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Tom Scola

@heyscola

Photographer, Brooklyn Buffista

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Posts 07.12.2023
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Latest posts by Tom Scola @heyscola

Internet Archive: Digital Library of Free & Borrowable Texts, Movies, Music & Wayback Machine

Somebody has been uploading a shit-ton of comics zines to the Internet Archive lately.

11.03.2026 19:34 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Photograph of a tall corrugated metal fence along a sidewalk in the Sunset Park neighborhood of Brooklyn. On the sidewalk in front of the fence, slightly off-center (because I have the Rule of Thirds embedded in my brain), is a red wooden chair. Projected onto the fence is the shadow of a streetlight, with several signs attached. Behind the fence is some sort of tent-like industrial structure. The fence is new and clean and shiny, but also a neutral color, so the red chair and a glimpse of blue sky in the background break up the monotony.

Photograph of a tall corrugated metal fence along a sidewalk in the Sunset Park neighborhood of Brooklyn. On the sidewalk in front of the fence, slightly off-center (because I have the Rule of Thirds embedded in my brain), is a red wooden chair. Projected onto the fence is the shadow of a streetlight, with several signs attached. Behind the fence is some sort of tent-like industrial structure. The fence is new and clean and shiny, but also a neutral color, so the red chair and a glimpse of blue sky in the background break up the monotony.

Sunset Park, 2020 #BelieveInFilm #UltraMax400

10.03.2026 22:32 👍 6 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Another close-up photograph of the façade of a home in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The bottom half of the photograph is some faux brickface, with a yellow-pink-brown palette. The right side is the wooden front door, with a really nice grooved wooden doorframe, finished in a darker shade of brown. The top is some yellow-green vinyl siding, with faux wooden grain embedded in it. The siding is showing its age, with dirt and grime and some mold growing on it. And if you zoom in, you can see a tiny picture of a worm that someone drew in white on the siding. On the very left of the frame is a basement window, which is surrounded by Christmas lights, which the owner had not yet taken down. As this photograph was taken on Jan 5, 2020, it is somewhat understandable that the homeowner hadn’t gotten around to it yet. The vinyl siding at the top has the silhouette of an aluminum awning that sits atop the entrance. You can’t see the awning itself, but you can see the wavy shadow that it casts.

Another close-up photograph of the façade of a home in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The bottom half of the photograph is some faux brickface, with a yellow-pink-brown palette. The right side is the wooden front door, with a really nice grooved wooden doorframe, finished in a darker shade of brown. The top is some yellow-green vinyl siding, with faux wooden grain embedded in it. The siding is showing its age, with dirt and grime and some mold growing on it. And if you zoom in, you can see a tiny picture of a worm that someone drew in white on the siding. On the very left of the frame is a basement window, which is surrounded by Christmas lights, which the owner had not yet taken down. As this photograph was taken on Jan 5, 2020, it is somewhat understandable that the homeowner hadn’t gotten around to it yet. The vinyl siding at the top has the silhouette of an aluminum awning that sits atop the entrance. You can’t see the awning itself, but you can see the wavy shadow that it casts.

Williamsburg, 2020 #BelieveInFilm #UltraMax400

08.03.2026 19:47 👍 6 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Closely-cropped photograph of a rowhouse in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Like the previous photograph in this series, this is a home clad in 1950s–1960s yellow-green aluminum siding that is manufactured to vaguely resemble wooden shingles. Below it is a wide picture window blocked off by Venetian Blinds. The front door is covered by a green and white aluminum awning. And the doorway has matching green and white tiles. While in the exact same architectural style as the previous home, and using many of the exact same materials, this home comes across as classy and chic, while the other home looked like kitsch. However, this building is showing its age, with decades of dirt and grime lodged in the grooves of siding and awning. A good power washing could have cleared all that up, but instead, in the latest Street View, it looks like the owners decided to paint the siding a pale powder blue, the green awning was removed, and the awesome green and white tiling was also painted over. Another example of the ongoing conspiracy to remove color and joy from our lives.

