Someone To Watch Over Me: Outdoor Advertising on Houston Street (A Slideshow)

I walk along or cross Houston Street almost every day, and I find it hard not to notice the outdoor advertising placed along the exterior street-facing walls of the buildings. These mega-size ads have become part of the visual culture of the contemporary megacity's landscape, insinuating themselves into the edges of our consumer desires. I like to think myself immune from such displays, but I caught myself this morning desiring a white dress shirt. Hmmm...Where did that come from? Let me see...er, Gap ad?

The ads along Houston are meant for a couple of consumer groups. Houston is a busy street for automobiles, and so the ads work for drivers zooming by. Pedestrians also would pass by these looming images while crossing south into SoHo's shopping mecca. The scale of these ads is impressive, for sure. Four- and five-story ads make for gigantic looming figures.

Sometimes the ads spoof the conventions of fashion modeling. The frog in the LifeWater ad poses like a fashion model, recalling comedian Sarah Silverman's mocking pose for Gap (which not long ago was where the new Phillip Lim Gap ad is sited).

Some news here. The DKNY September 11 ad, a familiar icon, may be in jeopardy. Recently, the building was sold to Abercrombie & Fitch for a 40,000 square-foot store, and the retailer may want the wall for its own advertising. Another ad here, the one with a baby and sponsored by a real estate broker, is south of Houston, on Lafayette. In that last image for Grand Theft Auto, that bright wall below is artwork by Keith Haring. The Diane Von Furstenberg girl/woman is looking very Les Miserables.

Jean Nouvel, Cass Gilbert, and the Hugh Ferriss Degree of Separation

In the image here, a streetscape along Mercer Street in Soho, the dark glassy building on the left is 40 Mercer, a luxury condo development by architect Jean Nouvel completed a few months ago. Yesterday, the prestigious Pritzker Prize (site) announced that Nouvel was the 2008 recipient. Looking south, Cass Gilbert's Woolworth Building, which I wrote about in the previous post, stands off in the distance.

Nouvel, a 62-year-old innovative designer, has several opportunities to add his touches to the physical landscape of New York. The condo above is a modest, though elegant, contribution. What he's planned for midtown is of a different order.

Nicolai Ouroussoff, architecture critic of the NYT, writes that Nouvel's planned 75-story tower next to the Museum of Modern Art "promises to be the most exhilarating addition to the skyline in a generation." (NYT article) The sketch of the proposed tower, Ourousoff notes, takes off from the imaginative 1920s sketches of architect Hugh Ferriss. Early in his career, Ferriss decided to focus on a career rendering the works of others, and after moving to New York in 1912 he went to work for Cass Gilbert. His rendering of the Woolworth Building for Gilbert is considerably lighter in mood than his later signature expressionist and theatrical sketches of the 1920s.

Nouvel, we're all coy to point out, resembles a handsomer though unmistakable Dr. Evil. Fashioning this new tower out of the mythical renderings of the New York skyline of mid-century - from Fritz Lang's Metropolis to DC Comic's Gotham (also Ferriss-influenced), Nouvel presents to New Yorkers a building that looks like its sketches, revealing the criss-cross lines of its construction. We'll be able to see straight through it in places. I'm now fantasizing an image of Nouvel, standing at a window on the 75th floor and looking out at the new Gotham, softly stroking a tiny hairless kitty.

See also Walking Off the Big Apple's 40 Bond to 40 Mercer walk. Image above by WOTBA.

UPDATE April 9, 2008. The proposed MoMA tower, designed by Nouvel, faces considerable opposition. Read about the Landmarks Preservation Committee public hearing in this NYT report.

The Woolworth Building

Minnesota architect Cass Gilbert (1859-1934) designed several important buildings for 20th century New York. The Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House (1902-1907) at 1 Bowling Green, his first big commission, is a lavish Beaux Arts- style masterpiece. The New York Life Building (1926-28) is a massive building that blends neo-Gothic with the geometries of more modern 1920s structures.

