Zoo-Lander

    

   

     This is the storefront of a designer's boutique on Prince Street.  I have seen store-owners keep their cats and dogs in their stores before as well, but the relationship with the customer is different.  In this context, the rabbit -his name is Jack- is more of an accessory than a buddy.  The dog usually stays in the back and cats are allowed to wander around and sleep where they please.  Jack is confined for practical/sanitary reasons, but someone had to make the conscious choice to build his playpen right in the front of the store instead of the back, which would probably have meant less stress for the animal.  
     The woman working at the store was very nice- she answered my questions and allowed me to take pictures.  The grass you see is fake grass, which she says he does not try to nibble on.  He has a waterbowl and a pile of real alfalfa to eat.  I asked if he lived in the store- he commutes daily.  The woman made it seem as if it were a matter of companionship and convenience to have him there, but he has his own well-outfitted space in the showcase, which he shares with two manequins.  It would be hard to believe that they're are not aware of the influence live cute animals have over a potential customer.  Having animals around (even pictures of animals) is an extremely reliable sales tactic.  In this circumstance, it may also be something for kids and boyfriends to play with so a woman can spend a longer time shopping.  
     Jack's presence is not unlike the pet adoption campaign tables seen outside of parks and pet stores, that feature live and eligible dogs and cats.  However, the connection between the animal and the product is less direct in the case of Jack.  He is "styled" just like everything else in the store.  Because it is a high-end boutique, it would be too tacky if he were to wear a little vest that said "This week 20% off everything," but maybe not so much if it were a neighborhood vintage store in Brooklyn.

   

Grub Hub

     When I began this post, I searched for images of GrubHub ads and almost immediately I found the collaborative blog Big Other's post "The Semiotics of GrubHub" by A D Jameson.  I had never seen this site before but it seems like it would've been a great source for people in the Visual Culture class to refer to during the semester.  The writing is solid and the topic are interesting.  At first, I wanted to discard my idea for this post because Jameson had already done it so well.  Then again, he and all of the other contributors to Big Other are real writers, with multiple Masters degrees and published books.
     Jameson focuses on decoding the (hidden and not so hidden) sexual messages in the ads.  Something else that I can't escape is the way that the ads use language and images to make the service seem absolutely effortless.  What I mean is, having a service online does not change the fact that your order is still being faxed to a real restaurant with real kitchen staff and real delivery people.  The language of ease is all over- in phrases like "summon food" and "eating made easy."  As well as GrubHub's repeated theme of ordering and eating food naked.  
     Seamless web is a similar service that emphasizes the ease of the experience.  Their tag line is "Your food is here," and nearby they claim to be "The easiest way to order.  Maybe even easier than eating."  However, their website and ads are far less humorous than GrubHub's.  They don't have cute paper-collage characters and inside jokes.  Seamless is straightforward and no-nonsense, while GrubHub celebrates entertainment and nonsense.
     If you have never worked in a kitchen, especially in New York City, it is no exaggeration that a huge percentage of the staff are Hispanic males, many of them illegal or with questionable immigration status.  Even in nice restaurants and those owned by non-Hispanic minorities.  In addition, it is common practice to pay them poorly, often in cash, because they have no better alternative.  This may seem like a stretch to associate this sad state of affairs with the politics of GrubHub's ads, but I'm not the only one.  On the opposite side of the "ease" coin, I see a lot of racist comments online about a) why Grubhub is great because you don't have to talk to someone who "doesn't speak English" and b) commenting on the "inaccurate" graphics of the ads, for example, a white delivery guy.  See howzyafatha.com for an example.  It's true that no matter what language is spoken, GrubHub is convenient because it is in writing, but is eliminating verbal communication going to make any of us better at it?

Green means go

     While I consider myself to be a healthful eater who makes careful choices in the supermarket, I've found it particularly bewildering to engage with Whole Foods' ever-expanding set of ratings and color-coded symbols.  They are used to label myriad items from meat to greens to lotion.  Several of them use a system that most citizens are already familiar with and can pretty much understand without even reading the explanation- green is great, yellow is okay, red is bad. 

