Tag: Manhattan

Modern Surprise?

New York

Well, at least the lamp is straight in this one, but I look like a deer caught in the headlights and that shirt just has to go! The one below has a yellowish color cast to it and we’re the wrong size compared to the one above. Nothing yet ready to add to Modern Romance.

Urban Exoticism

East 59th Street, New York

I had a cousin who was an optician. He offered me an after-school job at his shop. He told me he’d teach me how to work the lens-grinding machine but to be careful lest I fall in and make a spectacle of myself.

Some more urban night shots from the archive.

Click on the images below to see them larger.

Urban Exoticism

Downing & Varick St

I recently entered a competition on “Urban Exoticism.” From my archive I found 76 images I considered candidates, but only 5 could be submitted. Over the next few days I’ll share some of those that didn’t make the cut.

click any image below to see them full size.

Taking the Gardens Away

93rd St and Columbus Avenue, New York

Another soapbox issue of mine – the Upper West Side Urban Renewal Project – a plan first mooted in the late 1950s to “clear slums” and redevelop the area. Developers were given mighty concessions to bulldoze people’s homes and rebuild, while making few concessions of their own. One of those was the provision of public garden spaces. In my neighborhood this was most often met with an open expanse of cement holding a withered sapling in a concrete box, or something a tad nicer, surrounded by a fence to keep out people from the neighborhood. With the expiration of these requirements after a period of about 20 years, building owners rushed to build retail space on the sites of these barren “gardens” (increased revenue), topping them with private parks open only to the residents of their buildings. So now we must look up to see our crown of thorns.