He designed the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College, where I spent my undergraduate years, and also buildings for the campus of The University of Texas in Austin, including Battle Hall (1911), a Spanish-Mediterranean Revival building that houses the architecture library and is considered one of the best structures in Texas. I only bring this up because I spent many pleasurable hours inside Battle Hall researching my master's thesis on the American skyscraper. I remember how I would sometimes look up from my books and gaze at the windows and ceiling and thinking about wanting to live in such a place.

The Woolworth Building at 233 Broadway, the tallest building in the world when it was built in 1913, annoyed some modernist architects for its neo-Gothic ornamentation and bothered others for just being so tall. It was impressive for its design and engineering, with the steel frame skeleton supported by enormous caissons driven deep into the earth. The elevators were faster and more plentiful than in other buildings at the time, a profitable factor that Frank Woolworth appreciated for his "cathedral of commerce."

This morning I walked south through Soho on Mercer Street until Canal, walked a block east and then continued south on Broadway until I reached the Woolworth Building. I sat in City Hall Park across the way and looked at the building for some time. The neo-Gothicism lends the building the ecclesiastical aura, but there's little doubt of its secular intent as permanent outdoor advertising. What it doesn't look like at all, interestingly, is a Woolworth store.

The Woolworth Building hovers in my field of vision whenever I walk through downtown, and I've started to invest in it spiritual meaning and power. Maybe angels hang out up there, like the ones dressed in trench coats in Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire.

Image: The Woolworth Building, 233 Broadway.

See nearby places in Tribeca:
Establishing Shots: The Tribeca Film Festival
The Tribeca of Duane: Duane Street and Duane Park
Tribeca Living: A Building for Chocolate, and One for the Wool Trade
In Search of the Lower West Side: Before Tribeca
Walking Off Tribeca and Remembering Mostly Lunch
Walking Off Tribeca: The Lay of the Land
Walking Off Tribeca: Starting at Square One

Attention, Soho Shoppers

There's a special on the block on Broadway between Prince and Spring.

This afternoon, after raking through the closet, I decided it was time for a little early spring clothes shopping. Walking into the bright sunshine and down Broadway, I'm always a little stunned by the shopping hordes. After spending a long time by myself indoors, the mass of people on New York streets makes me think that something out of the ordinary has taken place. "What's going on?", I sometimes ask myself. In fact, nothing out of the ordinary, just the circumstances of my life now plopped down in the midst of one of the world's shopping meccas.

I'm an anxious shopper. I usually pick one store along a favorite stretch of Broadway, find several items that I think I can live with, and then turn around and go home. Late March is tricky for the seasonal transition, so I selected a few cashmere sweaters in pastel colors and called it a day.

Many of the women out on the streets were still wearing jeans stuffed into their fur-lined boots. The overall effect, and it's been like this for years, is that the most fashionable New York women dress like Davy Crockett, king of the wild countree-ee-ee.

(See also the popular post from the Christmas season, Shopping in SoHo Without Euros, for my list of shopping favorites.)

Tomorrow, follow along as I shop for party snacks, beverages, and flowers, and the behind-the-scenes preparations for 300 out-of-town visitors. A regular Mrs. Dalloway (site map by E.K. Sparks, Clemson University, October 2002), I am.

Checklist for a Busy Week: Hair Stylist, Canal Street, a Film Symposium

The events of the upcoming week can conspire to do me in, but I'm assembling forces of angels to help me out. Beginning this Wednesday, my spouse (a.k.a. the colonel) will host 300 people at a nearby venue for a film symposium. This symposium, not a festival, is a biannual event, and I've gone through this very fun and enlightening experience/trial-by-fire five times in a previous life. This is the first of such events in New York.

Strangely, I am calm. I've made a list of tasks, accounted for surprises, and organized my life to account for crises. I carry my passport and a credit card with me at all times, so if any day gets too much, there's always New Zealand.

