Riding the Gypsy Caravan
In a land that bears the footprints of past gypsies, the Provencal town of Saint Remy de Provence, at the foot of the Aplilles mountain, Les Verdines keeps unburried these footprints by restoring and selling gypsy caravans. In recent years, it has become the posh accessory to french gardens and backyards as they are transformed into guest rooms, tea rooms, childrens playhouses, nad outdoor rooms. In any case, Les Verdines endeavor in these exiqusite artisan wandering homes is perpetuating a heritage and culture so often forgotten and abandoned.
And while verdines can still be
seen in the Provencal areas of
France progressing along
roadside at a horses pace –
much like our American version of traditional Quakers — and their bright encampments illuminating the outskirts of villages. Les Verdines are now offering with their recollections of these verdines a piece and spirit of these proud, mystical, nomadic inhabitants to outsiders. Keep in mind, these are not built replicas, but actual recollections of original gypsy caravans.
Selling both antique and reconstructed gypsy caravans, each caravan is restored and then furnished and decorated with its own unique style, colors, materials, and knick-knacks in the spirit of yesteryear. This, of course, can be tailored to individuals’ style as well. Though these caravans are not intended to be used on the road, they can be moved about within a private property.
Link: Les Verdines
Via: apartment therapy
Hoodoo Russian Voodoo
Remember the Toy Tower as Gilding wrote about back in May when this monstrosity of a creation was torn down after the death of its flamboyant creator.
Well, this is the Russian version of it. This strange dwelling was found somewhere in the Russian countryside. Dirty as the Toy Tower may have been, this is just straight up scary. Don’t laugh. It looks all cute and harmless and, at most, eccentric — at first. Then you get to the cattle-and-doll-head fence.
Link: English Russia
Another Ruin About to be Lost…Ironically
Rochester, New York, was already outgrowing its downtown cemetery, Riverside, when a cholera epidemic struck in 1832. City officials began the planning to a new cemetery and purchased the land that would become Mt. Hope in 1836.
Mt. Hope was the first municipal cemetery in the United States with graves older than the official graveyard itself. Residents of Mt. Hope include Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglas. And among traditional graves include lawn crypts, columbariums and family mausoleums. And contrary to popular rumor, there are still burial spaces remaining, with an average of about 350 interments each year.
Mt. Hope also boasts and interesting cocaphony of the living mingling with the dead and elegantly up-kept grounds lay the foundation of abandoned buildings. There are historic walking tours of the cemetery and its myriad of historic treasures kept within its surrounding areas. Currently, the City of Rochester in conjunction with the Friends of Mt. Hope have several efforts underway to preserve and restore the cemetery. So…go check the ruins out while they’re still here. That’s a bit ironic to be saying, isn’t it.
Link: WebUrbanist | Friends of Mt. Hope | Riverside & Mt. Hope Cemeteries
Where Central Disappears
Know the old expression of ‘being wiped off the map”? In recent years, Centralia, Pensylvania has become one of those imbaguities. That’s not to say that Centralia doesn’t exist. It’s just not habitable.
Centralia lies in the heart of Pensylvania’s coal mining region. After mining itself clean of its natural resources, the town began using the abandoned mines as an underground landfill. Practicing a habit of burning the building up trash in the mine, it was the townspeople unfortunate circumstance that, sometime in 1962, some of the burning trash in a strip of mine laying underneath the outskirts of town caught fire an exposed anthracite vein and ..*Boom*..
The underground fire was thought to be extinguished when the fire erupted in a pit a few days later. Again the fire was doused with water for hours, but to no avail. For the next two decades, workers battled the fire, flushing the mine with water and fly ash, excavated the burning material and dug tranches, backfilled, drilling again and again in an attempt to find the boundaries of the fire in a plan to put the fire out or, at the least, contain it. All efforts failed and government officials delayed to take any real steps to preserve the township. By the early 1980′s, the fire had affected approximately 200 acres; the land becoming unable to sustain most forms of plant and animal life, the ground became so unstable that sinkholes would open up swallowing homes, stretches of road, and even people who walked on top of the unsteady ground that is prone to sudden collapse. Homes had to be abandoned and carbon monoxide gas reached life threatening levels.
An engineering study, conducted in 1983, concluded that the fire could burn for another century or more and “could conceivably spread over an area of approximately 3,700 acres.”