Closely-cropped photograph of a rowhouse in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Like the previous photograph in this series, this is a home clad in 1950s–1960s yellow-green aluminum siding that is manufactured to vaguely resemble wooden shingles. Below it is a wide picture window blocked off by Venetian Blinds. The front door is covered by a green and white aluminum awning. And the doorway has matching green and white tiles. While in the exact same architectural style as the previous home, and using many of the exact same materials, this home comes across as classy and chic, while the other home looked like kitsch. However, this building is showing its age, with decades of dirt and grime lodged in the grooves of siding and awning. A good power washing could have cleared all that up, but instead, in the latest Street View, it looks like the owners decided to paint the siding a pale powder blue, the green awning was removed, and the awesome green and white tiling was also painted over. Another example of the ongoing conspiracy to remove color and joy from our lives.

Williamsburg, 2020 #BelieveInFilm #UltraMax400

06.03.2026 16:20 👍 6 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Closely-cropped photograph of the front of a rowhouse in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The home is clad in aluminum siding that is made to simulate wooden shingles: It’s painted brown, it has vertical ridges pressed into them, and they are mounted in an overlapping manner as if they were wood. It looks like a cartoon version of a wooden house. There is an air conditioner unit sticking out of the front wall, it is also painted a matching shade of brown. The top third of the is a big picture window; the windows have vertical blinds hanging in them. Sitting on the window sill in front of the blinds is a vase, filled with fake yellow flowers. How do I know that these are fake? Well, I just checked the Street View for this site, and the exact same vase and flowers were still sitting on this window sill in 2024. In fact, Google has Street View photos of this home in 2024, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2009, and 2007. In every single one of those scenes, the exact same vase and flowers is sitting in the window, behind the same set of blinds, next to the same AC unit. This building has been unchanged from the outside for at least 20 years! Given just how much the rest of the neighborhood of Williamsburg has changed in that time, that’s pretty mind-blowing!

Closely-cropped photograph of the front of a rowhouse in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The home is clad in aluminum siding that is made to simulate wooden shingles: It’s painted brown, it has vertical ridges pressed into them, and they are mounted in an overlapping manner as if they were wood. It looks like a cartoon version of a wooden house. There is an air conditioner unit sticking out of the front wall, it is also painted a matching shade of brown. The top third of the is a big picture window; the windows have vertical blinds hanging in them. Sitting on the window sill in front of the blinds is a vase, filled with fake yellow flowers. How do I know that these are fake? Well, I just checked the Street View for this site, and the exact same vase and flowers were still sitting on this window sill in 2024. In fact, Google has Street View photos of this home in 2024, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2009, and 2007. In every single one of those scenes, the exact same vase and flowers is sitting in the window, behind the same set of blinds, next to the same AC unit. This building has been unchanged from the outside for at least 20 years! Given just how much the rest of the neighborhood of Williamsburg has changed in that time, that’s pretty mind-blowing!

Williamsburg, 2020 #BelieveInFilm #UltraMax400

04.03.2026 15:26 👍 13 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
Photograph of the side of a Chinese restaurant in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The bricks are covered with layers of red paint to cover up the layers of graffiti underneath. The latest tag is by someone called “Mei Fun” with a Chinese character quickly scrawled in Krylon, which I suppose is appropriate graffiti for a Chinese restaurant. The restaurant has a bright yellow sign, which contrasts nicely with the red bricks. Ho May KITCHEN, the sign proclaims. CHINESE FOOD. ORDERS TO TAKE OUT. Beneath the sign is a large exhaust fan, whose grating is covered in greasy black soot, indicating that this restaurant’s woks have been working overtime for many years. This restaurant survived in imminent COVID shutdown, but finally closed after decades in business in 2024. It seemed to be a popular neighborhood spot, in spite of the trashy outward appearance.

