We were in Detroit last weekend for a family wedding, and I went for a run and took some pictures. Here’s a sampling.
Full disclosure: the picture at the top of this post was actually taken last summer, but it was too cool not to include here. In fact, I’d say it’s a contender for “most Detroit street art” ever – though so is this piece, also from last year. At first I was unhappy that I was unable to capture the art without all the cars parked in front of it, and then it dawned on me. It’s Detroit, the cars are the point.
This, I’ve decided, is the summer that I’m going to get to know Bushwick a little better. Its reputation for coolness has scared me away in the past, along with the convoluted subway connections between here and there. On the other hand, it has fantastic street art and abundant Mexican and Ecuadorian food choices. It also turns out to be easy to bike to, with Citibike stations aplenty.
What this means, among other things, is that you can expect more food posts in the near future. In the meantime, feast your eyes on these works, illuminating the side of a wholesale meat market on Stockholm Street at Myrtle Avenue.
Last weekend, the National Audubon Society teamed up with the group Runstreet to host a running tour of the Audubon Murals in Upper Manhattan. Let’s see . . . an event that combines running, birds and street art? Sign me up!
And so, only slightly challenged by weekend train schedules, I headed across the East River and up, up, uptown to the Harlem Public at Broadway and W. 149th. A small crowd of participants had already gathered – easily recognized, first, by the fact that they were milling around outside a closed bar at 9 o’clock on a Sunday morning, and second, by their mix of running and bird-themed apparel. As we arrived, a preternaturally cheerful organizer checked us off from her list of registrants. New arrivals continued to trickle in, muttering about “trains” (the all-purpose NYC excuse for tardiness), until someone decided that it was time to get started.
First, though, some background on the Audubon Mural Project, echoing the introduction provided to us by Avi Gitler, a local gallery owner and project coordinator. The ambitious goal is to depict all of the more than 300 North American birds threatened with extinction because of climate change. Eight years into the effort, the count has reached 138, spread across 100 murals, mostly in Upper Manhattan – where John James Audubon was once a major landowner, and where he is buried in the cemetery of Trinity Church.
On Memorial Day, I mixed up my running routine by heading out of Prospect Park to the north, in a general Prospect Heights/Crown Heights direction. With spring migration winding down, I figured it was high time to start reacquainting myself with the less birdy sections of my borough (though as we know, birds are everywhere). And so I meandered through Grand Army Plaza, around the glassy Richard Meier building with the prestigious “1” address, then north on Underhill and east on Park Place. Eventually I hit the complicated intersection where Park Place and Washington and Grand avenues converge to define a small triangle. The triangle is surrounded by a construction fence decorated by multiple artists.
Naturally, I paused to snap photos of my favorite panels:
Having just arrived in Puebla on Friday, I can’t claim to know much about the city (other than the fact that El Carmen on Calle 16 de Septiembre makes incredible cemitas), and there’s certainly beautiful, funny and provocative art to be seen driving into the main bus station, or walking around the Centro Histórico. But if there’s a more extensive – and stunning – display than the one found in Ciudad Mural in the Barrio de Xanenetla…well, I’d be surprised.
At the beginning of the last century, Sunset Park was home to radical Finnish immigrants who set about constructing a cooperative alternative to capitalism. It’s nice to see that spirit endure today – in a different language, of course, the Finns having mostly moved on.
A few more snapshots from around the neighborhood follow.
Sometimes, it’s not enough to park in the bike lane, or in the crosswalk . . . or perhaps all the bike lane and crosswalk parking is already taken. In that case, some Brooklyn motorists see no problem hopping the curb to claim a sidewalk spot.
Not only is sidewalk parking problematic for pedestrians, it also blocks one’s view of cool street art, like this mural in Gowanus. I did my best, but the between the silver Nissan on the sidewalk and the truck parked curbside, it was challenging to capture everything going on in the work.
I ran to and around Brooklyn’s Red Hook neighborhood twice last week: once on a long-shot quest for Snowy Owls (they’ve been showing up in all kinds of unlikely places this year, so why not a warehouse roof somewhere in Red Hook?), once to get sandwiches from Defonte’s. It was on the first run, which meandered through likely unlikely Snowy Owl habitat and yielded no owls, but an inordinate number of Fish Crows, that I saw these cool examples of poster art.
The amorous skeletons at the top of this post were pasted on an expanse of brick wall on one of the quiet streets leading west from Van Brunt toward the waterfront – Van Dyke, maybe? (I made a mental note to remember the location, then promptly forgot it.) They shared the wall with this tagged-over jaguar by the same artist(s) . . .
. . . and this delicate plant, in a very different style.
And finally, not art, but a reminder of how long it had been since my last Red Hook run . . . and how fast the neighborhood is changing; I’m pretty sure this Potemkin building had four walls the last time I was on Coffey St.
It started with a quest to see a bird; it ended with a search for a different bird, and a takeout container of tacos on the F train.
But I’m getting ahead of the story. When I left the apartment early this morning, headed for the R train, I had visions of glory. That Sandhill Crane that’s been reported several times at the Dyker Beach Golf Course, always vanishing before others could lay eyes on it? I would find it. Maybe I’d even manage to document it with my handy iPhone camera.
Ha! You know who gets up even earlier than birders (or at least this birder)? Golfers, that’s who. By the time I had surfaced at 86th St and jogged west to the golf course, multiple foursomes were already well into their games. The idea that a freakishly large, long-legged bird would still be out there grazing in the short grass began to seem a bit farfetched.
I’ve been enjoying these simple line drawings on walls, lamp posts, mail collection boxes, and just about any other flat surface around the neighborhood. They’re stylized, yet somehow show personality; whimsical, yet sometimes poignant. I hope you enjoy them too.
Not another Brooklyn blog 