All stories about "Advertecture"

SOHO—Surprisingly, ugly advertecture is not only installed under the cover of darkness. A high-level Curbed tipster sends along the above photo and writes: "How your advertecture gets made. Seen on the northeast corner of Lafayette and Prince today -- NORTH SHORE NEON SIGN CO. putting brackets onto a building, presumably for more advertising." [CurbedWire Inbox]

WILLIAMSBURG—For some reason, there's a clique of people out there who follow Schaefer Landing really really closely, like the whole project is some Kennedy-esque conspiracy theory. Every now and then we hear from them. Now is one of those times: "Check the following links to see how desperate investors are selling their condos @ a loss: 440 Kent #20A paid $1,210,000 11/17/2006, selling for $1,195,000. 440 Kent #20B paid $1,480,000 11/14/2006, selling for $1,425,000. Sounds like fuzzy math." [CurbedWire Inbox]

And now, the latest from Racked, covering retail and shopping from the sidewalks up.

1) Soho: Bad news for those awaiting the Crate & Barrel offshoot CB2 in Soho: the opening of the Broadway outpost is delayed per the emails going out. Racked reports a likely new opening date of November 6.

2) Soho: There are serious words of wisdom from Kenneth Cole on a new humongous billboard on Houston Street. Per Racked: “We need more than a surface mentality. The writing is on the wall.” Indeed.

3) Flatiron: The Bombay Company is going out of business, so this means available retail space and a blowout going-out-of-business sale at some point.

4) Everywhere: In the big bucks world of fake vampire teeth and slutty bar wench outfits, Ricky's has sixteen pop-up stores this season, but the key to Halloween costume success is irony.

And now, the latest from Racked, covering retail and shopping from the sidewalks up.

1) Central Village: Make room for mo' banks. In this case, in the space that had been occupied by the Central Village eatery BBQ. The building owner apparently didn't dig the barbecue smell, so he's opting for a new, still unknown, bank tenant. And if you still need mo' banks, you can get the lowdown on plenty, plenty more.

2) Nolita: Rackage wanders into Japanese designer Mami Suzuki's new boutique, msg., which is perched on the border of Nolita, Soho and the Lower East Side. The lowdown is that "the draw here is a tightly-edited assortment of pieces from under-the-radar designers you'd be hard-pressed to find elsewhere.

3) Soho: The new H&M advertecture overlooking Houston Street now has a head and it shouldn't be long before the fashion statement reveals itself too.

4) Boerum Hill: We always thought the line at that bodega on Hoyt Street was a little too long for Red Bull, and it turns out we were right.

[photos via Stu_Jo/Curbed Photo Pool and brianvan/Curbed tipline]

While you enjoy these two newest additions to the downtown advertecture scene—at left, beer joy at the post-collapse 290 Mulberry Street, where SHoP's building that crazyass thing; at right, the bar 7B gets rebranded—the Wall Street Journal describes how outdoor advertising firms are getting around new restrictions. Getting to know Richard Schaps, the head of outdoor ad firm Van Wagner, is quite an experience:

Mr. Schaps hustled for spaces that other companies had overlooked. Federal government buildings, for example, often are exempt from many city restrictions on billboards. So Mr. Schaps now has a 60-feet-by-20-feet billboard on a post office on Ninth Avenue that rents for $20,000 a month... To help lure customers in, Mr. Schaps invites potential clients into a black Mercedes for a drive that takes in his advertising properties around Manhattan, a tour he calls “riding the boards.”

This Lafayette Street loft building is known for being more than just the sight [sic] of one of our favorite Bob & Bonnie listings ever—it's also been long-rumored to be the current/former home of Matt Damon. Which means that this is either a great inside joke, or one of those "Only in New York!" happy accidents that Cindy Adams makes a living off of.
· Funky Friday Listing: Bob & Bonnie's Motocross [Curbed]

It's always amusing when garish advertecture delivers more than a message about a product, but about the occupants of the building it's slapped on. Sure, this had its moments, but we prefer the unintentional stuff. So we don't know how the residents of this Upper East Village building feel about it, but we've already scored a truckload of Ecstacy, and we're planning on swinging by on Friday 'round 3 a.m. Who's in?
· Urbanity Without Advertecture [Curbed]
· Advertecture Attacks the Home: Et Tu, Foot Locker? [Curbed]
· Trends in Advertecture: Chelsea Glassvertecture [Curbed]

CHELSEA—Some burgeoning ad whizzes have added a little creative to one of the new Amex billboards that have been dotting the cityscape. Says Blog Chelsea, which snapped the above photo, "If we can’t get rid of the billboards, at least they can be used to ridicule the High Line over-development." [Blog Chelsea]

