Flirting with an age old love of graffiti, i heart wall art…. i wonder if it could be attached to my first love affair with a certain skateboarding graffiti artist cum graphic designer? Was i so permanently impressed upon at a tender 14 or was it the supreme irreverent stylings of growing up with Greco? Who really knows what all their creative influences are… and ultimately, who cares – this is what i notice and seems worthy of great promotion.

And, so…… my beloved new york city and all its wacky environs regularly gifts upon me great wonders of wall art. i hope that i may serve proper aesthetic justice to all its anonymous creators… they know they are out there: thank you! Your imagery does not go unnoticed; perhaps this will become merely part 1 in my homage to the cityscape creators.

So my new pal, Ryan, who is working for the NYC parks dept on urban planning had no knowledege of this remarkable gem of a location right in my backyard. It is at the top of my list of favorite NYC sweet spots and here are a couple of it’s highlights… Much explanation is needed here and I am not supplying it – so feel free to comment. Who doesn’t love Sea Lettuce?

sometimes life feels so good it seems
like a movie and we are…

swimming in it and, man -
I’m a fucking marathoner in this tide

with brass casings raining on my
feet, firm up to my calves

it’s a new year’s celebration, god
damnit, and I am here

like fireworks
gods of thunder
we’re alive full of color

and hell, man…
we made it another year

and I’m on my next
of nine lives

ha ha

What a wonder, what a marvel to come upon these 10 urban tree houses built in the peeks of Madison Square Park trees!

A mix of Dr Seus ingenuity and rustic functionality, these dwellings illicit my childhood fantasies of tree-hopping as illuminated in old Italo Calvino.

Ahhh, what bliss!

So, we went camping in the Catskills in September. Not uber wild hike-in camping but mild quasi-urbanite civilized camping like the cosmopolitan creative people we seem to be. I brought massive amounts of the best meat I know of in town and we feasted for 3 days on our humble campground fire.

Among the many campfire delicacies of authentic ShakeShack burgers, s’mores made with chocolate ganache (dark chocolate melted on the fire and then marshmallows dipped in it and schmeared on grahams!), was this strange gem!!!! My bacon morphed into deer hooves!??! WTF!??!?!

There is no amount of photoshopping or weird imagination that would have ever made me think to falsify this. It is a divine act, a message from the creator, or just the best damn darn bacon we ever ate!!!!!

Love you Pat!

http://lafrieda.com/home.html

These guys were in great abundance in Rincon, Puerto Rico. And at nearly 5 inches in length they could give breakfast sausages a run for their money. Insects provide one of the most concentrated forms of protein on earth in a substance called chitin. So, when compared side by side, there’s no beating their nutritional profile. The only downside would be evidenced by their aposematic colorscheme – these buggers are poisonous.

Japanese body detoxifying ped pads – fact or fiction?

On a whim and a lark, a fellow friend and I purchased a set of these foot patches and invoked a dreaded detox moonlight challenge. Of course, he applied his that night while I busily ate my pickled quail eggs and dried octopus and promptly forgot about the mysterious package.  A morning call brought his gruesome report of night panics and slippery soles. Luckily, I was prepped by his tales of horrific greenish slime and, thus, spared any dismayed surprise of my own. Adequately warned, I proceeded to apply the pads incorrectly during which time I was free to insist on my toxic innocence! That period did, however, draw to a close after closer inspection and I was able to live out the birth of a new dawn with grimly clammy soles. Yuck! Whether I am cleansed of toxins, I cannot say – there is much debate on the subject. But for $1.99 the adventure was worth all good cents!

www.takarapatch.com