pillows.

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February 7, 2010August 23, 2019

Patriotic Drinking

We knew we were going to run into the man child Mayor of Durand today. And sure enough, we heard him and his buddy coming down the hill before we saw them. We chatted, lamenting that the fact that the big storm was going to miss us. Peggi thinks these guys are Viet Nam vets but I think they’re too young. Maybe just vets. They have little flags on their sleds like there is something patriotic about drinking beer in the park and sledding.

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February 6, 2010January 7, 2019

Fine Line Between Bad And Good

Julianna Furlong Williams painting at Rochester Contemporary

I think most painters would agree that there is a fine line between bad and good. You can be hating what you’re looking at and then make just the right move, one adjustment even, and the whole thing looks good. Not that this has anything to do with Juliana Furlong Williams‘ painting above. This is nothing but good. It was so nice to walk into RoCo last night see all those red dots. Juliana sold eight pieces at around $1000 each.

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February 1, 2010August 23, 2019

Don’t Trample On This

It is so exhilarating to come across a new path in the woods. We drove over near the clubhouse in Durand and parked our car along Kings Highway so we could ski off into the undeveloped western part of park. We’ve been over here before and we’re always surprised how big this park is. We are still able to explore and get lost and that is a wonderful feeling.

John Gilmore brought an Andy Warhol movie over on Saturday night. It was more than I needed to know about his sex life. Give the guy a little respect. You wouldn’t even be in this movie if it wasn’t for Andy. It was called the “The Complete Picture” so we were warned. Had some great footage of the early hand drawn pop days and paintings that were painted rather than screened. Kind of old fashioned. The thing that bothered me the most was having someone read Andy’s words. The producers didn’t have access to real recordings so an actor read quotes out of “A to B and Back Again” or “The Philosophy of” I couldn’t even listen to what they were reading, the voice was so not Andy. I wouldn’t think that any one who ever heard his voice would trample on it. Don’t even get me started on Bowie’s portrayal in the Basquiat movie. Warhol had a distinctive, delicate and charming speaking voice. You didn’t know whether to take the words at face value or look for the philosophical twists. Same experience as looking at his art.

Our neighbors bought a new tv yesterday and I helped set it up. I came back across the street to paint and I heard later that Rick was only able to get dvd picture in black and white only. I guess I plugged one of the yellow cables in the wrong spot. Rick picked up a “District 9” to christen the thing with and he popped the corn. It is a sci-fi mocumentary and I found it hard to get a look at the aliens with all those squirmy thing attached to their face. And I didn’t give a hoot about the lead character so I fell asleep – in someone else’s house. I can’t wait to hear if our friends on the west coast liked it or not. I saw it on their NetFlix list.

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January 27, 2010December 18, 2019

There Is Still Time

Now that the snow is gone, the beer cans are starting to come out down on Hoffman Road. We’re not really sure who is dumping all these. We have speculated wildly and even suspected neighbors but who knows. I bring them home so I don’t have to look at them, that and I collect the five cents. I don’t think kids would be so stuck on the Budweiser brand. And they wouldn’t always throw them in the same place. This seems like the work of an obsessive alcoholic, as if there is any other kind.

Well, I signed up to be notified when the iPad becomes available. I read so much hype and speculation about the product that the movie on Apple’s site looked like a spoof. I’m guessing Bob Martin will already have an iPad when get to the Little for tonight’s gig.

Brad Fox sent me one of those small 33 1/i books on Trout Mask Replica and the behind the scenes tales of that seminal Captain Beefheart lp were really interesting. I noticed a few other books from this series on the shelf at Duane‘s place in Brooklyn so I asked if I could borrow a them. I read “Low” first and learned that David Bowie was a bit of Nazi nut. So it came as no surprise when Quentin Tarantino used Bowie’s Cat People Theme (Putting Out Fire) in Inglourious Basterds. It seemed everything was borrowed in that movie and then I heard the movie itself was a remake. I dug out our 45 of that song and it sounded fantastic, best thing in that movie, the theme song from another movie.

I’m reading Joe Harvard’s (sounds like a made up name) 33 1/3 book on The Velvet Underground and Nico and loving it. Next up is Exile on Main Street and then I might have to buy one. Bruce Eaton has written one on Big Star and it includes a passage on Pete LaBonne. I never caught on to Big Star in the day but I guess there is still time.

