Mini Me, New York City

Evolving 3-D printing technology is pretty darn amazing, from household doodads and clothing all the way to houses and body parts. We can’t print full humans— yet—but Doob-3D™ a German 3-D printing company with two stores in New York City and seven more across the United States, promises to capture the real you in a core resin polymer figurine. It’s 3-D narcissism, a “selfie” in the round.

Enter the onsite “Dooblicator,™” which looks a little like an airport scanner, and a few weeks later receive your freshly printed mini-me. So-called Doobs™ range in price from a $99 4-inch “Buddy” to a 14-inch $699 “Diva.” They’re not exactly cheap, but, I suppose, a perfect gift for that person in your life who has everything. Why collect Lalique birds or Herend bunnies when you can gather up your own life stages?

The Upper East Side store features the material timeline of “Heather,” (photo below). You see figurines of Heather pregnant, holding a baby, and then with growing family. Looking at a row of aging tiny Heathers made me feel a little nervous, like pet taxidermy or The Twilight Zone. I can easily imagine a Black Mirror episode where Doobs—kissing couples, siblings off to school, beloved huggable dogs—come alive at night on their little shelves and march off to subsume their flesh and blood hosts.

Creepiness aside, there’s also something sweet and sentimental going on here. Time is a killer beast. Like photos and videos, making your own 3-D Doob is a proud, defiant move. Her children may grow up, marry, and have children of their own. But Heather will be able to hold her unwrinkled pregnant self forever in her hands.

Malled, New York City

New Yorkers are fussy about dirt. Too little is the suburbs. Too much is the country. Just the right amount, say, on a stroll along Broadway in the West 90s, is the real New York. Some old-time city residents even mourn the super-grimy, edgy, “I’m walkin’ here!” aura of last century Times Square.

So I wasn’t surprised when the city’s critics threw mud at the $25 billion new luxury development, Hudson Yards, now open on Manhattan’s far West Side near 34th Street. For The New York Times’s Michael Kimmelman, the design was “at heart, a supersized suburban-style office park, with a shopping mall and a quasi-gated condo community targeted at the 0.1 percent.” New York Magazine’s Justin Davidson said, “too flat, too clean, too art-directed…I can’t help feeling like an alien here.” The New Yorker’s Ian Parker described the site as a “Doha-like cluster of towers on Manhattan’s West Side.”

Translation: it was too damn clean.

When I visited on opening weekend (March 15-17, 2019), I, too, was overwhelmed. Every surface, from the glass-and-steel supertall towers (one of which, 30 Hudson Yards, is now the fifth highest building in the U.S.) to the luxury retail mall’s walls and floors, gleamed. The plaza’s objet d’Instagram, “Vessel,” glowed like a penny in the sunlight and threw warm coppery reflections onto the white retractable shell of the adjacent arts complex, The Shed. The only dirt I could find was in the specially designed “smart soil” in the vast planters filled with gorgeous purple pansies. Even that dirt was clean.

How alien.

Did anyone notice? Thousands of visitors filled the 5-acre plaza, lined up to climb the 154 flights of stairs in the Vessel, flowed politely onto the seven floors of escalators at The Shops and Restaurants mall housing the city’s first Neiman Marcus, and ate snacks in the bakeries and food shops. The hordes were diverse, local, young, excited and curious. They were having fun. So was I.

Then I realized what the critics missed. The futuristic new neighborhood does fill a niche, and not just for the .1 percent. It’s a vacation from grit! Available to all, and just a subway ride away. A neighborhood with free Wi-Fi, 28,000 plants, 200 mature trees, specialty snacks under $10 and public revolving art exhibits? In close proximity to the High Line park? All sorts of people, from locals to tourists, will come for a clean getaway. By force of nature they will humanize it and, over time, it will acquire a unique patina all its own. If not from New Yorkers, then leave it to the birds.

Wee, New York City

People bring big dreams to this big city, but they live small to survive. They rent studio apartments with tiny kitchens. They walk diminutive dogs. They work in cramped cubicles. They do little gigs. They have trivial arguments. They eat microgreens.

Wee is us. And this mini snowman—about 18 inches high—was right on trend. He popped up on a townhouse railing after a March snowstorm that was slighter than expected. Tidbit accessories completed his look. Baby carrot for nose, celery scraps for hair, pebbles for eyes and the spindliest of twigs for arms.

And yet, small is beautiful. The frosty sculpture had presence. Think Billy Porter in his velvet tuxedo gown at the Oscars. Think Constantin Brancusi at the Guggenheim. Under its anonymous creator’s hands, the ephemeral snowman disrupted the three-circle cliché and turned a simple brown railing into a majestic pedestal. It was something all together new and fresh.

