The brilliant Flashbak shop for archival prints has a new range of photographs by Gerry Cranham. The British photographer (born 1928), took these pictures and many more in the late 1960s, experimenting with speed and light. The results are spellbinding. New York City, London and Las Vegas throb with energy.
Gerry captures the thrill of seeing halos of bright hues appended against the black night sky as mankind’s wattage vies to usurp the moon and the give substance to life’s fragility. Rather than seeing the neon lights as part of messages to pull us in off the street and into restaurants and clubs, Cranham plays with them, creating transformative clusters of abstract images, so that words and signs show us how light sculpts, altering what we see and how we see it.
They sold sex and souvenirs on New York City’s 42nd Street in the 1980s. Artist Mitch O’Connell was there with his camera to take snapshots of the street nicknamed the “Deuce”, where you got. cultural fix of grindhouse, where according to the book Sleazoid Express, cinemas were frequented by:
depressives hiding from jobs, sexual obsessives, inner-city people seeking cheap diversions, teenagers skipping school, adventurous couples on dates, couples-chasers peeking on them, people getting high, homeless people sleeping, pickpockets…
Outside was even better:
phony drug salesman … low-level drug dealers, chain snatchers … [j]unkies alone in their heroin/cocaine dreamworld … predatory chickenhawks spying on underage trade looking for pickups … male prostitutes of all ages … [t]ranssexuals, hustlers, and closety gays with a fetishistic homo- or heterosexual itch to scratch … It was common to see porn stars whose films were playing at the adult houses promenade down the block. … Were you a freak? Not when you stepped onto the Deuce. Being a freak there would get you money, attention, entertainment, a starring part in a movie.
To the Bronx Zoo in New York City, where a tiger has tested positive for Coronavirus. Yeah,. How come they test tigers before humans? This news comes from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), which operates the zoo, and announced the sick tigers tory in a press release. “Nadia, a 4-year-old female Malayan tiger at the Bronx Zoo, has tested positive for COVID-19. She, her sister Azul, two Amur tigers, and three African lions had developed a dry cough and all are expected to recover,” the WCS said in a statement.
How did they get it? “Our cats were infected by a person caring for them who was asymptomatically infected with the virus or before that person developed symptoms,” the statement adds.
The advice is to avoid tigers in New York. And if you’re in Wuhan, make sure they’re cooked through.
America really is another country. Having only recently discovered bribing elite colleges to accept children of the rich and famous was illegal – I thought it was the done thing; and aren’t the rich just college donors-in-waiting? – we today learn that dogs are only allowed to ride the NYC Subway if they fit in a bag, Tupperware pot or coffin.
The rule states: “No person may bring any animal on or into any conveyance or facility unless enclosed in a container.” The container is, presumably, less to keep your dog box-fresh than to prevent the pet from fouling the carriage, causing a nuisance or getting lost.
This man put his big dog in a small bag and attempted to board the train.
Sayfullo Saipov, 29, the Uzbek immigrant accused of murdering at least eight people in New York, is recovering from surgery after being shot in the abdomen by a New York City police officer.
What do we know of him? Well, not much. Saipov arrived in the US back in 2010. He worked as an Uber driver.
Eight people died and 11 injured in the worst terror attack on New York since September 11, 2001 as a lone wolf extremist screaming “Allahu Akbar” used a pick-up truck to mow down cyclists along a bike path on Halloween.
He did this alone? Sayfullo Saipov has no connection with any organised group, says the paper. He’s got the jihadi slogans, jihadi mode of attack and the jihadi beard, a panoply of symbols beneath which his violent urges achieve a narrative.
His is the face of a leaderless rejection of Western society, a fearful, murderous malcontent. Can we find some comfort in international terrorism manifest in an ordinary, unexceptional man with a limited access to weapons, albeit one who is capable of committing a brutal act of mass murder?
If we call the suspect a “lone wolf”, don’t we ignore the causes that led to him wilfully killing people, negating debate and investigation by adapting the crime to fit out own prejudices and anxieties?
The terrorists can’t dictate our reaction to their actions. The attack on innocent people going about their day under a clear New York sky can be meaningless, signifying something much less than a looming war.
The Brooklyn Paper reports that local New Yorkers are refusing to vaccinate their pets over autism fears. Holistic hipsters are buying into the anti-vaxx movement and “applying it to their pets”.
“I really don’t know what the reasoning is,” says Dr. Amy Ford of Veterinarian Wellness Center of Boerum Hill. “They just feel that injecting chemicals into their pet is going to cause problems. I had a client concerned about an autistic child who didn’t want to vaccinate the dog for the same reason,” adds Dr. Stephanie Liff of Clinton Hill’s Pure Paws Veterinary Care. “Most trends in veterinary medicine are extensions of human medicine, so I think the anti-vaccination movement extending into veterinary medicine is natural.”