Photograph of the side of a Chinese restaurant in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The bricks are covered with layers of red paint to cover up the layers of graffiti underneath. The latest tag is by someone called “Mei Fun” with a Chinese character quickly scrawled in Krylon, which I suppose is appropriate graffiti for a Chinese restaurant. The restaurant has a bright yellow sign, which contrasts nicely with the red bricks. Ho May KITCHEN, the sign proclaims. CHINESE FOOD. ORDERS TO TAKE OUT. Beneath the sign is a large exhaust fan, whose grating is covered in greasy black soot, indicating that this restaurant’s woks have been working overtime for many years. This restaurant survived in imminent COVID shutdown, but finally closed after decades in business in 2024. It seemed to be a popular neighborhood spot, in spite of the trashy outward appearance.

Williamsburg, 2020 #BelieveInFilm #UltraMax400

02.03.2026 18:53 👍 50 🔁 1 💬 2 📌 0
Tightly-cropped photograph of the entrance to a building at the top of a stoop, with three green metal doors. The stoop has a couple of black metal handrails, which cast abstract shadows across the scene. The doors are painted green, but at some point, it seems like they were covered in graffiti, which was then washed off. It gives the doors a kind of sponged-off look to them, which in turns gives the photo a painterly look, which is something I strive for in my photography.

Tightly-cropped photograph of the entrance to a building at the top of a stoop, with three green metal doors. The stoop has a couple of black metal handrails, which cast abstract shadows across the scene. The doors are painted green, but at some point, it seems like they were covered in graffiti, which was then washed off. It gives the doors a kind of sponged-off look to them, which in turns gives the photo a painterly look, which is something I strive for in my photography.

Williamsburg, 2026 #BelieveInFilm #UltraMax400

27.02.2026 15:49 👍 17 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

I cheered when she plunged to her death down an empty turblolift shaft.

25.02.2026 17:33 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Vertical close-up photograph of a rowhouse in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The house is clad in yellow vinyl siding, and there is an aluminum awning, which is white with matching yellow trim. Or at least, it would be white if the awning weren’t caked with years of accumulated dirt. There is a small mailbox mounted next to the basement entrance, with the house number scrawled on the wall with a magic marker. There is a 1970s or 1980s-vintage intercom also mounted with a single push button and what is obviously a very distorted cheap speaker. Welcome to 2020! I’m done going through my 2019 photos, and this photo was taken in February, 2020. About six weeks before everything went to hell. Photography proved to be my only respite from the horribleness, and it kept me sane, like it always does. At least when I had access to film and processing labs. I did some good work that year, too.

Vertical close-up photograph of a rowhouse in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The house is clad in yellow vinyl siding, and there is an aluminum awning, which is white with matching yellow trim. Or at least, it would be white if the awning weren’t caked with years of accumulated dirt. There is a small mailbox mounted next to the basement entrance, with the house number scrawled on the wall with a magic marker. There is a 1970s or 1980s-vintage intercom also mounted with a single push button and what is obviously a very distorted cheap speaker. Welcome to 2020! I’m done going through my 2019 photos, and this photo was taken in February, 2020. About six weeks before everything went to hell. Photography proved to be my only respite from the horribleness, and it kept me sane, like it always does. At least when I had access to film and processing labs. I did some good work that year, too.

Williamsburg, 2020 #BelieveInFilm #UltraMax400

25.02.2026 16:41 👍 17 🔁 1 💬 2 📌 0
Photograph of the bottom of the stairs of a subway entrance in the neighborhood Brooklyn Heights. Sunlight shines down dramatically from above and hits a hinged gate that can close off this entrance. The thing is, this entrance doesn’t need a gate, since it never closes! Back in the day, it was SOP for the MTA to close off secondary entrances to the subway at night, so that only entrances with manned token booths would be open. I guess that made more sense at a time when muggings were more commonplace. But over the decades, the crime rate dropped dramatically, and the MTA made the decision to get rid of most of the token booths, as there now were automated MetroCard vending machines. So you might as well just keep all the entrances open all the time. This gate was now completely redundant. Except that this photo was taken in December 2019. A few months later, in the midst of the COVID lock-down, Governor Cuomo would do something that had never really happened on the NYC Subway before: He closed the subway at night. So finally, after a couple of decades, this gate would finally have a use again, as it would need to be swung closed and locked every evening. By the way, this subway station is currently being remodeled. All of this cool 1970s era tiling has been ripped out, and is being replaced with 1910s-style tiling to match the rest of the station, witch is a historic landmark.

