Friday
The Ninth Street Bridge Operator
He takes his place in his metal perch. The operator’s room is cantilevered from the southwest tower out over the roadway for optimal sight lines through the congested bracing system of the elevated subway. He knows the terrain well. The span was designed to provide a channel width of 60’ and a vertical clearance of 60’ above mean high water when open. He’s at the helm and he stays in touch, with the MTA and the DOT and with all his brethren at the other bridges that span the canal. He’s above it all, but he’s never aloof. The bridge provides three lanes of traffic and two 7’-6” sidewalks connecting to the area city street grid. Yet who really knows the Ninth Street Bridge Operator?
Source: Modern Steel Construction
Thursday
Wednesday
Tuesday
Third Avenue Flea Market
The Third Avenue Flea Market is located in the middle of a remote stretch of Gowanus. It’s as if the owners intentionally set out to find a location almost devoid of foot traffic. But that’s a plus for the consumer as there’s ample room to browse undisturbed; you’ll never have to contend with other bargain hunters for the choicest goods. The place makes up for its lack of human vitality with a certain hysterical plenitude that suggests unlimited possibilities. It’s a colorful, cluttered cemetery of commercial failure, a bonanza of surplus uselessness that never fails to give me frissons whenever I visit. I often imagine I could be a regular there, not unlike the people you see hanging out at delis and garages—drinking coffee, kibitzing, and basking in the warm glow of stimulating, familiar surroundings.
Sunday
Vest Pocket Parks (Found Poetry)
New York's “vest pocket parks,” with their iconic vantages of highways and skylines, permeated by the calming drone of traffic noise, are perches of introspection. Sitting in Van Voorhees Park , during rush hour on a hot June day, I see before me arteries of the city in full flow, with a backdrop of buildings staired and serried against the sky.
Saturday
Singers, Statesmen, and Saints
Singers, statesmen, and saints, among others, have left their mark on the Brooklyn landscape in the form of parks and playgrounds bearing their names. It’s a great tribute to a person to give his name to a public space. What better way is there to keep the name if not the sprit of a person alive than by turning it into something concrete and functional?
Whenever I pass by Harry Chapin Playground in Brooklyn Heights, nestled between the BQE and some charming houses with lush, sun-dappled yards, I can’t get his signature tunes, “Cat’s in the Cradle” and “Taxi,” out of my head.
Friday
A Flash in Time (Photo Reenactment)
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This light, this spot, this buzz on which I’m working: a perfect combination, “it doesn’t get any better,” it’s almost sublime . . . never again will this moment repeat. (A cliché, maybe, but a perpetually arresting idea.)
Degraw St. & Court St., 8/24/06 (Thursday) at 6:59 pm
Tuesday
Monday
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Sunday
Dead Tech (No. 1)
Brooklyn’s techno-waste is disgorged continually through flea markets, stoop sales, and junk shops, producing a veritable time line of “consumer electronics.” 
Alongside the other trinkets and cultural detritus, dead tech seems more stolid—simply a byproduct of our relentless compulsion to upgrade, the personification of our “disposable society.” 
In dead tech we see the fate of all innovation. And whether piled in a heap on the sidewalk or carefully arranged on a tarp, it’s not simply our old tools being displayed but the fallacy of progress.
Friday
Memorial Day Garbage (A Holiday Tradition)
Smell of barbeques in the air
as I walk the streets
taking pictures of garbage
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