True outsider art. Or at least outside.

Soul Mate, New York City

I’ve never forgotten the joy of finding my homemade second grade mailbox (aka slotted shoebox) stuffed with Valentine’s Day cards and SweetHearts Conversation Hearts. Admittedly, it was an easily won popularity as the teacher’s rule was give to one, give to all. I learned to see the kitsch in paper hearts and candy sentiments, but my original enthusiasm for the day never waned.

Now I search for ways to mark the day in proper urban style: Ironic, dressed in black and self-obsessed. Scrolling through my inbox, I see endless local V-day options.

Instead of buying or receiving roses, I’ll adopt a Highline plant in Manhattan. Or shed my pants at Cupid’s Undie Run for charity. With the Naked at the Met Scavenger Hunt, the nude is in the art. Still too cloyingly romantic? In Queens, My Bloody Valentine Haunted Attraction bleeds red with two floors of scary stalking. Brooklyn’s Littlefield hosts a series of hipster events: “It’s Friday and I’m (Not) in Love, ” (a wear black Anti-Valentine’s dance party), “Mortified!” (share your teen-angst memorabilia) and “Tinder Live with Lane Moore” (watch her swipe right in onstage improv).

You name it, there’s a class for it. Teachers around the city are primed to instruct in making heart-shaped chocolates, cakes, soufflés, floral bouquets, lollipops, linoleum prints, and so on. My favorite? “Self-Love Hand Lettering” at Parachute Home, where you make a card to “celebrate the one person most important in your life…you!”

I take a walk to clear my head.

An overflowing Valentine’s window display at the independently owned store, More & More Antiques on Amsterdam Avenue, calls out to me. I realize I can’t complain about national chain stores and shuttered retail fronts ruining the streetscape unless I start to put my money where my mouth is. I wander in and buy a tiny hand-painted figurine with a winsome heart-shaped face. Something about it is slightly off, but it promises to be “All Mine.”

XOXO, Cutie Pie.

Frozen, New York City

The polar vortex is here. From Maine to Michigan, people are stuck in a freezer of ice, snow and brutally cold temperatures that threaten skin and spirit. My mind flashes back to this icy guy-in-a-box, Snowman, installed in MoMA’s Outdoor Sculpture Garden last summer. The frosty copper-coated statue was a magic trick in June’s humid heat. A clever study of contrast and form by Swiss artists Peter Fischli and the late David Weiss. It amazed and amused me.

Now the extreme cold darkens my perception. I have seen the Snowman, and he is us.

Holiday Sweet, New York City

My childhood dream was to own a lollipop tree. I figured if I could grow my own, I’d have pops all year. The landscaper at the garden shop promised me a seedling by Christmas. When the day came, I was too old to be fooled by the scotch tape fixing lollipop to branch, but I did love the effect.

Decades later, I’m still a sucker for genius confections. This year’s holiday windows at Bergdorf Goodman take the cake. Themed “Bergdorf Goodies” and up until January 3, 2019, the windows contain fanciful chocolate bears, licorice zebras, gingerbread clocks, and macaron giraffes in vibrant candy and fashion tableaux— no scotch tape visible. To see all, watch here.

Pumped, Millerton

Warts are in, at least on pumpkins. So are lumps, bumps, wrinkles and diverse colors. These compelling and unique “Super Freaks,” seen on a day trip to Daisi Hill Farm in Millerton, New York, wore their weirdness proudly. Back in the city, I was bored by the smooth-skinned orange pumpkins sold street-side at corner groceries. Now I wanted a Jack O’ Lantern with some serious battle scars. Looking in the mirror, I felt more tolerant of my own. Imperfection is organic. It is honest. And, at heart, it can signify rebellion.

Car Park, NYC

I don’t want a Maserati, I want a flying car. Ever since reading Ian Fleming’s Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, I’ve dreamed of a vehicle I could drive over gridlock, through rivers and under mountains. Maybe that’s why I’ve always loved these ingenious outdoor car parks. I like to imagine that the cars have swooped into their individual resting spaces like swallows into nests. I love seeing big metal machines stacked tidily like spice or wine bottles, two-ton weight be damned. At the push of the button they come carefully down, though there may be a wait if you’re the guy at the top. Even if cars can’t fly yet, they can still always pile up, up, up.