Dog and cat owners are legally obliged to inject their pets with anti-rabies serum. How many of these pets have autism is hard to tell. But we should be able to count the number of human being being treated for rabies after a hipster’s dog bit them. As ever, the lawyers are ready…
For you New Yorkers away from home, missing the noise and the visible air, help is at hand. Thanks to YouTuber “Cheesy Nirvosa” you can chill out with the sound of “ambient geek sleep aids.” These looped pulsing sounds continue for 12 hours, ensuring a proper night’s sleep. This one is of New York City street traffic at night.
When someone wrote the word “Hi” on a New York window using Post-its, two office blocks engaged in a contest. The @Postit war between @havasnyc and @harrisonandstar was on.
That Fearless Girl statue in Manhattan’s Financial District is terrific. It faces off against Arturo Di Modica’s Charging Bull. Greg Fallis has written a terrific blog post about the two statues and placed both in context:
Back in 1987 there was a global stock market crash. Doesn’t matter why (at least not for this discussion), but stock markets everywhere — everywhere — tanked. Arturo Di Modica, a Sicilian immigrant who became a naturalized citizen of the U.S., responded by creating Charging Bull — a bronze sculpture of a…well, a charging bull. It took him two years to make it. The thing weighs more than 7000 pounds, and cost Di Modica some US$350,000 of his own money. He said he wanted the bull to represent “the strength and power of the American people”. He had it trucked into the Financial District and set it up, completely without permission. It’s maybe the only significant work of guerrilla capitalist art in existence…
And that brings us to March 7th of this year, the day before International Women’s Day. Fearless Girl appeared, standing in front of Charging Bull. On the surface, it appears to be another work of guerrilla art — but it’s not. Unlike Di Modica’s work, Fearless Girl was commissioned. Commissioned not by an individual, but by an investment fund called State Street Global Advisors, which has assets in excess of US$2.4 trillion. That’s serious money. It was commissioned as part of an advertising campaign developed by McCann, a global advertising corporation. And it was commissioned to be presented on the first anniversary of State Street Global’s “Gender Diversity Index” fund, which has the following NASDAQ ticker symbol: SHE. And finally, along with Fearless Girl is a bronze plaque that reads:
Know the power of women in leadership. SHE makes a difference.
Note it’s not She makes a difference, it’s SHE makes a difference. It’s not referring to the girl; it’s referring to the NASDAQ symbol.
Fearless Girl is terrific. But she’s selling something in the belly of commerce.
Artist Craig Ward took sterilized sponges onto the New York sUbway system. He was looking for life invisible to the naked eye. He pressed the swabs into agar plates and incubated them in his Brooklyn studio.
“Over the summer of 2015, I rode the trains of each of New York City’s twenty-two subway lines, collecting bacterial samples from hand rails, seats and other high traffic surfaces in an attempt to create an unconventional series of portraits of the city’s complex eco-system and a snapshot of the city at large,” says Craig. “The resulting images are a portrait of the complex microcosm that each of us contribute to and are a part of.”
“When you hold onto the handrail it’s like you’re shaking hands with a hundred people at the same time.”
“You look at the subway and it’s all just different shapes and sizes and colours of people and you look at it at a microscopic level and it’s all just different shapes and sizes and colors of bacterial colonies,” Ward tells Bernstein & Andriulli. “It’s a nice kind of portrait of the city on a very small scale.”
The S Train – here the agar was actually removed from the plate in the shape of an S for visual variation.
Among the bugs are strains of E. coli, serratia marcescens, proteus mirabilis and salmonella.
The B, D, F and M group
Microbial residents of the L Train. They were here before it was cool.
Ahmad Khan Rahami has been charged in New Jersey with the attempted murder of two policeman. Ahmad Khan Rahami also allegedly tried to murder scores of people in New York in a bomb attack that left wounded 29 people. Terrorism is a crime in New York.
Following that blast, the authorities received a call telling them “There will be more”. The FBI has arrested five more people in connection with that Chelsea bomb.
The Press get to work. The Telegraph leads with news that Ahmad Khan Rahami has Islamist links. The paper says he “may” have been radicalised after making a trip to his native Afghanistan and Pakistan. Which means he “may” not have been radicalised there. He “may” have been radicalised in his bedroom.
The Times leads with news Rahami is the “Afghan gunman”. Not quite. He became a naturalised US citizen in 2011.
The paper of record adds that Rahami’s nickname was “Mad”. Because he’s insane? No. Because Mad is a short version of Ahmad. Ah!
We hear from ‘Flee Jones’, who grew up with Rahami – and who might really be called Flee. He says Rahami was changed after a trip to Afghanistan. He had a beard, dressed in traditional Muslim robes and was “praying regularly in the back of the family’s chicken restaurant”, American Fried Chicken.