     Arguably the most straightforward guide is the ANDI scale, which stands for Aggregate Nutrient Density Index.  It is helpful to know that collard greens are the most nutrient dense food you can eat, but let's not forget about the fact that a varied, balanced diet is also good for us, we can't eat only "top 10" foods, and that many vitamins are fat-soluble and need that olive oil on them in order to be absorbed by the body.  Using these labels as a shorthand substitute for reading the package can be convenient, the ANDI scale is "part of this whole process, not an isolated tool," says Mary Olivar, Whole Foods' Southwest regional healthy eating specialist.  I think this coded system is extremely seductive for shoppers who want to make the best choices all the time, as quickly as possible, without having to worry or research themselves to death.  I imagine that the symbols themselves will begin (have begun?) to generate a whole new set of hang-ups, such as "Should I buy the Orange-rated shampoo for my kids because they're sold out of my favorite Green-rated brand?  Am I a worse mother because of it?"  The rating is essentially subjective.  It could be argued that were someone to produce an entirely different scale for animal welfare, for example, what is a 3 on that scale might be a 5 according to Whole Foods.

     I don't want to sound like I don't support organic, local, sustainable, or otherwise "clean" food.  In fact I am a huge supporter.  It's just that I'm a little wary of the oversimplification, judging, and jumping to conclusions that is probably taking place.  In the end, people should fully own all of their knowledge, and that means reading ingredients, learning about production practices, nutrition, and drawing their own conclusions. 

      This past Earth Day, Whole Foods celebrated by discontinuing the sale of all Red and Unrated seafood items, nearly a year earlier than they had planned.

     Because the ANDI scores are based on nutrition-per-calorie, high-calorie foods that are very good for you (yogurt, peanut butter, olive oil, avocado) get pushed lower down on the list, which may give people the sense that they should avoid them.  The "Clean 15" list is not in Whole Foods, but I think it makes for an interesting side-by-side comparison.

Kids Draw The News

     Kids Draw The News is a new weekly special assignment in the CityRoom blog of the New York times. Kids 12 and under are asked to illustrate a chosen current events story selected by the staff. I have mixed feelings about it because the age range is wide and the results are so varied.  I know it is for entertainment purposes only, and not a "real" art assignment, but it would be so much richer if it were.  Because of the vast age range, some kids really get what the stories are about (so far a brawl at the New York Athletic Club and the incident of a crowd member calling the mayor "pharaoh Bloomberg" at a City Hall rally) and some don't.  Ask kids age 5-10 what their concerns and artistic goals are, and most of them will not mention anything about adult politics and scandal.
     The way that they get the story also affects their interpretation of it- did their parents tell them the short version and ask them to draw a picture?  Did the parents read the article or a summary of it out loud?  Or maybe the child was old enough and interested enough to read the entire news story themselves.  This is not the a short-coming of the kids, but what I see it the extraction of one or two juicy details from the story used as the inspiration for a drawing.  What I don't see is understanding, interpretation, reflection. I am not demanding more of the kids, but it makes be wonder who's idea it was and what purpose it might serve.  I think a more relevant and learner-centered idea would be to ask older kids (maybe 11-15) to choose a story from the past week and to react to it visually, with or without accompanying text.

Don't knock it til you try it...

     I became aware of this because someone posted it on Facebook.  I know that this kind of hate speech happens every day in homes, schools, and churches across the country, but this particular audio clip immediately generated a lot of angry responses from people whose blood boiled when they heard it. 
     On Harris' website, he apologizes for unintentionally offending people, but doesn't retract his original opinion.  He also complains that many people have misquoted what he actually said, yet he does not offer a transcript or video of the sermon to prove his point.
     One thing that really stood out to me is his presumption of the dad's role as family disciplinarian.  Harris tell dads to "snap" the wrist of a young boy as soon as undesirable behavior is shown- like playing dress up at four years old with women's clothes, and to "reign in" a daughter that doesn't strive to make herself more beautiful.  This is really about gender-identity formation, not sexuality.  It is not uncommon for people to make this confusion, especially when they have no out gay people in their life.  People are so caught up on gender roles that they equate them with sexuality.  Even worse, people confuse the normal, exploratory play of young children with expressions of gender and sexuality.
     Harris should watch what he says, because the medical community is onto him.  An article published last week in the New York Times elaborates on the results of a scientific study which demonstrates something that the rest of us have "known" forever: if someone is an over-achiever at being belligerently homophobic, maybe they're gay.  Freud's concept of a "reaction formation" turns out to be testable and true at least part of the time.
     The good news: Pastor Harris has apparently never heard of "lipstick lesbians" who will fly safely under his radar because they look, act, and smell like "girls"!  And about that limp wrist...

