Photo By Gail
If this Giant Pink Banana looks familiar, it might be because you’ve seen one like it offered as a prize for winning one of the games at Luna Park in Coney Island. I was nowhere near Coney, however when I saw this happy teenager, waiting to board the elevator from the 7 Train platform at 42nd Street with the banana, which is clearly as tall as he is, in tow. Live in NYC long enough and eventually you’ll see everything.
When you’re on a long commute, whether on a train or bus, it can seem that time just slows down, and a twenty-minute journey can feel like an eternity. When traveling by public transportation, many people try to occupy themselves to help pass the time so that it’s a bit more bearable.
What you choose to do to pass the time will depend on your interests, but to help guide you, here are a few things that you can do to make your journey more interesting.
Continue reading How to Pass the Time on Your Commute
Photo By Gail
On his second stay in New York, Jose Clemente Orozco (1883 – 1959) made many works reflecting the city’s urban expansion and social dimension. The Subway (1928) presents several commuters on New York’s emblematic public transportation system, which first opened in 1904. The shadowy, stone-faced passengers impart a sense of melancholy to the scene, contrasting with the shiny train poles. A highly regarded artist in Mexico, Orozco struggled to find recognition in New York despite showing at several local galleries and completing a five-panel mural cycle at the New School in 1931.
Photographed in the Museum of Modern Art in NYC.
Photo By Gail
Surrealism was identified by its proponents as a way of reuniting the conscious and unconscious realms of experience so that the world of dream and fantasy could be joined to the everyday rational world — or what one critic called “an absolute reality, a surreality.” René Magritte accomplished this by merging dreamlike imagery and naturalistic detail, as in his iconic canvas Time Transfixed (1938).
Continue reading Modern Art Monday Presents: René Magritte, Time Transfixed
One of the most vivid and cherished dreams I’ve had in the past couple of years involves a dream in which I discover a secret room in the back of my apartment. How I have managed to live in the apartment for 20 years and never even notice this room is a mystery. In the dream, this approximately 225 square foot room has been meticulously finished with wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling cabinetry, and it is the most exhilarating feeling imaginable to realize that I have all of this space in which to expand my world. Seriously, I would compare it to discovering a treasure chest full of $100 bills, and you can perhaps only truly relate to and appreciate that if you live in a NYC apartment.
Can you even imagine having access to an extra 225 ft. of rent-free space to use as, say, a walk-in closet, or to store absolutely every single thing you’ve ever owned in your entire life? That “Undiscovered Room” dream is probably the best dream I’ve ever had, because it gets to the root of an issue that all Manhattan dwellers live with: the desire for More Fucking Space. Continue reading Video Clip of The Week: Worriers, “Most Space”