Working for the weekend

Friday afternoon, a stretch Hummer tried to navigate a turn from Bleeker onto Mott Street.




It wasn't easy.



For further reading:
Limos, Limos Everywhere (BoweryBoogie)

One of those days

On Fulton Street near Water Street.

The morning after...and the Tompkins Square Park Diets

Record number of people in Tompkins Square Park yesterday afternoon for the nice spring weather? At least record number of people in swimsuits in the lawn for a third weekend of April? A record number of Whole Foods bags? Hard to say.

Opinion: For the first time "NYC is going to struggle with questions about its reason for being"

From Peggy Noonan's column in The Wall Street Journal Friday:

In New York some signs of that future are obvious: fewer cars, less traffic, less of the old busy hum of the economic beehive. New York will, literally, get dimmer. Its magical bright-light nighttime skyline will glitter less as fewer companies inhabit the skyscrapers and put on the lights that make the city glow.

A prediction: By 2010 the mayor, in a variation on broken-window theory, will quietly enact a bright-light theory, demanding that developers leave the lights on whether there are tenants in the buildings or not, lest the world stand on a rise in New Jersey and get the impression no one's here and nobody cares.

The New York of the years 1750 to 2008 — a city that existed for money and for all the arts and delights and beauties money brings — is for the first time going to struggle with questions about its reason for being. This will cause profound dislocations. For a good while the young will continue to flock in, for cheaper rents. Artists will still want to gather with artists — you cannot pick up the Metropolitan Museum and put it in Alma, Mich. But there will be a certain diminution in the assumption of superiority on which New York has long run, and been allowed, by America, to run.

Sunday morning, Avenue C

It's Record Store Day

Go to the Record Store Day Web site for info on participating stores.

This is one of the records that I bought last year. David J. showing a little nipple action, standing in front of a fan. In Style, indeed! (Night Fever was apparently already used...)

Tape delay

The week-or-two-long morbid curiosity over Lady GaGa will (I hope) end soon. Until then! The Superficial had the following shot yesterday:



With this comment:

Lady GaGa decided to pull the ol' "Pretend to Take Pictures of the Paparazzi" routine last night while leaving Bungalow 8 in London. It's a celeb tactic to deter the paps from taking shots because your face is obscured. Of course, it's slightly more effective when, I dunno, you're not wearing a see-through shirt with tape over your nipples.

Meanwhile, I'm not comparing these two in any way whatsover, but the electric tape reminded me of Wendy O. Williams... And I can't believe it has been 11 years since she died -- April 6, 1998.




Previous photos of Lady GaGa on EV Grieve include.

[Bottom photo via Prehistoric Sounds]

P.S.

Sorry for all the nipples today.

Stories from the Times today that I didn't get around to reading

Donkey Ball Stubbornly Holds On Despite Criticism

[Photo: Jodi Hilton for The New York Times]

Then we went down to Coney Island on the coaster and around again

David Lynch directs a Moby video

Shot In The Back Of The Head from Moby on Vimeo.

Hmm.

(Via BuzzFeed)

PUB CRAWL ALERT: Snuggie editon

From SnuggiePubCrawl.com:

Attend the First-Ever Snuggie Pub Crawl in New York, NY
In response to the stunning public embrace of the warm and cuddly Snuggie, the SnuggiePubCrawl.com Team is partnering with PubCrawls.com, who just broke the Guinness book of World Records for the world’s largest pub crawl, to co-host the first-ever Snuggie Pub Crawl in New York. Even though it's just a blanket with sleeves, we're sure that you'll enjoy a spring evening spent drinking with friends and the Snuggie.

What: A pub crawl in New York, New York wearing Snuggies
You must be 21 or older to attend

When: Saturday, April 18th from 12:00pm to 8:00pm

Where:
1. The Village PourHouse - 64 Third Ave at 11th street
2. Side Bar -120 E 15th At Irving Pl
3. Kings Head -222 East 14th Street Btwn 2nd & 3rd Ave
4. Bar None - 98 Third Ave Btwn 12th & 13th
5. Belmont - 117th East 15th street Btwn Park Ave and Irving Pl
6. Still - 192 Third Ave at 17th - 3-5pm
7. Plug Uglies - 257 3rd Ave Btwn 20th St & 21st St
8. Van Diemens - 383 Third Avenue at 27th street

BYO-Snuggie Bring your own Snuggie:
Blankets with sleeves can be purchased at a number of retail stores.

(Via Gothamist)

The "new urban pioneers:" Yeah, but do they have plentiful FroYo and Momofuku? (Oh, wait...)

From The Wall Street Journal today, an article titled Artists vs. Blight. This is a complex topic that deserves more than a smart-assy treatment on a Friday morning. But for now, let's just read some of the article.

Last month, artists Michael Di Liberto and Sunia Boneham moved into a two-story, three-bedroom house in Cleveland's Collinwood neighborhood, where about 220 homes out of 5,000 sit vacant and boarded up. They lined their walls with Ms. Boneham's large, neon-hued canvases, turned a spare bedroom into a graphic-design studio and made the attic a rehearsal space for their band, Arte Povera.

The couple used to live in New York, but they were drawn to Cleveland by cheap rent and the creative possibilities of a city in transition. "It seemed real alive and cool," said Mr. Di Liberto.

Their new house is one of nine previously foreclosed properties that a local community development corporation bought, some for as little as a few thousand dollars. The group aims to create a 10-block "artists village" in Collinwood, with residences for artists like Mr. Di Liberto, 31 years old, and Ms. Boneham, 34.

Artists have long been leaders of an urban vanguard that colonizes blighted areas. Now, the current housing crisis has created a new class of urban pioneer. Nationwide, home foreclosure proceedings increased 81% in 2008 from the previous year, rising to 2.3 million, according to California-based foreclosure listing firm RealtyTrac. Homes in hard-hit cities such as Detroit and Cleveland are selling for as little as $1.

Drawn by available spaces and cheap rents, artists are filling in some of the neighborhoods being emptied by foreclosures. City officials and community groups seeking ways to stop the rash of vacancies are offering them incentives to move in, from low rents and mortgages to creative control over renovation projects.

"Artists have become the occupiers of last resort," said Robert McNulty, president of Partners for Livable Communities, a Washington-based nonprofit organization. "The worse things get, the more creative you have to become."

Later...

Artists have flocked to, and improved, blighted areas for decades -- for example, New York's SoHo and Williamsburg, parts of Baltimore and Berlin, Germany. They often get displaced once gentrification begins. But now, since real estate has hit rock bottom in many places, artists with little equity and sometimes spotty credit history have a chance to become stakeholders, economists and urban planners say.

And, for the record, I like Cleveland. My cousin moved there.