"You can be gay, but you don't have to be a faggot." 

-Pedro Angel Serrano, 

activist, spoken-word artist, and host of Generation Q on 88.7 WRSU

Skirts and Skin

      Bald Barbie started with a Facebook campaign that proved influential.  At first, Mattel rejected the idea, but when more than 100,000 people "liked" it, they decided to go for it.  It's interesting to note that in the official statement from Mattel, they specify that the doll "will be a friend of Barbie."  Too bad they didn't have the courage to make it Barbie herself.  I guess then all subsequent Barbies would be in remission and have to live with the fear of relapse.  The other bad news is that they are only producing 10,000 to start and they will only be available through children's hospitals.  So by limiting production and availability, not all kids who want one will be able to get one.  Do they think that only current cancer patients deserve one?  Are they trying to turn it into a collector's item?  Do they think that siblings and friends of kids with cancer will not want one too? Are they just worried about their brand image and do not want risk controversy? They sure are implying these things.
     While Mattel was weighing its options,  the makers of Bratz dolls went to work and quickly announced their new True Hope dolls.  They will not be new characters, but three Bratz and three Moxie Girlz and Boyz that fans are already familiar with- Cloe, Yasmin, Cameron, Avery, Sophina, and Jaxson.  These bald dolls will be for sale in Toys'R'Us stores starting in June.  They retain all of the Bratz/Moxie Dollz look, except the hair.  They still have trendy clothes and make-up, but each comes with a bracelet that kids add beads to with each chemotherapy treatment. 

     I think it is crucial that the characters are the same as the original Bratz and Moxie Dollz.  It is more consistent with real life, that anyone (regular kids and adults) can get cancer.  It does not make you less of a person, and does not mean that your family and friends love you less.  Also, a child that loved a particular Bratz doll before their diagnosis can keep that same friend with them through their treatment, now without hair.  Because the True Hope dolls will be widely available, relatives and friends of the cancer-diagnosed child can receive their own too.  This does not separate and stigmatize the way that Bald Barbie might.

Slow Jamz

     I kind of like Jimmy Fallon's routine "Slow Jam the News" with Barack Obama, though I'm still trying to figure out what's going on here.  It works like this: he starts off reading a news story then interrupts himself when he's about to crack a joke.  He decides to "slow jam" it instead, which is when he introduces the president.  Bringing out Obama as a special guest brings ratings  and support for the both of them.  It keeps the audience's attention while discussing politics. It is a dry topic, but one that is completely relevant to the audience, who are mostly young and middle-aged adults who likely have students loans, and children who will soon go to college.
     R&B as is traditionally, but not exclusively, a black genre.  Obama is not a musician, but his blackness lends him to be read by the audience as someone who is "entitled to slow jam," even though it is Fallon and the band that do the singing and joking.  He did not participate by actually singing slow-jam style, but provided a contrast to it that makes the whole thing funny.  His seriousness and earnestness is alternated with R&B style smooth speaking over music, filled with innuendo.  He wins "realness" points, yet saves face.  We see a relaxed humorous side of him, like when he sang only the first line of Let's Stay Together, stopping short of embarrassing himself.
     There are comedy skits based on real news all over YouTube.  It is now a category in its own right.  One of the most poplar and outlandish is a series called Auto-Tune The News:

     I don't know if I can explain all the reasons for political apathy in this country, but one of them is surely the quality of news broadcasting on TV.  TV news is a big-budget operation just as concerned with making money and keeping ratings as any other show.  In addition, a channel's politics and values often come into conflict with the content of what they are (or are not) reporting.  The people that realize this have  a few response options: they could change their news-source to something a little more public and democratic, they could protest and become activists in one way or another, or they could use the news as a platform on which to build comedy.  The news is often "boring" because people feel like they have no say in politics, leaders are out of touch with the real concerns of their constituents, and the system is generally dysfunctional and biased.  When people feel like they have no control, they act out.  And play with Auto-Tune.

