#343

#343, San Francisco, CA

#342

#342, San Francisco, CA

In my alternate life, where all notebooks are Moleskine and all shoes Made in Italy, where entrance hallways are not lined with peach bathroom tile and front doorways are unencumbered by seven layers of sticky black paint, this is what the entrance to my home looks like: angular, architectural, clean, and well-designed. Up those steps, a bright studio awaits me with slanted windows, a wall of exposed brick, and all the fixtures stone or brushed steel. I sit at my ergonomic desk sipping espresso, contemplating my orange Bigso Box of Sweden files that are, of course, impeccably organized. I open my Mac and sentences of elegance flow from my well-manicured fingers.

What really happens when I get home is I shove my weight against a heavy black door (after wrestling the obligatory ten seconds with the lock that always sticks), trudge up the crooked steps with three visible layers of manky linoleum in various states of decay. I pass the inexplicable mish-mash of nightmare knick-knacks my neighbor on the second floor has installed on a wicker shelving unit in the hallway: ceramic bullfrogs holding stone tablets that say I Love You, Easter bunnies grossly out of season bearing white taper candles, and I wonder as I shove open my front door what I'd ever do if I tried to find a right angle in my apartment. Die of shock, probably.

Still and all, in a chaotic apartment in Brooklyn, things fall into place. The rough draft in its many pieces hardens into something sharp and complete, the windows let in fresh air, and unfettered by perfection, I work. I plan. I craft. And it's good. Damn, it's good.

#341

#341, Boerum Hill, Brooklyn

#340

#340, Upper East Side, NYC

Sugar? Snow? Salt? No, just a carving over the doorway of a building on the Upper East Side. As I sit in New York City, pining for rain to turn to snow already, it seems fitting to have this 340 to, well, rub it in.

A few months ago, while trawling design blogs for typographical eye candy, I came across some breathtaking images both playful and ephemeral. The pictures -- words and designs delicately crafted in sugar -- were the work of Canadian graphic artist Marian Bantjes. The detail in the images is so arresting that it's hard to not draw closer even as you hold your breath, both out of awe and a fear, maybe, that one sneeze could send the whole thing packing. I admire an artist willing to craft something that inevitably will crumble to dust. This is the fate of all projects eventually, but I'm talking about the artists who embrace this very aspect and make it part of their work.

On the subject of art and the ephemeral, few things are as beautiful to me as the meditative, painstaking projects of Andy Goldsworthy, the subject of an excellent 2001 documentary by German filmmaker Thomas Riedelsheimer, "Rivers and Tides." Watching Goldsworthy, this stoic man, hunker down in the woods, stringing together a magnificent chain of leaves simply for the sublime pleasure of watching them float down the river, enduring every nuisance of nature -- bad weather, errant winds, broken stems -- in his quest to do so, is both tragic and inspiring, mundane and heroic. In an interview, Goldsworthy speaks in simple, direct terms of his craft:

All that effort goes into making something look effortless.

A better expression of the creative process (apart from the one where I bang my head against a wall, repeatedly, which is satisfying only marginally and hardly eloquent) I have yet to find. If you're curious, you can check out a clip of "Rivers and Tides" here, though I can't recommend highly enough seeing the full-length feature -- beautiful, meditative, stunning. And don't miss the chance to admire the intricate, ornamental beauty of Bantjes' sugar images. Certainly nothing to sneeze at.

#339

#339, Lower East Side, NYC

A favorite among fading ad enthusiasts, ghost sign collectors, and hunters of the New York ephemeral (do not be fooled by our intrepid nature: we are legion), this decaying 339 on Grand Street on the Lower East Side is the gold standard.

"Ideal" was the big advertising promise back in the day -- you can see another example of it in my #20, Samuel Cohen's Son Ideal Class on 2nd Street -- and here both ladies & men could rest assured that they could fetch their ideal hosiery wholesale from this corner shop. (It begs the question, what exactly is men's hosiery, anyway?) My heart went pitter-patter when I discovered this gorgeous specimen of urban decay earlier this year on an otherwise uneventful number-hunting expedition on the LES, and if I wasn't already bought, sold, and sent down the river at first glance, when I glimpsed that tiny fading ampersand I sure as heck was.

