in new orleans, it even rains backwards

An art work is a dot on a line.

Dear Cops:

Urgent message, found on the back of a Bank of America deposit envelope: "Dear: Cops
Two guys are chasing us."

Signs of the times

An ode to the denture, Henry Street


Hand-lettered sign. Believe it or not, this place is right next door to the Pretty Young Pimp store, South Willamsburg


Wooden letters and late afternoon light, South Williamsburg


Manhole cover designed by Lawrence Weiner, Union Square


Some sort of private, members only club. Oh, all the velvet ropes of Beacon, NY!


My latest obsession: hand-lettered signs. Charming, but would you trust your finest suit to a tailor whose letter design looks like this? Ludlow Street


Sneaky wheatpaste in Chinatown: two mushrooms in love, Good Value!

Today in Photos: Miss Pussycat, primary colors

Nom Wah Tea Parlor

Nom Wah Tea Parlor is downtown on Doyers Street, but don't let the sign fool you, it's really a dim sum den. Great signage, typography, and use of the word "parlor."

How to grow an exoskeleton (or, self-preservation while blindfolded)

Excerpt (of shockingly and extraordinarily poor quality), Vito Acconci, Blindfolded Catching, 1970. Ignore the sound...it's just background noise, not part of the clip.

I think I need a new heart

Candy: a bridge between the digital and the corporeal.

Williamsburg's answer to Mardi Gras

I am walking down the street in Brooklyn on a softly spitting Ash Wednesday morning and looking down at a sidewalk that greets me with this, an adamant pile of rocks calling out:

So maybe some kid just dumped his fishbowl in the gutter. Or maybe, somehow, the world is woven with invisible threads tying people to cities, to hours.

Somewhere, sometime, Wynton Marsalis said that in New Orleans culture doesn't come down from on high, that it bubbles up from the streets.

Nabokov, Shmabokov!

"...in Britain retail chain Woolworths withdrew from sale a bed for six-year-old girls called the Lolita Midsleeper Combi after receiving complaints from parents. 'We had to look it up on Wikipedia,' said a store spokesman. 'But we certainly know who she is now.'"

[from Harper's Weekly, 05 February 2008]