For over 44 years, and $40 million dollars later in attempts to stop the fire and help the residents of Centralia, the fire still burns through the old coal mines and veins under the town and its surrounding hillside. As fire, smoke, fumes, and toxic gases came up through the backyards, basements, and streets of Centralia, most homes were condemned and residets were evacuated and, using grants from the federal government, were relocated to new homes elsewhere. Still, some die-hard residents refused to be bought out and remained in the town. Today, only nine Centralians remain.
Link: Centralia Pensylvania…truth is stranger than fiction | Centralia Photo Archive | Forgotten Pensylvania
Depraved Indifference of Stewardship
Founder of the New
Deal, the greatest
investment in our
nation’s modern
development,
Roosevelt’s New
Deal agencies
literally rebuilt the
United States and
brought it from
the 19th century into
the 20th. And now,
the Franklin D.
Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum at Hyde Park, N.Y., the nation’s first presidential library, is falling apart in near irrevocable proportions, threatening the loss of the materials documenting this historic legacy, which brought us roads, bridges, dams and even libraries and museums.
The tradition of national presidential libraries was innaugurated by Roosevelt when he donated his personal and presidential papers to the government — a testament to the once great presidents’ belief that they were nothing greater or above than a public servant. Along with these paper, Roosevelt also donated land from his estate along the Hudson River. Friends of the president formed a nonprofit corporation to raise money to build the library, which Roosevelt designed himself and incorporated within the facade the native Hudson Valley fieldstone. Construction started in 1939 and finished in 1941; much of which has not been updated since.
The basement, which lies below the water table and is where collections are stored, flood in a good rain, and have only sump pumps, which were installed in 1939, to keep it dry, but don’t. Storm and sewer drainage run together, which means they mingle if there’s a backup in the basement, and causes flooding in restrooms and public areas.
The electrical system, which was also installed in 1939, has outlived the suppliers of its replacement parts. Archivists use the original circuit breakers to turn the lights on and off, which is housed in the flooding basement and presents a hazard for shorting and setting the place on fire, subsequently destroying the entire collection. Furthermore, the staff have come to resort to stuffing towels against doorjambs to keep water out.
FDR supervising the construction of the
Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum
And yes,
Michael from
Yonkers,
losing these
treasures –
and they are
treasures –
would, and will
be if
something
isn’t done
soon, a grave
depravity.
When is the
last time a
president has
openly
disclosed to
the American
people, the
people he is
meant to serve, the papers not only of his legislation, but those of his own personal collection. These papers demonstrate a time in America in which the presidency believed and practiced the moral value of public service. Roosevelt’s papers demonstrate not a deification of a president stored within the walls of a library, but precedence. A precedence that this is what it means to be a president. Furthermore, the F.D.R. Presidential Library and Museum is not a monument but a place of research and knowledge, a place of America’s history, not of reverence to one man. As President Reagan described, presidential libraries are “classrooms of democracy” that belong to the American people.
Parts of the steam heating system are also original, including the asbestos that was used to insulate the steam pipes, presenting a danger to employees and the public as the asbestos continues to crack and peel. The museum saw some 110,000 visitors last year, along with the 15,000 elementary and high school students who visit each year, making it among one of the most popular presidential museums visited.
The heating system is so out of date it can’t be calibrated or repaired. Old transformers contain PCB, a dangerous toxic material. Security and fire systems are outdated. Household dehumidifiers are deployed among the archive stacks and museum exhibits in a losing battle to control damaging humidity.
The House Financial Services Subcommittee has approved funds for repairs and new equipment at the library, covering the first year of a three-year program. The House Appropriations Committee is the next step, and, of course, the Senate must agree.
Such is a sad state for the stewardship of our history.
Link: NYTimes– “Freedom from Mildew | Franklin D. Roosevelt Library & Museum | William J. Clinton Presidential Library & Museum
Original article written by Nick Taylor of the New York Times, “Freedom from Mildew”
Darkened Shores of Polished Remains
Poveglia, an island located south of Venice’s historical center, and not far from the area known as Boche di porto di Malamocco. It was originally a self-governing island hundreds of years ago. That is, before it was taken over by Italy when the Black (Bubonic) Plague was sweeping over the country side, and the island became the dumping grounds for the dead — and the not so dead but definitely doomed. Even alive, the plague striken people were tossed into “plague pits” with their fellow dead comrades and either buried, burned, or just left to lie there and rot. And, as the plague worsened, panic swelled, and those showing even the slightest symptom were dragged kicking and screaming from their homes. These living victims, including children and babies, were tossed just the same into the pits to be burned, buried, or left dying in agony and the smell of rotten flesh. The island was used as thus during the three times that the Black Death spread through Europe — beginning with the Romans — and was an efficient way of keeping the infected people separated from the healthy. It is believed that over 160,000 people died on the island throughout its pit-filling history.
