Art Scene

Awhile ago I was flipping through an art book at home, and quite accidently stumbled upon this:

I about jumped out of my chair. You see, that was painted in 1974, and today, the scene looks like this:
I walk by here every day that I leave our apartment as this is 79th Street and Broadway; when I come home from work, I exit the subway right there.

It's not that different, of course. But I never expected to see part of my day-to-day life in art books.

The former is a painting by Richard Estes, who apparently lives somewhere in the neighborhood, because there are nearly a dozen such paintings, based on photos that he took up and down Broadway for the past 35 years.

Here is one looking uptown at 79th and Broadway: and here it is today (from not quite the same angle):

When I've seen these 20th century photo-quality paintings in museums, I've always sort-of wondered "What's the point?".

But at least today, I smiled a bit more than usual walking up and down Broadway, thinking that it's both changed and not changed over my lifetime.

And I wonder, if people like this had stumbled across themselves in a museum in the 1560s, would they think there's a point?

Saturday In the Park

We've had a beautiful Labor Day Weekend here in the City. We spent all of Saturday afternoon on "the hill" overlooking Central Park Lake listening to That Guitar Man, otherwise known as David Ippolito.

It's hard to know what part was best:

• The music
• The mixture of tourists and locals, saris and jeans
• The guy who looked like Rupert Murdoch, telling strangers he used to work on Wall Street, but was there alone and fell asleep curled up like a baby
• The fact that he emptied his guitar case of donations and bought everyone hot dogs
• You never know who's in the audience, like Sid Bernstein
• Or who might sing, like Christine Lavin
• Or singing along to someone's wedding dance -- this couple was from Bristol, England

Or just watching your child, who you first brought here at age four days, dance in the sun-dappled shade to Jack and Diane, seeing that even growing up in the Big Apple she'll know something sweet about the Heartland [at 2:30].

I took some video on our little Canon point & shoot. The quality isn't so good, partly from the technology of converting it to mpeg, and partly because it's always better to just be there.

Nonetheless, I hope some of the magic makes it through:

They're Gr-r-reat!

I was watching the Little League World Series today while eating lunch with Ellie, and saw this during the commercials:

Now I don't know about you, but the first thought to my mind was, "Man, even Tony's been popping the 'roids?!".

You decide. Here's a box of Tony's from 1987:

And they say "there's no cereal box immortality" for Mr. Bonds.