While I Was Gone

Lots of small changes in just six weeks away from New York. Since most of them are far from improvements, this will likely be another post to justify my blog name.

A hideous new logo for New York taxis has been slapped onto most of the fleet. It's a horrible jumble of typefaces and consumerism, a feeble attempt to brand NY Taxis (as if they needed branding) and make them more consumer-cuddly.



I wouldn't mind so much if the logo were any good, but it's awful too spacey, unhip and unattractive, with type that manages to look out of focus and too severe at the same time. Dozens of designers, from pro to amateur, have submitted designs much, much better than this one, which looks to be a sad result of design-by-committee, in which everyone's input was considered and accounted for, resulting in this ghastly set of compromises that achieve nothing. (Just change a few of the nouns and I could easily be writing about the textbook industry...)

This is, or rather, was Macondo, the last Spanish bookstore around.



Five months ago, there were two Spanish bookstores on 14th Street. Now there are none. Lectorum (owned by Scholastic) closed this summer and now, the smaller Macondo shut it's doors on November 1st. It had been clearly dying for quite a while (apparently they hadn't paid their rent in 10 months), but both stores fell victim to two obvious trends: the delatinization of the neighborhood (which used to be very Spanish, oh, about 20 years ago) and the fact that nobody reads books anymore, regardless of the language. This space will probably be another nail salon or pocket bank by early 2008.

On the not-so-bad-but-was-it-neseccary? shelf we have the new storefront placed onto the local deli where Bobby buys his coffee soda. It's glass and modern and makes the place look sort of like an aquarium. I can't imagine that it's really going to improve the traffic in there (it's already pretty busy), but it's not an eyesore. Though I am sad they got rid of a metal bar that made for a very conventient dog-hitching post.



And yes, some changes are actually for the good. They added an interesting new bike line on 9th avenue. By moving the row of parked cars away from the curb, they created a safe, protected bike line with metal rods separating the parked cars from the bikes.



Instead of regular parking meters, there are these muni-meters, which accept coins (at last, a use for those pesky Sacajewa dollars) and charge cards. It only goes from 23rd St. to 16th, which is about a minute and a half if you don't hit a red light, but still, it's progress.