The island was once home to a small community…until it was abandoned around 1380, during the War of Chioggia. Reports of voices, footsteps, eerie sounds, and an overall sense of evil permeating the island is rumored to be the cause, and locals of the area today still will not journey to the island at night. Most will not even talk about the island, its history, or its ‘inhabitants’, not even for the sake of capitalizing on tourism.
The soil on the island, combines with the charred remains of the bodies, formed a layer of sticky ash on the land. The top layer of the ash has dried to form a fine dust that blankets the island in the breeze and catches in the lungs. Part of the island’s core consists of a layer of human remains, a reason for which fisherman avoid the area, as chances of catching a body part of two is likely.
In 1922, a psychiatric hospital was built on the island. Many of the patients claimed to see the tormented spirits of the plagued and plague victims; a perfect justification for the administering physician to conduct torturous experiments on the patients in order to discover the cause of their insanity. Patients described, in horrid detail, seeing the ghosts of rotting corpses from the plague, of hearing whispers echoing off the walls, and being deemed demented, their reports fell on deaf ears and in the hands of an even more demeted doctor — a little too zealously ambitious…oh, and eventually driven completely mad by the ghosts himself. Or so it is believed.
The doctor’s methods of experimentation were crude, to say the least, having performed lobotomies using a basic hand drill or, more often than not, a simple hammer and chisel. The observation tower became the place where they were subjected to the most hideous of tortures.
After years of performing his experiments, the doctor himself began seeing ghosts and, it is said, took flying leap to his death from the bell tower. Miraculously, or one really fucking funny joke of a ghost, the doctor did not die — not immediatly, that is. According to one nurse, as the doctor lay writhing in agony, a fine mist swirled up around him, entered his body, and choked him to death. It is whispered from tight lips in dark corners by locals that the doctor is bricked up in the bell tower, and on a still night the bell can be heard tolling across the bay.
Recently, a family sought permission to tour the island, in the hopes of buying for a cheap sum in the pursuit of building a vacation home. Reports state that the family left the island before the night was over. The family has refused to comment, but it was a little harder to hide their daughter’s face — which required 20 stitches after “something” ripped it open.
Thrill seekers have eluded the light police patrol (the island is currently closed to the public) that guards the bay and subsequent island at night. Though all have sworn never to return. Reports of “moans and screams that reverberate around the island are unbearable” and that “there is a feeling of the most intense evil.”
This makes Poveglia the perfect candidate for a museum of ecology, history, nature, and culture of the lagoon; a sort of laboratory which will involve the visitors in a cultural journey to the discovery of the Venetian lagoon. Nope, not even Gilding is sick enough to employ this one (but do note she said employ. That’s not to say she wouldn’t have hilariously and with a maliciously fervored glee thought about it).
In a current project, restoration and restructuring of the island’s existing buildings, avoiding the introduction of new construction, and with planning directives that put above all the importance of the environment and employing building strategies peculiar to Veneto culture, and more specifically, particular to Venice.
Plans for the island’s current architecture include a “Welcome Center” housed in the southern part of the island, the main building, and situated opposite the canal, separating it from the “octagon”, a prominent structure, once used as a fortress, on the island. The “Guest Quarters”, a.k.a. ‘Foresteria’, will be made of the building directly behind the Welcome Center, and wil be used for the comfort of visitors between scheduled events — because nothing says comfort while waiting for your conference, concert, or movie screening inside the place that Satan’s tortured minions play. A restaurant, located on the south west side of the island next to the welcome buildings, will offer Venetian cuisine — all produce used in the dishes will come from the organic vegetable farm located in the northern part of the island. And don’t mind the dripping strips of ghoul flesh slopped on your plate — simply hand it back to your attending tortured soul…er…waiter and you may escape your dinner with your face still intact.
