From the night sky to the ocean floor

These star and anchor wall hangings are what many New Yorkers revert to when trying to decorate an apartment that already requires all of their cash: cheap decor. Nice nautical theme, however.

One year ago today.

Trash Mountain

This popular work by nature photographer Ansel Adams adds a mountain to this pile of trash bags and debris.

One year ago today.

Books and Booze

These books and martini glass were left behind after someone moved out of their apartment. Perhaps the glass was to celebrate the move, and the purchase of an iPad.

One year ago today.

Promo within a promo

Gotham Writers Workshop and notecard stating:

N.Y. Civil Liberties Union
212-344-3005

Break a leg

Manhattan Motion Dance Studios gets its advertising groove on.

Happy Birthday America!

The pain behind the paint.

These painting supplies, including a can of Quik-Marx (left) and a paintbrush still laden with fresh black paint, adorn a hot summer sidewalk in the Upper East Side.

Pause... forever

The sidewalks of New York City tell the story of technology, and this discarded VHS tape demonstrates that memories may be forever, but how we store them isn’t. Perhaps this tape holds video of a family reunion, a first grader’s play, or something less innocent. We’ll never know, which is part of the beauty of sidewalk trash.

Solid investment advice in tough times

Something to sleep on

DLV's signature

Considering that we’re sidewalk anthropologists here at Hnyc and study human life through the lens of trash and general hilarity that is New York City, we are very familiar with the work of De La Vega. In fact, he’s one our favorites.

De La Vega’s work is whimsical but serious, and offers penetrating social commentary without sounding pedantic, self-indulgent or angry. The message is sincere and accessible — indeed, anyone who chooses trash as a canvass isn’t exactly squirreled away in some commissioned Chelsea studio with a bag of weed, bottle of Grey Goose and some cryptic yet staid interpretation of corporate greed and racial injustice. Yawn.

De La Vega brings art to the people, and like people his art is ephemeral — it gets rained on, snowed on, thrown into garbage trucks, smashed into bits and buried in land fills. It’s there on a mattress, on a bookshelf, and then it goes. It dies. But like true art it lives on in the people who experience it.

Indeed, when I took this photo last night, this woman walked up to me and said, “You know, I was going to do the same thing. Isn’t that wonderful?”

There she was. Just a stranger. Her head probably filled with thoughts about work, family, the electric bill, those old carrots in her refrigerator that she should throw out. And then it hits:

Become Your Dream

Check out this video about street artist, Ellis G.