All along East Houston between Avenue C and Norfolk street, the sides of buildings are painted with murals and graffiti. Particularly on East Houston and between Norfolk and Suffolk street, there is a side of building that is covers in wave like images and finger like projections that resemble a combination of goo dripping and mutant worms sliding all over the place. These characters are further emphasize by their crazy faces with creepily enthusiastic toothy grins, grotesque tongues and eyeballs that are swollen and sticking out of the characters. And to make it worse, they are all in bright psychedelic colors such as magenta and turquoise. Being that this mural is found in Lower Manhattan, right on the edge of Alphabet City, which was renown for it’s run-down neighborhood and projects, passing through this mural makes me think of the neighborhood’s notorious reputation of housing drug abusers, and hippies and beatniks from the 60’s and low income immigrants today. However, right above and next to this mural is a series of empty lots and scaffolds where construction workers noisily drill, hammer, and dig throughout the day, hurrying to build it’s latest condominium project. This part reminds me of the steady gentrification of this neighborhood, with it’s new wave of hipsters moving it, bringing with them chic boutiques, fancy bars, and expensive condos. Seeing such a contrast between the public art and the scaffolds reminds me of the old low income and shabby cheap neighborhood that the Lower East Side/Alphabet city used to be and the gentrified hip neighborhood that it is becoming.
Course Information
The Peopling of New York City: MHC150 Sec.03
Rm HN C107, Wednesday, 10:10am-12:40pm
Professor Mike Benediktsson
Officer Hours: Wednesday, 1:30pm-2:30pm, Rm HW1648Sign Up
If you want to add yourself as a user, please log in, using your existing Macaulay Eportfolio account.
Important Stuff
Research Paper
Film Project
Reading Responses
This is great Alice. I like the part about the mutant worms. I can almost picture it. Painted wall advertisements and public art murals provide some of the best reminders of what neighborhoods used to be like and who used to live in them. Unfortunately the mural advertisement is all-but-dead. There’s only one company that still paints them – a friend of mine is one of their painters. Instead, all of the big billboard ads you see around the city are vinyl screens that are custom-printed in factories. The problem with this, from a historical point of view, is that they leave no traces behind when they’re rolled up and discarded to make way for a new one. There’s also an interesting idea here about public art vs. unsanctioned graffiti. They both say something about a neighborhood, but they say different things in different ways.