Photograph of the bottom of the stairs of a subway entrance in the neighborhood Brooklyn Heights. Sunlight shines down dramatically from above and hits a hinged gate that can close off this entrance. The thing is, this entrance doesn’t need a gate, since it never closes! Back in the day, it was SOP for the MTA to close off secondary entrances to the subway at night, so that only entrances with manned token booths would be open. I guess that made more sense at a time when muggings were more commonplace. But over the decades, the crime rate dropped dramatically, and the MTA made the decision to get rid of most of the token booths, as there now were automated MetroCard vending machines. So you might as well just keep all the entrances open all the time. This gate was now completely redundant. Except that this photo was taken in December 2019. A few months later, in the midst of the COVID lock-down, Governor Cuomo would do something that had never really happened on the NYC Subway before: He closed the subway at night. So finally, after a couple of decades, this gate would finally have a use again, as it would need to be swung closed and locked every evening. By the way, this subway station is currently being remodeled. All of this cool 1970s era tiling has been ripped out, and is being replaced with 1910s-style tiling to match the rest of the station, witch is a historic landmark.

Brooklyn Heights, 2019 #BelieveInFilm #UltraMax400

23.02.2026 18:13 👍 10 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0

Did you consider @vanshnookenraggen.com’s proposal for an IBX spur to LGA? He made it sound like an N/W extension wasn’t very feasible.

23.02.2026 17:57 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Photograph of a graffiti-covered rolling gate located in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. The street artist’s palette is bright red and white, with black highlights spelling out the person’s name. In front of the gate is some metal scaffolding, painted green and covered in stickers. This picture was taken in early December, when the light in New York City is spectacular, and it certainly shows in this photograph. The Ultramax gives the photo an almost three-dimensional feel, which is one of the main advantages that film has over digital. You can almost feel the textures in this scene.

Photograph of a graffiti-covered rolling gate located in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. The street artist’s palette is bright red and white, with black highlights spelling out the person’s name. In front of the gate is some metal scaffolding, painted green and covered in stickers. This picture was taken in early December, when the light in New York City is spectacular, and it certainly shows in this photograph. The Ultramax gives the photo an almost three-dimensional feel, which is one of the main advantages that film has over digital. You can almost feel the textures in this scene.

LES, 2019 #BelieveInFilm #UltraMax400

19.02.2026 15:24 👍 8 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Post image

Same. Shot two rolls of film yesterday. (iPhone reference)

15.02.2026 23:40 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Close-up photograph of a rolling gate in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. The gate is covered in graffiti with a red, white and black palette with blue highlights, except that since the sun is shining down on the gate so intensely, the black is completely washed out. Next to the gate is a diamond plate slab of metal, also painted with the same washed-out black. The ridges in the gate, and the diamond pattern in the gate are under such high-contrast sunlight that the photo looks like some kind of abstract painting. I hate that. To call this photo an abstraction is something of an insult to my vision. I’m not trying to erase the sense of place, but to distill it—to erase the unnecessary. To make it MORE real, not less. The diamond plate metal on the right has a couple of stickers with writing on them. This I hope pulls the photo back from the abstract into the representational. The original cubists—Picasso, Braque, et al, were insistent that their paintings weren’t abstract, and they too began to incorporate printed text into their works for the same reasons, which led to the invention of collage.

Close-up photograph of a rolling gate in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. The gate is covered in graffiti with a red, white and black palette with blue highlights, except that since the sun is shining down on the gate so intensely, the black is completely washed out. Next to the gate is a diamond plate slab of metal, also painted with the same washed-out black. The ridges in the gate, and the diamond pattern in the gate are under such high-contrast sunlight that the photo looks like some kind of abstract painting. I hate that. To call this photo an abstraction is something of an insult to my vision. I’m not trying to erase the sense of place, but to distill it—to erase the unnecessary. To make it MORE real, not less. The diamond plate metal on the right has a couple of stickers with writing on them. This I hope pulls the photo back from the abstract into the representational. The original cubists—Picasso, Braque, et al, were insistent that their paintings weren’t abstract, and they too began to incorporate printed text into their works for the same reasons, which led to the invention of collage.

