WJTalk - MOCA

The Chinatown Film Project is about re-seeing Chinatown. Through the eyes of filmmakers all over the world. Namely because we don't always appreciate, or even notice, what's right in front of us. Last week, it took someone else's admiration of the views from my Chinatown apartment to re-see what's right in front of me.

The view from my office, at twilight:

Eight stories up, I peeked this outside my bedroom window:

發表: Karin Chien 02:26 PM | 文章連結 | 留言 (0)

Manhattan's Chinatown is the hardest-working neighborhood in a city of workaholics. Finding quiet spaces to relax, and create something other than green, is rare. Even meals are eaten in a cacophony of other people working. Tomorrow I head out to California, where the sunshine perhaps relaxes people's ambitions a tad. But before I go, a couple snapshots of quiet leisure in Chinatown.

Silk Road Cafe has the best coffee in Chinatown. I come here for meetings a lot. Last week, I spied some teens chilling out front, kids who would blend in unnoticed on Bedford Ave, but here, generate double takes.

Barrio Chino, at Orchard and Broome, is Chinatown only in name. Twelve minutes to walk from my Chinatown crib to the Loisaida's re-interpretation. Theirs involves expanses of wood and brick, and a place to sit quietly in the sunlight.

發表: Karin Chien 01:55 PM | 文章連結 | 留言 (0)

I live in Chinatown. And I work 3 blocks away, in Chinatown.
Chinatown figures quite heavily into my everyday life.
A few scenes, then, from the prior week...

When I woke up one Wednesday, this is what I saw out my window. Chinatown provides poetry in the most mundane.

I've walked past this display window on the Bowery at least 300 times. Why this night I chose to notice this fantastical creation - a brightly-lit-color-chameleon
-giant-disco ball - beckoning a sleeping Chinatown to revelry, is a mystery to me.

Snow mutes everything. February has been mercifully warm. A few hours later turned this pretty dusting into grayish slush.

發表: Karin Chien 01:48 PM | 文章連結 | 留言 (0)