"The Struggle Continues"

     At the plaza of Jay Street Metrotech... I thought it was so refreshing to see public art in its "natural state" meaning that it is a web/video piece that needs nothing except a screen.  It was not designed to fit into or match a space.  The only condition is that you must read English.  It can be viewed on any computer as well.  On their website, all pieces are viewable in multiple languages.  One thing that is a shame is that since it is in a public place, "profanity" is replaced by a text "bleep" which does little to disguise the message.  See The Struggle Continues full video here.

     The struggle that they are referring to is the struggle for love and physical connection in a world that seems as if it is fighting against our interests.  In our culture, there is plenty of sex and sexiness.  Just browse Victoria's secret catalog, where "sexy" seems like the only word they use to describe something.  The ideas present in Young-Hae Chang's video are starkly different from all of this.  If I'm not mistaken, there isn't even any direct mention of gender or body type here.  Here, sex is detached from pornography, sex is detached from images, from objects, from purchasing.   It is unrelated to owning anything.  We encounter the idea of sexiness daily in our visual experiences, but the overwhelming majority of them are about selling something either explicitly or implicitly, and the image attached to that is of some sort of unattainable ideal.  Young-Hae Chang's philosophy is that sex is a democratic action, in a world where most people are afraid to admit that love is free and individual.  No valentines, no lingerie, no make-up, no flow of money.  By transcending all of this, we are making the world a better and happier place.

Wave of the future

     I'm posting this because I've fallen under the hypnotic spell of the GIF, which is flip-flopping its way back into popularity lately.  Even as some music videos' make-up special effects have gone so over-the top and hyper-real, it seems that some are nostalgic for the quaint by comparison computer graphics of decades past.  This video was animated by Carne and Queso whose entire design concept is devoted to the tastes and trends of the late 80's but curated by a 2012 mind.  There is a low-tech arcade style game "Pizza Party" that you can play and a "cinema" page dedicated to the B-list movies of the 80's that someone born in the 90's may have missed out on.  The metabolic cycle of media and culture trends has been short-circuited since the increasing dominance of web-based communication.  The constant re-hashing of images means nearly everything is at once retro and novelty.

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     How an image functions changes when that image is partially destroyed.  It loses its power in one way, but also gains a new aspect aesthetically.  Most often the image is destroyed by the deliberate act of some person.  This is a large plate of shattered glass with the poster attached to the back of it, mosaicized and slumping under its own weight.  One ceases to be interested in the sale and more concerned with the installation itself.  "Who did that?  It looks cool. It looks dangerous. Will it fall down?"

     When a public image is altered, it is always a matter or time before someone will be sent out to "fix it."  This is a figure of St. Anthony in front of the parish on Sullivan St.  He is cloaked in a torn laundry bag.

    A vacant lot for sale in Chelsea.  The "artist" has used plastic bags, themselves a waste product, to weave text into the fence.  It is a message that is emblematic of our technological dependence and occasional disappointment, right up there with "loading" or "open in new window."  It functions as a joke because it is so ubiquitous, but bitterly ironic that it is in front of an overgrown "wasted" patch of land in the city.  The "no image" implies, "This space is nothing- there is no building, business, or store here.  Do not bother."

     A wide sidewalk in Soho was re-purposed as a public protest for the protection of workers.  On the 101st anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in nearby Greenwich Village, the artist questions just how few we think we're come in our time.  It reminded me of the "articles of the day" that Wikipedia posts, or the "on this day" lists of one-liner history that people read for passing amusement.

Cheezburgers are my guilty pleasure

     When you're feeling down what do you do?  Does seeing your cat licking the floor or chasing his own tail make everything right again?  Now you can have this experience anywhere, anytime, faster than you can say I can has cheezburger.  It's the unending world of cat cuteness where if the last one didn't make you LOL there's always a next button.  Where the font is always bold, the spelling iz unchecked, and the grammar is adorably wrong.  All these qualities synthesize to create what may be the purest form of one-liner comedy.  LOLcats and its many imitators use candid still shots of cats paired with a caption that imposes a human sense of humor and desires onto the (oblivious) kitty.
     LOLCATS best-of (and they're all best btw) compilation video here.  A lot of people complained that the frames changed too quickly, but I think this was a great conceptual move on the creator's part.  The frames started out slow and towards the end went by so fast, you barely have time to finish reading.  If you actually need more time to read everything, you have to keep pausing the video.  The point being that this brand of humor is highly edible and addictive.   And millions love it.  

