Ella, Ella, Ella, Ay.

Walking home the other night, I saw this:

Nothing unusual here, right? A broken umbrella handle.

I take about 30 steps forward, and I see this:

At first, I thought this was the rest of the broken umbrella. But this umbrella, while broken and discarded, still has its handle.

At this point, I’m thinking that I might go back and take a picture of the two broken umbrellas, as it’s a pretty unusual sight to see.  Then I take about 80 steps forward (I went back and counted), and saw this:

It's a little difficult to see here, and I might have missed it entirely if I wasn't looking closely.

Can you make that one out?  Here’s a closer view:

It's a little blurry, but you get the idea. It's another handle.

At this point, I’ve gone back, taken photos, and am pretty satisfied with what I’ve discovered.  Then I see THIS:

FOUR!

And then:

This looks like a garbage bag, but it's an umbrella. I didn't check to see if it still had its handle.

I’m not sure if these fit into the Lonely Sock category, since there’s a sense of community here somehow.  I do know that this whole experience was kind of incredibly, impossibly sad and sort of bizarrely beautiful.

A New Thing Every Day.

That’s my goal for 2009. Most of these things will be New York things, except when I’m not in New York. “New” is open to interpretation in all this, as is “thing.” In fact, the definition of “every day” could eventually be stretched as well. When not otherwise specified, you can assume that whatever I’m mentioning is a play I saw.

Here’s what I’ve done so far:

1/1: Besides winning a game of Scene It in dominating fashion (which totally doesn’t count, but I had to mention it), I saw Dust Off-Broadway.

1/2: Becky Shaw at Second Stage.

1/3: Boeing-Boeing on Broadway.

1/4: Ethiopian food at Ghenet in Brooklyn. Oh man, that was good.

I’m not sure what I’ve got planned for tomorrow.

The Lonely Sock Project, IV.

So one night, I’m walking through Grand Army Plaza when I spy this:

This sock is lonely.

That picture gives you a good look at the sock, but without context, it’s hard to capture the loneliness.  So here, without further ado, I provide context:

Shying away from the spotlight.

We all get lonely at night in Brooklyn.

All in all, a successful night of sock scouting, I’d say.  But wait–we’re not done.  The next day, about 21 hours later, to be exact, I was once again walking through Grand Army Plaza when I saw something out of the corner of my eye:

Still there.

This, of course, raised some philosophical questions for me.  Why did I awesome these socks would somehow move on from their spots by the next time I came around?  If I’m not picking them up and taking them home (I gotta draw the line someplace), who is?  Why would I think someone is going to come throw the sock away?  If that sock is there, it’s staying there.  It’s unloved.  It’s lost.  It’s alone.  It can’t dig itself out of its metaphorical hole.  It has no powers of ambulation.

How is this sock supposed to be anyplace else?

22 hours after this picture was taken, I went back to Grand Army Plaza.  The sock was gone.

And my world was changed forever.

Next week…believe it or not, I’ve still got more socks to show.

The Lonely Sock Project, III

So I’m keeping my eyes open for Lonely Socks left and right, and then one day I’m in the Atlantic Avenue train station, and I see this:

And of course, this changes everything. I realize that while socks can be lonely, so can almost anything that comes in a pair. So of course there are going to be lonely crocs as well. It’s possible, however, that this particular croc wasn’t so lonely after all:

Now, there are a few ways to view this picture. One, and this is my initial reaction, is that Croc #2 is lost and alone down on that lower step, and Croc #1 has given up hope and is prepared to go it alone. That’s the sadder view, although it is, again, some kind of commentary on the indomitable human (Croc) spirit. The other way to see this, I think, is that Croc #2 is just hiding from Croc #1.

It’s a glass half-full/half-empty kind of thing. Or a Pop Tart gun vs. Twinkie gun kind of thing.

The Lonely Sock Project, I.

I live in Brooklyn. I see strange things here. More often then you’d think, these strange things are socks.

For example, one night I was walking through Park Slope with Carey, and I found this:

This, my friends, is a lonely sock.

Here is another look at him:

Now, if this was just one sock we were talking about here, that wouldn’t really mean anything. But maybe ten minutes later, I found this:

Another view:

One is a fluke, two is the beginning of a pattern. And so, I set out to document as many lonely socks as I could find in Brooklyn and beyond. In the coming weeks, I will be sharing the results of this documentation with you here at Smichovsky.

The Telectroscope.

So a while back I went to see the Telectroscope in Dumbo. I was very excited about it. I’m not sure why. There’s not a lot to the Telectroscope–I mean, you get to look at people in London via live video. If I knew someone in London (I mean, I do know people in London…hmmm), then maybe I could make a date to see them face-to-face, and then (cue music) even though we’d know how very far about we are, it’d help to think we might be wishing on the same bright star. Ahem.

So I wasn’t really all that impressed by the video part of it, but I think the video part of it is really not the point. I mean, look at this:

And then this:

And it’s kind of amazing.

More pics of this and other awesome stuff from DUMBO can be found here.