Photo By Gail

As photographer Stephen Shore once said “Paying attention all the time is an interesting way to go through the day.” While heading uptown after an appointment near Wall Street and Broadway, I passed Lume Studios, an immersive event and pop-up space I’ve visited on several occasions. The storefront appeared vacant, and the space looked as though it might have seen better days. But amid the signs of an empty venue, one bright spot demanded my attention: a rather conspicuous pink storage bin sitting on the sidewalk out front .

It could be a generic mobile trash bin, but a Google image search points pretty consistently to it being from  IKEA, so I’m going with that identification (although I think the dimensions disqualify it from being a consumer product). Whatever its origin, this oversized pink object was hard to miss against the otherwise rather dreary scene.

There’s something a little bittersweet about an abandoned storage bin outside an apparently empty event space. Perhaps Lume Studios is simply between exhibits, but the vacant storefront and its lone pink companion certainly make for an interesting little New York street scene. At least something was still bringing a splash of color to the block!