Chunks of Chelsea (New York)

We normally have a "no garbage" rule on the blog, but how can it be garbage if it's primordially eternal?

-MG


ardently notice this

Poor man's Expressionism,
poised and
clumsy fulgency slathered
askance the moon.
but why call him poor?
While he struts
in his luxurious coat
wool spun of rose

-VG

Skazochki

Death hides her pale face

In the folds of the skirt,

And bitterly whispers

Into the sallow hem

Her post communist epigrams

-VG

(Folk Tales for the Littlest)

This particular book reminds me of the more terrifying side of childhood. Kids are usually afraid of monsters and criminals and clowns. I was scared of poor design. The gloomy existentialist animated films of eastern Europe were beautiful to me, but our imitations of Disney (and western design in general) haunted me in the night.
This certainly wasn't an educated phobia. This was long before i learned anything about drawing. I was one of the littlest, too little to be snooty. These things were just really ugly and they frightened me.

-MG

Homecrest Avenue, near Avenue Z.

At least in form, liberallization has set in. A generation after the more talented artists in the Soviet Union had begun to leave the confines of illustration (especially children's books) for still circumscribed but real opportunities for making fine art, a ghetto they had been herded into by bureaucratic edict and the opportunity to feed their families, this hapless piece of generic and bucolic late-soviet kitsch first saw the light of day. The logic of the masquerade. There is sheen, but no authentic polish, no burnishing mark of the artists. This illustration coincides with the moment of exhaustion, of the Ideology as well as the art.

Though one does not want to particullarize this.

These impulses are latent. The communism of cruellty, universal and economically viable.

The Russian skaz, the folk tale. Take this as reversion. The Formalists and Shklovsky,

The perversion of finding this in Brighton Beach... We had come to New York to escape the nightmares of East Europe.

-VG

(Contents: "The Tar-Sided Lamb", "The Snow Maiden", "The Fox With a Rolling Pin")

Plastic Pals

Life in the streets can be fairly tough for a girl.


Especially in the streets of Clinton Hill (home of the Notorious B.I.G. and Dave Chappelle's Block Party).

Luckily she now has a friend, in the form of a soft-legged cat.


And a sweet ride.

Sheepshead Chic

This chair was discovered across the street from the Moloch of Manhattan Beach. It glistened, in all its glory, in the summer sun, against the blue trim of Sheepshead Bay as its backdrop.

(Sheepshead Bay is pronounced "sheeps - head - bay". The name comes from a fish that used to be common around here.)

The Moloch of Manhattan Beach is a three-story mansion which encapsulates the epitomy of excess in numerous stylistic manifestations. Peyton Harrison has described the contents of the place as "what the poor of the 1970s thought the rich lived like". Whether this chair was spewed from there, or from one of the surrounding mini-Molochs is unknown, but the spirit here is certainly a whole.

We've Got Crabs!

We've got crabs...

...and bugs...
...and birds...

Plant Trees

There aren't too many trees in new york.



You can help.

http://www.milliontreesnyc.org/html/home/home.shtml

This Flower Lasts Forever

This flower will not wilt in the heat of Brighton Beach, unlike the rest of us.
But like the rest of us, it is lost.

Filter then Freddy

While walking home tonight, as i passed the Manhattan Beach Jewish Center, i came accross this little guy:



He had served his time as a pool filter and lay on the sidewalk waiting for the green men from Staten Island to take him to his final resting place.

Then i caught a glimpse of Freddy Kreuger as he was about to do his thing to his next victim.

Blue Ball

Ah, the Blue Ball - the staple of a Brooklyn upbringing. If you grew up in New York, especially if you attеnded public school, you will surely remember this ball. It was sold in most deli/grocery stores and was used primarily in games of "handball".

Actually, the sport known as Handball is quite different. It is very similar to Football (Soccer) except for one obvious difference.

The game we New Yorkers grew up with is oficially called US Handball (History of US Handball) and apparently dates back to the early 1900s.


The ball itself seems to be a generic version of the Spaldeen. Spaldeens are pink rubber balls, manufactured by Spalding, a sporting goods company (http://www.spaldeen.com/).

C.I. Cinderella

This slipper was discovered today, amidst the steaming asphalt of Brighton Beach avenue.



Who are you, my Coney Island Cinderella?
My Bucharian princess of Brighton Beach.
Where were you racing to, through the evaporating film of garbage juice?
Did your Lexus get you home before it turned into a pumpkin again?...

Scaffolded Man

For today's post we have not an object, but a person.
Though he could not be taken home and put in a scanner, he was most certainly found in the street.

In mid-April, my friend Peyton and I discovered this man on the corner of 22nd street and Lexington Avenue.






The man was unconscious, and wholly supported by the scaffolding. In his hands, was an unlit match. A cigarette butt, which had probably fallen out of his mouth, was on the floor.

Bunny Key

Hello. Welcome to the Street-Found Blog. Here is the first item in our collection.


A metal key, about one inch long, featuring a playboy bunny design.

It was found on the corner of Kings Highway and E 16th Street, in Brooklyn.

Could it have been the key to a diary? If so, what could have been written inside? Did it belong to a 16 year old high school student dressed in a pink sweat suit, or to a 40 year-old waitress covered in tattoos.

Please help me speculate on the former function of this key.