Part chore, part pleasure, the act of taking your canine pet for a stroll in downtown New York is like walking around with an open invitation to strangers to strike up a conversation with you, the owner (and failing that, with the pup itself). Here a young woman is casuallyContinue Reading
Many of the residential buildings in Chinatown are old low-rise tenement buildings tightly crammed next each other along narrow traffic-choked streets. That makes the Chatham Towers apartment complex pictured here a stand-out in the neighborhood. The architectural design, with its concrete facade and alternating balcony scheme, is a sophisticated exampleContinue Reading
This is a snapshot of a display window at a Chinese pharmacy (or “chemists,” as they say in London) in the heart of Chinatown in New York. Limited retail space and maximized efficiencies, as well as a distinct sense of Confucian-like order, puts most of the medicinal stock of thisContinue Reading
Michael Caine played secret agent Harry Palmer in a series of 1960’s spy movies, and in doing so created the image of the “thinking man’s James Bond.” Here the renowned New York street artist Bäst has used Caine’s image from the movies to create a quartet of posters, in effectContinue Reading
The Meadowlands sport complex sits in East Rutherford, New Jersey, is home to several professional sports teams. At the heart of the Meadowlands is Giants Stadium, named for the NFL football team the New York Giants. (Yes, the Giants are from New York, but their home turf is in theContinue Reading
The Tom Bradley International Terminal at LAX, like at most major international airports, is a massive hub of diverse airlines sporting a wide variety of colorful logos and color schemes from nations near and far, large and small. Looking out from huge windows on the terminal’s south end, the tailfinsContinue Reading
Shepard Fairey’s icon of André the Giant pops up on the streets in various forms: stickers, posters and stencils. Here’s another example of a large wheat-pasted poster on the wall of a tenement building in the East Village, in New York. What makes this location noteworthy is that it’s adjacentContinue Reading
Walking around Tribeca, in New York City, recently, we spotted this intriguing graphic-logo on the black tinted window of a van for what appeared to be a pet or animal rescue organization. However positive and well meaning the organization, there is something strikingly creepy about this logo. The white-on-black colorContinue Reading
“Lowest prices in New York!” Since this image was snapped, Economy Foam & Futon Center in the Lower East Side has undergone an exterior makeover, deleting this giant advertisement from the city landscape. The ad for Foam & Futon is classic billboard-style marketing, but it’s on the side of aContinue Reading
The address itself may not mean anything to most people or even to most residents of Hollywood, but 1750 Vine St. is home to a 13-storey building that is an instantly recognizable architectural icon of Los Angeles. The Capitol Records building suggests a stack of 45-rpm records on a turntableContinue Reading
The address itself may not mean anything to most people or even to most residents of Hollywood, but 1750 Vine St. is home to a 13-storey building that is an instantly recognizable architectural icon of Los Angeles. The Capitol Records building suggests a stack of 45-rpm records (see image 1Continue Reading
The face of the late great wrestling superstar André the Giant became an international underground icon in the 1990’s after his image was appropriated by the designer Shepard Fairey in the form of stickers put up as street art in cities around the world. Often the image was subtitled withContinue Reading
The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City is among the foremost collections of important art and antiquities in the world. It is also one of the most popular places to spend an afternoon for tourists and native New Yorkers alike. Few of the thousands of daily visitors toContinue Reading
The ruthless Mongol ruler and warrior Genghis Khan (c. 1162-1227) unified his people and created the world’s largest empire, which at its speak reached as far west as Hungary and as far east as Korea and covered much of China and Russia. A New York City artist has paid homageContinue Reading
The steel shutters in front of commercial spaces get battered over time by people and the elements. In New York City especially, they also get bombed by graffiti–some of which is art, some just plain vandalism. Occasionally, a shop proprietor will commission art for their store front or take theContinue Reading
Swoon is a New York City street artist whose work is instantly recognizable to residents of certain neighborhoods of Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn, where much of her work can be found. Last Friday, Swoon and her art were featured in a lengthy New York Times’ article by Kirk Semple aboutContinue Reading
Swoon is a New York City street artist whose work is instantly recognizable to residents of certain neighborhoods of Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn, where much of her work can be found. Last Friday, Swoon and her art were featured in a lengthy New York Times’ article by Kirk Semple aboutContinue Reading
Swoon is a New York City street artist whose work is instantly recognizable to residents of certain neighborhoods of Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn, where much of her work can be found. Last Friday, Swoon and her art were featured in a lengthy New York Times’ article by Kirk Semple aboutContinue Reading
Old urban centers in the United States are filled with small shops that do business for decades without ever giving the storefront a makeover. These places are easily recognized by faded signage gasping for impact under rotted paint and accidentally retro typography. The Lower East Side of New York, despiteContinue Reading
When inscrutable and fashion-forward Italian clothes designer Prada decided to open a massive store in SoHo, in New York City, it hired famed Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas to design it. After $40 million were spent on the project, the Prada SoHo store opened in a cast iron-era loft building onContinue Reading