adventure playground

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Space Cadet

I go to Union Square Park. I expect activity. Weather like this—choking, sultry—teases people out of the cracks. No one person could honestly account for this phenomenon. Desert wraith weather systems are socially understood on a cumulative scale. I go to Union Square to take measurements.

I see a female mime without makeup. She climbs ropes, idles on swings, apes pedestrians, makes sharp, anonymous gestures in the air. She wears a red hat and sash with a black pants suit. Passersby ignore her as if she were homeless or insane. If she were anywhere else, mincing across a bridge or inside the nearby Whole Foods, they could be right. The weather and the park work together to insulate madness, performative and otherwise.

The she-mime commands space. She remains inside a five yard radius of her “center.” Her ability to endure the rich, deliberate oblivion of New York pedestrians gives her antics a sad, desperate quality. She has no makeup. What does that mean? She climbs ropes without a mask, unmasked, as though, “that’s what you do,” she thinks across her pointed rictus.

A homeless man stands behind me. It takes me a minute to realize he’s homeless. He commands space. He stands there, a meaty middle aged black man dressed in grey sweats, swaying almost imperceptibly to sounds issuing from earbuds, which, followed, are connected to a handheld radio. Homeless men listen to the radio. They listen to the radio as though taking instructions. The instructions are part of a magnificent plan. The magnificent plan stacks onto itself, detail upon detail, until, like a fever dream, the plan disintegrates, becomes incomprehensible, can only be recalled in fragments. Plastic bags stuffed with remains collect around his legs. His eyes appear to sweat—shiny, faraway, “but I see you. don’t think I don’t.”

I lean against a lamp post. I command space. I realize that if I lean against this lamp post long enough I will become a sex worker. The mime without makeup was a normal person until she stood still. She could become homeless person, a sex worker, or a street performer. If she were none of these things, she would have known to play with her phone. Normal people standing still play with their phones. Phones mean normal people can’t be bought. I play with my phone, but the effect is less as a sex worker. It’s my shorts, I think. It’s my hat. If I stand still long enough an officer will ask me just what I think I’m doing. If I stand still, watching, waiting, taking my measurements, someone will want to light my cigarette. But I don’t smoke. By then it would be too late.

I cross 14th street onto Broadway. I see a man leaning against a wall. He commands space. He has olive skin and sleepy, saturnine eyes. He is wearing a long white dress shirt and black slacks. He is smoking a cigarette in long, exaggerated drags. I realize he’s a sex worker before I pass him. He makes kissing noises at me. I smile at the horror of my developed intuition. Two blocks later, I turn around. I can squeeze his image between my thumb and index finger. He doesn’t look like the hustlers I’ve seen around the Port Authority. His outfit looks like pieces of a groom’s man. I remember the weather. I think of LA. Prostitutes come out in the heat. That’s why they love LA.

I walk to Thompkins Square Park then back to wear I saw the groom’s man. I want to speak with him, but I doubt myself. He would tell me anything so long as I paid him. But I would decide what was true, I would tell him. I would know something just by the sound of your voice. I can read voices, I would tell him.

He was gone. I turn onto 14th street. I’m looking at every face that passes me by. I’m looking at every face and notice a woman with a full face of makeup standing near the entrance to Whole Foods. She commands space. She is holding her purse with her arms crossed. Her outfit passes for discreet, but the rest of her does not. She is not dialing a phone. She is standing there with a sad, expectant look resting just beneath the heavy layers of makeup. I watch her closely as I continue down 14th. I don’t see her see me. She might have already seen me today. “Watching you,” she thinks about anyone. Day and night. Watching you.

Ryan Ford: Brooklyn's the Borough

The painting is not finished, but it is still disturbing. A wrestler, dressed in purple, is in the center, a look of anguish on his face. His hands disappear into the mouths of shadowy demons. Standing all around him are gray-faced, leering spectators. One throws money, another has a pet monkey on his shoulder. Each has a distinct expression and personality. In the bottom right, almost as large as the scene in the center, a group of young boys runs around. The Bosch-inspired painting is bleak and barren, a battle scene in a desert.

The painting, with the working title Dudes of Destruction, is one of the latest works of Ryan Ford, a Bushwick-based artist.

