Bitches, Bridges, and Bedrooms

Helen Levitt died at the age of 95, in her Manhattan apartment.

I remember how inspired and effected I was by this photo, as a little Little.

It was so timeless and reminded me of everything that I loved about New Yorkers and adolescence. It wasn't until much later, that I discovered the image was from 1939.

Her photos always gave me the sense of memorability, at first glance. Followed by effectiveness upon looking just a little bit further

100 years ago, today, the Queensborough Bridge was completed. Only killing 50 people, in the process!

The Queensborough Bridge is so commonly overlooked. I blame the Brooklyn Bridge, for this.

With 4 top lanes, and 5 bottom lanes, it really does an amazing job at commuting traffic into Midtown. Even in the worst of traffic, I don't think I've ever been on there for over 25 minutes.

The Bowery Boys did a pretty interesting little blog about the bridge today. Enjoy the fuck out of it!

At this turning point of my life, I am reminded of the memories of this bridge in my life, as stupid as it may sound. Its just a fucking bridge.

• Phone calls made in fits of horror, as I tried to rush back into manhattan after 'running away' just didn't work out.
• Throwing mix CDs of love, over its edge.
• Taking boat trips so that I would be able to just take photos of its underbelly.
• Having first listens of music made by friends, on my way out of the city.
• Looking into open apartment windows of converted storage areas and visually upsetting glass buildings, to see how rich people decorate and arrange their lighting.
• Wishing I could shop at the Bridge Market regularly.
• Smoking cigarettes at the park that went along the East River, staring at the bridge traffic and thinking about the ten most important items in my life.
• And freaking out every single time TO THIS DAY, about driving up the onramp into the city.

Finishing up my true New Yorker post, I feel pretty inspired by tiny pods!

I wish i owned a little area and a big fucking drill.

New York Pavilion, a Possible landmark

Photos I took of the New York Pavilion in 2007

The ruins that were once Philip Johnsons New York Pavilion used for the 1964-65 Worlds Fair, is working toward official landmark status! 

Ever since i was a tot, who would drive past the sad and erie looking Flushing Meadows Park on my way from the airport, I have occasionally felt like the only New Yorker concerned that a time will come where they just demolish the park completely. 

Hopefully my worries will be beamed up in a space pod and never have to return. Then perhaps a day will come where I will be crazed enough with joy and poverty, to walk along the side of the BQE with no shoes, disheveled hair, a tie-dyed shirt with spray painted wolves on the front, smelling like the griddle of a Wendys fast food restaurant and I will be able to say

"You may have taken the Yankee Stadium, Coney Island, the Domino Sugar Factory, AND the YMCA building i loved on 53rd street, but you will never take the rotting remains that keep Queens interesting!!"

And i do hope that the intentions are to keep it as remains and not the next hip outdoor movie theater to play a bundle of movies featuring Molly Ringwald, for the hip kids in the summertime.  

I hope they do this for the respects of its architect, Philip Johnson, who had a well known passion for architectural ruins. And who wrote about how pleased he was with the decay of the pavilion in the forward to his book, The Architecture Of Philip Johnson.

In 2001, an organization was formed in hopes of turning the remains into an Air and Space Museum. But in the end it didn't work out.