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| Boerum Hill, Brooklyn |
If J Crew needs someone to come up with sweater color names for their next catalog, I'm available. Just saying.
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| Upper West Side, NYC |
I happened upon these well-mannered, ornamental numbers on a late afternoon stroll down Riverside Drive, and though it was a cold winter day, you can just barely catch a glimpse of warm January sunlight in the upper left hand corner.
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| Upper West Side, NYC |
Somebody had fun designing this one.
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| East Village, NYC |
With a hard right angle serif on top and a softer curlicue underneath, these 3's are unusual, both noble and whimsical. Combine those with a proper upright infinity 8 -- not to mention a touch of rust -- and it's a mighty fine look.
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| Pittsburgh, PA |
Early in the day on June 16th, 1904 in James Joyce's Ulysses, Stephen Dedalus is giving a history lesson to an academically lackluster pack of spoiled rich kids. The lesson is not going over well, sort of the early 20th century Irish equivalent of the economics teacher in Ferris Bueller's Day Off deadpanning, "Bueller? . . . Bueller?" But it does lead Stephen to muse, when no one can answer a simple inquiry about what a pier is, that a pier is "a disappointed bridge."
The tendency to render to inanimate objects human feelings and qualities is something very near and dear to me, and it happens a lot when I contemplate a new set of numbers each week, trying to imagine what these mute images are trying to say to me. And when I look at these numbers, what I see are two 3's and a 9 all striving, with their loopy serifs, to be 8's. Disappointed bridges.
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| Upper West Side, NYC |
A hand-drawn ampersand AND a weird amorphous finger pointing the way to an otherwise forgettable service & delivery entrance? Like it.
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| Venice, Italy |
Venice's typographical palimpsests are pretty fascinating. You can find all sorts of examples of buildings that have been re-numbered where you can see two opposing numbers side by side: one old address beside a new. But this one's a curious relic: a quickly scrawled, chalked-up 341 elbowing its way in beside a perfectly serviceable permanent one. I'm not sure what the reason is behind this -- rogue chalk artist? Italian kid practicing penmanship? some sort of typographical Goofus and Gallant? -- but the sight has surely faded from view by now.
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| East Village, NYC |
And these, my friends, these are the numbers I love to hate. Crass colors, ham-fisted paint jobs, and a palette so appalling it makes an LSD trip look like an Ansel Adams. And yet. There's that word again: character. I'm starting to think of it more, particularly as I watch the boutique-ification of the Lower East Side start to spread its glass enclaved dynasty into the rough-around-the-edges East Village. I was all right with it till y'all took away Mama's, home of the giant platters heaped high with mashed potatoes and the garage sale portraits of cross-eyed housewives lining the walls. But now? It's war.
If the all-time diviest dive Mars Bar -- known far and wide for its ability to transmit infectious diseases by simply looking at a photograph of it -- can be converted into a sanitized TD Bank, as was recently announced, then it seems most anything can happen to EVil, including the eradication of these little character pieces. In fact, for all I know, these numbers have already been converted into a Trader Joe's. Is it time we chained ourselves to every last purple, yellow, and green residence, crying for preservation? Probably not. But it's nice to retain a photo of the atrocity, just in case.
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| Chelsea, NYC |
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| Venice, Italy |
Ever since watching the epically freaky film "Don't Look Now," I can never see the color red in Venice in the same way again.
