Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Graffiti stencils and 'tree poop' on Pulaski Bridge

From the Restless:

The NYC DOT continues to do its best to run pedestrians off the Pulaski Bridge's only sidewalk. It was bad enough when the city turned the sidewalk into an official bike lane, but now -- in addition to more preschool illustrations and signage that promotes sharing... -- there's a thing in the turnout in the middle of the bridge that looks suspiciously like kids' playground equipment, below right. Or maybe the DOT wants to encourage lounging, and is going to install wi-fi and let a sidewalk waffle cart move in.

How can you expect people using a fast form of transport to slice safely through walkers, even if the biker is always calm and considerate? If all the decoration really works, why not let motorcycles use the sidewalk too? -- they're no wider than the shopping carts I've seen there.

Since it makes zero sense in any other way, the "bike lane" must be the result of a desire to connect the dots on the map of suburban bike lanes that cut through the Greed Belt of luxury condo towers along the Brooklyn / Queens waterfront.

How much has the DOT spent on this propaganda exercise? Why doesn't it quit insulting Pulaski pedestrians and go prettify, say, the Greenpoint Ave. Bridge (below right), further up Newtown Creek? Not enough luxury condos up there?


Wait, there's more to this insanity...From Miss Heather:

My buddy Bitchcakes (who took the above photograph) writes in an email entitled “UGH”:

>>>Have you seen this craptacular mess on the Pulaski Bridge? I don’t know when it went up, but I saw it today and I HATE IT!!!!!<<<

To answer your question, yes I have seen this “craptacular mess”. It would appear a number of people have. Many have questions about it, but few seem to like it.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

i wonder how many trees that thing will count as? also, i wonder what that gang of DOT workers are discussing?

Anonymous said...

Way too small of a bridge with poorly done car lanes with excessive speeding drivers.
Maybe this dumb sculpture is fitting.

Anonymous said...

Its a good thing that none of you live in LIC so you do not have to deal with it and while your at it...STAY OUT!! You are not wanted.

Queens Crapper said...

Actually, several commenters on here live in LIC...they send me their horror stories regularly. And they are well aware that the newbies don't want them there.

Ridgewoodian said...

The "preschool illustrations" and the "kids' playground equipment" (actually benches) are an art installation called "Bridge that Binds" by an LIC artist named Joel Voisard. You can read about it HERE, HERE, HERE (NY POST), and HERE. The stencils are meant to last about a year or maybe a little lest. Not sure if the benches are going to be there forever or not. I haven't seen them myself - maybe I'll piss you all off and bike on over there if we catch a warm enough day - so I can't really judge them as art yet, but it's probably at least as good, if not better, than some of the performance art that's gone on there before.

Anonymous said...

About the artist: "Having grown up in the Rust Belt..."

Can we ship him and his shitty artwork back there?

Queens Crapper said...

Looks like "Bridge that Binds" could use an ex lax...

Ridgewoodian said...

Obviously, Crappy, you have an extremely fraught relationship with feces.

Anonymous said...

Now if the newbies in LIC could just stay in their new corner and back to their jobs in Manhattan. Your not needed in Brooklyn.

Anonymous said...

Speaking of the people and newbies in LIC, my friend who has a diner on Jackson by the bridge wonders why none of the new tower folks dont even have the time or money to even buy breakfast at her restaurant when people from many other neighborhoods do that work by there or pass through on the way to work?

Anonymous said...

I walk there every day. The stencils are innocuous, the bench thing silly and wildly out of place.
But what about the lanes that showed up about the same time.
Those are incredibly silly. Why does one need to separate a five foot pathway? I assume I am not supposed to walk in the six inch space outside the lanes. What are they for? Rats?