Kentucky Avenue, Atlantic City — © Brian Rose

Lucky Seven National Spa. Open 24 Hours.

Showboat Hotel — © Brian Rose

Standing on the boardwalk looking inland — if you leave things vacant long enough in Atlantic City it will revert back to the sandbar that it naturally is. I assume that this block long party wall was meant to abut another casino hotel. But this being Atlantic City, windowless casino walls become virtually permanent features of the urban landscape.

Showboat and its casino closed in 2014 along with several other AC casinos, but has since reopened as a giant plain vanilla hotel. Obviously, it can’t make money. These things have to be write-offs awaiting possible rebirth as rebranded casinos. What else is there? Perhaps, money laundering machines, which is almost certainly true of the former Trump casinos.

Meanwhile, the sand drifts.

Pacific Avenue, Atlantic City — © Brian Rose

The Trump Taj Mahal (seen at right) has been stripped of its faux Indian/Arabian/Russian motifs, and new owner Hard Rock is in the process of installing its characteristic rock/guitar/burgers theme. Hard Rock, which was founded in in 1971 in London by a couple of Americans is now owned by the Seminole Indian Tribe and is headquartered in Orlando, Florida. Trump, of course, parlayed his casino bankruptcies and reality TV show into a gig as president of the United States. It all makes sense in Atlantic City.

Atlantic City — © Brian Rose

Pauline’s Prairie

Former Trump Taj Mahal — © Brian Rose

The grand staircase to the Trumpian realm — now stripped of its onion domes and minarets. Atlantic City continues to bank on casinos as the way out of urban blight and crime. It hasn’t worked so far.

Atlantic City — © Brian Rose

An MRI of America.

Atlantic City — © Brian Rose

Back in Atlantic City…

The Oyster Bar, Grand Central Terminal — © Brian Rose

There is no more essential New York experience than having an oyster stew or pan roast in the Oyster Bar in Grand Central. If you sit at the counter along the north wall you can watch your stew prepared in front of you. It all happens in 3 or 4 minutes — a half dozen Blue Point oysters are quickly cooked in clam broth in a steam heated pan, half-and-half is added, along with dashes of Worcestershire, hot chili sauce, and a sprinkle of paprika. The pan is then tilted, the stew goes into a bowl, and it arrives piping hot a few seconds later. It doesn’t get any better than this.

I once sat next to Peter Seeger at the counter in the Oyster Bar — he was alone — but I didn’t say a word.

Grand Central Terminal — © Brian Rose

After an oyster stew, one must pay homage to Grand Central Terminal itself, one of the greatest interiors in the world. Look up and see the Zodiac. Be filled with wonder.
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The Bowery and Delancey Street — © Brian Rose

The Bowery has been known for a long time as the restaurant supply and lighting district of New York. Manhattan used to have many such concentrations of businesses, often with their wares spilling out onto the sidewalks. Does anyone remember dodging rolling clothing racks in the Garment District?

The Bowery — © Brian Rose

The stores are still there — mostly. But new hotels and a scattering of galleries and restaurants have gradually begun to move in. I actually expected a more rapid turnover, but I think that the restaurant supply and lighting businesses will eventually decamp for the outer boroughs. Some will be pushed out, others who own their buildings, will cash in.

The Bowery — © Brian Rose

The Bowery remains, for the moment, a wonderfully chaotic mess of street. There are still a few shelters for homeless men, vestiges of the days when this was New York’s skid row. Chinatown dominates the south end of the Bowery, as colorful as ever, while things have gotten quite upscale near Cooper Square at the north end.

The Bowery and Spring Street — © Brian Rose

Don’t stare too long at this picture — can’t guarantee the bright orange won’t cause retinal damage.

The Bowery — © Brian Rose

Just a few doors from the cacophonous corner of Delancey Street and the Bowery, I came across George Versailles, a store displaying lots of gold encrusted furniture and glittering chandeliers. The faux opulence, the forced élegance. It vaguely reminded me of something. Oh yes…

Donald Trump apartment, Trump Tower — photo by Sam Horine

It’s Donald Trump by way of Louis XIV by way of Saddam Hussein by way of Muammar Gaddafi. Dictator chic — available on the Bowery.

The Bowery and Delancey Street — © Brian Rose

Not many know this, but  Hitler was obsessed with inflicting direct damage to the United States, and had plans to drop a nuclear bomb on New York. Ground zero was this exact corner — the Bowery and Delancey — equidistant between Downtown and Midtown. Fortunately, the Nazis ran out of time, and were defeated before they developed the bomb.

It is still an epicenter of sorts. Traffic going to and from the Williamsburg Bridge congeals at this point where restaurant supply outlets and lighting stores vie with sidewalk cafes for dominance. It feels a little like the center of all things.

Pell Street and Bowery — © Brian Rose

Grand Street and Bowery — © Brian Rose

The Bowery — © Brian Rose

The Bowery — © Brian Rose

Continuing my walk up the Bowery. Chinatown extends farther north than ever. There’s a lot of construction, but it’s hard to know which way things are going. It’s still a crazy quilt of shops, wildly diverse architecture, and crowded streets. In the late afternoon sun, shadows were sharp and colors vibrant. I made the photograph of the steel beams by sticking the camera through a construction fence.

Hester and Bowery — © Brian Rose

I was down on lower Broadway and decided to walk back to my studio by way of the Bowery. At Hester Street, in the heart of Chinatown I came across Who’s Next, a mural by Otto Schade, which depicts a bald eagle comprised of guns. Its talons grasp a bullet wrapped in stars and stripes.

Kassel Dummy Award submissions

I have rarely been successful at grant submissions or competitions. It’s a good thing I haven’t waited around for such accolades, financial or otherwise. I would never have done any of my Iron Curtain/Berlin wall project. And none of my independent book projects would have seen the light of day. Certainly not my most recent Atlantic City project.

I have dutifully submitted my books to the Kassel Dummy Award, which spotlights unpublished photo books, but I’ve never been shortlisted. Not this time either. But there it is —  my Atlantic City book dummy — in one of their publicity photos (top right). Oh well.

Stay tuned, however, for news…

down the darkening street

I have seen my fortunes fall, rise, and fall again
I have walked the painted line to where the highway ends
tunnels burrow through the earth burrow through the pain
rumble through the underground the rumor of trains

let me show you what we’ve built, staggering and steep
let me show you where we live, where we hunker down to sleep
let me show you this city deep and incomplete
let me show you where your heart goes down the darkening street

I have heard her poetry the clash of ice and fire
dots and dashes intermittent sparks that crackle on the wire
twisted steel the dust of years swirling in a gyre
the bric-a-brac of broken dreams in the pathways of desire

she was once my love my muse ghost-like in the mist
now I know, now I admit, that she does not exist
this towering tree, this tenement, this isle of rocky schist
what is real, what is true, what images persist

Music and lyrics © Brian Rose

West 43rd Street and Fifth Avenue — © Brian Rose

Thunder and lightening, torrential rain, then gradual brightening. Walking through steam clouds after teaching my class at the International Center of Photography. Downtown, Stormy Daniels, Trump’s porn dalliance appeared in Federal court, along with Trump’s slimy mister fixit Michael Cohen. Hilarity ensued. Somehow, the Trump embarrassment comes to roost here in New York and has devolved into farce. .

Williamsburg, Brooklyn — © Brian Rose

Chaos reigns.