Ford, thirty, is almost too large to fit in the small room in the shared loft space that serves as his studio. However, he is obviously right at home there. His sketches and assorted detritus cover every inch of wall space, and his paint-stained iPod plays from a corner. Works-in-progress are all around.

“I’m supposed to do this,” he proclaims.

Ford was born in Waterbury, Connecticut, and then moved to Pinehurst, North Carolina as a teenager. He attended the Savannah College of Art and Design in Savannah, Georgia, and moved to Brooklyn three years ago.

Much of his early work is influenced by the Sienese school of painting, a flat Renaissance style. it. He combined this classical technique with pop culture, most often videogame imagery. Works in this style include Cloud Eater vs. Box of Hell, which depicts two figures about to fight, Tekken-style, in front of a distant mountain range.

However, he became dissatisfied with this style.

“I felt bound by landscapes,” he says. “I was stuck in those parameters.”

He moved into painting with airbrushing and stencils, laying down a shiny background over which he painted darker images than previous, like the “Globhammer,” “a wheel of sewage and bile that just smashes things.” The Globhammer series was his way of “dealing with darkness, the void.”

The Globhammer makes an appearance in Brooklyn’s the Borough, Ford’s most explicitly New York-influenced painting, smashing some of Bushwick’s run-down, vinyl-sided apartment buildings. A cartoonish figure with a plastic bag for a head walks down a gritty street where one building is on fire, and another has no roof. The painting’s anxiety and disgust is palpable. It’s part of a long line of art about disillusionment with the City.

“I got lost in dark feelings,” says Ford about the darkness of the Globhammer series. “I was having some feelings of despair, but however grimy it got, I was going to roll around in the muck.” This muck manifested itself in striking imagery of violence and grotesquery.

However bad Ford may ever feel, though, he will paint his way through it.

“I have an addiction to laying paint down,” he says.

Take a look at Ryan Ford's work here

Why Drive in NYC?

I don't. I never have, and never will. But in extreme situations, such as moving, it becomes necessary to get in a car. M Beds, dressers, tables, etc. aren't ideal for subway transport. Friday April 30, with the help of a friend's mother in a small SUV and one of the mother's friends with a small truck, I moved from East Harlem to Sunset Park. Sitting in traffic left me with plenty of time to think about why noone should drive in the city.

From experience, I knew that I could from the Manhattan Bridge to my old apartment in about 30 minutes on a bike. It took over an hour in a car. Google Maps estimates 50 minutes by bike, and up to 45 in traffic by car. The bike estimate is based on a speed of about 10 mph, which is slower than I ride, and the car estimate seems faster than is realistic. This shows the average speed of a car in the city is around 10 mph, and can be less. As we sat in traffic, waiting to get on the Manhattan Bridge, watching the cyclists whiz by in their wide-open bike-lane was painful. But I had to move furniture. The other drivers, they are the ones that I do not understand.

So, biking isn't for everyone. New York City has the best and most used public transportation system in the United States. You walk down the stairs, swipe a card and get on a train that takes you wherever you want to go—generally faster than a car would, and far less stressful manner. For me, the idea of sitting next to smelly hobo on a train sounds better than sitting next to a friend's mom's friend who I don't really know who is shouting at the traffic and for some reason preferring the awkward silence to turning on the damn radio.

Riding a bike or taking the subway win for comfort and speed, but they also beat cars monetarily. AAA estimated that it cost 41.4 cents a mile to operate a small sedan in 2006 if driven a total of 15,000 miles, and that does not include the purchase price of the vehicle. Compare that with a bike: a nice bike costs around $500. With a lock and helmet, you're up to about $600, but after the initial investment, bikes don't generally cost more than $100 a year in maintenance. A 30-day Metrocard costs $89, or about $1083 a year.

Driving a car wastes time and money. And hurts the environment. Next time, instead of giving the cursing man in the BMW the finger while on my bike, I'll just feel sorry for him, give him an encouraging wave as I leave him behind.

We Don't Need No Education

Following the 58 percent approval by voters to cut the state education budget by $820 million, thousands of students across New Jersey marched out of their classes in protest. Since Governor Chris Christie's announcement to cut the budget, an all out war has been occurring between himself and the New Jersey Education Society. In the shadow of this conflict, on May 20th, Christie will give the commencement speech to 2010 Monmouth University graduates.