LES, 2019 #BelieveInFilm #UltraMax400

15.02.2026 22:56 👍 7 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

I love my thick Moscot glasses, but I’m realizing that kind of glasses are suddenly and rapidly going out of style, and we all have to switch to thin wire-frame glasses now.

13.02.2026 17:00 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Photograph of a defunct candy store on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. This photo shows the storefront, closed off with a rolling gate. Along the top of the frame is an awning, adorned with the name: The Sweet Life. A small portion of the window is exposed on the lower right, with a For Rent sign visible, providing a profoundly ironic and sad counterpoint to the hopeful message on the awning. The Sweet Life was a candy store that had been open in the LES for decades, before going out of business in 2018. The store had been vacant for over a year when this photo was taken. It’s now a hair salon or something.

Photograph of a defunct candy store on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. This photo shows the storefront, closed off with a rolling gate. Along the top of the frame is an awning, adorned with the name: The Sweet Life. A small portion of the window is exposed on the lower right, with a For Rent sign visible, providing a profoundly ironic and sad counterpoint to the hopeful message on the awning. The Sweet Life was a candy store that had been open in the LES for decades, before going out of business in 2018. The store had been vacant for over a year when this photo was taken. It’s now a hair salon or something.

LES, 2019 #BelieveInFilm #UltraMax400

12.02.2026 15:53 👍 15 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
11.02.2026 16:25 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
The first of a diptych of close-up photos of a graffiti-covered wall in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. These photos bear more than a passing resemblance to Jackson Pollock painting. The photo consists of splotches of bright colors on a textured stucco wall. This photo’s palette consists of a dozen or so distinct colors, but is biased towards red and black. The sun hits the wall at a good angle, and both the colors and the texture really pops.

The first of a diptych of close-up photos of a graffiti-covered wall in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. These photos bear more than a passing resemblance to Jackson Pollock painting. The photo consists of splotches of bright colors on a textured stucco wall. This photo’s palette consists of a dozen or so distinct colors, but is biased towards red and black. The sun hits the wall at a good angle, and both the colors and the texture really pops.

The second of a diptych of close-up photographs of a graffiti-covered wall in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Again this is a Jackson Pollock like abstraction of bright colors on a textured stucco wall. This photo’s palette is biased towards purple and black, although, as in the previous photo, there are about a dozen distinct colors.

The second of a diptych of close-up photographs of a graffiti-covered wall in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Again this is a Jackson Pollock like abstraction of bright colors on a textured stucco wall. This photo’s palette is biased towards purple and black, although, as in the previous photo, there are about a dozen distinct colors.

LES, 2019 #BelieveInFilm #UltraMax400

10.02.2026 19:50 👍 5 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

A country group from Texas, and a punk band from the East Bay should be held to vastly different standards.

08.02.2026 23:23 👍 5 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Close-up photo of the base of an eagle monument in the Elizabeth Street Garden in Lower East Side of Manhattan. A whole bunch of entitled Millennials are pissed that their fancy garden is going to be torn down to make room for desperately needed housing. Fuck them.

Close-up photo of the base of an eagle monument in the Elizabeth Street Garden in Lower East Side of Manhattan. A whole bunch of entitled Millennials are pissed that their fancy garden is going to be torn down to make room for desperately needed housing. Fuck them.

LES , 2019

08.02.2026 22:44 👍 4 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
The first of a diptych of graffiti-covered rolling gates in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. You can’t make out what the tag says, but it’s bright red with black and white highlights, and on the right there are splotches of blue, purple and yellow. On the right is the frame of the rolling gate, which is secured by a hefty padlock, which of course is covered with stickers for locksmiths.

