New York City Noir

Williamsburg, Part 2

I took these photos wandering around Williamsburg last weekend when the temperature got into the 70's.

Williamsburg

My late father was born in Williamsburg on Wythe Avenue in 1919.  Back then, it was an Irish shanty town and for years my mom didn't even like to admit my father was born in such squalor.  Now, though, the neighborhood is as trendy and expensive as any in Manhattan.

Still more Times Square

People photography using the S90.

More Times Square Street Photography

More examples of street photography taken with Canon S90 a couple of weeks ago.

Evangelism on 42nd Street

New Yorkers do not usually care to associate their city with Evangelism, perhaps thinking themselves too sophisticated for bible thumping.  But Burrows and Wallace, in Gotham, trace the city's history of fervid preaching back to George Whitefield's open air meetings in Manhattan in 1739.

Note on link:  Though I use the term "Evangelism," I've linked to the Wikipedia article "Evangelization" rather than "Evangelism" because the neutrality of the latter is currently disputed.

LES Street Art

To me, there's something disturbing about the street art one encounters walking through the Lower East Side.  Although some pieces are genuinely heartfelt tributes, most seem artificial and self-consicious.  The neighborhood itself has become so trendy that one feels one is walking through a perfectly safe Disney recreation of what was once one of the city's most vital and multicultural, albeit dangerous, neighborhoods. One even wonders if some of this street art has not been deliberately planned and executed to raise property values by evoking the neighborhood's long departed charisma, much as one can now buy "Hell's Kitchen" t-shirts in the tame and boring Clinton area.

Speaking of tame and boring, in regard the pictures below, there was a recent New York Times article reporting on the City Council's decision to ban all roll down gates on storefronts in another attempt to stamp out whatever street art and graffiti is left in NYC.  Even The Times, which usually has some respect for NYC's cultural heritage, copped out and  referred to these painted gates as "symbol[s] of blight."  The new law will be phased in gradually.  Eventually, by 2026, there will be no roll down gates left, only the diamond shaped grates that cannot be painted.  While I might once have deplored this as a loss to the character of various neighborhoods, the city has by now become so gentrified that, except for Chinatown, NYC's neighborhoods as such no longer exist.  Instead, they've given way to a uniform shopping mall of chain stores and high priced condos that covers pretty much all Manhattan below 125th Street. 

Great Neck

 
A lot of rain and heavy winds in NYC today.  I went out to Great Neck to see my mom and took this pic there.  Mom will be 86 in June.

Lower East Side

I remember when the Lower East Side was Alphabet City.  I read Lou Reed once rented an apartment on Ludlow Street for $85 a month when he first moved to NYC.  There were junkies and scary guys with knives all around then, but that was part of what made it fun.  Now the whole neighborhood is just a brunch spot on a Sunday afternoon.  There are cute Green Thumb gardens and nicely restored tenements.  There aren't many remnants of the old days.  The whole area is so gentrified that I began to wonder if even the little remaing graffiti might actually have been painted by decorators.

Street Photography in Times Square

Times Square is one of the best places in NYC for street photography.  It's easy to be unobtrusive when using a small camera, such as the Canon S90, because literally everyone in that area is compulsively taking photos with a point & shoot.  And, in the unlikely event that someone should become incensed at having his or her picture taken, there are plenty of police all around to protect unwary tourists with cameras.

 

Back Down to Chinatown

The pic above is a good example of the street photography I've been trying to accomplish with the new Lucis Pro 6.0 and the Canon S90.  It's very graphic and immediate.  The S90's small size lets me be relatively unobtrusive and gets me in much closer than I'd be able to manage with an SLR.  The Lucis Pro brings out all the detail with an almost comic book intensity.