(no subject)
This first building here was across the street from my old apartment in Brooklyn. It was an abandoned factory and a squat and you've seen it and the street around it in basically any movie that takes place anywhere New York when they have a scene in an abandoned looking industrial area. I'm especially proud to have noticed it in the video for "99 Problems" by Jay Z because holy shit do I ever love that song.
That building burned down, I think it was last year.
This is Kent Avenue, which I love because all along the waterfront is the most post apocalyptic vacant lots. The fences are all rusted away so you can just walk right up to the river. Shit, you can go swimming if you're not afraid of genetic deformities.
When I was 14, Corey and I sat on those benches in the freezing cold and he asked me to be his girlfriend and we watched the sun go down over the skyline. Awwwww.
I liked Greenpoint alright, but if I moved back to New York its west Harlem I'd look at first. Do you see the McDonald's in the lower lefthand corner? I lived above that. On my sixteenth or seventeenth birthday some dude got shot in that parking lot at like four in the morning. Six months later the police decided to maybe try to follow up on it and return our call.
Here's the same exact view from 1905. I'm so sad that I'll never be able to see old Old New York. I think that's why I love Gangs of New York so much, even though all the sets are on some soundstage in Italy (the same one where they filmed Rome, God I'd love to take a stroll through there).
There goes 1905 again. Look, there's grass! And trees! On my block!
This is taken at 116th street. One of my favorite things about my neighborhood is that these buildings are pretty much all still there. If you look in the distance you can see the elevated train station next to my house.
The white building to the right is mine.
Old Broadway, which is a really cute, one-block long street and home of the oldest synagogue in the entire world. It woul have to be just considering that The Jews left the neighborhood so long ago they're already sort of gentrifying it. But only if they go to Columbia University.
These are my local projects, the Grant houses, named after Grant's tomb which is right nearby. They're just across the street. I like to tan on my roof in the summer a lot, but I'd like it a lot better if the projects weren't taller than my building. You know I'm authentic ghetto because I've been asked by a black girl whether I lived there.
This is Moylan Pl, which is on my block, except that there's no street to go with the sign. I love New York's little eccentricities like that. Obviously there used to be a street there, but the projects were built in '57 and the street signs aren't that old.