Oh, and for the eco-concious, plans have been envisaged for a computerized system to control the managament of public lighting, therefore, avoiding “light pollution.” Just one tiny step in conservation in the sphere of all the charred body ashes that the island is contributing to the atmosphere.
Link: Shadowlands | Phunk U– “Poveglia Island of Horror” | Poveglia | Wikipedia–Pveglia
Related: Poveglia: A 1st-Hand Account
High-Voltage Generation
Russia appears to be a veritable shmorgasborg of way too fun abandoned and/or hidden sights just waiting to be played with, on, about, around, in…well, you get the picture. From abandoned villages — some even with distinct architecture unique to Russia that date some 200 years old — to abandoned and forgotten dachas to an Experimental Grounds for High-Voltage Generation.
This bizarre military/scientific research, and eerily futuristic doomsday-weapon-of-mass-destruction looking, creation is located close to the city of Istra (50 miles from Moscow), and is the only open-air kind in the world.
Amazingly, it’s still in use. The experiments done here are based on the work of Nikola Tesla, who continued his research with generators and multi-million volt transmitters until his death in 1943.
Link: Dark Roasted
A Swallow’s Nest Upon a Sea Side Cliff
Swallow’s Nest Castle is an architectural folly, located on the Crimean shore in southern Ukraine, built between 1911-1912 ontop of 130 ft high Aurora Cliff. Designed by Russian architect Leonid Sherwood, the castle overlooks Ai-Todor cape of the Black Sea and is located near the remnants of the Roman castrum of Charax.
The first building on the Aurora Cliff was a wooden cottage romantically named the “Love Castle” and constructed for a Russian general circa 1895.
In 1911, Baron von Steinheil, a Baltic German noble who had made a fortune extracting oil in Baku, aquired the timber cottage and within a year had it replaced by the current building. Though Scottish baronial and Neo-Moorish styles had been introduced in Crimea in the 1820′s, Swallow’s Nest is closer in style to German architectural follies, such as Neuschwanstein, Babelsberg, and Stolzenfels, although its precarious setting on the cliffs by the sea may also suggest the Belém Tower.
The Village Civilization Forgot
Oftentimes abandoned for city dwelling where more money can be earned, thousands of Russias signature wooden architectural masterpieces, some more than 200 years old, can be found standing amongst the barren ruins of abandoned Russian villages.
This particular home sits amongst a deserted village, the road all but grown over with only faint tire tracks leaving a barely discernable trail in their wake from the few and far between explorers to their corner of forgotten earth.
Link: EnglishRussia.com
Sleeping Dachas Time Forgot
Hmmm…Gilding is going to have to ask Pavel about this. Apparently, masterpieces of Russian medieval wooden architecture can be found abandoned — many appearing as if they have just been left there, furniture remaining, and completely undisturbed. It seems that their location — deep inside the forests of Russia — leave them there like sleeping artisan crafted giants that time — and people — have forgotten, just waiting to be found and awakened.
Related: “Gingerbread Houses in the Ruins”
Link: EnglishRussia.com
Via: ullabenulla
Gingerbread Houses in the Ruins
City official, Nikolai Zakotnov, came by 32 Kartashov and vowed to rescue it. Once serving as homt to a 19th-century merchant, the little log masterpiece with ornate doors and shutters carved like doilies, became a woebgone flophouse after the Soviet years, and had all but given up on itself as no one in the Siberian city could even be bothered with it. But Zakotnov saw standing an example of Tomsk’s unique architectural heritage.
The riverfront city of Tomsk finds wooden buildings erected before Communism filling its side streets and now standing in various states of decay. Some of the Gingerbread Houses are already gone, demolished and replaced with high-rise apartments, supermarkets, and offices. But as Tomsk prospers from trade, pressure is growing for new real eastate projects, especially in the commercial center. Yet 1,800 or so still remain and so the balancing act of economic growth and historical preservation ensues.
Zakotnov hopes that a third of the Gingerbread Houses can be saved and restored, creating a historic district, perhaps even becoming an attraction for tourism, the city being a mere four hours from Moscow by plane.
“In the old days, the homes’ owners competed to show off the most lavish wooden designs, like American suburbanites vying to have the most verdant lawn on the block. Craftsmen flocked to Tomsk and other Siberian cities, and their art thrived. To create such carvings from wood was a fine way to honor the Siberian forests.”