     After you watch several dozen, the LOLcats slang grows on you.  Words that you never knew existed suddenly seem so right: caturday, harbls, meh, eated, etc.  And the random pluralization of anything makes it funnier.  This suddenly reminded me of another kind of less savory humor,  which made me feel a little bad for loving LOLcats.  The kinds of ads that infantilized African-American characters/spokespeople in the early 20th century used the exact same comedy tactics.  Are we creating glaringly inappropriate stereotypes of cats?  Is LOLcats racist?  Probably not.  Sometimes a cheezburger is just a cheezburger.

Ring of fire

    A bus bus rolls by announcing that War is coming, and we're supposed to believe it?  This poster was frightening even though I logically knew it was an ad campaign.  It's in huge capital letters with no picture or further explanation.  (I took this picture in mid-February, having no idea what Game of Thrones was.)  I'm sure all of the Game of Thrones fans who saw this bus were psyched to hear that war is coming to HBO on April 1.  In 1938 when Orson Welles read War of the Worlds on the radio people believed it and panicked.  We've come a long way.  Which makes me wonder: how far long into the future before wars actually are announced in ads with debut dates on major networks? 

     It was a couple of weeks later when this poster came out.  "Now I get it! War is coming, and it's already season 2!  Where have I been?"  Then I realized it looked like a lot a lot of the other movie posters that were out at the time.  They all looked the same to me, and I was just beginning to set them straight.  

     This "ring of fire" motif seems to be everywhere, from the flaming skull (and chain and wheels) of Ghost Rider, to the Hunger Games' "Mockingjay" which glows like a red-hot branding iron.  Various combinations are similar imagery are reconfigured to slightly alter the message,  but in general conveying (thus, selling) a combination of power, fear, drama, violence, aggression, passion, and wrath (see below).

Graphic Details

     The Graphic Details show at the Yeshiva University Museum is a show of female Jewish comic-book writers.  The original drawings are on display, which allows you too see them at a much larger scale than in a book.  The words "underground" and "confessional" are used freely in the accompanying text, which I don't disagree with, but it made me feel out of context as someone who reads underground and confessional comics almost exclusively.  My whole comic-world is underground and confessional, and since we're talking about women, you can add "transgressive" to that list.  In the world of comic-fans, everyone is entitled to their own little brand of selfishness, which is as it should be, right?  I never felt any duty to expose myself to and become well-read in the super-hero or anime genres, for example.  Somehow the ignorance that I possess does not carry with it the guilt of an art-lover that refuses to look at 17th century Dutch painting just because they "don't like it."


     Now that I think of it, the only time I've ever heard or had to use the word "underground," has been in the situation of trying to talk to someone who asks, "So, what kinds of comic do you like?"  Is anything actually underground these days?  I would argue for a new word to replace "underground" which has been in use since the 60's (or before) and really doesn't apply anymore.  It's not the status that requires a definition, but the style.  I don't know what that word might be.


     Since the show is at the Yeshiva University Museum it may lose a lot of potential visitors.  Many people don't even know that the Center for Jewish History, the larger building which houses the museum, exists.  It's interesting to note that since this is a touring show, several different types of institutions will host it.  In San Francisco it was the Cartoon Art Museum.  In Ann Arbor it is at the University of Michigan art gallery.  In Toronto and Portland at Jewish-culture focused arts foundation and museum.  The place in which art is viewed influences how the show is perceived.  Because it was in the CJH, I was more in tune to the Jewish identity aspect.  I wonder if or how I would have thought differently had it been at the Brooklyn Museum or The Drawing Center.  I learned about the show by chance, thanks to an ad embedded in a news website I was reading- I do hope that the people who would appreciate it will get word of it.

Where's my free spray paint?

     Wanna go bombing with this stencil that came with my shoes?  On the inside of this shoebox is the Ipath logo that says, "This is a stencil/cut along the dotted line."  Clearly, the first conclusion that can be made is simply that Ipath wishes to market its brand to a specific cultural crowd that is familiar with street art and appreciates graffiti as a legitimate art form as well as a  cool (subversively rebellious) thing to do.  Well, I tried to cut it out.  I used a real X-acto knife.  My carefully traced lines inevitably strayed while rounding those tight curves, and the knife didn't cut all the way through, so i  had  to retrace everything again.  I gave up after the main logo shape.  If I couldn't do that without grumbling, I had no business getting into the lettering.   This was an activity designed to frustrate.  Had this been my own design, I might have had some patience, a little tender loving care... but all this to stencil a shoe company logo?  Did they really expect anyone to do this?  There was no way my stencil would ever look just they way it was supposed to.  With all those little slip-ups, it was bound to corrupt the perfection of the design and appear hand-made.  

