----The photos are linked, as required, to Flickr. But In general the largest versions are here on the blog. ---The street art I found most interesting in 2008 was sometimes found in galleries.
I have heard that the Haring Foundation was not pleased, but these additions by an old Haring collaborator added a lot of life to the memorial.
I just finished part two of my Toy Tower Video – Eddie’s Big Wind.
A fierce wind and rain storm, Monday night after the memorial, leaves the tower dangerously leaning into the garden. This accelerates the Parks Department’s plans to tear it down. I again interview the gardeners : Joanee Freedom, Pat Russell, Graywolf and William Hohauser. And we hear from gardeners: Barbara (Improvisational poetry), Steve Jones Daughs (drums) and Tim Young (a sad witness to the final fall of the tower). Plus we hear from various neighbors who were unhappy to see it go, and John, the single angry, vocal protester on the morning of the take-down.
Graywolf tells a great story about how the tower almost came down in an ice storm in 1994, and how Eddie got his friends from Sophie’s bar to save it.
Joanee gives more garden history, and shares her theory about the storm being Eddie’s Wind.
William shares some insight into how Eddie expressed his spirituality.
And Barbara Monoian from the Musee de Monoian gallery says that Eddie was the neighborhood’s keeper of history.
A couple of neighbors expressed glee within earshot that the pile of junk was finally gone, but no one was willing to go on camera to say it.
Part One:
My Baby – Eddie Boros and the Tower of Toys from GammaBlog on Vimeo.
On Sunday May 11th, 2008, the one year memorial for Eddie Boros the creator of the Tower of Toys was held in the 6th and B Community Garden. The NYC Parks department had just declared the tower unsafe and that it must come down. Eddie Boros was an amazing character, he had to be in order to build and preserve from destruction his 60 foot ramshackle tower of salvaged timber and rotting toys from 1985 until 2008, a full year after he died. I combined the interviews with the many photos I’ve taken of the tower, plus photos on the garden bulletin board, as well as some that people put on the garden fence after Eddie died in 2007.
In part one I talk to:
I simply asked everyone to give me their stories about Eddie. He touched a lot of people, the stories were great.
Part Two: Eddie’s Big Wind
Eddie’s Big Wind from GammaBlog on Vimeo.
A fierce wind and rain storm, Monday night after the memorial, leaves the tower dangerously leaning into the garden. This accelerates the Parks Department’s plans to tear it down. I again interview the gardeners : Joanee Freedom, Pat Russell, Graywolf and William Hohauser. And we hear from gardeners: Barbara (Improvisational poetry), Steve Jones Daughs (drums) and Tim Young (a sad witness to the final fall of the tower). Plus we hear from various neighbors who were unhappy to see it go, and John, the single angry, vocal protester on the morning of the take-down.
Graywolf tells a great story about how the tower almost came down in an ice storm in 1994, and how Eddie got his friends from Sophie’s bar to save it.
Joanee gives more garden history, and shares her theory about the storm being Eddie’s Wind.
William shares some insight into how Eddie expressed his spirituality.
And Barbara Monoian from the Musee de Monoian gallery says that Eddie was the neighborhood’s “keeper of history.”
A couple of neighbors expressed glee within earshot that the “pile of junk” was finally gone, but no one was willing to go on camera to say it.
Part Three, the probable final part, is tentatively titled, Some Toys Survive. It deals with the aftermath of the take-down in the garden. For one thing, the area, no longer in the tower’s shadow, is growing lush. For another, Eddie’s toys will likely be given to people in return for gifts of new toys for needy kids, as opposed to auctioning them to support garden needs. There is no date yet on this event, as far as I know.
| Adirondack Camping – Friday, July 11, 2003 – NYC to Camp Black Fly | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Here’s Payaso mugging for the camera. I was unable to get a candid shot of him the whole trip. We’re on our way to the Moose River Plains Wild Forest. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Using his amazing Payaso Sense, Payaso found what was probably one of the most isolated and private of the campsites. It was raining lightly when we arrived an hour before sunset. By the time we got around to trying to start a fire it was too dark to find adequate dry kindling. The illustrated fire is a bit of a sham, as it is subsisting mostly on lighter fluid and soon died, leaving us little protection from the mosquitoes that were starting their evening shift. They clocked-in while the black flies were ringing out. Here I am huddled in my black hooded shirt. From the enthusiastic way that the black flies and mosquitoes hovered around me, we figured that they must be attracted to black. But I’m glad I had it to protect the back of my neck and ears. I protected my face with vigorous slappings. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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This was the tail end of what we heard was a really banner year for black flies. They’d apparently been waiting dormant for several years for such a fine wet year as this has been. Though the little feller in the award photo above appears to be dining, the ones that hovered around our heads seemed to be of a species that does not bite. They prefer to annoy you to death. Black Fly came in third in the 2003 GammaBlaBlog’s Defender of the Wilderness Awards. Black Fly Fact Sheet Black fly image source MAINE BLACKFLY BREEDER’S ASSOCIATION |
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| Saturday, July 12, 2003 – Camp Black Fly. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| We heard nothing that first day, but the wind rustling through the trees. It was heaven, even though it was still cloudy and wet.
