Be Here Now

Can you read the writing on the wall?

A fresco many years (decades?) in the making on the side of a house beside the BQE near Clinton Hill.

Love Is Not Free

Robert Indiana knock-off, or the real thing behind bars on Teleport Drive, S.I.?

Bridge Update

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Time for some traffic problems in Greenpoint? Progress on the new Kosciuszko Bridge, Phase I, continues apace with some lane diversions but no cones in sight.

Bridgegate

The Verrazano-Narrows Bridge from the S.I. ferry.

Reading the Poles

Christopher Lane runs along the Staten Island Expressway. An unscientific survey was posted on the other side:

Return of the O'Jays?

A colorful truck on a gray day. The artist's tag up top seems to read OJAES FYC. Immediately thought of the great American R&B band crossed with the also great British post-ska band Fine Young Cannibals.

Here's one from the O'Jays...

And one from FYC...

Empty Diamonds

Clove Lakes Park, Staten Island

The Yankees season ended a while ago. The Mets' ended lasted night in the ninth inning against the Dodgers. The Red Sox and Cubs play on. Two minutes of the VP candidates' debate is all I needed to answer the question, why do we need baseball?

Missed It

Ferry commuters seem indifferent to the news that Kenny Rogers' "Final World Tour" will touch down at the St. George Theatre.

He just stopped in to see what condition his condition was in...

Underground Lit

Riding the subway is always educative, though not always in a literary way. But last week I found myself sitting just below a young man reading Gertrude Stein's Tender Buttons (in the centennial edition released by New Directions in 2014) and across from a  young woman hugging a plaster of paris figurine and reading The Book of the Courtier.

I had to Google that one to discover that Baldassare Castiglinone's book was a per-Amazon bestseller in the 16th century. A "courtesy book," it consists of fictional conversations among courtiers of the Duke of Urbino's court (of which the author was one). I think Gertrude Stein, seen below in the lovely little statue by Jo Davidson from Bryant Park, would have enjoyed sharing a car with her reader and this young woman, not to mention her companion, very much.