victorian cow man
I've no idea the author of this vaguely shakespearean street art stencil work, but he or she has vastly improved this building in my eyes.
I took this on a block in Washington D.C., Columbia Heights neighborhood [note: info thanks to sidecardog: NE D.C., on Newton Street between 14th & 16th], distressed area of the city that has been experiencing somewhat of a 'revival' as they say. Some well-educated, moneyed, people, mostly from out of the area, now rub elbows with the poor native D.C. folks who've been there all along. Add to both of these groups the ever increasing numbers of immigrants, overwhelmingly Central American, and you have an uneasy mix. Virgin Marys painted on fabric hang in one window, next door all the windows are boarded up; on the corner a church has just served lunch to 200 homeless men and women, as it has for 30 years, while 2 blocks away young people stroll in and out of the ubiquitous chain coffee shops with $5 coffee drinks in hand, cell phones in hand. I don't live in the neighborhood and have really only spent significant amounts of time there in the past month, but it appears to me that the groups are like oil and water and, I don't know, sand (? some other element that doesn't mix with the others). The various groups just lack any common experiences (except for the most basic ones of being human, the suffering and joys of our log, etc., but having those things in common only gets you so far...) Then there's the issue of $$$...who has it, who doesn't, anxieties and resentments about this imbalance and the accompanying power imbalance (actual or perceived).
Anyhow, that's the long story of the setting of this street art.
victorian cow man
I've no idea the author of this vaguely shakespearean street art stencil work, but he or she has vastly improved this building in my eyes.
I took this on a block in Washington D.C., Columbia Heights neighborhood [note: info thanks to sidecardog: NE D.C., on Newton Street between 14th & 16th], distressed area of the city that has been experiencing somewhat of a 'revival' as they say. Some well-educated, moneyed, people, mostly from out of the area, now rub elbows with the poor native D.C. folks who've been there all along. Add to both of these groups the ever increasing numbers of immigrants, overwhelmingly Central American, and you have an uneasy mix. Virgin Marys painted on fabric hang in one window, next door all the windows are boarded up; on the corner a church has just served lunch to 200 homeless men and women, as it has for 30 years, while 2 blocks away young people stroll in and out of the ubiquitous chain coffee shops with $5 coffee drinks in hand, cell phones in hand. I don't live in the neighborhood and have really only spent significant amounts of time there in the past month, but it appears to me that the groups are like oil and water and, I don't know, sand (? some other element that doesn't mix with the others). The various groups just lack any common experiences (except for the most basic ones of being human, the suffering and joys of our log, etc., but having those things in common only gets you so far...) Then there's the issue of $$$...who has it, who doesn't, anxieties and resentments about this imbalance and the accompanying power imbalance (actual or perceived).
Anyhow, that's the long story of the setting of this street art.