Jerry-built: No longer culminant

BY | Posted on | FILED UNDER Categories Culminant, Jerry-Build, Manhattan, Welkin

Eddie Boros’ Tower of ToysEddie Boros’ Tower of Toys grew and stood for a few decades on 6th and B. It was taken down in May 2008, a year after its creator’s passing. At my first encounter with the tower, the garden was closed. It was a cloudy day. It drizzled. The tower stopped me in my tracks. I lingered to take it in, looking through the bars of the fence. As a recent art school graduate, the Tower of Toys mesmerized me. It both honored and defied design theory. The structure was showing honesty in how it was built, starting on a broad base, tapering towards the welkin of this skyscraper city. It showed clarity in how it was created. If there is a comparison worth making with an architect-built structure it might be San Francisco’s Transamerica Pyramid, while in the realm of outsider architecture the structure has evoked Simon Rodia’s Watts towers for many. Eddie Boros defied what I learned in design theory in his construction and connection details. Although his tower looked and stood like a tall structure, its details did neither suggest that it should, nor assure its stability or longevity, where Rodia’s creation does. But Boros wasn’t a designer or architect in that schoolish way. He built from passion, with intuition, using that rough-n-tumble New York grit as the tower’s backbone and his own longevity as mortar. How cool is that

A photo album:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jschumacher/sets/72157605010716901/show/with/2485379258/

An elegy: http://nymag.com/news/intelligencer/47237/

Taking it down: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBY0Vk6wyrU

Pelagic and Welkin: “Stepping on the beach, do-do-do-do!”

BY | Posted on | FILED UNDER Categories Brooklyn, Pelagic, Welkin

Fake ConverseFish

Says the famous Spongebob Squarepants. Going to the beach, when it’s not crowded, is a fun thing to do. Everyone should try it. But you’re at a risk of getting strep throat or some sort of sickness. It happens every time, on the days when it’s not crowded (November-February). Anyways, I took these photos at Coney Island, so enjoy. I think they’re very pretty.

Lovely Couple

Just Because I Like This One