New Jersey, which has the highest property tax of any U.S. state, has incurred a debt of over $10.7 billion. Christie, who was elected last November in hopes of curing this substantial sum, has kept his goals stern: to eliminate that debt, at any cost. He had announced earlier in April a targeted budget proposal of $29.6 billion for the upcoming fiscal year. As school boards attempt to delegate their budget plans by April 20th, extracurricular activities, services, and jobs will be cut.

John Teehan, a student of Montclair University studying history, thinks that the budget cuts make no sense. "Education is the most valuable tool for the future and should be receiving the most money instead of being cut the most," he says.

With the budget cuts approved, state aid will no longer be offered in full to 600 school districts. Some, like Ridgewood, Millburn and Glen Ridge, will receive no state aid at all. Institutions like state colleges and universities will see a cut of up to $175 million, a loss which will result in the raising of tuition, and job cuts for professors.

To many students, this comes as an insult in a time when education in New Jersey is in a danger zone. This is why some students at Monmouth University, like Laura Fiorelli, are unnerved by the fact that the very man who is taking away privileges from students will be speaking to them as well.

"It's insulting to have Christie speak as an honored commencement speaker at an event like a graduation, especially for a school known for its education department," says Laura. "Most of the education majors will have a really difficult time finding jobs these next few years due to Christie's budget cuts and policies."

According to Laura, there is a lot of anti-Christie sentiment going on around Monmouth's campus. There is plan by students to turn their backs during the graduation as Christie speaks. She, though not graduating with the 2010 class, has emailed the university's presidents asking to reconsider Christie as a president. However, the arrangement is pretty much set in stone.

In response to Christie's appearance at Monmouth University in May, many students have organized to prevent it from occurring. Groups on Facebook, such as "Members of the MU Community Against Christie as 2010 Speaker" have up to 892 members.

"I'd rather he didn't," says John. "But I almost would, to see him get booed off the stage like a fool."

-Photos, and stats, courtesy of NJ.com and lehighvalleylive.com

4-20: Not Just The Birthday of Mein Fuhrer

On April 20th 2010 while Aryan extremist groups blew out candles, and residents of Littleton, Colorado placed flowers on 13 graves, thousands of people got high. 4/20 pronounced four-two-oh has become the unofficial holiday of pot smokers across the world. For Empire State NORML (The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws) 4/20 was a day of protest. The organization held a rally in Union Square, in which chants of legalize it now were chanted through loud speakers, and marijuana rights cards were handed out to spectators informing them of their legal rights should they be implicated with carrying an illegal substance.

Contrary to myth and legend 420 is in fact not a police code of drug violations. Police departments across the country are knowledgeable enough to not use such a well known code in correlation to the very offense it pertains to. According to High Times a publication that caters to the toking community, 420 came in to being by Steve Waldo, who used the expression "420 Louie" in high school. 420 stood for 4:20 pm the actual time of day in which waldo reminded his friends to meet for smoking sessions at the Louis Pasteur statue in San Rafael, California.

"420 is a big counter cultural celebration for people who use marijuana, and feel that the marijuana laws are unjust and inhumane, and that's why were here, to change the laws" said Doug Greene director of legislation for Empire State NORML. According to Greene Empire State NORML is currently working towards having medicinal marijuana legalized in New York State. "It's the cutting edge right now at least in terms of New York State. 14 other states and the District of Columbia have passed medical marijuana, but despite it passing for the past two years in the New York State [Assembly], we still don't have medical marijuana laws" said Greene.

The rally was a lively event featuring musical guests the Ashy Elbows, as well as several speakers including Greene. As a precaution several dozen NYPD officers were scattered throughout the plaza. One could assume they were posted in the case of the event getting out of hand granted the attendees gained a stint of drive and initiative. A communal "snack" was encouraged at 4:20 pm of brownies, cookies and cupcakes with questionable ingredients. Dana Beal a scruffy white haired man stood in the foreground of the event ominously. Beal is the founder of Cures not Wars, a organization that lobbies for medicinal marijuana to be leagalized. He declined a interview simply passing me a small flier, uttering a single word "here". His group will be organizing the New York City branch of the World Wide Marijuana March the first of which occurred May 1st. Strong supporters of the cause however need not worry as a second march is scheduled for this Saturday, May 8th. Sieg heil!