DIGITAL REAL ESTATE—A Curbed reader writes, "Anyone know what the deal was with the very legit-seeming ad on Craigslist for about three hours this morning (presumably taken down due to a massive response): $2000 for a 3-bed in the West Village on thompson and bleecker, 2 baths, duplex, real name and phone number of owner? has anyone seen this apartment?" [CurbedWire Inbox]

The crane spotted by Curbed tipsters at the Gansevoort Hotel's MeatBoard last week wasn't there to dismantle it after all, but rather to attempt to re-angle the 'Board to meet the city code. Andrew Berman and the GVSHP still contend the thing's illegal, but that's not stopping the Gansevoort from charging ahead with the installation of the second MeatBoard, below the VW ad. Another tipster sends along the above photo from this morning, noting, "Saw two guys with ropes, working on the gansevoort billboard this morning." Guesses as to the next advertiser?

The Wall—the iconic minimalist scuplture (right) installed by artist Frosty Myers at 599 Broadway on the corner of Houston and Broadway back in the early 1970's, but removed for structural reasons in 2002—will rise again on the same wall. Per The Villager, 30 additional feet of wall space will be added so the beams that form the structure can rise higher, allowing for the installation of (you see this coming, right?) street-level billboards. 'The Wall' will also be lit at night for the first time.

An odd compromise, to be sure, but an oddly pleasing one nonetheless.
· High, Bright, 'The Wall' Will Return to Soho Wall [The Villager via Miss Representation]
· Soho's 'The Wall': Going, Going... Already Gone [Curbed]

Last year, São Paolo banned all outdoor advertising in the city. The ban went into effect on New Year's Day. The eerie results of a city stripped of all advertecture, courtesy of Flickr user Tony De Marco.
· São Paolo No Logo [Flickr via Kottke]

You've probably seen those ads that get projected onto the sides of buildings, but usually that form of guerilla advertising is saved for commercial and touristy areas. Usually. We bring you the plight of an East Village resident, who—from 10 p.m. to midnight a couple of recent night—practically had the ads beamed into his living room:

After speaking with 311, in hopes that someone from the city would come out immediately to fix the problem, I took it to the streets. Before confronting the guerrilla advertiser, I checked the zoning law and this advertising posted on the newly developed 101 East 10th Street (in a C6-1 district) is illegal. When I went to the street, the guy--who said he was employed by "street blimps"-- said that he would take it down if it was a problem. Considering the direct light in my apartment felt like it was high noon, I told him that 1. he was in violation of zoning codes, 2. the Department of Buildings is on him, 3. Community Board 3 has been notified, he took it down.

Needless to say, Adidas and Foot locker should be in for some trouble as I will continue to follow up with CB 3 and DOB.

With the city cracking down on scaffolding advertecture, what's a property owner to do to reap random advertising revenue from his/her streetfrontage? From the corner of 22nd and Seventh, ta-da: glassvertecture! Reports BlogChelsea, "From time to time you hear rumors about various businesses moving in but it seems to have been used as a store room ever since the coffee shop closed. The landlord also seems to think that he can rent the window space out as a billboard. Is this legal?" Who knows! Double bonus points for pluckiness either way.
· Is 22nd Street Part of Times Square? [BlogChelsea]

UPDATE: As long as we're on the building collapse theme, check out the roofline of the building above, then appreciate this commenter observation: "Unfortunately I live across the street from this mess and have to look at it every day. The roof is sagging and will eventually cave in. I have called the Department of Buildings several times, but apparently it is not at imminent risk of collapse."

The controversy surrounding the Hotel Gansevoort's new 75-foot addition to the Meatpacking District's skyline may have reached its peak yesterday. The billboard (a billboard!) received both major media coverage and a protest in its name. Josh Barbanel reports in the Times that the Buildings Department has already rejected many of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation's arguments concerning the illegality of the billboard, but they're taking some time to investigate a few of the other claims. To rally support, the GVSHP had a little gathering at the hotel site yesterday afternoon. As for Team Gansevoort, Barbanel reports:

Elon Kenchington, the chief operating officer of the Gansevoort Hotel Group, would not discuss the revenue from the billboards. But he said they were angled to minimize the impact on nearby residential buildings and would add warmth and light to what is “pretty much a dead area.” He said that the hotel had signed a long-term contract with an outdoor advertising company, which is putting up the billboards, but that the hotel would retain the right to reject ads it found unsuitable.