Why I Heart NY

Okay, okay, I DON'T LIVE THERE. And therefore, I don't have to pay the various costs (fiscal, physical, psychic), but I do get there for a visit now and then, and I just can't help loving the place.

Here are a couple quick excerpts from yesterday's New York Times story by Randy Kennedy about the building in the picture to the left (click on the photo for a link to yesterday's NY Times story; the access is free if you're a subscriber):

"Depending on your point of view, the hulking 19th-century brick building at 11 Spring Street in NoLIta, a former stable and carriage house, was either a stunning eyesore or one of the most famous canvases and lodestars in the world for urban artists. When those of the latter view heard recently that the building had been sold and would soon be gutted and converted into condominiums, they considered it the end of an era. Bearing their cameras, they began showing up at the building over the last few weeks in a kind of mournful procession."

So the owner-developers contacted the Wooster Collective, who are documentarians of street art (New Yorkers, natch) and they invited street artists from all over the world to come do this building up right before the contractors come in Monday to cover it over. If you're in New York this weekend, you can visit 11 Spring Street to see the artwork on the walls; otherwise, there are some great photos on the Wooster Collective website.

Does this kind of thing go on in Chicago and I'm just not plugged in enough to know about it? I don't know, seems to me New Yorkers just have an attitude toward the arts, and urban culture, that isn't matched anywhere else in the good ole USA.