More gawking, speculating, history-mongering, and oohing and ahhing to be found from fellow friends at Greenwich Village Daily Photo, Lost City, and Fading Ad Blog. Or take a stroll down Hosiery Row and see for yourself. Have an ideal weekend.

#338

#338, Tucson, AZ

Staggering up and down 4th Street in a hundred degree heat, past the tattoo parlor and the Dairy Queen, past the Jimi Hendrix mural and the hookah bar, looking only for air conditioning and a place to kill an hour before sound check. Back at the tiki bar it was what you'd expect: a jolly roger hanging over the stage and a grass skirt circumnavigating the bar, plastic palm trees stuck in fruity drinks and one dude in a cabaña hat talking to himself. I had to get out.

Tucson and I have that oil-and-water thing going on. Heat destroys me. It bloats my brain and saps my life force. Arid climates are dead zones to me, and it's in these places that a city or town is truly an oasis, the only sign that I'm not in a nightmare post-apocalyptic landscape. If I want to feel like I'm in a Cormac McCarthy book, I'll read one. Just don't make me get out of a van or airplane anywhere near one of those deserts. Five minutes in and I'm unscrewing my industrial sized water bottle. Ten minutes in, I'm hallucinating cow skulls.

One thing that did charm me about Tucson was the effort everyone put into brightening up their buildings. Maybe enough exposure to heat convinces you that a life-sized Jimi Hendrix is just what the town needs. Adobe huts painted bright blue or brick red lined the main drag. Ceramic numbers decorated the walls of cafés. This weirded-out 338 hung above a smoke shop. Bright green trolley cars lurked behind a chain-link fence, waiting to come out and play. It was almost enough to convince you that the place was life-sustaining.

Later on, when we were wandering back up and down that main drag with guitar and accordion and horns and toy piano, drumming up civic interest in our show over at yonder tiki bar, when we were standing outside that Dairy Queen, playing "Love to Love You" to bewildered and bemused natives scooping up peanut butter parfaits and Oreo Blizzards, it was almost like a real place and not just a whistle stop on a bad vision quest.

Of course, one adrenaline-infused gig (my accordion's reeds actually went haywire that night, it was so hot) and two tall frosty drinks later (an alcohol-soaked concoction know to Tucsonians as "The Fat Man," or, for the smaller version, "Fat Man on a Diet"), the room was spinning and the playing field was leveled once more. And doggone it, if that dude in the cabaña hat wasn't still at the bar, talking to himself four hours later.

#337

#337, Pittsburgh, PA

#336

#336, West Village, NYC

#335

#335, San Francisco


File this one in the "numbers that look like their cities seem to suggest" folder. It'll go well along with the fabulously glitter-spackled Chelsea hair salon at #328, the timber lodge Branson, Missouri fish at #218, and the rugged, distressed #85 at the chic hotel adjacent to Brooklyn's notorious House of D, the now-defunct juvie detention center. (Not to be confused with the David Duchovny film by the same name from earlier this year -- for the 0.002% of you who saw that blow past like so much tumbleweed.)

This unabashedly cheery mosaic decorates the Katherine Michiels School on Guerrero and 25th Street in San Francisco's hilly and highly respiratory Mission District. The school, a stately, symmetrical architectural charmer, is one of many San Fran style Victorian dollhouses that look almost too cute to inhabit. In fact, I don't think anyone actually lives in half of these houses, and if they do, I don't know what they do when they want to slam a door once in a while. While I don't routinely go in for decorative rainbows (those who've been following along know I belong more to the skull-and-crossbones set), there's no harm in trying to make going to school more inviting. &7 Seal of Approval is hereby duly given.

Now that I think about it, a school adorned with a cheery skull and crossbones mosaic might not be such a bad idea. I'll have to have my people draw up some sketches and get back to your people. Zaha Hadid it ain't, but in this recession, it'll have to do.

#334

#334, Atlantic Ave, Brooklyn