New York/Atlantic City


Former Trump Taj Mahal — © Brian Rose

The grand staircase to the Trumpian realm — now stripped of its onion domes and minarets. Atlantic City continues to bank on casinos as the way out of urban blight and crime. It hasn’t worked so far.

Donald Trump wrote “The Art Of The Deal,” but it was Florida’s Seminole Indians who made a truly amazing deal to buy the opulent casino built by the man who is now president of the United States.

The Trump Taj Mahal, the Atlantic City, N.J., casino that the real estate mogul built for $1.2 billion in 1990, went for 4 cents on the dollar when it was sold in March. Documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday revealed the price billionaire Carl Icahn got from Hard Rock International for the shuttered casino: $50 million.

— The Los Angeles Times/AP

New York/Grand Central Terminal


The Oyster Bar, Grand Central Terminal — © Brian Rose

There is no more essential New York experience than having an oyster stew or pan roast in the Oyster Bar in Grand Central. If you sit at the counter along the north wall you can watch your stew prepared in front of you. It all happens in 3 or 4 minutes — a half dozen Blue Point oysters are quickly cooked in clam broth in a steam heated pan, half-and-half is added, along with dashes of Worcestershire, hot chili sauce, and a sprinkle of paprika. The pan is then tilted, the stew goes into a bowl, and it arrives piping hot a few seconds later. It doesn’t get any better than this.

I once sat next to Peter Seeger at the counter in the Oyster Bar — he was alone — but I didn’t say a word.


Grand Central Terminal — © Brian Rose

After an oyster stew, one must pay homage to Grand Central Terminal itself, one of the greatest interiors in the world. Look up and see the Zodiac. Be filled with wonder.
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New York/The Bowery


T
he Bowery and Delancey Street — © Brian Rose

The Bowery has been known for a long time as the restaurant supply and lighting district of New York. Manhattan used to have many such concentrations of businesses, often with their wares spilling out onto the sidewalks. Does anyone remember dodging rolling clothing racks in the Garment District?


The Bowery — © Brian Rose

The stores are still there — mostly. But new hotels and a scattering of galleries and restaurants have gradually begun to move in. I actually expected a more rapid turnover, but I think that the restaurant supply and lighting businesses will eventually decamp for the outer boroughs. Some will be pushed out, others who own their buildings, will cash in.


The Bowery — © Brian Rose

The Bowery remains, for the moment, a wonderfully chaotic mess of street. There are still a few shelters for homeless men, vestiges of the days when this was New York’s skid row. Chinatown dominates the south end of the Bowery, as colorful as ever, while things have gotten quite upscale near Cooper Square at the north end.

New York/The Bowery


The Bowery — © Brian Rose

Just a few doors from the cacophonous corner of Delancey Street and the Bowery, I came across George Versailles, a store displaying lots of gold encrusted furniture and glittering chandeliers. The faux opulence, the forced élegance. It vaguely reminded me of something. Oh yes…


Donald Trump apartment, Trump Tower — photo by Sam Horine

It’s Donald Trump by way of Louis XIV by way of Saddam Hussein by way of Muammar Gaddafi. Dictator chic — available on the Bowery.

New York/The Bowery


The Bowery and Delancey Street — © Brian Rose

Not many know this, but  Hitler was obsessed with inflicting direct damage to the United States, and had plans to drop a nuclear bomb on New York. Ground zero was this exact corner — the Bowery and Delancey — equidistant between Downtown and Midtown. Fortunately, the Nazis ran out of time, and were defeated before they developed the bomb.

It is still an epicenter of sorts. Traffic going to and from the Williamsburg Bridge congeals at this point where restaurant supply outlets and lighting stores vie with sidewalk cafes for dominance. It feels a little like the center of all things.

New York/The Bowery


Pell Street and Bowery — © Brian Rose


Grand Street and Bowery — © Brian Rose


The Bowery — © Brian Rose


The Bowery — © Brian Rose

Continuing my walk up the Bowery. Chinatown extends farther north than ever. There’s a lot of construction, but it’s hard to know which way things are going. It’s still a crazy quilt of shops, wildly diverse architecture, and crowded streets. In the late afternoon sun, shadows were sharp and colors vibrant. I made the photograph of the steel beams by sticking the camera through a construction fence.

New York/The Bowery


Hester and Bowery — © Brian Rose

I was down on lower Broadway and decided to walk back to my studio by way of the Bowery. At Hester Street, in the heart of Chinatown I came across Who’s Next, a mural by Otto Schade, which depicts a bald eagle comprised of guns. Its talons grasp a bullet wrapped in stars and stripes.

New York/Atlantic City


Kassel Dummy Award submissions

I have rarely been successful at grant submissions or competitions. It’s a good thing I haven’t waited around for such accolades, financial or otherwise. I would never have done any of my Iron Curtain/Berlin wall project. And none of my independent book projects would have seen the light of day. Certainly not my most recent Atlantic City project.