Super Tall, NYC

Like its ambitious citizens, the Manhattan skyline is always reinventing itself with an eye to the competition. The newest super tall skyscrapers—some still with cranes—look like fishing lines to the stratosphere. Are they trying to catch birds, helicopters, clouds? Here are views for billionaires (and maybe global criminals) who need to show they are on top of the world. Not just the one-percent, but the one-upper percent—the “my treehouse is higher than yours” club. Like NBA basketball players or super models, the towers look down imperiously on older buildings. The formerly imposing now looks short and squat. But reflected in the dimpled water of the Central Park Reservoir, the Super Talls shrink like Legos and belong to everyone. Nature brings them down to size, and wins.

Overhead, NYC

A crazy thicket of scaffolds is turning New Yorkers into moles. The other day I walked two long dark and dingy scaffolded blocks in a row, turned a scaffolded corner and walked yet another without seeing open sky. I wasn't just a mole. I was a mole in a maze. 

City laws promote the erection of scaffolds, but don't legally limit how long they can stay up (for details, read here). As a result, they're out of control. Something must be done. An obvious step is to regulate how long they can stay up. But there's an easier idea.

When I walked under this Hanging Garden of Scaffold outside Cafe Lalo (the Upper West Side destination pastry shop where a scene in You've Got Mail was shot), I realized exactly what was needed. Uplifting interior design. 

I propose The 2018 Scaffold Law of Aesthetic Uplift to stop the blight. Imagine the possibilities. Tiki Scaffold, Fiesta Scaffold, Disco Scaffold? Big Apple Orchard, King Kongland, Lady Liberty Lot? Think of blocks of lights at Christmas! Consider the stage sets outside Broadway! Tourists would come from all over to visit The Big Scaffold. Twinkling light and fake flower businesses would boom. People would actually mourn when the tunnels left. 

Goodbye, mole people. Hello, party in the streets! What do you think?

Bridged, New York

Summer travel is so cumbersome. I'd like to fly around the world—bagless, weightless and on bird wings. Because I can't, airplanes are a necessary evil. But they have their consolations. I do like looking out their windows and the way my head is in the clouds for real. I also love coming in for landings, particularly returning to New York. For once, I'm the master builder. Big city grids align, massive buildings shrink, and noisy traffic melts away. Here, the Throgs Neck Bridge by Othmar Hermann Amman gets the toy-size treatment as I come into LaGuardia one afternoon. For a moment, I had my wings.

Flower Hour, NYC

Urban Irony #353: you can shop for growing things while underground yourself. With the onset of Memorial Day weekend, my spring flower craving deepens. The subway florist Botany Bar, buried down in the Turnstyle Underground Market at Columbus Circle, serves up singular orchid "spritzers" on a silver platter. The whimsical shop also concocts air plant "shots," succulent "flights," and a "six-pack" sampler "for your next BYOP event." 

I don't just like to BYOP, I also love to seasonally BYOB. Since I can't plant violets on Memorial Day (I've got a park, but no backyard), I drink them. A fragrant bottle of Creme de Violette inspires botanical violet gimlets and brings flower power to my apartment while green thumbs are out in their backyard tilling soil.

I may not have a bed of dirt to run my fingers through, but I can work with metaphors. Here's another: You don't have to have a backyard patio to make your life a garden party.

Hung, New York City

I love blank space. To me, it speaks of luxury and potential rather than the absence of things. But is it possible that inside every minimalist there's a hidden maximalist? The trendy gallery wall (above) at the special exhibition, "Forever Young: Selections from the Joe Baio Collection of Photography," certainly called to mine.

The Joe Baio Collection was one of three special collections (also "A Time for Reflection" curated by Elton John and "All Power: Visual Legacies of the Black Panther Party" curated by Michelle Dunn Marsh) at The Photography Show presented by Aipad (April 5-8) held annually at Pier 94 in New York City. The premiere photo show featured fine art galleries, book dealers, publishers and photography organizations from all over the world in mostly spare and chic grey booths.

Joe Baio, however, opted to create the feeling of a luxe Manhattan townhouse inside the vast pier space. The collectors brought in large oriental rugs, plush sofas, and antique tables and painted display walls in dense red, cobalt and light blue hues. More than 200 photos of children and adolescents ranging from the 1850s to the present were hung in intricate and beautifully executed arrangements. 

Passionate maximalism ruled. People came, sat and stayed. Here,  the fine art of hanging lead to the even finer art of hanging out. 

Booted, New York

Women's shoe choices often give mixed messages. At the 2018 Golden Globe Awards, actresses wore #TimesUp black gowns with precarious stilettos. High shoes lend power but are destabilizing. It's so much easier to protest in flats. 