The Ashy Elbows Performance

The Ashy Elbows at 420 Rally from Aulistar Mark on Vimeo.

Torah Theft and Return in Brooklyn Synagogue

April 28, 2010 Khal Yirei Hashem, a synagogue located on 53^rd Street in Borough Park Brooklyn, experienced their first heist. Five Torahs mysteriously go missing the night of April 27^th.

At around 6 a.m. the police were notified by a Congregation worker of the heinous crime committed. Upon arrival the police found no force of entry. The worker informs them that the safe guarding the torahs must’ve either been left open the night in question or someone within the Congregation must have been a part of this theft.

According to Rabbi Jack Meyer, a number of people knew the combination to the safe in which the torahs were kept. Assemblyman Dov Hikind and Councilman David Greenfield offered a $10,000 award for the return of these five “precious torah scrolls” worth $250,000.

Coincidentally not five days later were the torahs returned unscathed by a middle man who claims to be a friend of a friend believed to be the perpetrator. “A good deed” he claims he wanted to do for his community and the synagogue, yet he so graciously accepted that $10,000 reward.

However the question still arises, was this an inside job? Is there a corrupt Congregation member? Was this “go-between” really a go-between or was this staged just for the reward?

Skid Row with Macs

Finals are upon the students of the New School and as a result, finding a computer at any of the labs is becoming more and more difficult. Lang junior Diari Dieye, who is a frequenter of the labs throughout the year, says that at finals “the lab is like Skid Row with Macs.”

The New School website says that the university has “invested more than $30 million in a series of extensive labs and academic technology services”, a fact which Dieye literally laughed out loud at and queried “$30 million? Like dollars or yen?”

An employee at the third floor Arnhold Hall lab informed me that excluding classrooms the New School university has 301 computers and said that he wasn’t sure how many computers there were in total. The website mentions there being 600 networked computers, which presumably includes the number in the classroom. Parsons sophomore Iliana Begetis feels that there “aren’t enough computers for the student body,” and points out “Some labs are being used for classes which limits us.”

Some students, like Luciana Lombardi, a sophomore at Parsons, have decided to forgo the labs after their experiences in previous years. “Last year I experienced the shit storm that is Parsons Finals week in the labs. It’s impossible to find a place to work and when you do you have to keep an eye on your shit cause you never know when someone is gonna try to fuck you up. [Now] I don’t even bother using the labs. I just download the programs I need,” said Lombardi, “It’s much easier and more comfortable to work at home anyway.”

Dieye has developed several tricks for getting a computer during finals, saying “you have to be smart” about when you go and what you do. She tells me she avoids early morning and noon hours because that’s when everyone goes to print something before class starts. Dieye is not afraid to use her friends either “I look for someone I know and sweet talk them until they are done, then I use the computer.”

The University Student Senate has also noticed problems. Senator Corey Mullee states on newschoolsenate.org that he “ran the platform of getting our printer up and running in the basement below the café on 11th Street” and is looking to get “Express printing stations” in the computer labs. Dieye said of Mullee’s addition to the 11th Street building “I want to marry him. Now we don’t have to make a trek and be late for class just to print a paper.”

The extended hours that the lab has during finals (8:30 am-1:30 am Monday through Thursday) doesn’t seem to help either. Dieye says, “I’ve been there during the late hours. It’s disgusting. Hipster kids are sleeping on the floor and at the computers. It’s like being in a crackhouse. I feel like [those hours] are for really ADD kids who are desperate and can’t focus at home.”

"Here's the problem with this school," Dieye says, "It's not that they don't have it, it's that no one can find it. Some people don't even know that we have labs on certain floors. These things are not at your disposal like they should be."

Guv's Got a Blog Too...

It's called "Straight Talk, Straight Answers" and it is straight up boring.

Rest in Peace, St. Vincent's

A poster on the St. Vincent's boarded-up emergency room entrance reads, "A boundless thank you for your service to the mission of St. Vincent's Hospital and the tradition of the Sisters of Charity."