1. Haircut. Before friends arrive, I go see Jason Razorcuthands, my hair stylist in Soho. He gives me the extra flair I need as well as any updates on where to eat fried okra in the city. He also knows that the hair I wake up with in the morning will pretty much look like the hair I'm wearing all day, so he cuts it that way. He's a celebrity stylist and knows how to talk to me.

2. Passport picture. I had to get a new passport picture for something I can't talk about right now (not New Zealand), so I asked a good friend/artist/graphic designer/printmaker/Tribeca pioneer to take it for me. I passed through Soho streets to see her south of Canal.

3. Pashmina. Coming back home north from Tribeca and into the Square above Canal (Squabca, my new name for Soho, suddenly), I looked at a new scarf long enough for the merchant to lower the price.

4. Walking dogs. All days include a walk to the park with loving canines. One of my two best friends, I noticed, is turning into a hairy beast of the forest and needs to see her own stylist. Wouldn't you know, in my neighborhood, that her haircut would cost more than mine?

Walking Off Tribeca: The Lay of the Land

One of the oldest sections of Manhattan and part of the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam, the area now know as Tribeca was originally a fruit and produce market, a shipping center, and a hub of the city's textile industry. Sprawling along the west side of Manhattan, from south of Canal to Vesey Street and the site of the World Trade Center, Tribeca extends from the Hudson River on the west to Broadway as its eastern boundary. The area got its name, an acronym for the TRIangle BElow CAnal, relatively recently.

View Larger Map The area's conversion from a shipping and manufacturing district to a residential neighborhood parallels the loft developments of the SoHo neighborhood to its north. The vast inside spaces of these buildings that once housed 19th century businesses have inspired the modern-day phenomenon of loft living. Where immigrants once worked for low pay, standing long hours spinning cotton on a loom, a wealthy family now lounges on high-end living room furniture, watching reality programming and cable news on a 58-inch wall-mounted plasma TV.

I'm walking through Tribeca this week to shake myself out of the comfort zone of my own neighborhood, to get some exercise, and explore new streets. Leaving my place in Greenwich Village and walking south to Tribeca, I pass through SoHo and its exceptional cast-iron architecture. Yesterday, I arrived at the Square Diner in Tribeca via West Broadway, a pretty street lined with many elegant galleries, fashion stores, and European-style restaurants.

I have a few places on my Tribeca agenda today. I want to see some of the 18th century houses on Harrison Street, and I need to go back to the little shop I saw yesterday on Beach Street that makes homemade Mexican tamales. Other than these stops, I like to leave much of my walk unscripted.

See related posts:
The Woolworth Building
Establishing Shots: The Tribeca Film Festival
The Tribeca of Duane: Duane Street and Duane Park
Tribeca's Most Tripped-Out Vista
Tribeca Living: A Building for Chocolate, and One for the Wool Trade
In Search of the Lower West Side: Before Tribeca
Walking Off Tribeca and Remembering Mostly Lunch
Walking Off Tribeca: Starting at Square One

Monday Roundup: Chelsea Planning Tip, Whitney Biennial, Green Peppercorn Sauce, and Other Items

Visiting Chelsea. Maybe the following quick Descent Into Art Hell in Chelsea has happened to others: I hate when I'm in Chelsea and I've just realized I wanted to visit a particular gallery but it's four streets back now and I walked right past it earlier and I don't feel like trying to find the stupid door on the self-important gallery anymore and I hate looking at art in this part of the neighborhood in the first place where there are hardly any trees and curse the person that thought warehouses and factories for baking cookies were good places to view art and where there's no place to sit down and it's kinda far from the subway and I don't feel like going back there now. I'm going home.

Golly. WOTBA needs some HELP. Look at that little girl on the horse. She looks like she's spoiled and could cry. I'm better now, thank you. I've started planning my trips to this well-known art mecca in advance through the website chelseaartgalleries.com, and I am a better person for it. The website includes a feature that allows you to plan shows you want to see by organizing them by street, and then you can print out the list. With organizing my excursions, I can enjoy myself now and even include some impromptu gallery visits.

