Thursday, June 18, 2009
New Toy
While I've been relying heavily on Duotrope to find literary magazines to submit to, I just found this new website that organizes information about litmags in a different, more visual way. While it currently lists only 450 magazines (compared to Duotrope's 1145), it color codes listings with bold borders indicating whether a magazine is more traditional or open to more experimental work, and there is also tag cloud showing the kinds of writing accepted by the various magazines listed. The site also allows for comments on particular publications, with the hope of one day posting "unbiased reviews" of mags on the front page of the site. Other neat tidbits of information include circulation data, which I've always found unwieldy to dig up, and acceptance rates as reported by editors rather than submitters. So that could be a nice counterbalance to Duotrope's writer-reported acceptances. If you're into that sort of thing.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
High Line's Debut
Yesterday, M. took me to the High Line, which officially opened its first section to the public this week. The only entrance for now is on Gansevoort and Washington. I felt giddy ascending the steps to what had been built up and built up and talked about and photographed and anticipated.
The rain had rendered the vegetation lush: wild grasses, purple and blue conical flowers, odd green spears and larger cones of muted yellow just about to burst open to something brighter. (I'd wished there was a guide to the plants, but could find none on their website, just a picture or two of echinacea purpurea.) There were spindly plants topped with magenta spheres and moody, bluish red petalled things, everything poking out of stylized cracks in concrete and elegantly arranged rusting train tracks, just as they'd done wildly, before.
And the views! M. snatched my attention away from the architectural botany to the strange and wonderful perspective on the buildings around us. Just-above-the-rooftops of the meatpacking district on the one side with wispy grasses growing atop awnings and views of pediments and cornices you'd never see from the street level without craning your neck and getting hit by truck hauling animal carcasses or a snarling Escalade.
On the other side, remnants of what is still a manufacturing zone. Whining machinery still grates the ear. You get a marvelous close up of the rotting neglect of buildings. Gorgeous patterns of mottled brick and peeling paint and metal doors leading out to no where, fire escapes rusted away long ago. Barbed wire catching plastic bags and shuddering rooftop ventilation systems.
Thankfully, the botany seems delicately designed with the olfactory in mind, wafting over any industrial smells.
We walked further north and M. seems to salivate at the view ahead, that explosion of West Chelsea architecture. I'm staring at a honeybee burrowing into a lavender poof of something and then he pulls us forward, under the gray Standard Hotel straddling the High Line. Slabs of concrete jut out of the hotel, reaching for the High Line without touching it, amputated by glass barriers that perhaps will one day be removed and planks put across the gap so park goers can be sucked into fancy pants lounges.
Gehry's iceberg / sail boat is moored along the northwest side, with Nouvel's winky windows behind, continuing installation as I write. We can stare into a yoga class in the Equinox near 14th Street and the students emege groggy from their corpse pose, befuddled by the voyeurs standing on this perch, snapping pictures of everything, shamelessly.
We recline on a cedar (?) bench that rolls a short distance along a track and wondered how long it would be before names were scratched into the slats of wood. A man in an army coat, circular sunglasses, and a thick gray moustache pointed whimsically up, shoots his enormously expensive camera right at our faces. He repeats this with the man beside us, assuring him he is only taking pictures of the gallery behind us.
At the fence on 20th St., a Parks Department sentry repeats a happy spiel: "This only the end for now. Section Two is scheduled to open next year. Check out the website for updates."
The rain had rendered the vegetation lush: wild grasses, purple and blue conical flowers, odd green spears and larger cones of muted yellow just about to burst open to something brighter. (I'd wished there was a guide to the plants, but could find none on their website, just a picture or two of echinacea purpurea.) There were spindly plants topped with magenta spheres and moody, bluish red petalled things, everything poking out of stylized cracks in concrete and elegantly arranged rusting train tracks, just as they'd done wildly, before.
And the views! M. snatched my attention away from the architectural botany to the strange and wonderful perspective on the buildings around us. Just-above-the-rooftops of the meatpacking district on the one side with wispy grasses growing atop awnings and views of pediments and cornices you'd never see from the street level without craning your neck and getting hit by truck hauling animal carcasses or a snarling Escalade.
On the other side, remnants of what is still a manufacturing zone. Whining machinery still grates the ear. You get a marvelous close up of the rotting neglect of buildings. Gorgeous patterns of mottled brick and peeling paint and metal doors leading out to no where, fire escapes rusted away long ago. Barbed wire catching plastic bags and shuddering rooftop ventilation systems.
Thankfully, the botany seems delicately designed with the olfactory in mind, wafting over any industrial smells.
We walked further north and M. seems to salivate at the view ahead, that explosion of West Chelsea architecture. I'm staring at a honeybee burrowing into a lavender poof of something and then he pulls us forward, under the gray Standard Hotel straddling the High Line. Slabs of concrete jut out of the hotel, reaching for the High Line without touching it, amputated by glass barriers that perhaps will one day be removed and planks put across the gap so park goers can be sucked into fancy pants lounges.
Gehry's iceberg / sail boat is moored along the northwest side, with Nouvel's winky windows behind, continuing installation as I write. We can stare into a yoga class in the Equinox near 14th Street and the students emege groggy from their corpse pose, befuddled by the voyeurs standing on this perch, snapping pictures of everything, shamelessly.
We recline on a cedar (?) bench that rolls a short distance along a track and wondered how long it would be before names were scratched into the slats of wood. A man in an army coat, circular sunglasses, and a thick gray moustache pointed whimsically up, shoots his enormously expensive camera right at our faces. He repeats this with the man beside us, assuring him he is only taking pictures of the gallery behind us.
At the fence on 20th St., a Parks Department sentry repeats a happy spiel: "This only the end for now. Section Two is scheduled to open next year. Check out the website for updates."
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