“Sidewalk Psychiatry” is a public-art sidewalk project that plays with the fact that people often think about personal issues while they walk. The artist, Candy Chang, has painted questions on the sidewalk that relate to what people might be thinking about.
She also has some other interesting art-in-public-space projects on her website — they’re worth browsing through. I particularly like the “Do not displace” doorknob signs for gentrifying areas, and the tear-off notepad maps of local publicly-accessible bathrooms, for placement at the exits of transit stations. On a more analytic note, she’s done an interesting project about pedestrian wayfinding problems coming off the Brooklyn Bridge.
Also, a couple of months ago I wrote a post about the limitations of the city’s new vending cart plan for a wider variety of foods. Dale Duncan wrote an update on the situation in her Eye City Hall blog last week, and tells us that the city now has an online survey about street vending (cleverly named the “A la cart” survey). You can finish you weekend diversions by filling out the survey. Although, as Dale says, it’s kind of limited and there’s no space for general comments.