Food. I've found good places for hamburgers. I like Rare on Bleecker, Soho Park on Prince, and now, I like Stand on E. 12th. I went to Stand last night and ordered the hamburger with green peppercorn sauce. Best thing ever. I prefer the lighting in the other places, however. Inside Stand, the spot lighting is a little too theatrical for me, and where I was sitting I thought I'd be called upon to deliver a monologue.

I met some friends for lunch the other day near MoMA. We gathered at Sushiya (Menu Pages) at 28 W. 56th Street, between 5th and 6th Ave., and I thought the sushi was some of the best I've had in New York. Very fresh, sublime texture. They kept replenishing our green tea, so we had to cover the glasses with our hands.

Lecture on Raymond Hood. For those who enjoyed reading about the architect on this website and will be in NYC this week, Carol Willis, the director of The Skyscraper Museum (39 Battery Place), will be delivering a lecture titled "Raymond Hood 'The Brilliant Bad Boy' of New York Architecture" on March 4th, 6:30-8 p.m.$10. More info here.

The Whitney Biennial 2008 opens this Thursday, March 6. The website is up and running, with bios and images of the participating artists. Ideas of fluidity, ephemera and displacement prevail among this youngish group of artists, and it looks like we'll all be invited to blog along.

Image: Myself, on horse, as a small child. Place: A Bar A Ranch, Encampment, Wyoming. Year: Once upon a time in the West.

Wee Willy WOTBA's Downtown Chocolate Walk

Yesterday was the colonel's birthday, so he asked me to go over to Bruno Bakery and buy a couple of cakes for an impromptu celebration. It's a hard job, but someone's got to pick out the chocolate cakes. Now, facing the prospect of Valentines Day, I must once again go back into the world and find chocolate candy. Gee, life's tough. Fortunately, chocolate has known health benefits, so I can rationalize any purchase. Buying a little chocolate also helps the economy by boosting consumer "sentiment."

I first devised this self-guided chocolate walk for visiting friends who expressed interest in such a thing. I sent them to chocolate meccas in SoHo - Vosges, Mariebelle, and Kee's, stores within just a few blocks of one another. Now I feel compelled to broaden the walk to include Jacques Torres, Chocolate Bar, and a few pastry shops that also feature quality chocolates. I'm also partial to the very elegant La Maison du Chocolat up on Madison, but that's too far off my personal grid.


View Larger Map

Shopping for Valentines Day should also include a roundup of chocolate-covered strawberries, red velvet cakes, a big bouquet of red roses, and a bag of those little hearts with sayings on them. Greeting cards may be involved. After festively decorating the dining room table with these items, you've pretty much taken care of your own needs and could consider what to get for anyone else.

Image: Inside a case at Bruno Bakery (musical pleasures await at the website), LaGuardia Place. February 2008.

Weekend Frivolities: Walking Off the Big Apple's New Wide Open Spaces

Do not adjust your set! Walking Off the Big Apple needed SOME SPACE. For those loyal readers returning for a daily dose of WOTBA, I apologize for the shock of this bold new look. I needed room to stretch - I have long lanky legs, and the tiny font size of the former WOTBA was too hard for me to read, much less write. I redesigned the site yesterday on a total whim. Maybe it's due in part to the images of tall buildings I plan to show you this week or the pretty SoHo chocolates coming up for Valentines Day. In any case, like many Texans in the Big Apple, I need to walk to where I can see the sky.

Image: From The Promenade in Brooklyn Heights, the view of Lower Manhattan.

