Silvery Fog Light

The weather has been jumping around from bitter cold to early spring. It always seems silly to complain about extreme weather in nyc. People always have it much worse in places like Chicago. Still it is hard to know what how to dress as each day presents a new microclimate. There has been a bit more fog than usual. A few days ago, there was a dramatically foggy morning, which was well documented over at the Gothamist. By the time I came outside, the sun was burning through, creating a huge bank light over Bushwick.

It softened the bright colors of Broadway and gave the street a European glow.

On the J train platform, the tracks disappeared.

Looking away from the sun, the light reminded me a one of my dreams.

Everything looked as if it had been photographed through ground glass.

Down This Road Before

I haven't been doing a lot of art recently.  An old friend of the family died and I am dealing with the formalities of his passing, as well as a fair amount of grief.

I find that I am revisiting places in different light.

The morning light sets the mood for the day.

I just like the colors in this picture. The graffiti is Kenny Scharf.

Broadway Junction

I spend a lot of time at the Broadway Junction subway station waiting for the J train. It is cold on the platform, so I usually wait upstairs where windows look out over the L platform and beyond. To me it looks like the country.

I am sure that anyone else would just see a cemetery near a gas station. Looking at the picture, this is what I see too. And yet, I keep expecting to see a horse and cart, carrying cut trees no less, rolling up that hill. I decided that the cemetery needed investigation.

A big problem with my new neighborhood, is that it is not familiar to me at all. I often feel lost, as if my inner compass is off. The streets below the Broadway Junction station are confusing and shrouded in elevated lines. I found myself on a shadowy street where cars were parked on the sidewalk, snow was black and unplowed, and the trees grew into the concertina wire. Soon I passed the Alabama Avenue subway station. The automated subway voice always seems to take a bit more pleasure saying that station name, with almost a southern drawl. I knew used the station to orient myself with the elevated lines as a guide to bring me back in the right direction.

  

I found the entrance to the cemetery. It was pretty bucolic, very calm.

 

I like cemeteries, I find them to be comforting rather than scary, especially the old ones. People have been living and dying for centuries.

The oldest tombstones are missing their names, worn away by time and weather. Streaked with moss, their old shapes seem almost cheerful.

On a hill I looked out and saw silver strip of water, Jamaica Bay and the Rockaways in the distance; what I have always referred to as 'the end of the world'. I felt even more disoriented, I do not know where I am in relation to the rest of the city.

I looked in the direction of Manhattan, and it felt so far away and it is not the view I am used to. Feeling a touch bereft, I picked my way through the muddy streets and past the bus stops back to the subway station.

There is a corridor in the station that connects the three subway lines. People line the hallway in front of the stained glass and preach the word of the Jesus. Sometimes they wait at the the end corridor to hand out pamphlets. Their hearts are good, they are not annoying like the people crying out about damnation on the subway cars. Maybe it is the light spilling through the stained glass that softens everything.

Angels in Brooklyn

It has been either bitterly cold or dark and grey. I have been feeling disoriented in my new neighborhood. I am now living in a part of Brooklyn that I never even visited. From the elevated subway, I catch glimpses of the Williamsburg Savings Bank tower which looks over my old neighborhood. I feel a little pang.

I went over to Myrtle Avenue to get a good look at the abandoned elevated line that used to run. The area around there is so depressing. Maybe it was the grey January light, but I felt really discouraged.

All is not totally dark. I unpacked my old hanging sculpture after I found it tangled in a Toys 'R Us bag with a ladder moving into the mess. I hung it off of a light stand and one morning, some beautiful light came in. The latest sculpture is dismantled and waiting for me in a box.

I am having a little trouble working because the space is so cold downstairs. We will have a big area rug coming that should warm things up, but I think I need to invest in sheepskin booties.

New Year's End

Well the bloom is certainly off the new year. With the Boxing Day blizzard, it took people a while to shake off the holiday glitter, but it is finally dispersed.

Wandering around my new neighborhood, I am noticing a lot of purple on the buildings.

It is perhaps not a brilliant violet, but the blues have a decidedly purple cast.

Even the street sheds are a bit indigo.

I love riding on the elevated subway. Lots of buildings are tagged with graffiti. I had not realized how much I missed the tags in my old neighborhood which was being increasingly scrubbed fresh. The Myrtle Avenue station has lots of graffiti.

The remains of the old Myrtle Avenue elevated line cross this station, but I haven't found a good angle to photograph it yet.
 

I need to explore the neighborhood some more, maybe in black and white.

Red Subway Stations

 

I guess I am still in a little seventies nostalgia after contemplating the globe lights of Washington Square Park.  I love the Bowling Green subway station.  It is the first Manhattan station on the 4 or 5 from Brooklyn and it greets passengers with flame red tiles.

There is a lot of contrast with black and brushed steel, it all still looks modern.  The station after it, Wall Street, used to have intense deep blue tiles, but it has been renovated into more faux victoriana.

 

The surprising thing here was that a policeman waited for me to finish taking this picture before walking past.  Usually, the police in the subway want to look in my bag.  It was a nice change to have one tolerate my photography.  I was worried that they would get all paranoid (there were many, many police at the Bowling Green station).

 

A friend suggested that I check out the Lexington Ave/53rd St station of the F train.  At first blush it did not seem that impressive. 

The combination of the black mold and the red accent is pretty cool though.  I think this station was last worked on when the city ran out of money.  It has a kind of desperate simplicity; black paint on the bottom, white paint on top, long red stripe for color.

I do not think the mold was part of the design but I think it is kind of wonderful.

 

The 49th street station of the R train is another red brick affair.

 

 This station always reminds me of Sesame Street.

 I rather expect to find muppets hanging out on the very seventies benches.

 

However this picture reminds me of coming home late at night when things were a little scary.

 

When the Subway Looks Like the Metro

The shuttle train from Prospect Park to Franklin Avenue travels above ground and I always think about Paris when I am riding it. To say that it looks like the Metro Aerien would be a huge exaggeration. And yet I could almost expect to burst out onto the bridge over the Seine with the Eiffel Tower in the background.

I thought the similarity might be from the iron fences and covered walkway of Prospect Place station. It reminds me of the fences under the Parisian metro and the roofs over the stations.

But then things take on a decidedly New York feel.

In fact, during the whole short ride, I swing between thinking it looks like Paris and realizing it is just Brooklyn.

Meanwhile the winter solstice light is back.

Random Pictures

The light has been really pretty and ordinary things start looking all mysterious. These are some streaks of water on the sidewalk.


This is a burst sand bag on Houston Street.


And one evening I indulged in some subway pictures. I love the view when the train crosses the Manhattan Bridge towards Brooklyn. Lower Manhattan drifts away looking like a play set. The sun glints on everything.


This picture reminds me of a curtain being pulled back from a window.