Tag Archives: street art

Birding the streets of Chile

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The only owl I saw on this trip

Relative to countries like Ecuador or Colombia – heck, even relative to the state of New York – Chile doesn’t have a lot of birds. Paradoxically, that makes it a great birding destination. Think about it: a lavishly illustrated field guide to the birds of the country can include a bonus section on the identification of eggs (!!!) and full-page photographs of the authors’ favorite species, and still slip easily into your handbag. Studying up on the birds you’re likely to see is relatively easy. Do you find hummingbirds frustrating, but love distinctive gulls and weird ducks? Do wren-like birds with long, spiky tails appeal to you? You’ve come to the right place!

But where Chile really stands out is the omnipresence of birds on the walls of its cities. As readers of this blog surely know by now, I love street art almost as much as I love birds. And Chilean street artists seem to have a strong ornithological bent. The walls of Santiago and other cities were practically a gallery of the birds of Chile; I could stroll neighborhoods and sharpen my identification skills at the same time.

Here, then, are some of my sightings.

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Street Art Sunday: Eye contact

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This poster stayed with me after I saw it in Sunset Park earlier this week. Today, I went back to 45th St and Fourth Av to snap this picture. (And grab some barbacoa de chivo while I was at it.)

“Don’t make eye contact” is standard advice these days. Passing someone on the street? Don’t make eye contact. Pressed tight against a stranger on the subway? Don’t make eye contact. And for heaven’s sake, if someone seems distressed or asks you for money . . . don’t make eye contact.

Needless to say, the more different the other person is from you, the more important it is to avoid looking them in the eye.

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Street Art Sunday: Ecuador edition

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I spent much of January in Ecuador, mostly on a pair of birding trips organized by Brooklyn naturalist, artist and general bon vivant Gabriel Willow, but with some time on my own as well. In Qiuto, I stayed in the neighborhood of La Floresta, drawn by the food – from street vendor tripe in Parque Navarro to the ultra-high end tasting menu at URKO – and also by the street art. As you can see by the mural above this post, the latter was pretty spectacular.

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Street Art Sunday: Endangered birds

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It’s awkward, even intimidating, to restart this blog after one of its periods of quiescence – especially one as long as this. Let’s see, my last post was in . . . January? Gulp.

It’s not as though there was anything particularly dramatic about this Brooklyn Sunday. The suffocating heat has loosened its grip ever so slightly, but by the time I’d run and biked my way from Park Slope to Prospect Heights, I was soaked in sweat. I had let the availability of CitiBike “Bike Angel” points determine my route. For the uninitiated, the corporate parent of New York City’s bike share program is Lyft, a company that knows a thing or two about motivating non-employees, and I’ve allowed myself to be sucked into their Bike Angel program, whereby riders earn credits, membership extensions and cold hard cash by shuffling bikes from overstocked stations to ones where bikes are in short supply. It’s manipulative as hell, and a source of cheap labor, of course, but it also gives me a couple of hundred dollars a month, and meshes nicely with my much-reduced running program. I trot along, picking up and delivering bikes along the way, and call it a workout.

So it was the prospect of a 12-point (triple bonus points, baby!) drop-off that took me to the corner of Underhill and St. Johns Place, where a seemingly eternal construction fence around a ruined building has been a magnet for street art for years – long enough to earn a listing on Google Maps. It’s the “Underhill Walls,” evidently.

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Street Art Sunday: Saint John, NB

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Saint John – the “Saint” in the New Brunswick city is spelled out, and the “John” is singular and non-possessive – was to be a quick first stop on our driving tour of Atlantic Canada. Instead, it became the only stop. With the remnants of Hurricane Fiona slamming into Nova Scotia the day we’d hoped to arrive, we headed back stateside and watched the news with horror.

But our one day in Saint John was delightful. As we stood on the corner across from our hotel, debating whether to head to the City Market, the Jewish Museum, or simply wander the Uptown district, not one, but two kind people offered to give us directions.

We’re not lost, we explained, just indecisive.

I was struck by the number of Syrian restaurants in Saint John – not vaguely “Mediterranean” or generically “Middle Eastern,” but specifically Syrian – and by the number of women wearing hijab. That inspired me to do a little googling, which confirmed that this small city has welcomed more Syrian refugees per capita than almost anywhere else in Canada. (And far more, needless to say, than anywhere in the U.S.)

Less consequential and arguably less admirable, but also noticeable: Saint John punches far above its weight in the use of Edison bulbs, which seemed to be everywhere. Their warm, retro glow suits the Port City’s vaguely steampunk esthetic.

And, of course, there’s the city’s street art. A small sampling follows.

Sending heartfelt sympathy to all the Canadians affected by this weekend’s devastating storm.

Street Art Sunday (now with even more sidewalk parking!)

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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:

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Street Art Sunday: Puebla Edition

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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.

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Street Art Sunday: Sunset Park

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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.

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Street Art Sunday: sidewalk parking

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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.

Street Art Sunday: Red Hook posters

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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.

Alongside Louis Valentino, Jr. Park at the end of Coffey Street, another skeleton:

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.