A Death in SoHo

The news of Heath Ledger's death yesterday came as such a shock, and I was surprised to learn he lived just a few blocks away. Like most, I learned of his tragic death from the mass media. For my after-dinner walk, I walked south along Greene St., past the luxury furniture store, the high-end coffee place, the Apple Store, and all the design stores and boutiques. I was nearing Broome Street when I saw ahead of me the flashing lights of the NYPD police cars and an ambulance heading west. I learned later that Ledger's body was removed from the building at 6:30 p.m.

Standing across the street from Ledger's SoHo apartment building, I was surrounded by six satellite vans and a growing throng of mostly twenty-somethings of Ledger's age. They talked to reporters, text messaged friends, and snapped photos. I overheard a few references to Marilyn Monroe. There wasn't much to do except look up at the fourth floor loft windows or glimpse at the live feeds in the satellite trucks.

As I have been thinking about the concept of "home" lately, I thought about the young Australian's life so far away from home. His building on Broome Street, a classic well-kept SoHo cast iron, seemed kind of cold to me, as the view from the street did not reveal any evidence that someone lived there. I often wonder about the challenges of living in buildings that were designed to store objects as opposed to house human beings, and I think it takes a lot of work to make them into a semblance of "home."

So, here's this talented and handsome actor, I thought, far away from home in a cold-looking loft in lower Manhattan, and he's found dead without his clothes on at the foot of the bed. Tragic indeed.

Life buzzes along at all hours in New York, and it's often punctuated by louder noises, and sometimes all you want to do is sleep.

NYC Hotel Availability For "Orphanistas" (Moving Image Archivists, Cinephiles, Film Scholars, Film Restorers, Etc.)

The following information is especially for the archivist-scholar-preservationist friends planning to attend the 6th Orphan Film Symposium at NYU March 26-29, 2008. I can't vouch for availability and accuracy. I do know these affordable hotels by reputation or experience, so these would be fine places to stay.

Hotel rooms under $200 a night:

SOHOTEL (SoHo area, on the Bowery)
341 BROOME ST. NEW YORK, NY 10013
1-800-737-0701
$179-$189

HOTEL 31 (Midtown East)
120 EAST 31ST. NEW YORK, NY 10016
(212) 685 3060
double, shared bath $94
other type rooms available

HOTEL 17 (Gramercy)
225 EAST 17 ST. NEW YORK, NY 10003
(212) 475 2845
double, shared bath $119
other type rooms available

THE POD (formerly Pickwick Arms) Upper midtown East
230 EAST 51 ST. NEW YORK, NY 10022
800-742-5945
single, shared bath $116

GERSHWIN HOTEL (Midtown East)
7 EAST 27 ST. NEW YORK, NY 10016
212-545-8000
Superior Room $180-$194 (one double or two singles)

By the way, I recommend these hotels for people who are not film scholars or moving image archivists and would like to find NY hotel rooms within a budget.

the 6th Orphan Film Symposium blog

Letter to the Editor Inquiring About Orphan Hotels (on this website)

Shopping in SoHo Without Euros

View Larger Map

I have completed most of my holiday shopping now, and efficiently I might add, finding everything I needed at two museum shops and the stores under the starry firmament of Grand Central Station.

As I live near SoHo and enjoy roaming its cobbled streets and glancing at its cast-iron facades, I thought I'd wrap up the holiday shopping there. I decided to play the poor rough street urchin and unfurl my fingerless gloves to see what a weakened dollar or two might bring home for holiday cheer. I have no Euros, sadly, and thus must look puppy-eyed and longing at the consumer sports of the visitors, thems in their fancy Marc Jacobs clothes.

So, yesterday, after straightening the flowers on my hat and rubbing the soot off my face, I bid farewell to the guv and mutts and took to the cobblestone streets south of Houston to search for affordable trinkets and plum pudding for me in-laws.

While I pressed my nose against the window pane of many a store I dared not enter, I visited several places for affordable gifts and warm places to get out of the cold and alight for some light refreshment.

I frequent these places at other times of the year, so what follows, in no particular order, is my personal itinerary for a typical day in SoHo. No clothing stores on this list, as I've already purchased those items elsewhere.