But with the revolution, the government converted these homes and turned them into communal apartments, first housing up to three and four families into each, and by the end of World War II, the buildings were crammed with eight or more families as factories were evacuated to Siberia from the front. Under Communism, when everyone was responsible for upkeep of the homes, no one was.
Using $3 million from this years city treasure, Zakotnov will restore a dozen buildings, replacing corroded logs with new ones, using Siberian larch, and completely renovating the interior, including, for the first time, bathroom. (Outhouses can still be found in the backyard.)
But not all are happy with the final product.
“It was better before,” said Nina Kupina, 85, a retired bookkeeper who was leaning from a window of a house that had been all prettied up — tan paint, beveled window frames, new roof. “But then they had to redo it, all those fools. They spoiled it all.”
Ah well, c’est la vie.
Link: NYTimes– “A Fresh Take…”
Pebbles of Imagination
Facteur Ferdinand Cheval, an “uneducated, unskilled mailman who was moved to build the palace of his childhood imagination after stumbling across one beautiful stone in the road,” built his perfect palace in Hauterives, Southern France. “From that moment,” he said in a letter dated 1897, “I did not sleep day or night.”
Beginning in 1879 and finished in 1912, Palais took over 10,000 days, 93,000 hours, and in the end a total of 33 years to construct. Its design was inspired by various sources including the Bible, Neuschwanstein (a Hindu sanctuary), and a sandcastle.
Mailman by day and crazed architect by night, driven to build Palais by one pretty pebble and a child’s imagination.
Link: sadtomato
Via: Curious Expeditions
Vertical Implosion
If you had a house that was going to be demolished, scrapped and completely replaced with something else – what would you do with it? Houston sculptors Dan Havel and Dean Ruck thought it would be “neat” to turn the house into one of the strangest installation art pieces the ‘burbs have ever seen.
Letting their sense of humor reign, the Tunnel House was built, creating an illusion of vertigo and a sense that the house is being sucked in upon itself.
One of the really great things about this installation piece is the ability for the viewer to interact with it, walking through the middle and coming out the other side.
The tunnel tapers through the center of the house, becoming a crawlspace that ‘drains’ out the other side. Suitably enough, the homes on the site were slated to be demolished for the site to be turned into a new arts center. Since the houses’ demolition was slated for early June 2005, the installation piece, which was constructed in April of that year, was designed to only remain up until the, though Gilding found pictures that were dated as having been taken as late as June 2007. Whether the Tunnel House installation is still up at this point in time no one mentioned, however, boukou pictures can be found on Flickr if you search with the tag ‘Tunnel House’.
Link: WebUrbanist
The Fantastic Adventures of Count Carl von Cosel & the Corpse Bride
Born George Karl Tanzler, the German born radiologist became Key West’s own necrophiliac Count Carl von Cosel.
As a child, von Cosel claimed to have been visited by visions of a dead ancestor, Countess Anna Constantia von Cosel, who revealed to him the face of his true love, an exotic dark-haired woman.
Von Cosel
emmigrated to
the United
States, winding
his way down to
Key West,
Florida, where he took up residency at the Marine Hospital. It is there that von Cosel met reputed local beauty Maria Elena Milagro “Helen” de Hoyos, a Cuban-American woman who had been brought to the hospital by her mother. Von Cosel immediately recognized the ravishing young woman as the dark-haired beauty that had been revealed to him in his “visions.”
Hoyos married, though her husband left her after she miscarried their child. Eventually, she was diagnosed with tuberculosis, the same disease her sister had succumbed to, and a typically fatal disease at the time. The disease claimed the lives of almost Hoyos’ entire family. Von Cosel, with his self-professed medical “knowledge,” attempted to treat and cure Hoyos with a variety of medicines, as well as with x-ray and electrical equipment that was brought to the Hoyos’ home, becoming obsessed with the young woman. Von Cosel showered her with gifts of jewelry and clothing, and he allegedly professed his love for her, but no evidence has ever surfaced that Hoyos reciprocated the feelings of affection.
Despite his best efforts, von Cosel was unable to save his visioned dark-haired beauty, and with the permission of the Hoyos family, von Cosel commissioned and paid for the construction of an above ground mausoleum for his beloved in the Key West City Cememtary, which he visited almost every night.