At 8 a.m. on April 30, St. Vincent’s Hospital officially closed its doors, leaving over 3,500 employees without jobs. The closure was marked when the West Village emergency room stopped admitting patients and boarded the entrance. Attached to the unpainted plywood are several “closed” signs with the hospital’s logo and a poster resembling a gravestone, reading, “St. Vincent’s Hospital 1849 – 2010.”

The board of St. Vincent’s voted to close the hospital on April 6 after a long struggle with management and economic issues. The hospital is over $1 billion in debt; it is not clear exactly how much or why because that is the highest amount a debtor may claim, according to the New York Times.

St. Vincent’s took the first steps towards closing back in December 2009 when about 180 employees were laid off. After more layoffs and protests in 2010, the process recently sped up. On April 11, all ambulances stopped running. By mid-month, all 3,500 employees received termination notices, according to the New York Post, and on April 15 at 4:58 a.m., Abigail Yael Jancu was the last baby born at the hospital.

Many employees stuck around to say goodbye to the hospital and treat its last patients, including 43 emergency room walk-ins on the night of April 29. Over 1,500 employees attended a morning mass in the hospital’s chapel on April 30.

“It’s like a funeral,” said Vivieth Buckner, a community-medicine medical assistant at St. Vincent’s for 17 years, to the New York Post on May 1.

Since St. Vincent’s stopped running ambulances, the Daily News has reported Beth Israel Medical Center on East 16th Street saw a 25 percent increase in walk-in patients.

West Village residents may not have to worry too much about the trek to Beth Israel, however. Lenox Hill Hospital, located on East 77th Street, is receiving $9.4 million in state money to open a temporary emergency facility on St. Vincent's property, the New York Times reported on April 26, but there is no definite date. The urgent care facility will treat minor emergencies; those with "more elaborate care" will be sent to Lenox Hill or other hospitals, said Governor David Paterson to the Times.

Until then, the fire department plans to have several ambulances in the neighborhood to make bringing emergencies to other hospitals easier. Two will be outside St. Vincent’s.

With over 400 inpatient beds and room for 700 patients, St. Vincent’s was there for the Village during its 161 years. It was there for the cholera epidemic in 1849, the Titanic’s sinking in 1912, September 11, and most recently, when US Airways Flight 1549 landed in the Hudson River in 2009. It’s served celebrities, artists, poets, and ordinary people alike.

"It's not just a shame that we're losing a hospital," said a West Village resident standing outside the boarded-up entrance on a Sunday morning who did not wish to be named, "but that we're losing a great hospital."

Power Breaker

I found online Robert Moses' typed response to Caro's book - thought all would be interested! I especially love what he says on page 6.

Immigrants say No Gracias to Arizona.

The weekend's heat didn’t keep protesters in The New York Coalition from showing their support at the annual May Day Rally for Immigrants' and Workers' Rights in Union Square. Thousands of immigrant workers hit the streets of over 70 cities this Saturday. Law officials estimated that 1,500 to 2,000 of the Latin American, Asian, and Muslim immigrants were in attendance at the New York event, to a blogger for The Berman Post.

Activists demanded a governmental respect for the immigrant work force, rights to citizenship, and curiously, a boycott of the entire state of Arizona. Arizona Senate Bill 1070, passed April 23, will give law officials the power to investigate a person's immigration status with "reasonable suspicion". Should officers in Arizona find suspects without documentation, they will have the authority to charge them with criminal misdemeanor and arrest. Protesters’ signs and speeches denounced Arizona’s legislature for being unconstitutional and a harsh method of racial profiling. They also called into question Obama's lack of action with immigration reform. The president vowed to handle the issue in his "first 100 days".

"We may not run America, but America could not run without us!" chanted the packs of immigrant workers. The crowd was largely Latino; the majority of speeches, chants, and hip-hop acts were in Spanish. According to The New York Coalition's website, 40 New York based workers' unions were in attendance.

While opposition to AZSB1070 was passionate, protesters were peaceful in New York and nationwide. There were only two reported arrests at the Los Angeles rally, coming in at the largest with 50,000 attendants, reported the Washington Post.

Car Bomb terrorist attack in Times Square New York City NYC 2010

The Future. Very Creepy. (E3 2009: Project Natal Milo demo)