GammaBlog » East Village

Xmas Tree for the One Percent

gamma — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 04:45:36 +0000

Gift store window on Avenue A.

Share and Enjoy:

Temperance Moon

gamma — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 04:42:46 +0000

Moonrise over the Temperance fountain in Tompkins Square Park.

Share and Enjoy:

Occupy Food

gamma — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 15:03:19 +0000

Marching from La Plaza Cultural Community Garden in the East Village to Liberty Plaza the home of Occupation Wall Street. No GMO. No Fracking, Go Organic.

Share and Enjoy:

Faile Wall

gamma — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 17:48:08 +0000

This has been up for awhile but this was the first chance I’ve had to see it. The distortion comes from the photo being an Autostitch panorama, knit from four photos.

Share and Enjoy:

OWS General Assembly Under Krishna Elm

gamma — Sat, 29 Oct 2011 21:04:55 +0000

Early OWS general assemblies were held in Tompkins Square Park underneath the American Elm Tree held sacred by Hare Krishna devotees. Underneath this tree is where their movement started. I took photos in July and September there prior to the occupation of Liberty Plaza. OWS Day 40

Share and Enjoy:

Muffin Milk Paste

gamma — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 12:13:54 +0000

I started seeing the tag “Muffin Milk” scrawled on walls around the neighborhood this past February. It is so incongruous, making illegal graffiti with such an innocuous concept, that it makes me laugh. Now it looks like the tagger has gone on to something else. Mickey Mouse body and is that a Nike swoosh?

Share and Enjoy:

General Assembly under the Krishna Elm

gamma — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 04:36:58 +0000

Saturday Sept 3 this iconic location under this American Elm in Tompkins Square Park was used for one of the General Assemblies to plan Occupy Wall Street.

Share and Enjoy:

Neighborhood History on an Elm Stump

gamma — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 02:57:05 +0000

This Elm was cut down in 2003 and I shot these photos then. It may have been afflicted with Dutch Elm Disease. Some neighbor nailed wooden tags to the rings giving radical perspectives on local and national history starting in 1931. It looks like the tree was a few years older than that. The stump is no longer there, the tags lasted a few months. The tree was near the corner of 10th Street and Avenue B. No tree has grown there since.

I was inspired to dig these photos out of my archives by the initiation of the online interactive map for my Tompkins Square Park Tree Identification Project. This project is rolling out slowly, I have thousands of photos to edit and add.

I shot these photos in 2003 with my cheap first digital camera and have enhanced the tags for legibility. The 1981 tag refers to the discovery of AIDS. The 1988 tag has police riot scratched out and replaced with “dirty animal.” The 1989 tag mentions Dinkinsville though David Dinkins wasn’t Mayor until 1990.

Share and Enjoy:

Latest TSPTIP Map

gamma — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 16:31:26 +0000

This is a work in progress with many errors still to correct, and many trees still to positively identify. But it is in good enough shape for me to put out there, for comment and correction from the public. I will be putting updated versions here as they happen. Hi-res version for printing. I will soon have a Flickr group devoted to this project.

Share and Enjoy:

Tompkins Square Park Maps 1924 – 2011

gamma — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 17:00:29 +0000

I’m continuing my Tompkins Square Park Tree Identification Project. Here are maps of the park that I am finding useful in my research. NYCityMap is a great resource, you can enter any NYC address or point of interest, and find maps, and aerial photos through the years of all the boroughs. Plus you can see building violations, zoning and overlays of such things as water fountains and parks. Keep an eye on map feature updates at their blog. The aerial photos start in 1924, think bi-planes buzzing overhead.

It looks like it was taken in winter. That must be a pavilion in the center. I’m imagining brass bands playing here. There’s another one further east. I’ve rotated the image to have it squared off with the streets.

Tompkins Square Park in 1951. The basic paths are established.

A friendly Tompkins Square community member let me photograph her copy of a map drawn by Lorna McNeur in the Spring of 1981 for The Friends of Tompkins Square Park. Notice how many elms were there then. Also note the bandshell and the various arrangements of benches, tables and fences. My photo does not do justice to this lovely drawing. I was dealing with reflections from glass over a faded print and had to tweak it severely to get readable details. But it is a great map, I was very happy to find it. The tree identifications on it are limited to major trees. I love seeing the arrangements of benches and tables that were there. I moved here in 1978 and I can vaguely remember them. View Full Size

The next date available on NYCityMap is 1996. Note the old dog run. There is a bit less green covering paths and details here. This might let me tighten up the cartography on my map. I don’t think the configurations of the fences have changed, other than the playgrounds.

The latest on NYCityMap is 2008. I know the west playground has undergone major changes since then.

My latest brainstorm is to use the seemingly uniform (40″) fence segments to calculate distances for my map. If it wasn’t raining today I’d be out there confirming some of the details I have here. So instead of pacing off like a pirate, I’m wandering around the park counting fence posts, and trying not to run into people.

This is a work in progress I am sure there are still many errors in it. The tree icons are proportional to their estimated trunk diameter. Right now I am more interested in notiing their positions and sizes as accurately as I can. The tree identification can come later. Your help is welcome in all this. I’m continuing to photograph the trees, and hope to have portraits of all the major trees of the park before the leaves are gone.

The purple arrows show trail directions. The idea is to sequentially number the trees along those paths for identification purposes. I’m using the Manhattan convention of north being uptown though that is way off the actual compass point.

Share and Enjoy: