Almost exactly 19 years ago…I snapped these muddy, verging-on-blurry shots with a small Canon camera…I tried uprezzing and sharpening the focus, but it didn’t help.
Tenement buildings between 5th and 6th streets on Bedford Avenue, Brooklyn — Sunday, 6.5.05, 6:10 pm.
Looking south down Seventh Avenue from northeast corner of 53rd Street, a half-hour or so before Monday evening’s Batman Begins screening at WB’s very covertly located screening room, which has a Sixth Avenue address but is actually about 75 feet to the east of 7th Avenue on 53rd Street.
Clean streets and sidewalks are an indicator of neighborhood pride and self-esteem. Clearly the residents of the Bedford district’s south side (near south 5th Street and Driggs Avenue) have a ways to go. If all this crap were lying on the sidewalk in front of my building I would get a Hefty plastic garbage bag and pick it up and throw it in the dumpster. Where is the dignity with these people?
Sherry Netherland hotel (older building, right) and Hotel Pierre to its left. Pic taken from area near the eastern entrance to the formerly alive and pulsing Plaza Hotel, which is being turned into condos for the grotesquely rich…terrific. Another pat on the back for George Bush and his efforts to restrict middle-class opportunity and let the super-rich go hog wild and turn the pricier sections of this country into a super-rich pigpen. And another big pat on the back for those red-state security moms who voted him in…very wise, ladies! Completely contrary to your own financial interests plus the 911 Commission guys are saying they don’t believe that the Bushies have done all they can about preventing another World Trade Center catastrophe…so voting for Bush just made loads of sense.
Looking west on 57th Street from Sixth Avenue, just as Monday afternoon’s rainstorm was about to begin — 6.7.05, 4:15 pm.
Sixth Avenue bus stop during Monday afternoon’s cloudburst — 6.6.05, 4:20 pm.
Taken from Sony corporate headquarter’s 7th floor after screening of Sony Classics’ Heights, which wasn’t half-bad — 6.5.05, 3:00 pm.
Sixth Avenue again, from entranceway to Starbucks during that same old rainstorm you’re now starting to get tired of hearing about — 6.6.05, 4:17 pm.
Approaching Marcy Street subway station in another enterprising but vaguely shitty area of Brooklyn. Just after taking this I was walking past some low-rent cheeseball hot-dog stand with my Canon camera in hand, and I must have looked like a tourist because a couple of guys who looked like close relations of R. Crumb’s Weasel J. Weisenheimer gave me a look that said, “Whoa…can we take this guy? We could get that camera.” I gave them a Dirty Harry look that said, “Go ahead, try it.”
There is rarely a work day (or any day, because I’m online every damn day no matter what, including holidays) when I don’t click on this photo and think about how the water would feel.