Friday Fotos: A Safari into Midtown Psychedelia [the Hallucinating City?]

Wednesday morning I headed into Manhattan for a meeting on W44th St., just off Times Square in the theater district. I took my camera with me so I could catch some flix on the way in and back out.

Here’s we’re just below 41st. Right there in the middle, see that? It’s a bicycle behind a chain-link fence.(Click on photos to embiggen.)

Not really. It’s just a photograph, or perhaps a frame from a video. It’s on a LED screen, changing. That’s what I’m here for.

There we are, 41st Street, Times Square ahead.

There’s Coca Cola – the Real Thing, No? – it’s all over the place. The guy at the bottom, left of center, probably reading something on his sMart pHone, or just zipping through whatever, oblivious to the rest of the world.

I LOVE this one, positively love it. We’re looking into a subway station, the turnstiles.

Except we’re not. It’s just a photo.

Remember Howl’s Moving Castle? The castle had a magic door with four settings, each taking you out into a different part of the world, but castle itself doesn’t move. That’s how this is, each LED display is a different door opening out on a different world. Some of them, of course, open into multiple worlds, one after the other, while others keep cycling through the same world. Another metaphor: the Tardis from Dr. Who. It can take you anywhere in time and space, but itself remains the same (on the inside). Where do you want to go?

And this! The marque dominates the image. The Loft, is that what the building/theater/whatever is called?

NYPD is here – they’re everywhere, this, after all, IS New York. The Lion King. Aladdin.

Same place, different angle. SAVE FOR EDUCATION.

Looks like a Walgreens advertisement at center right; notice the “W” at the upper left.

TIMES CHANGE • DUTY ENDURES • THE CROWN • NOV 17 | NETFLIX.

I’m there! And I will be. I liked the first two seasons.

And look at all the people. Some lonely, some not, some betwixt and between. Time goes on.

Change of scale. Into the red: 18 MILES OF BOOKS • STRAND • NEW YORK CITY • EST. 1927.

See, books are not dead, nor, apparently, has Instagram replaced the postcard.

I don’t know what’s going on above His Dark Materials but I like it.

The lower right, notice the man with the Captain America shield on his back. Of course that’s not the real Captain America; it’s a man in a costume. And it looks like Minnie Mouse to this right. As I walked by I noticed the clown (you can only see the red hair) peeling bills from a roll. Paying street performers for their shift in Never-Never Land?

Let’s look up:

THE END