Not all flats are created equal. I stumbled across a high-end shoe sale and wondered if, as with social media, shoe designers had to shout to be heard.  The parade of wallflower racks held the inane, the insane, and the downright hilarious. There were leftover platformed Timberlands with a stainless steel retainer tip, a burgundy brogue with a pink feather and rhinestone side buckle, and gold-dipped booties tied up with a dainty bow. You had to smile. The ultimate punch line was a zipped fake foot in a red stiletto heel that made me think of the creepy 1971 movie, Klute. 

Maybe outrageous times call for outrageous footwear. But the Golden Globes showed that when it comes to silhouette, some shoes are just too beautiful to #resist.

Imaginary Acts, New York

A friend of mine once looked out her window in deepest night and saw a parade of elephants underneath. She described it to me so vividly that I almost stole it as my own memory. It turned out she wasn't dreaming. The only way to get the Ringling Bros. elephants to Madison Square Garden each year was to walk them across Manhattan when the streets were empty. Her vision of pachyderms on Park was real.

That circus folded in May, 2017, but our collective fantasy of seeing elements of the greatest show on earth lives on. This year's Bloomingdale's New York celebrates it with windows themed to the new P. T. Barnum movie, "The Greatest Showman." You can step right up to view the bearded lady (above), the snake charmer, the fortune teller and the trapeze artist all captured at work and play. The store's message is of fabulous individuality, inclusion, and, of course, shop until you drop. No elephants required.

Conduct, New York

You'd have to be very jaded or a retail atheist not to get excited by the visual artistry in New York City's holiday windows. Each year Barney's, Bergdorf Goodman, Bloomingdale's and Saks Fifth Avenue create bedazzling sidewalk displays that in my mind outperform the towering spectacle of the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree.

Bergdorf's theatrical stage sets—perhaps due to the architectural scale of the actual window frames and the bottomless talent of visual director David Hoey—are usually my favorite. This year's BG masterpiece windows (slideshow here) are no exception. Fanciful, elaborate and technically superb, they celebrate the city's great cultural institutions like The New York Philharmonic, above.

In the window, a cascade of neon instruments light up in sequence and crescendo visually to full blast. Prismatic perspective shows how symphonic music pours out, around, and over you. A flamboyant and flame-haired conductor ignites the scene with back turned and arms raised. My secret fantasy is that as she conducts, she shatters something—not the window—but the notorious gendered glass ceiling of most of the world's great symphony orchestras. 

What's that sound you hear? It's a #metoo army of stiletto heels grinding glass shards into grains of sand. Applause, please.

Signed, New York

Design that speaks out can whisper or shout. I see more people wearing their values on their sleeve (or caps, jackets, sweatshirts and backpacks) with slogans and small buttons that promote love, equality and resistance. I also notice the proliferations of anti-hate posters and flags on the doors of independent stores, on sides of churches, and here, on the glass-front entrance wall of a Jewish Community Center in Manhattan. The sheer size and profundity of this sign, along with the invisible burden carried by a stooped passerby, left me speechless—but not for long.

Beloved, Martha's Vineyard

The person (or people) who created this got to say with pride: "Today I made love on the beach!" I stumbled across it on a long walk and could say, "I found love on the beach." And then I realized that the only way to make this love everlasting was to shoot it.

Smarter, New York

Smart cars are so adorable you just want to pick them up and put them in your pocket. Whenever I see one, I hope these extremely efficient and small-is-beautiful Mercedes are counterbalancing the horrendous number of gas-guzzling black SUV's picking up in the city. The jelly bean-sized cars are so well-designed for the Rush Hour maze that even the NYPD bought a fleet.

Some owners can't resist gloating. When I saw this blue subcompact backing up into a luggage-sized space, I thought, what a real New York car.  It wasn't just Smart, it was also Smart-ass.

Egged, New York

These eggs called out loudly to my inner narcissist. Reading my name in the unlikeliest place— the bright neon of a refrigerated shelf— made me laugh. Fresh foods was giving me a shout out?

Which made me think. What if our future In Real Retail Life (IRRL) interactions were hyper-customized just like current online "Amazon/Netflix recommends"? What if we saw things just for us everywhere? In a boutique, Carol’s jeans, Carol’s dress. At the hardware shop, Carol’s light bulb, Carol’s nail. Even on stickered fruit: Carol's banana. We'd all be trapped in a claustrophobic echo chamber of our own historic tastes (and yes, it's already happened with politics). Your name here, everywhere.

On the other hand, who could resist a small cute box of humane heirloom blue eggs? Thanks, Carol, whoever you are.