PhotoGraffiti (No. 1)

Footbridge Haiku

The highway stops for no man
the car-less trudge
over streams of traffic

Ode to the Discarded Air Conditioner

Woe is the poor air conditioner in the street: broken, abandoned, left to the ignominious fate of curbside torpor and refuse truck oblivion. A life of service deserves a nobler end, perhaps one final chance to serve.


A hard surface and an open space are all that is required for a Small Appliance Departure Rite. Audio-visual documentation is strongly recommended. These ceremonies should include as much ritual as inspiration permits, such as chanting ("Cooling unit, cooling unit, cooling unit . . .), a brief manifesto, and/or exaggerated body movements.


To begin, take the remains of the appliance by the cord and spin overhead. Strike repeatedly until creative and therapeutic rethinking of obsolescence is achieved.

Color Among the Ruins

A Classic Block

Fourth Ave. b/w St. Mark’s Pl. & Warren St.



There's lumber, lawyers, laundry, and more on this block. Also, it exhibits the panoply of facades so typical of Brooklyn as a whole: aluminum, brick, faux stone. It's a jumble of commerce and materials, a microcosm of city life where everything overlaps and pulsates with a vitality that transcends the utilitarian.

Kensington Daze

Denny’s Steak Pub—A complimentary weekday buffet (where else do you find that?), sausage and peppers, with an alluring snack mix at the bar: Cheetos, pretzels and barbequed Fritos. It’s an accommodating place . . . Lotto, horse racing feed . . . A New York Post on the bar: “MISERY: Coroner Reveals Anna Nicole’s Descent into Hell” . . . lachrymose Dire Straits’ songs, one after another . . . nicest day of the year so far, 78 degrees--perfect. [Church Ave. & McDonald Ave., 3/27/07 (Tuesday) at 2:18 pm] . . . Club 773—Oprah blaring on TV . . . trompe l’oeil pics of Elvis and John Wayne . . . an impressive selection of darts accessories for sale, in glass display cases . . . More lottery action, horse racing video, an Instant Lotto vending machine—the Brooklyn version of a gambling bar . . . Ahh, the languor of weekday drinking . . . the sun through the open door reflects off the video poker machine . . . no one here under 60 or 70 [Coney Island Ave. & Cortelyou Rd. at 4:05 pm.] . . . Coney Island Avenue @ Cortelyou to Avenue I—a crazy ethnic mélange: Russian, Polish, Pakistani, Muslim, Christian, Hasidic . . . my love of Brooklyn sometimes makes me tear (5:09 pm) . . . Nitecaps bar--Some bearded dirtbag laughs at an electrocution death reported on the local news, mocking the other miseries dribbling from bland anchors’ tongues—a coarse but understandable response to media abstraction . . . Spring means DrunkWalks . . . McDonald Ave., beneath the F line: Royal Marble, Family Dollar.

Dead End

Car Service Haiku

I need a car . . . "Five minutes"
no matter what
it is always five minutes

Butler Street is for Lovers

Do yourself a favor: walk down Butler Street, starting at Bond Street and moving east. It’s a spooky but fascinating stretch, especially at night. Be sure to notice the almost-completed Comfort Inn between Nevins Street and Third Avenue. You might ask yourself, as I did immediately: “Why would they build a hotel here, of all places? Who would want to stay there?” (For the answer, visit the blog Curbed.)

Thus the Name: Inspiration From Above

Where the Highway Meets the Street

The mighty Gowanus
frames the landscape
cuts across the horizon

The Road Through Leisure

*More Plastic Bags Impaled on Barbed Wire

These are the flowers of the industrial landscape (endless variations on a basic structure).

*See Industrial Haiku #2

Brooklyn Playgrounds (No. 2)

The Brooklyn playground is a functional thing, often installed (seemingly as an afterthought) beneath ramps and overpasses and next to expressways. This is a legacy of Robert Moses, whose auto-centric vision of New York melded transportation and leisure in a perverse way that was oblivious to humanity and aesthetics.


Nonetheless, this is the landscape we’ve inherited, and it’s oddly stimulating. Maybe this is a result of the collision between Moses’ anti-humanist vision and the power of social adaptability, that assertion of humanity in the face of hostile forces.


This hopeful attitude is diminished, though, when one sees these concrete-and-metal-filled spaces barren of people (as they often are). Then it becomes apparent that there’s really something uninviting about these playgrounds, these footnotes to the highway.


I still like the highway playground, in the same way I might like an old dysfunctional radio that looks just right on the window sill. But I mostly appreciate the highway playground because it’s essentially, undeniably Brooklyn.