Houston St. (Broadway)

Here's a picture I took on March 17, looking downtown from the busy NW corner of the intersection of Houston St. and Broadway.

The big DKNY mural on the SE corner was painted over recently. The wall space will be used for a billboard for the store Hollister, which just moved into the SE corner store, where a big Pottery Barn store used to be. Here's a picture from today's Gawker, showing what the site looks like now.

Another SoHo landmark bites the dust. Although I disagree with this quote from the Gawker article:

Not as memorable or institutional as the tele-screens of Times Square or the Domino Sugar factory over in Queens, sure, but still a visual presence that now cedes to the neighborhood's near-complete suburban mall makeover.

Yes, the neighborhood has become a mall . . . but I don't think the removal of a DKNY billboard makes SoHo more mall-like!

The thing I'll miss most about the DKNY billboard is that it always reminded me of this amazing cartoon by Roz Chast:

Billboard

An enormous billboard overlooking the intersection of Watts St. and Thompson St. Basically, Watts St. serves as the feeder street to the Holland Tunnel, and it's congested with heavy traffic at rush hour, which means commuters spend long minutes staring at this billboard.

While I'm wholeheartedly in agreement with the sign's sentiments, and that rottweiler is pretty cute, the choppy urban splatter graphics are so very tired.

And can we put an end to the random use of "It's all good!" Please?

Does it say "sux" on the dog's collar? At first glance, I thought he was wearing a bow tie.