In the City Where the Colours Run Dry*

One poet may feel that the city saps the "colour" from them, but these photos show a city scene that rivals a new box of Crayons. 

* The title of this post is a line from a poem by Nicole Buckland, Romance in the Moonlight. Not my favorite poem, but the first line was perfect for this post, lol.

N E W   Y O R K  C I T Y  — Thanks to Ian, Ish of The Cahokian Blog, we have these awesome photos of his "stoop garden." Ian has planted these containers in front of his Brooklyn brownstone.  I see all sorts of begonias, impatiens, coleus and vincas, delightfully mixed and matched. The flowers really complement the colors of the brownstone, marble and granite. If I lived in the area, I would make sure to walk by Ian's building everyday. I'm sure there are lots of appreciative Brooklynites in his neighborhood!

Ian has a great eye for color and texture, as these impatiens, begonias and coleuses show. 

Artfully arranged magazine or did someone drop some mail on the way in, lol. I love the combination of hot pink and bright orange shown here.

B T W :

One of perhaps a million songs about New York I love... This might be playing in the back of my head as I perused Ian's colorful display, Lou Reed's Halloween Parade, a song about Greenwich Village's famous, and oh-so-colourful, annual event. 

Street Scenes: Downtown Manhattan, 1980

RIP—The Twin Towers.

Kaleidoscopic culture—Chinatown is a vastly lively part of the city, colorful in every way. All photos clickable to enlarge.

Hanging out downtown—Clotheslines between buildings.

Get all your ducks in a row—Easy to do in a Chinatown storefront.

Comparing apples to oranges—And lemons and limes, too. Chinatown fruit vendor.

Orange Zest—One of the earliest Honda models imported to the USA, the 600 coupe.

Living Large—The Empire State Building in the distance.

Kissing cousins—Typical New York City parking! 1969 Buick Skylark meets 1980 Oldsmobile.

Chauffeur's day off—Early sixties Bentley S3 parked at the curb in Little Italy.

Deco tour de force—The Chrysler Building, one of the most exuberant expressions of Art Deco architecture, gleams in the background of this photo of downtown turn-of-the-century brick and brownstone rowhouses.

Right Coast Greetings

My friend and fellow blogger, Woody, sent this photo yesterday of the sunset in Manhattan. Woody was in midtown on 7th Avenue visiting a friend at work, and shot this beautiful sunset. That would be the Hudson River and beyond that, New Jersey. It's just a breathtaking photo. I hope to feature more Manhattan photos in this blog in the future. (Thank you, Meghan, for the directional advice!)

Decades ago. I lived on 7th Avenue, downtown on the corner of 14th Street, in an apartment building called The Vermeer. Every once in a while, I still hear from the night doorman. He's an artist; we send postcards we each create. While he's retired now, and it has been thirty years since I moved out of the building, our exchanges are as friendly and as funny as was our long ago personal banter. Of course, the night doorman was the only one I ever saw, lol, as I tended to not venture out much during the day. 

Thank you, Woody!

The Tunnel Bar, NYC East Village, 1991, 4 am

Favorite haunt, late '80s early '90s. Four in the morning, Lou Reed blaring from the Town Car's stereo cassette player and open-to-the sidewalk doors, Korean Deli's surreal exterior vegetable displays. Sketching and schmoozing, speeding and slacking, and spanking each day into life after a rough fucking night's labor. Click on image to see the scrawling and sprawling scribbles and roughed-in crayon and pastel lighting in greater detail.

B T W :

Vintage Polaroids of Lincoln Town Car mentioned above, at the dealership the day I bought it. 'Twas a great car that didn't lead the pampered life it probably was expecting... : )