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January 14, 2010August 23, 2019

Better To Ask For Forgiveness

"Spotless Restrooms" sign on door at Delta Sonic on Main Street in Rochester, NY — “Spotless Restrooms” sign on door at Delta Sonic on Main Street in Rochester, NY

Delta Sonic is in tough competition with the new Fastrac that open next door to its Main Street location. But it’s even tougher to figure out which station has the cheaper gas. Delta Sonic’s low price is available only with a car wash and Fastrac’s low price is only available if you use their card. The “Spotless Restrooms” at Delta Sonic hardly seem possible.

I plan to add this photo to the “Signs” section that I have been quietly building on Popwars. I have a “Signs” collection on the Refrigerator but that site became unwieldily so I am slowly rebuilding it on PopWars where I am using php to update the navigation and MySql to populate the pages. I wrestle with every stage of this thing and then get interrupted by paying work so it may be a few years before launch.

John Gilmore rode downtown with us last night for the Margaret Explosion gig. He was telling us how he stuck his own handmade sign on the outside of the building he worked in at Kodak Park. It read, “This Space Reserved For (his ID badge number)”. So had his own private parking spot in a crowded lot. He quoted an oft used but new to us corporate saying, “Better to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission.”

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December 30, 2009August 23, 2019

iEatPhotos

View of Lake Ontario while skiing at Durand

I carry a camera with me most of the time. Well, all of the time, actually, except when I’m swimming or sleeping. And so I come home with a lot of photos but I throw most of them out and keep the good ones. I have a big photo library. I keep minis on my iPod and I’m thinking about going “pro” at Flikr so I can see them full screen at other locations.

My father, on the other hand, goes out to shoot photos, mostly birds and moss and barns. He brings home 200 photos at a time and he keeps them all. I thought I was bad but he has manage to fill his computer’s hard disc to the breaking point. I had him sort his hard drive by file size and 90% of it is in his iPhoto library.

So I ordered an external hard drive (one Terabyte for $79 from Buy.com) and found this link on Apple’s site that explains how you tell iPhoto where the library is once you move it out of the “Pictures” folder. You can’t do this in the “Preferences” like you do in iTunes when your music is on an external drive. You basically have to confuse iPhotos by moving the Library and then starting the app with “Option” key down so you can tell it where the photos are.

There is something spooky about that “iPhoto Library” folder. Unlike other folders, you can’t open this one. And yet there are 180 gigs worth of photos in there. I do like the application though. the way it keeps your photos in the original camera format and yet you can adjust the color, crop, straighten, add tags, publish to Flickr etc. The slide shows look great. I would much rather look at a photo on a monitor than print it out. It amazes me that Kodak is still in business.

New Years day is supposed to be near 40 degrees and rainy but the skiing conditions right now are excellent. We skied into the park, around the ponds and up the lake. I took a few photos. I’ll put one up here when I get back home.

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December 17, 2009August 23, 2019

Half Full, Half Empty . . .

A few years back I was having a discussion with Mike Deming and he said, “Oh yeah, you’re the ‘half full’ guy”. And I usually am so I didn’t argue. I spotted these coffee cups in a gallery in Williamsburg last weekend and recalled that quip. I had always heard the “half full, half empty” part but didn’t know there more to it.

Back on the street, our host, Duane, pointed to some of the newly painted bike lanes there and he told us a bit about Mayor Bloomberg buying some votes by having the lanes removed before the election so the Hasidic community didn’t have to look at scantily clad women as they rode through there neighborhood. It all sounded whacked but it’s a real story.

I road my bike to the post office this afternoon in fifteen degree weather and because the sidewalks are snow packed I stayed on the road. It gets crazy where Culver meets the Expressway. I’m thinking of painting some bike lanes over there when the weather breaks.

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December 15, 2009August 23, 2019

NYC Hangover

Not that type of hangover, more like the way you feel after a really long walk. Renewed yet sluggish. And that’s probably why they say, “Great place to visit but I wouldn’t want to live there.”

Wandering in and out of galleries in Chelsea on Saturday alters your perception of everything. You start by just looking at the art, some great and some dreadful. There are so many galleries in this five or six block area that after a while you lose track of whether the art is on the walls or behind the desks where the gallery attendants sit with Apple monitors or in gallery goers themselves or out on the sidewalk or in the halls of a warehouse where you are desperately trying to find a bathroom.

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