Vesuvio Bakery (160 Prince St.): always, always. Eggs, toast, bacon, and the waitress calls me "Bubbe."
Pearl River (477 Broadway) for strings of light, novelty lamps, sushi plates, lipstick cases.
MoMA Design Store (81 Spring St.): coffee cups, refrigerator magnets, pre-wrapped gifts, cute measuring tape.
Kate's Paperie (72 Spring St.): gift wrap, calendars.
Joe at Alessi (130 Greene St.): a hit of espresso, and a bag of Vienna Roast to take home.
Taschen (107 Greene St.): for Taschen books.
SoHo Park (62 Prince St.): my standard burger and brew break.
Vosges (132 Spring St.): RedFire chocolate bars.
Apple Store (103 Prince St.): for better earphones, and just to watch everyone else try out IPods. Walking Off the Big Apple is produced on a MacBook, by the way, the cool one in black.
Vintage NYC (482 Broome St.): a bottle of wine to take home and a glass at the wine bar.

"So, 'twas a good day, guv," I said when I returned home. "I ain't complainin'."

Coming Up on Walking Off the Big Apple: SoHo Without Euros, Tour de Bears, Tamale Search, and A Walk to McSorley's

Let me review the busy week before I list the coming attractions. And what a busy week this was.
What are the life lessons learned since Monday?
A list:
• The New Museum likes to mix and match chairs and make visitors comfortable.
• The New Museum likes artwork by young people who find things.
• Museum membership includes not standing in line.
• The New Museum is New but not with respect to its sketching policy. Its sketching policy is eerily like MoMA's.
• Walkers and flâneurs require different gifts.
• Washington Square Park will survive, but I'm glad I took the pictures of the park in pristine snow the week before.
• Michele Asselin's photos of Mike Huckabee for the New York Times make him look hot.
• Robert Henri is a rock star.
• The We Are Ellis Island commercials make me cry.
• I want to recreate Art Ford's TV party in my own place.
• In an uncharacteristic act of website organization, I gathered all the printable maps in one place.
• Cookie cutters are for the cookie-cutter dependent.

Those are some powerful lessons. And come Monday, and for the many days after, look for the following posts:
• Shopping without Euros in SoHo, and A Ho-Ho NoHo Holiday on Ice
• Washington Irving's Solitary Walk Through Christmas
• Ashcan Artists Walk to McSorley's
• A Walking Tour de Bears in Central Park
• The New York Christmas Tamale Search
and many more lessons and carols.

What's In My Wallet: Museum Membership Cards

Even before I saw any art at the New Museum's new home on the Bowery, even before I knew that the café had red velvet cupcakes and the elevators were that shade of green, I joined as a member, finding it easy to sign up at the front desk.

After I visited the New Museum this past Saturday, I walked over to the MoMA Design Store in SoHo (81 Spring St.), encountering the store jam-packed with shoppers taking advantage, like me, of the member discount days. With 20% off the regular price, I was able to round up many unusual gifts for all the usual suspects.

As a frequent museum visitor, it's more cost effective for me to become a member. At MoMA, for example, if I shelled out $20 each time I visited the galleries over the course of a year, that would cost more than my annual membership. I also like to skip the lines and take advantage of discounts at the shops and cafés. With my Met membership, I can enjoy previews of special exhibitions and the beautiful quarterly Art Bulletin that arrives in the mail.

If this seems like a pitch to give a museum membership as a holiday gift, it is.

Image: Visitor entrance: New Museum, 235 Bowery.

Note: A list of New York museums open on Mondays is posted in the sidebar on this website.

Walking Off Thanksgiving Dinner: Prepare For a Day Hike

If you enjoyed a large traditional Thanksgiving Day dinner yesterday, a feast of 2800 calories, give or take a 1,000, you may want to walk it off today. So, here's how to keep those extra pounds off. Lace up some sturdy hiking boots, walk out the front door, commence walking, and then return home 7 hours later.