     Was this really the point?  Had they really hoped for anyone to use it, wouldn't they have included inside the box, an already cut out stencil, ready to be sprayed?  Maybe it is a reminder to their customers that something is expected of them also.  It's not enough to just be cool, you have to do cool stuff too.  They want to have the kind of customers that know they are cool because they or their friends make stencils, and they wear Ipath shoes.  And so while they are not seriously suggesting that you cut out the box yourself, Ipath can be that kind of shoe brand.  I felt like a failure as a consumer.  I'd tried too hard, the most uncool thing to do.

Black candy

     Like a predisposition for depression, the love of licorice is something that you get from your parents.  Either you love it or you hate it.  When I tell people I like it,  I am met with responses ranging from confusion to disgust to rejection.  Loving licorice is regarded by many as an aesthetic abnormality, a perversion of taste.  Its flavor comes from an underground root, not a fruit or an herb.  Its impenetrable color comes from molasses.  It is never advertised for in this country, because no new customers will be reeled in and tricked into liking it.  If you want it, you know where to get it.  At once old-fashioned and subversive, it is stylistically akin to one drinking strong black coffee.  The affection for other black articles is similar, with varying degrees of hardcore-ness:  black flowers, black underwear, black cars, black nail polish, black lipstick, black patent leather face masks...

Good dog

     New York City is decorated with so many no-poop signs that they become easy to ignore after a while.  This sign stopped me in my tracks one night.  It is reflective and bolted to a tree.  It simultaneously grated my nerves and fascinated me for several reasons. 


     I wondered what kind of thought went into designing a sign in which a dog is "scooping" up after himself.  What is this sign saying, and how and why is this sign saying it?


      It seems so natural for humans to project our feelings onto our pets (and as a result denying their dog- or cat-ness) by imagining that we are neurological and/or emotional equals.  This is annoying in its milder form, and disturbing emotional escapism when more extreme.  The personification of a a dog who can walk on his hind legs and maneuver his paws well enough to wield a poop-scoop (not to mention being caring and empathetic enough to do it) is a tough image for me to digest.  Maybe this silhouette dog has learned this behavior as a "trick" that he does when he goes outside.  Maybe he is a very smart well-mannered dog, and so he is sending a message to other dogs via their literate owners that they should feel inferior if they do not/can not "scoop."  This dog role-model is doing the human's job.  In all other dog signs I have seen, there is a human crouching behind their dog with scoop or plastic bag in hand, waiting.  By eliminating the crouching human, this sign empowers both dogs and their owners at the same time.  To dogs: You can clean up all by yourself!  To humans:  Your dog should be doing this, not you.  Ultimately, we all know that it will be the owner bending down to pick it up, but their task is lightened because of this sign.  They have had some of the responsibility and shame taken away for them.


     I searched online for website that sells this sign, and it turns out that they use this same image for three other signs with different messages.  One begs, "Be responsible, or train your dog to be!"

There is a light that never goes out...

     There is a free-standing McDonald's on 4th Ave. at 1st St. in Park Slope.  It even has a drive-thru that stays open 24 hours a day on weekends.  It is a pilgrimage site for any soul that needs coffee or a hamburger at 2 am, or 4 am, or 6 am, when regular old deli coffee just won't do.

      When I walk to work, it is still dark outside, and the glowing M is a beacon against the dark Brooklyn sky.  The site is walled in glass and the glittering fluorescence spills forth, illuminating the whole block; it is so bright, that I must stay on the opposite side of the street when passing.

     It has the presence of a preserved turn-of-the-century building surrounded by high-rises. It has space on all sides, on its own plot of land (parking lot).  Its contemporary high-tech touches are subtle: there is a small decal on the window reminding you that you can follow McDonald's on Twitter and check in on FourSquare.

    During the day, this spectre is the quaintest of buildings in the neighborhood, with its low sloped red roof, banners waving, and a carefully landscaped mulched border.  Its well-maintained paint job is untouched by graffiti.  While I am not a devotee it this place, I really do admire it.