They call this wilderness camping, and it is, but most of the sites have a privy, picnic table, and fire pit. Well graded dirt roads lead to the camps. Payaso’s Nissan handled every obstacle that was thrown at it. |
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| A beautiful tree towered over us. It reminded me of the tall trees you see out West, but of course not quite as tall. That’s Payaso’s tent at the bottom of this natural lightning-rod. (The top is gray and dead and looks lightning-struck.) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| This hooded shirt was the only semi-warm clothing I managed to pack. Sheesh! Next time I’ll know better what I need to bring. I want some sort of mosquito netting hat, to protect the back of my neck without restricting air flow. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Camp Black Fly’s privy.
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| At one point we both took refuge from the flies by reading our books in the car. Other campers, out exploring in their truck, came by and asked us how the bugs were treating us. Pretty funny being out in the wilderness and huddling in the car, but the tents weren’t as comfy. They said that at their camp they haven’t even had to put on any repellant. They were staying in the crowded lakeside camp where you are lean over and borrow the salt distance from other campers. Maybe the air by the lake is just saturated with everyone’s evaporated DEET. Our camp was maybe a good mile from the nearest occupied camp, and it smelled sweet and clean.
They told us tales of black bears on their lakeside picnic table. And warned us not to get between a bear and whatever that bear wanted. We’d been keeping our food and trash in the car overnight as a precaution, but I suspect that most of the hungry bears were hanging out near the lake, where they can score junk food, and expect regular mealtimes. The largest mammal I saw near our camp was a chipmunk. Here’s a news story about some Colorodo campers who took even more bear precautions to no avail. After reading that story, I’m going to be even more vigilent with food handling, and not have the tents near the food area at all. One reading of the news story could be that this particular bear was pissed-off that these campers didn’t even leave him a snack.
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It looks like they are clearing some of the junk from beneath the famous Toy Tower of the Sixth and B Garden
It would be practically impossible to mention Eddie Boros, a charismatic, sometimes cantankerous artist from the East Village, without describing his most ambitious work, a looming sculpture made of scrap wood and salvaged objects that rises 65 feet above the southern end of the Sixth Street and Avenue B Community Garden.
Mr. Boros’s sculpture rises 65 feet above the southern end of the Sixth Street and Avenue B Community Garden
The wood of the ramshackle tower is aged and graying. The flotsam suspended from it includes a string of red and white buoys, toy horses and a statue of the Virgin Mary. Mr. Boros called it the toy tower, but others likened it to a psychedelic treehouse.
Mr. Boros died on Friday at 74, and now his sculpture will be the most visible reminder of his long presence in the neighborhood.
A wake was held yesterday for Mr. Boros at a funeral home on East Seventh Street, but before that, members of his family visited the garden, where photographs of him were taped to a tall iron fence and candles sputtered in the breeze.
“He had a great soul,†said one of Mr. Boros’s nieces, Helen Boros, 50, from Massapequa on Long Island. “He was a very giving man.â€
She said her uncle had undergone surgery to have both legs amputated below the knees at a Veterans Affairs hospital in Manhattan in the winter. He had been recuperating at a veterans center in St. Albans, Queens, but was taken last Monday to Mary Immaculate Hospital in Jamaica, where he died.
His relatives said that Mr. Boros was born, and until recently, lived in an apartment on East Fifth Street. He served in the Army and worked delivering ice and painting apartments. But he was always an artist, and the Avenue B sculpture was his masterpiece. And its mere survival over more than two decades has elevated it to the status of neighborhood institution.
Mr. Boros began constructing the sculpture on a 4-by-8-foot garden plot in the early 1980s, initially as a form of protest because the garden’s founders wanted to relegate him to one plot. Before the garden was formally organized, he had been using a bit of empty space on the site to work on wood carvings. For years, Mr. Boros added to the structure until the base expanded to cover six times the original space.
Not everybody was pleased that Mr. Boros had turned a significant chunk of the garden into an outdoor folk art studio. As the sculpture rose, some gardeners accused the artist of insubordination born of bitterness. There were angry meetings. In the early 1990s, some of the garden members spearheaded an effort to evict Mr. Boros and his sculpture. In the end, they settled for an agreement in which Mr. Boros accepted a height limit.
As time went by, the sculpture became a local landmark. People used it as a meeting place, and feral cats used it as a home, climbing their way through the intricate interior of the piece. Sometimes, Mr. Boros himself was known to clamber to the top, where an American flag flew. He sat there, like a lookout on the Pequod straddling a spar, while surveying the streets and skyline.
A documentary featuring Mr. Boros was broadcast on PBS in 1998, and for a time, an image of the sculpture was among opening shots of the television show “NYPD Blue.â€
In recent years, Mr. Boros’s health declined and he quit climbing. Instead, he could sometimes be seen sitting near the sculpture in a folding chair and chatting with visitors.
Yesterday afternoon, a garden member, Pat Russell, gazed up at the sculpture.
“It’s given so much to this garden,†she said. “It’s been a talking point for strangers walking by and for longtime neighbors.â€
By COLIN MOYNIHAN – Published in the New York Times: April 30, 2007
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