But nearly two years after her death, simply visiting his love was no longer enough and von Cosel carted her body to his home on a toy wagon after dark. Von Cosel attached the corpse’s bones together with wire and coat hangers and fitted the face with glass eyes. As the skin of the corpse was decomposed, von Cosel replaced it with silk cloth (at least he chose the good stuff) soaked in wax and plaster of paris (hey it had to feel good and be long lasting for vigorous activity…yech). As the hair fell out of the decomposed scalp, von Cosel fashioned a wig from Hoyos hair that had been collected by her mother and given to him not long after her burial. He filled her abdominal and chest cavity with rags to keep the original form, and dressed her remains in stockings, jewelry, and gloves, and kept the body in his bed. Von Cosel also used copious amounts (not sure ‘copious amounts’ is still enough) of perfume, disinfectants, and pressing agents, to mask the odor and forestall the effects of decomposition.
In 1940, nearly seven years after his midnight traipse grave-robbing, the rumor mill made its way to Hoyos’ sister that von Cosel was sleeping with the disinterred body of her sister Elena. She confronted von Cosel at his home, discovering the body and notifying the police, whereupon von Cosel was arrested and detained. Found mentally competent enough to stand trial, von Cosel was charged with “wantonly and maliciously (is it malicious if you ‘copiously’ love the corpse within?) destroying a grave and removing a body without authorization (is that to say he could have asked permission to reassemble and boff the corpse?). The case was eventually dropped, though it did make it to a preliminary hearing, as the statute of limitations for the crime had…teehee, expired.
Link: Wikipedia–Carl Tanzler
A Toy Tower Creation by A Force of Nature in a String of Pearls
The ramshackle wooden tower has loomed over Avenue B for more than 20 years, drawing curiosity–both the morbid and awed ilk.
The Toy Tower at Sixth Street and Avenue B was the 65-foot tall, toy draped wooden tower creation of Eddie Boros and the the garden’s quirky and controversial centerpiece. The creator of the monolithic sculpture? installation? disaster? was Eddie Boros–who lived in the same E. Fifth St. and Avenue B apartment in which he grew up in. He died recently at the age of 74 after receiving poor care at the V.A. Hospital in which he was recouperating from the double amputation of his legs.
“NYPD Blue” featured the tower in its opening credits and a half-size replica of it graces the stage of “RENT,” the East Village rock opera. “NYPD Blue” would occasionally return to the garden to get a fresh shot of the tower to stay current with its ever-changing appearance.
Born the middle child of Hungarian immigrants, Boros followed the family trade of house painter, but also had a consuming passion for art.
His tower came about after he joined the then-two-year-old garden — around the corner from his house — in 1985. He began carving big wood sculptures in the middle of the garden, but this was taking up space and the wood chips were flying everywhere. Founding member of the garden, Joanee Freedom explains that “each gardener only got one 4-foot-by-8-foot plot…We told him, ‘Put it on your plot.’”
So Boros picked a plot–and built up. In the end, the Tower’s base grew to engulf eight plots.
But while tourists loved it (a Japanese town wanted to purchase it), Boros found both his creation, and himself, the source of much chagrin and contention. This, of course, could be due to his penchant for climbing to the top of the Tower at two o’clock in the morning to beat on his drum or toot his horn. And some gardeners felt it was dangers–and bitched that the Tower blocked sunlight to several plots. Every year votes were taken on whether it should be torn down, but each time it narrowly survived.
“A forerunner of today’s recycling movement, Boros felt much of what was discarded as garbage had beauty and told the story of the neighborhood. Early on, he decided to decorate his tower with refuse that he found both on the streets of the East Village and sometimes farther abroad.
Many of the things he collected he gave to neighborhood children. He made bikes and airplanes for the kids. He never married or had children of his own, though it was as if the whole neighborhood was his family.”
He was also renowned for his attire — or lack of it. He walked around the neighborhood with his size-14 feet bare, without a shirt, wearing black cutoff jeans shorts and always a string of pearls around his neck.
But in the end, despite media coverage and narrow support, the Toy Tower was dismantled last Tuesday [May 20, 2008] after the city deemed it structurally unsound.
Cristal summed it up the best, though: ” I just liked how ugly the thing was. When you walked down Avenue B, it was like, “Ooh, have a delicious Kir Royale at Rue B! Try an organic, grass-fed burger at Back Forty! Eek! Shit-covered toys hanging from the sky!”
Links: NYTimes Week in Pictures | The Villager | New York magazine
