Found this sticker in the parking lot outside a small town supermarket. It’s big at about four inches square. There’s a disconnect between the professional vinyl color printing and the childlike illustration and type. I have no idea what it means beyond the obvious video game reference, but I do love the pencil scribbled response. When graffiti causes a response, it transforms into a conversation and eventually into a historical timeline.

Saranac, New York

In this obligatory, Valentine’s Day post, I found a black heart shape made from the remains of an industrial adhesive. My guess would be it was used to glue a sign to the stucco wall. Now it seems to carry so much unintended meaning. All the big existential human conditions are here, love, loss, memory, time, etc., as well as some more sinister cultural impacts, a black heart, dripping with animosity stains the rough surface defying the smooth, clean modernist world, forgotten but yet stubbornly remaining as a reminder of our search and our loss.

Midtown, Manhattan.

Somehow this really struck me as a summary of the current geopolitical situation. The faded 1950’s architecture, the broken sign with it’s web address as the brand, the haphazard construction permits on the doors, the fact that there are two sets of doors — one transparent, one opaque (one for you, one for them) the dirt and decay along the bottom panels (as if they building had been repeatedly kicked and scuffed) and finally, hiding in the lobby, a traffic cone warning us.

It’s the demise of respect for the U.S. around the globe, immigration and the promise of a better life — all coming together in this one shot captured before they put a shiny new facade on it. The architectural grid no longer able to impose a sense of ordered modernism in order to reassure visitors of it’s grandeur. A historical fragment that reveals so much more.

Midtown, Manhattan.

Happy fourth of July!

Red Hook, Brooklyn.

Once the pinnacle of advertising and a symbol of the greatness of the American capitalist landscape, these now stand as skeletons in our midst quietly reminding us of a past both revered and reviled.

Note: These are only a few from the neighborhood. I didn’t capture them all.

Redhook, Brooklyn, NYC

Sign of the times. What are they watching? You and me.

Red Hook, Brooklyn

Brooklyn, New York