Apparently no spell check, either.

Bruckner and Willis

Hat tip to:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spell_checker

Eye have a spell chequer.

It came with my Pea Sea.

It plane lee marks four my revue

Miss Steaks I can knot sea.

Eye strike the quays and type a whirred

And weight four it two say

Weather I am write oar wrong

It tells me straight a weigh.

Eye ran this poem threw it,

Your shore real glad two no.

Its vary polished in its weigh.

My chequer tolled me sew.

A chequer is a blessed thing,

It freeze yew lodes of thyme.

It helps me right all stiles of righting,

And aides me when eye rime.

Each frays come posed up on my screen

Eye trussed too bee a joule.

The chequer pores o’er every word

Two cheque sum spelling rule. 

The original version of this poem was written by Jerrold H. Zar in 1992. An unsophisticated spell checker will find little or no fault with this poem because it checks words in isolation. A more sophisticated spell checker will make use of a language model to consider the context in which a word occurs.

Many hands make light work

The groundlevel space within our very own ClockTower took a giant step forward this past week with the acquisition of the raw materials needed for an overhead pipe grid. 

Thanks to Juan we now have a dozen ten foot pipes in the space and thanks to an endowment via Charles from the building owner we also have the hardware needed to hang them. 

If all goes well in the days ahead we’ll have a usable overhead pipe grid in the gallery in time for Diana Rivera’s show, opening on September 3rd.

http://clocktowertenants.com/2010/07/night-of-3rd.html

And speaking of the gallery, the original “ClockTower Gallery” is at 108 Leonard in TriBeCa, a famous space pioneered decades ago by the Institute for Contemporary Art.

http://www.fieldtrip.com/ny/87842084.htm

Accordingly, we may need a different name. ClockTowerSalon might work:

sa.lon

n.

1. A large room, such as a drawing room,used for receiving and entertaining guests.

2. A periodic gathering of people of social or intellectual distinction.

3. A hall or gallery for the exhibition of works of art or performance. 

Our art space will be all of these things but we’re open to suggestion and I hope you’ll offer one or two in the comments. Stay tuned for an announcement how you can help with the installation of the rig. There will be lots of non-construction things to do. 

As the Chinese famously say, “Many hands make light work.” Please get in touch and help us make our lights work in time for the 3rd. Thanks.

Reality check

Anytime you find yourself thinking about just how hard you work for a living, check out the folks who do the REALLY hard work for us all.

Last night about 9pm, these guys were out in a blanket of August humidity breathing heavy tar fumes, wearing layers of protective gear and sweltering in the scorching heat rising from the hot asphalt.

135th and Lincoln 

I’ll take design and photography, thank you.

I cover the waterfront

This miracle in the Bronx

The first time I walked from the 6train to the ClockTower I couldn’t help but notice the dilapidated gazebo behind the chainlink fence flying the flag of Puerto Rico.

  “Hm...” I thought, “an outdoor party room right across the street. Uh-oh.”

So after years on the sedate UpperEastSide I had visions of nocturnal beer-fueled laughter and a HotBronxSummer featuring the collected works of Tito Puente.

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tito_Puente

My loft at 402 is right over the Puerto Rican flag. “I’ll never get any sleep”, I thought. How wrong I was.

Jose Rodriguez, now retired from the NYC Park’s Department, works this plot like a man possessed. He singlehandedly dug all Spring then planted in early May and with a hydrant hook-up courtesy of his old buddies at “Parks”, he weeds and waters almost every afternoon. The results have been incredible. If we all worked as hard as this guy does our recession would be in the rearview mirror by Fall.

Now and then I bring him cold cans of Tecate with wedges of lime, and I hang with the guys for a few. Every week there’s a different color bloom down there and people stopping by with empty baskets for tomatoes and green beans, eggplant, zucchini and peppers. 

I expected a party every night and what I got instead is a very decent guy with an exemplary work ethic and a whiff of the proud machismo of accomplishment. It’s been amazing watching this miracle in the Bronx unfold all Summer and the pumpkins he planted are just now getting underway. Soon his greenery will be studded with orange! I’m loving it. I do wish in the evenings he played some Puente, though.

Thanks, buddy.

The original lighting designer

Mother Nature, and still the best.

Shot just now through my window glass, 8:00pm, at f/3.5 for .1282sec, or just over 1/8th of a second exposure.

Cat and Mouse armour from jeffdeboer.com

From his website:

"Jeff de Boer was born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, in 1963, the fourth child of Dutch immigrants Andy and Maria de Boer. Being that his father was a professional tin smith, Jeff grew up exposed to the endless possibilities of metal. From the age of five, he knew that he wanted to be an artist."

Amazing.

See the whole collection here:

http://www.jeffdeboer.com/Galleries/CatsandMice/tabid/77/Default.aspx

Frida recommends ClockTower PetServe

Amateur or professional, for fee or for free, we (heart) our animal roommates!

If you have a pet (or even if you don’t) and you need or would like to offer helpful services like walking, feeding, grooming or just hanging out with a new four-legged friend, this is your place to connect.

Hit me up (Contact) and I’ll post your offer or request for services (BuySellTrade) with your email address so you can be contacted directly.

Frida

Another brick in

A small chapter in the age-old battle between art and commerce was settled a few years ago when “The Wall”, a Soho landmark art installation at 599 Broadway corner of Houston was returned to its rightful place, albeit 18 feet higher.

You can read the entire story here: 

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/25/nyregion/25wall.html?_r=1&ref=forrest_myers

Basically this was about a large brick wall in a busy Soho intersection unable to sell advertising space because the art covered the exterior square footage. 

From the NYTimes:

“The original owner of 599 Broadway, Charles Tannenbaum, commissioned [the] work as a way of disguising an eyesore — naked joists that once were attached to a neighboring building that had been torn down. As its reputation grew, it became known as “The Gateway to SoHo.”

Installed in 1973, it was taken down for building repairs in 2002 but the reinstallation was blocked by the building owners. A seven year trip through the federal courts (sigh) and everyone agreed to put it back 18 feet higher so sidewalk level advertising could produce a revenue stream projected at $600,000 a year.

You can still see the vestigial sawn-off stubs of the “eyesore joists” that compelled this commission in the first place.

Couldn't have said it better

Recession Forecast

There’s always light......

At the end of the tunnel.

With a bit of rain, today.

138^th Street Third Avenue Station (to Alexander Avenue at East 138^th Street) opened on January 17, 1919. 

Just in case, y'know

The computer monitor you are reading uses the RGB “additive color model” to draft the colors you see, it adds red green and blue together in various combinations (RGB duh) to create a wide range of tint and shade. (Tint is any color plus white, shade is any color plus black. Accordingly, seafoam green is a tint of teal while navy is shade of blue, got it?)

From Wikipedia:

”The main purpose of the RGB color model is for the sensing, representation, and display of images in electronic systems, such as televisions and computers.............”

Every color in the RGB color system has a six integer ID and the eyedropper tool in PhotoShop can identify them.  What better example than our own Maria’s Tire Shop?..... a retail presentation along Morris at 139th based on the old “too much is not enough!” model.

This is just in case, y’know....... you want to paint your loft to look like Maria’s. lol