I have dutifully submitted my books to the Kassel Dummy Award, which spotlights unpublished photo books, but I’ve never been shortlisted. Not this time either. But there it is —  my Atlantic City book dummy — in one of their publicity photos (top right). Oh well.

Stay tuned, however, for news…

New York/Song

down the darkening street

I have seen my fortunes fall, rise, and fall again
I have walked the painted line to where the highway ends
tunnels burrow through the earth burrow through the pain
rumble through the underground the rumor of trains

let me show you what we’ve built, staggering and steep
let me show you where we live, where we hunker down to sleep
let me show you this city deep and incomplete
let me show you where your heart goes down the darkening street

I have heard her poetry the clash of ice and fire
dots and dashes intermittent sparks that crackle on the wire
twisted steel the dust of years swirling in a gyre
the bric-a-brac of broken dreams in the pathways of desire

she was once my love my muse ghost-like in the mist
now I know, now I admit, that she does not exist
this towering tree, this tenement, this isle of rocky schist
what is real, what is true, what images persist

Music and lyrics © Brian Rose

 

New York/Midtown


West 43rd Street and Fifth Avenue — © Brian Rose

Thunder and lightening, torrential rain, then gradual brightening. Walking through steam clouds after teaching my class at the International Center of Photography. Downtown, Stormy Daniels, Trump’s porn dalliance appeared in Federal court, along with Trump’s slimy mister fixit Michael Cohen. Hilarity ensued. Somehow, the Trump embarrassment comes to roost here in New York and has devolved into farce. .

New York/Gravesend


Gravesend, Brooklyn — © Brian Rose

New York City spreads out like an endless carpet across Long island comprising the boroughs of Queens and Brooklyn. I took the D train down to Gravesend just one stop before Coney Island on the Atlantic Ocean. The streets are lined with single family houses and duplexes fronted by elaborate decorative railings and religious icons.


Gravesend, Brooklyn — © Brian Rose

It is, apparently, a mostly white neighborhood, some Asians mixed in, A number of large housing projects loom off to the east, and consistent with the segregated nature of much of New York, are predominately black. We are in Trump country, almost for sure. The cheap ostentation, the gaudy appliqué, are clues. But maybe I’m wrong. I’m out of my element here. It’s a strange world with its own peculiar culture, its own aesthetic rules.


Gravesend, Brooklyn — © Brian Rose

Many of the houses are built up above garages, I’m guessing to stay above flood waters. This area lies only a few blocks from the Lower Bay of New York harbor,


Gravesend, Brooklyn — © Brian Rose

Some of the houses are set back behind driveways and are located in the middle of the block. Very odd.


Gravesend, Brooklyn — © Brian Rose

Manicured shrubbery, and plastic tulips. This is an apartment building. Three buzzers and a well-fortified door. A wreath with a plastic bird’s nest, and to the right a wind chime. A bright turquoise hose hides behind the bush.


Calvert Vaux Park — © Brian Rose

I crossed over the Belt Parkway, which follows the contour of the shoreline in Brooklyn, and walked into Calvert Vaux Park. Vaux and Fredrick Law Olmsted were responsible for Central Park — Vaux designing many of the bridges and structures in the park. I have no idea why anyone would name this place for him.

Some of the park was under renovation, and there were two new turf soccer fields, in use by young players in uniforms. Further along I reached my destination,  a scruffy baseball field where my son was playing for his college team. Next to a parking lot reeds popped up out of the marshy ground, and a flock of ducks flew overhead.


Calvert Vaux Park — © Brian Rose

A player raked the infield dirt before the game began. A scraggly line of trees stood just behind the outfield fence, and in the distance a line of buildings in Coney Island. It was 42 degrees and windy..


Calvert Vaux Park — © Brian Rose

There was almost no place to watch the game at this field. The dugouts blocked much of the view, and there were no bleachers. Spectators stood or sat on folding chairs huddled together behind chain link fencing, wherever there was a glimpse of the field. I followed a narrow path between the dugout and some fencing, ducking beneath tree branches to reach a small area adjacent to a shed containing various tools for raking and tamping down the infield. I plopped my chair down and could just see home home plate and the infield.


Calvert Vaux Park — © Brian Rose

Baseball in New York City on barely acceptable fields in bone chilling cold. My son’s team won both games of the doubleheader. He got on the team bus, and I trudged back to the D train.

New York/Cooper Union


41 Cooper Square, designed by Morphosis  —  © Brian Rose

Adrian Jovanovic Hall — proposed

Currently, the no name New Academic Building. A much maligned architectural wonder — largely because of its connection to Cooper’s financial problems — it was intended as a bold step into the future for the school.

Turning things around at Cooper was a community effort, but it would not have happened without the leadership of Adrian Jovanovic. His tragic death last year stunned everyone, but his inspiration remains a powerful presence. The board of trustees has adopted a plan to return to free tuition within 10 years, and hope, albeit cautious, now prevails where once there was much anguish and despair.

In that spirit, it does not diminish our individual and collective roles to say, that Adrian Jovanovic saved Cooper Union. He deserves recognition and honor.