Sorry about this. Depending on individual weight, walking speed, and terrain, walking burns an average of 100 calories per mile. That's not much. So, consuming even a few more hundred calories a day would necessitate a few more hours of daily walking in order to keep extra pounds from piling on.

I need to visualize what my walk would look like if I want to seriously contain holiday overeating, so I've plotted a 15-mile course through Manhattan. Just to walk off HALF of the calories I probably consumed yesterday, I would need to start in Washington Square Park at the arch, walk up Fifth Avenue all the way to 110 St. turn left, walk back down the west side of the park, take Broadway all the way down to Battery Park, turn north on Church, and then make my way through Tribeca and SoHo back to Greenwich Village.

This fantasy day hike, of course, seems overwhelming right now. But I can make amends for at least part of the Thanksgiving feast by choosing to walk 2 or 3 miles at a moderate pace of 15 minutes per mile. Some fast window shopping along Fifth Avenue or Broadway may be just the ticket.

The Bowery 2007 Walk: Upscaling the Flophouse

The Bowery's northern blocks, from Cooper Square south toward the Kenmare-Delancey intersection, embrace the majority of the area's new construction. The most controversial new building, the Cooper Square Hotel, looms out of scale on 3rd Avenue, just yards before the Bowery technically begins.

I've passed through the area many times, and I often see people standing across the street from the hotel looking like they want to tear it down with their bare hands. I talked to one guy the other day who wanted some affirmation that the building was "ugly." I've seen design professionals waving their arms and shaking their heads. The hotel will market itself as "downtown luxury." There's no stopping it now.

Farther to the south, The Bowery Hotel at 335 Bowery, in business for several months now, strikes me and many others as a successful design. Handsome on the interior as well as exterior, the hotel builds upon and improves a pre-existing structure, expanding windows and opening terraces. The interior design blends old school ambience and modern comfort into something that can be appropriately described, for once, as casual elegance. Don't get too excited, however, unless you have over $500 to spend per night.

Another promising addition to the Bowery hotel "scene" will be the "green" hotel planned for 250 Bowery. Based on the renderings at their website, Flank Architects look like they understand the concept of scale. The perforated Corten steel exterior skin may play off the New Museum's aluminum mesh. Perhaps now all the Bowery buildings should wear metallic veils.

Other than visiting the New Museum of Contemporary Art, guests of these hotels will not likely hang out on the overly-wide Bowery and bargain shop for industrial Hobart mixers. They'll be out and about in the adjoining NoLita, a neighborhood that can only be described as precious, and on nearby streets of the Lower East Side. You can believe, though, that the pressure is on for many of the older existing Bowery businesses to leave.

The area does have some nice and affordable places to stay. Check out the Off SoHo Suites Hotel on Rivington, or the SoHotel, just off the Bowery on Broome.

See the complete walk here.

Images: at top, the unfinished Cooper Square Hotel; below, The Bowery Hotel

How Far I Walked This Past Week

Last Sunday afternoon, you may remember, I was too tired for another art excursion with my visitor. We had walked a lot on Friday and Saturday, but just now I plotted the accumulated trips to see how far.

I was not surprised to see that we walked a total of 10.3 miles on these two days. I've even left some things out.

I can remember my physical and emotional state just by glancing at the Chelsea section of the map. When we were there visiting the galleries, my friend drew up a methodical sequence of streets locating the exhibits we needed to see, but we became so disoriented in the presence of contemporary art that we forgot places we wanted to go and then had to backtrack several streets. So, the map does not include all the retracing of steps. Nor does it include a separate mile or so we walked later on the Upper West Side. Sunday morning we visited the Whole Foods Market on the Bowery and a couple of other places for an additional mile.

I fully recovered by Monday morning and was ready to go back out on to the streets. I walked mostly around Greenwich Village and SoHo, and on Tuesday and Wednesday various errands took me to the East Village, Nolita, and NoHo.