The first of a diptych of graffiti-covered rolling gates in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. You can’t make out what the tag says, but it’s bright red with black and white highlights, and on the right there are splotches of blue, purple and yellow. On the right is the frame of the rolling gate, which is secured by a hefty padlock, which of course is covered with stickers for locksmiths.

The second of a diptych of graffiti-covered rolling gates in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. This is also bright red with black and white highlights, but in stark contrast to the previous photo, the paint is peeling off the gate.

The second of a diptych of graffiti-covered rolling gates in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. This is also bright red with black and white highlights, but in stark contrast to the previous photo, the paint is peeling off the gate.

LES, 2019 #BelieveInFilm #UltraMax400

06.02.2026 22:15 👍 9 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Close-up photograph of a pipe with a valve coming out of what looks to be a wall in Lower East Side of Manhattan. It looks like a wall, but it isn’t; it’s the side of a shipping-container sized transportable emergency backup boiler for a building, sitting on the side of the street. The pipe is where the heating oil gets refilled, and you can see that the pipe is covered in a black sheen. The side of the container is painted blue and yellow, exactly like the flag of Ukraine. I don’t know why it’s painted that way, the colors are exact enough that it seems to be intentional, but in 2019 were people that interested in showing support with Ukraine? Maybe the owner of this boiler is Ukrainian?

Close-up photograph of a pipe with a valve coming out of what looks to be a wall in Lower East Side of Manhattan. It looks like a wall, but it isn’t; it’s the side of a shipping-container sized transportable emergency backup boiler for a building, sitting on the side of the street. The pipe is where the heating oil gets refilled, and you can see that the pipe is covered in a black sheen. The side of the container is painted blue and yellow, exactly like the flag of Ukraine. I don’t know why it’s painted that way, the colors are exact enough that it seems to be intentional, but in 2019 were people that interested in showing support with Ukraine? Maybe the owner of this boiler is Ukrainian?

LES, 2019 #BelieveInFilm #UltraMax400

03.02.2026 15:50 👍 18 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
Photograph of a rowhouse undergoing renovation in the South Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn. So much like the previous house I posted, this house was cheaply built, but the land underneath is extremely valuable, so either the homeowner sold out, or they tapped into their equity to renovate.

Photograph of a rowhouse undergoing renovation in the South Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn. So much like the previous house I posted, this house was cheaply built, but the land underneath is extremely valuable, so either the homeowner sold out, or they tapped into their equity to renovate.

South Slope, 2019 #BelieveInFilm #400TX

01.02.2026 22:04 👍 17 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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30.01.2026 13:49 👍 2031 🔁 480 💬 20 📌 12
Black and white photograph of a rowhouse in the South Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn. You can tell that we are no longer in the Park Slope neighborhood, because this house is not one of the spectacular brownstones that the neighborhood is famous for. Everything about this rowhouse looks cheap and practical. The foundation is made from cheap cinder blocks. The stoop is made from cheap bricks. The house is clad in cheap vinyl siding. The basement entrance is covered by a cheap aluminum awning. A cheap air conditioner sticks out of the bedroom window. Yet this home is not, by any stretch of the imagination, cheap. It’s current estimate on Zillow is $1.4 million. Sure, an actual brownstone, ten blocks to the north, is worth more than double that, but even still, this thoroughly modest home is somebody’s nest egg and treasure. Sitting on the window sill, next to the air conditioner, is what appears on your phone screen as a tiny black dot. But if you zoom in, you can see it’s a small glass vessel with an itty-bitty plant growing out of it. The Park Slope brownstones typically have huge planters in their windows, and the homeowners pay their gardeners for elaborate displays. Yet this modest house only has a space for the tiniest of plants, which looks like it might fall off at any moment. However, on Street View, the tiny plant is still visible, some five years later.

