The Performance on a Dirty Corner

There was no lack of spectators for the performance down on the corner. Many even returned to watch the show on its second and third days. "I've lived here for 30 years," or "I've lived here for 40 years," several of them stopped to say, "and I'm so glad you're doing this."

Creating a mural is a public performance. Of course, the finished artwork is a permanent installation, but the process of transforming a space in the middle of daily street life becomes performance art in its own right.

Watching @BigeyesWorld work on the Norwood mural, you realize this type of project is largely performance art. The community is spectators enjoying the show as the piece progresses. pic.twitter.com/MNa82Ao7li

— Urban Residue (@urbanresidue) September 2, 2018

East 207th Street and Bainbridge Avenue has always been an unremarkable and rather dirty corner.  The side of the bodega is a blank wall that consistently attracted juvenile tagging, which local anti-graffiti group Norwood Against Graffiti (NAG) routinely rolled over with fresh paint, seemingly refreshing the canvas for the next set of tags. Meanwhile, the sidewalk and tree pits had long accumulated trash. A couple local characters spend their afternoons sitting on the corner with a drink in hand. It was the leftover backside of a small commercial building, a little place that had mostly been abandoned for decades. It was a place that people shuffled through, dulled by the mundane ugliness.



While most people were resigned to walking by the griminess on this corner as an immutable fact of life, something they had effectively tuned out, Elisabeth von Uhl saw the possibility of creating a place that had more to contribute to the community. It took a few years of effort and a couple false starts, but with some perseverance and persuasion, she eventually partnered with ArtBridge and secured funding from Councilmember Andrew Cohen. ArtBridge brought in artist Laura Alvarez who designed and painted the mural.

Staring at the Pole

I was recently at Frederick Douglass Circle at the northwest corner of Central Park. Every time I go, I am bothered by a detail that detracts from the relationship between the plaza and its surroundings. I am not sure if the detail was on the drawings I first say many years ago, but if it was I certainly missed it.

Back in 2003, I attended a public meeting for neighbors skeptical about the transformation of Frederick Douglass Circle into a public space. At the conclusion of years of participatory planning and a design competition, residents of Towers on the Park emerged with last-minute objections to various aspects of the reconfiguration of the previously dysfunctional intersection (the circle was previously cut through by traffic, creating far too many movements as well as lane drops in the middle of the intersection...). I spoke in favor of the project, convinced it would create a great new public space.

Then construction stretched on for many years. It was disruptive for everybody in the area and continued long beyond what any resident would consider reasonable. I second guessed myself for speaking up after seeing the ordeal I had helped to put these people through. I hoped the quality of the built space would eventually make up for the disruptions in so many lives.

Since the first time I was finally able to visit the plaza some time around 2011, I have been bothered and deeply disappointed. For me, the execution of the concept was seriously compromised by one poorly placed traffic signal pole.

The overall concept for the plaza was strong, and much of it has in fact turned out very well. It would be unfair to call this urban space a failure. Yet while the statue of Douglass was symbolically positioned to face Harlem, the gesture is undermined by that traffic signal. Instead of looking up the avenue that carries his name, Douglass just stands there staring at a steel pole a few feet in front of him.

Chewing Gum on a Sign 15 Feet Over the Street

Stuck on a sign hanging over Broadway, out of sight of the throngs of workers and visitors crowding the sidewalks and unnoticed by the drivers passing below, are a lot of pieces of chewing gum. There's a few stickers stuck on there too. While generally invisible to ordinary New Yorkers, it is a shared experience of the thousands of tourists who pass mere feet below the sign while seated on the top of a double-decker bus. Some of these tourists are the people sticking the gum on there.

There are a handful of places where people have collectively created a kind of grotesque landmark by sticking their chewing gum onto something. The old gum tree in South Philadelphia and more extravagently, the gum wall in Seattle, come to mind. Compared to those, this sign is thoroughly unremarkable. Yet it shares the same fledgling crowd dynamic. All these locations emerge because something prompts others to follow the example of that first person who deposited their gum in an inappropriate place. At first, others just take enough notice to take advantage of the opportunity to discard their stale gum, until it reaches a critical mass and presents itself as an invitation to join the fun. In this case, it's possible to identify how this sign developed into the early convenience phase.

Touring an Underground Art Gallery

When we are out for a walk on the weekend and see a real estate agent's open house sign, my family sometimes likes to be a bit nosy and explore the interior spaces of our neighborhood. I also like to hear how our community is being described to our new neighbors. When the real estate agents ask the standard question about how long we've been looking, we generally embellish a little and say we have friends who may be interested in buying a home in our neighborhood. It's only a partial exaggeration, and other than a little disappointment that we're not going to be their next sale, there's no harm. If it's a slow day, sometimes they're glad to have some company.

On a recent weekend, we walked up to see an apartment in a cooperative next to the neighborhood park, where we know a family. The apartment had some nice views of the park, but was otherwise rather unremarkable. The real estate agent was polite and professional, but had little of interest to say about the neighborhood. I wanted to go down to visit the basement, though. We had never been downstairs, but one of our elected officials has mentioned more than once that he enjoyed door knocking in the co-op because the buildings are connected through the basement, allowing him to go from one to the next once inside.

Once down in the basement, we were pleasantly surprised by a gallery of discarded artwork and a communal library. Pieces of artwork created a juxtaposition with the rough, utilitarian materials of the basement walls. At the same time, the prints and paintings mostly appeared worn, sometimes slightly damaged, complementing the roughness of their setting. There are other buildings in the area with basements decorated by their supers, yet this one stands out because of its larger size, which makes it more like a gallery instead of a crowded, kitschy nook.

The basement also housed the communal library, where residents left their old books and could rummage for anything of interest left by others. Unlike the typical stray bookshelf, this had the appearance of a small library. Arranged on attractive, mismatched bookshelves well proportioned for the space, and set next to a giant bank of electrical meters, it made the improbable impressive.