Annulla in the City: July 2005

I SAID, give me the ball!

In some New York neighborhoods amateur basketball is very serious business. This Alpha N Omega League game was held in an East Houston Street playground on the Lower East Side.

Shouting

Watching

Crouching

Dribbling

Planning

Shooting

Keeping score

New York Sports On Line

Signs, signs, everywhere signs

A selection of signs seen in Lower Manhattan on a Sunday morning.

Calvin Klein Jeans on Houston Street

Go vegan, thanks.

Teairra Mari on the Bowery

Rosario's and Kropps & Bobbers

Help Wanted

Buckle Up New York

MOMA moments

Located in midtown Manhattan since 1929, the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) began a vast $858 million expansion and renovation project in 2002. Rather than put the entire collection into storage during construction, or shut down completely, the Museum temporarily moved lock, stock and barrel -- along with a selection of masterpieces -- to a former stapler factory in Queens.

A series of blockbuster exhibitions enticed dedicated art lovers to make the long subway trip out to the hinterlands (at least once, anyway), but New Yorkers rejoiced when MOMA finally moved back to Manhattan (the library and archives have permanently relocated to Queens).

The renovated museum has nearly twice the space of the former facility, including the newly created sixth floor that is currently the site of Pioneering Modern Painting: Cézanne and Pissarro 1865–1885. Seeing how these two masters of French impressionism influenced one another was fascinating (unfortunately, cameras were not allowed inside the show). But on a gorgeous day like this the best place to be was outside in the sculpture garden, enjoying the bubbling fountain, the leafy shade and a cool, creamy cup of gelato.

Ellsworth Kelly. Colors for a Large Wall. 1951.

Henri Matisse. Dance (I). Paris, Hôtel Biron, early 1909.

Barnett Newman. Vir Heroicus Sublimis. 1950-51.

Picasso sculpture

Security guard on 4th floor landing

Napping in the garden

Aristide Maillol. The River. Begun 1938-39; completed 1943.

Girl at gelato stand

Pablo Picasso. She-Goat. Vallauris 1950.

Museum of Modern Art

ArcSpace: MOMA QNS

MOMA QNS

Laboratorio del Gelato

Sunset Park on a sunny day

Sunset Park is home to Brooklyn's rapidly growing (and largely invisible to the rest of us) Mexican community. About 30 blocks along Fifth Avenue, once home to a Scandinavian colony, seem to have been transplated directly from south of the border.

Spanish music spills out of shops and car windows, travel agencies advertise special fares to Chihuahua, Mexico City and Guadalajara, campaign posters for candidates named Ferrar and Gonsalez are tacked to the lamp posts, and the awning of nearly every shop is a riot of red, white and green (the colors of the Mexican flag).

There seems to be as much business conducted at curbside as there is inside the shops. Stroll along the street past the taquerias (taco shops) and panderias (bakeries), try on a sombrero and a pair of hurraches, buy a steaming tamale fresh from a cart, sip some homemade horchata and a flip through a stack of Thalia CDs. You'll never think that you are in the US.

While I was taking photos, a well-meaning man approached, asking what I was going to do with the pictures. He then warned me to avoid photographing the adults who crowded the streets. "They wouldn't like it," he explained. "They might think you are ... how do you say it? With the border patrol."

Me? La migra? Hardly. But I know good advice when I hear it and after receiving the warning I stuck to simply taking pictures of the kids in the sunny streets of Sunset Park.

Mexican wedding cakes

Street corner

Sombreros and hurraches for sale

Mural for Hector Pinero Jr.

Selling horchata, tamarindo, watermelon juice

Boy with Silly String

Beauty shop doorway

Inside Sunset Park bakery