Journal & Rant: That Time I Joined a Pick-Up Basketball Game at Rainey Park in Queens

In this post, we talk about a local pick-up game of basketball at Rainey Park in Queens.

I don't play basketball. I don't play any sport, actually. However, I have recently taken to walking. I walked to Rainey Park this past weekend to attend my friend's birthday — it was completely outdoors in a park in Astoria, Queens that lies adjacent to the East River. You can see Roosevelt Island — and there is a small basketball court. The kids from the party started their own pick-up game and I took a few photographs. Can you spot the fake basketball?

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Photograph: Ernie Childhood Toy Spotted at the Museum of the Moving Image

I had this Ernie puppet toy growing up — it was manufactured by Topper Toys in 1972 — mine was a handme down from my older brother. I liked Ernie (better than Bert). Watching Sesame Street as a kid, Ernie was the lovable one while Bert was irascible and perennially annoyed. Ernie was definitely the better guy for me. The toy is made from rubber and polyester. What's the main idea? Toys influence a life. I felt a visceral response seeing this same toy in the Museum of the Moving Image @movingimagenyc.

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Artful Photograph: Philip-Lorca di Corcia

Photo by Philip-Lorca di Corcia (c. 1995)

What story does this photograph tell?

Philip-Lorca di Corcia is an art photographer. You may be familiar with di Corcia's body of work. In the early Nineties, he did a series of photographs of street hustlers in Los Angeles - charging them to pose for him at the same price the men would normally charge a client for sex. 

In the above photograph, part of a series of images wherein di Corcia would photograph a banal scene (i.e., a gas station, a drug store, a hotel room) with a model who does not quite fit into the scene, the artist plays with light, setting, and storytelling.

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