So, adding all the walks together over the past week, and, oh no, I forgot to add the dog walks... I would estimate that I walked 24 miles, or roughly the distance from Battery Park to Hastings-on-Hudson, New York.

I'll try that some time. Fall would be a nice time to go. I assume I can get a train back.

Image: Screen capture of walking routes from October 19 & 20, 2007 mapped on Gmaps Pedometer.

"The Pain Threshold," Or, Maintaining Dignity with Our Euro-spending Friends

Or, alternative post title: "Who's Wearing the Fingerless Gloves Now?"

New Yorkers know only too well that it's expensive to live here. According to the latest census numbers, large numbers of New Yorkers shell out a large percentage of their income for mortgage or rent. Other dollars go to the utility company, the cable company, mass transit, and to caffe lattes grandes. That leaves precious little for a movie and brunch.

With the dollar now so deflated in relationship to the euro, New Yorkers have to work hard to maintain dignity with their euro-rich friends visiting from overseas. Vacationing friends will disappear for a spree in SoHo and bring home a bounty of goods to show off. "And it's all so cheap," they say. Or, I'll go out for a nice dinner with visiting friends, and while I'm looking for the thing on the appetizer part of the menu that's under $12 dollars, the friends will say, "And it's all so cheap!"

The weak dollar means that Americans will think twice about visiting Europe and also limit purchases of European goods. At some point, European companies arrive at "the pain threshold," and there comes a knocking at the door. Many articles in the business pages, such as this one, indicate the threshold has already been breached. It could get worse, though, and someone's hand could get caught in the door after it's open and then slammed back shut.

U.S. officials don't mind, because a weak dollar eases the trade deficit. It's kinda pitiful, if you ask me.

More from NYC & Co:
"Total visitor spending from New York City tourism in 2006: $24.71 billion
Total wages generated by New York City tourism in 2006: $16 billion
Total NYC jobs supported by visitor spending in 2006: 368,179
Total taxes generated by visitor spending in 2006: $6.24 billion"

Frozen Refreshments for a Planet in Danger

I have just returned from my stroll today, but with some failures to report. I wanted to visit two or three venues in the annual Open House New York event, but the lines were too long for WOTBA. At the first venue, I decided I didn't need to wait an hour to see how a designer repurposed subway doors in a townhouse. I then went to another venue on Charles St. to look at a glassy modern residential building, but they said that we couldn't visit an actual interior and had to make do with dimly-lit pictures of it in a tiny foyer.

Something cold beckoned. I blew off Pinkberry and went instead for a cup of artisan pistachio gelato from L'Arte del Gelato on Bleecker and 7th Ave. No one knows what's actually in Pinkberry yogurt, except that it's low in calories. I know that the gelato is more fattening, but at least I know what we're dealing with here.

Image: Aggressive Signage in SoHo: Mi casa es mi casa. Spring Street, SoHo, NYC. Oct. 6, 2007

Weekend Frivolities: Buried Treasures

(Left: I lost my head at the Prada store in SoHo.)

I'm beginning to break through this morning's fog and shall soon be out and about in the Metropolis.

Did you think that last week's British Invasion Walk was a little long, or perhaps just a tad pretentious? I know I thought so. For the coming week, I plan to take shorter walks and commit to shorter posts on shorter subjects. I can always find good movies or old TV shows if we don't want to read so much.

I did not even get around to sharing with you some of the most fascinating items I discovered last week, and in naughty fun on this very fine foggy morning, I buried these treasures on a hidden web page that you have to find.

So Weekend Frivolities involves a GAME. I pulled together the posts for the British Invasion Walk and placed the compilation where it belongs on the sidebar up on the right. I am not saying for sure, but maybe, just maybe, I've buried the treasure somewhere in that new place.

You will win something if you find it. Good luck!

Now WOTBA is off to OHNY (Open House New York) or maybe just to a Pinkberry location. I'll be back soon.