Black and white photograph of a rowhouse in the South Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn. You can tell that we are no longer in the Park Slope neighborhood, because this house is not one of the spectacular brownstones that the neighborhood is famous for. Everything about this rowhouse looks cheap and practical. The foundation is made from cheap cinder blocks. The stoop is made from cheap bricks. The house is clad in cheap vinyl siding. The basement entrance is covered by a cheap aluminum awning. A cheap air conditioner sticks out of the bedroom window. Yet this home is not, by any stretch of the imagination, cheap. It’s current estimate on Zillow is $1.4 million. Sure, an actual brownstone, ten blocks to the north, is worth more than double that, but even still, this thoroughly modest home is somebody’s nest egg and treasure. Sitting on the window sill, next to the air conditioner, is what appears on your phone screen as a tiny black dot. But if you zoom in, you can see it’s a small glass vessel with an itty-bitty plant growing out of it. The Park Slope brownstones typically have huge planters in their windows, and the homeowners pay their gardeners for elaborate displays. Yet this modest house only has a space for the tiniest of plants, which looks like it might fall off at any moment. However, on Street View, the tiny plant is still visible, some five years later.

South Slope, 2019 #BelieveInFilm #400TX

30.01.2026 15:17 👍 9 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Dramatic photograph taken underneath the Gowanus Expressway as its six-lane viaduct climbs up high in the air as it passes over the canal. Somewhat reminiscent of Italian Futurism, the viaduct looks like some kind of abstract painting placed in the middle of a Brooklyn street. Yet the structure is not shiny and new as Futurists depicted; it looks old and weathered and rusted. The modernists were focused on destroying the past and replacing it with the new, yet their ultimate failure was that they weren’t living in the future, they were stuck in the present. The works they created are now subject to the same fate as the structures of their forebearers that they destroyed. This section of the Gowanus Expressway has since been repaired and patched and repainted, but ultimately it must be torn down replaced with something human scaled.

Dramatic photograph taken underneath the Gowanus Expressway as its six-lane viaduct climbs up high in the air as it passes over the canal. Somewhat reminiscent of Italian Futurism, the viaduct looks like some kind of abstract painting placed in the middle of a Brooklyn street. Yet the structure is not shiny and new as Futurists depicted; it looks old and weathered and rusted. The modernists were focused on destroying the past and replacing it with the new, yet their ultimate failure was that they weren’t living in the future, they were stuck in the present. The works they created are now subject to the same fate as the structures of their forebearers that they destroyed. This section of the Gowanus Expressway has since been repaired and patched and repainted, but ultimately it must be torn down replaced with something human scaled.

Gowanus, 2019 #BelieveInFilm #400TX

26.01.2026 17:41 👍 20 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Preview
Executive Order 13769 - Wikipedia

January 27, 2017

25.01.2026 21:49 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 1
A black and white photograph taken underneath an elevated section of the BQE near the Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn. The photo mainly shows a metal pylon, covered with metal plating, which is attached with an absurd number of rivets. Resting on top of the pylon is a curved girder, again with metal plating and a shitload worth of rivets. There is also a pipe that drains water from the roadway above to a sewer below. The dead space below the viaduct is paved with cobblestones. In the background is a neighborhood that was plowed through by Robert Moses so that he could build this pollution and noise generating monstrosity.

A black and white photograph taken underneath an elevated section of the BQE near the Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn. The photo mainly shows a metal pylon, covered with metal plating, which is attached with an absurd number of rivets. Resting on top of the pylon is a curved girder, again with metal plating and a shitload worth of rivets. There is also a pipe that drains water from the roadway above to a sewer below. The dead space below the viaduct is paved with cobblestones. In the background is a neighborhood that was plowed through by Robert Moses so that he could build this pollution and noise generating monstrosity.

Red Hook, 2019 #BelieveInFilm #400TX

23.01.2026 20:57 👍 9 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Gandalf will always fail upwards, just like every other mediocre white dude.

22.01.2026 21:17 👍 8 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

One of the most underreported NYC stories is the Delaware Aqueduct Bypass tunnel, a huge upstate megaproject that is half-built, and keeps getting delayed, year after year. And nobody talks about it. Hopefully the new Mayor will appoint someone who can bring this project past the finish line.

22.01.2026 13:43 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0