The Gaurdian says he was just your everyday normal guy. “Regulars at First American Fried Chicken in Elizabeth, New Jersey say Ahmad Khan Rahami was a friendly person who did not express extremist beliefs.” Vocally, no. But he may have expressed them by bomb?
CNN has more. Rahami might be a bit thick: “According to multiple officials, investigators also believe Rahami is the man seen on surveillance video dragging a duffel bag near the site of the New York explosion, and the location where police eventually found a suspicious pressure cooker four blocks away.”
Bearded man dragging duffel bag close to sign of suspected terrorist explosion… Mad? Or just dangerously stupid?
We’re told he “majored in criminal justice at Middlesex County College in Edison, New Jersey, school spokesman Tom Peterson said. Rahami attended the college from 2010-2012 but did not graduate.”
He can soon test out what he did learn first hand.
North Korea has issued a statement. Hear ye, Western filth!
“Our hydrogen bomb is much bigger than the one developed by the Soviet Union… If this H-bomb were to be mounted on an intercontinental ballistic missile and fall on Manhattan in New York City, all the people there would be killed immediately and the city would burn down to ashes.”
To New York’s East Village, where you can buy edible chocolate Jesus, Moses, Buddha, Lord Ganesh and the Virgin of Guadalupe.
The edible Mohammad is there somewhere on the shelves, most likely, but spotting him as hard, what his image being banned, and all.
But not everyone is happy:
Bond Street Chocolate storeowner Lynda Stern was recently asked to discontinue her Lord Ganesh chocolate by Universal Society of Hinduism president Rajan Zed. In a press release, Zed stated, “Upset Hindus urge withdrawal of Lord Ganesh-shaped edible chocolate”…
Stern has dismissed the criticism, saying, “All spiritual icons are treated equally in my shop…with honor and respect to the religion.
The New York Times spoke with Queens-based Hindu Temple Society of North America, president Uma Mysorekar. Said he:
“We Hindus look at the universe as eternal and god almighty as one…so we would not say that the lord resides only in that little piece of chocolate. It’s more like when they eat it, the lord comes back to us — he is within us.”
Go for the head first, followed by the trunk, legs and beard.
“I was studying for the test when I started to have unwanted thoughts,” Manny Romos, 35, told MTA police. “I began to touch myself when I felt ill with a headache and stressed, the next thing I knew I was masturbating.”
He was not alone. Not too far away a woman was sleeping on the Metro-North Railroad. She tells the court:
“My daily commute from New York City to New Haven was really tough, and especially, being six months pregnant back then, I really, really felt tired. But after the incident, I never snoozed or slept again on the train, since I was afraid that it could happen again. Considering that this horrible event happened during working time, I really think his future employers should know about what happened … This clearly was a sexual attack, and he should have a record of this.”
Ramos masturbated on her. When she saw him. He zipped up and declared, “It wasn’t me.”
The judge sentenced Ramos to a two-year suspended term, three years’ probation and to sign the register as a sex offender.
FACES of the day: Costumed characters hold signs prior to a press conference held by NYC Artists United for a Smile at Times Square in New York, Tuesday, Aug.19, 2014. The artists called for the fair treatment and the right for performers to work for tips. (AP Photo/Vanessa A. Alvarez) Date: 19/08/2014
Subway commuters point to a poster sporting a caricature of a nearly nude Walter Mondale that promotes the current issue of Penthouse Magazine at a Times Square Station in New York. CBGB, the birthplace of punk rock, is gone. No longer can visitors to Coney Island plunk down a few coins to play the unsettling attraction called “Shoot the Freak.” And seedy, edgy, anything-might-happen Times Square? These days, it’s all but childproof. Around countless corners, the weird, unexpected, edgy, grimy New York _ the town that so many looked to for so long as a relief from cookie-cutter America _ has evolved into something else entirely: tamed, prepackaged, even predictable. (AP Photo/Jim Lukoski, File)
Hungry customers get coffee, sandwiches, and cake on the house at Fort Greene, retail market in Brooklyn, N.Y., January 27, 1949. Katherine O’Toole, three, receives a sandwich from Rena Kleiman as her mother does her shopping. Other buyers get theirs under the free for all sign. Date: 27/01/1949
EVERY city in the world follows the same pattern. Deprived area is cheap. All the artists move there and it gets hip. Hipsters follow the artists and the rents go up. The rents go up alongside the appearance of coffee houses and falafel bars. Formerly deprived area now no longer considered scummy, gets filled with wealthy web-designers and their awful children and no-one who originally lived in the area can afford the rent and has to move. They move to another scummy area and the cycle continues.
We all know this. This is always the way. However, Spike Lee doesn’t like it one bit.
WHAT face do you pull when the train pulls into the station? One surprise looking at Adam Magyar’s super slo-mo films (50 frames per second; one 12 second moment spans to 8 minutes of film) of faces on the platform is how few people eat on trains in Tokyo, New York and Berlin. Also, no sly looks to the left and right to study the competition for seats and space?