DInosaur egg

even though we could not find a signature, we recognized this baby dinosaur as most likely made by ROA, whose murals we also saw in miami and a deserted place in california (a picture i still have to post). ROA is originally from belgium, but he has been all around the world to paint the most amazing murals... i like the mom with the 2 kids in the "bakfiets", all 3 looking at it...

yesterday they announced obama will visit amsterdam while he is in the netherlands for the nuclear security summit in the hague. just now we watched some program where they interviewed some american tourists in amsterdam. one lady mentioned that perhaps obama would be disturbed by all the graffiti we have here (indeed, we have a lot more graffiti, lots of ugly graffiti too, than boston for example). and 2 young girls said that they didnt like they have to pay for everything, even for a glass of water (thats true, and i also miss the glass of water you immediately get in an american restaurant).

Amsterdam mural

this is part of a mural on a playground in amsterdam. we were biking past it and stopped when we saw the mural. its really big and very well done! (this is just a small part). i just looked at the website underneath th painting, and it says that there are several large murals in amsterdam, and they all have something to do with amsterdam's golden age.

the above is the coat of arms of amsterdam, the official symbol of the city of amsterdam. the 3 x shaped crosses are the symbol of amsterdam since approximately 1419 (!). the 2 lions are the symbol of the netherlands, and were added in the 16th century, and after world war II the dutch queen added the 3 words to the coat of arms: "heldhaftig, vastberaden, barmhartig", which means "heroic, determined, compassionate, in recognition of the people of amsterdam that protested in 1941 against the persecution of jews by the nazi regime.

tim has some days off and we are trying to finally tidy up the apartment. the weather is very nice again too!! but the outdoor pool has closed... :( (they close at the end of august, buhuhuhuh). i hope tomorrow we finally can ejoy the sun a bit, before it will disappear for the remainder of the year....

In Austin

on a wall in austin, texas, where we were last december. i thought this was a really cool graffiti.

in the subway today i saw a lot of men with "some flowers". normally you never see that. funny.... perhaps tomorrow all the valentine's candy is on sale? (the shops were full with chocolate etc). maybe i should check..... :D
as a valentine's gesture, the mayor of boston decided that parking was free today, so that everyone who wants to go out for dinner can do so without having to think about paying for parking.... although that didnt make parking in the center of boston any easier, i guess, especially since there are still huge piles of snow that are also taking up some spaces..... 

Graffiti proposal

when biking from my sisters apartment in utrecht to the city center, i passed this mural! i had to take a picture of that, of course. as you can see, its hard not to take pictures in the netherlands without bikes in it, either parked bikes, or as above.... :) (unfortunately the sun was only illuminating the upper part of the house... )

the mural says: "lieve afra, wil jij met mij trouwen? Jan" and next to it: "ja!" which translates into; "dear afra, do you want to marry me?" "yes!" i googled around a bit and found an article that tells me that the person who painted it is a graffiti artist named Jan, who made several murals in/around utrecht. here he got permission to paint his marriage proposal on the wall of someone's house. he then led his girlfriend to it, and proposed to her. and as you can see, she said yes! isnt that cute?

there really was quite a bit more graffiti in the netherlands than i remembered (i had not been there for almost 2 years), and there was also a lot of random, ugly graffiti along the train tracks. but apparently it has always been there, and i just forgot....  :) but as you can see, this mural is pretty recent, from july 2012.

for more monday murals, go here!

Such fame...

i think its amazing that most people probably immediately know who this is, although this is quite an ugly representation... imagine being that famous, that just a white flowing dress, or the blonde short hair is enough. even though she died exactly 50 years ago yesterday, while she was only 36.

i just read a little about marilyn monroe (on wikipedia, ofcourse). most of her early life she lived with foster parents, as her mother was unable to take care of her. the most striking anecdote to me was this; until the age of 7, norma jeane (her real name) was living with foster parents in california. one day (wikipedia doesnt specifiy how old she then was), her biological mother, gladys, came and demanded that her daughter would come live with her again. her foster mother refused, as she knew marilyns mother was unstable. somehow, however, gladys managed to stuff marilyn into a military duffel bag, with which she wanted to walk out. marilyn was screaming while in there, and a struggle between gladys and the foster mom caused the bag to break open, letting marilyn to fall out... 

later, she lived with her mother, but she was mentally unstable and eventually was forced into a state hospital, leaving marilyn to live in several different foster homes again. 

i have seen her face so very many times, but didnt know anything about her background...

this barn is somewhere in cape cod, in fact next to the one with the american flag that i showed you last week.

Proud American

the owner of this shed must be a proud american...  but there are many! its not the first time i saw a wall painted like this... (this was in cape cod, close to provincetown)

i dont think you would ever see this in the netherlands...

finally joining the monday mural again! for others, click here.

Lightpole face

somewhere along the charles river....

it was yet another hot day. but with some rain in the early evening. much less heavy than expected (or than it seemed to be with the big clouds and think rain drops..... but at least it seems a tiny bit cooler right now.

good night!

Freaky image

who doesnt know this image? i never entirely saw the movie, but i think more or less everyone knows this scene, and to which movie it belongs...

today we drove a bit around boston, and went to see the remains of a psychiatric hospital. once, the grounds were huge, but now only one building remained. it is abandoned, but it was interesting to see... i actually wanted to post a picture of it and write something about it, but i spend the entire evening reading about hospitals for the "mentally ill", looking at other blogs, reports of such places being haunted, photographs of people more brave than i am who went inside such buildings to picture all the creepiness. there are many huge psychiatric hospitals in the us, and many are closed by now. many abandoned, others converted to luxury apartments... highly interesting (but also sad) to read about all that stuff! but.... its way past midnight and now im too tired to look at the photos i took myself. grrr...  so... you will have to do it with this freaky iconic image of jack nicholson that we saw in new york last weekend. 

good night!

Street wisdom

somewhere in boston.... 

awesome is a very american word, i think. its much used by the americans around me, but i never use it as i feel i cannot say it casually enough. my accent is wrong, too. here you can listen to the pronunciation, but it sounds a little off to me. the guy saying it defenitely forgot to be awesome..
(the shadow is of course the one and only awesome tim...!)

Newly decorated

i took this pic in new york, when we were there in october. i guess once this building was newly decorated indeed, but now its merely a ghost sign... it was around the time we had to decide if we would renew our lease at our current apartment complex or not. it was expiring at the end of december, so we had to decide 2 months in advance whether to stay or not. as opposed to the netherlands, here you have to rent an apartment by the year or more (you can rent it with a "flexible lease" but then the rent is even higher than it already is...). so.. once you decide, youre stuck for at least another year. the other great thing is that other apartment complexes do not know 2 months in advance whether they will have something available for you or not. so its kind of a gamble; you terminate your lease, yet are not entirely sure whether the new place will have something available (ofcourse, you can always pay double rent for a few months! they do know whats available right NOW!). we did look for some new apartments, but they were all more expensive (and ours is already too expensive)/were less nice & expensive/ not close to a subway station. the worst experience we had at a similar complex as ours. we had an appointment at 10 in the morning. it was cold and windy, and there was nobody. we had to wait outside as we could not enter the complex. when the "leasing officer" showed up nearly 10 minutes late, she said "well yes, it was 10-ish". no apology, nothing. then we were in her office, she had only introduced herself to tim, and then.. while i was next to him ALL the time, she asked him, and only him: "so... what are you looking for? is it for one person?" i was so surprised i did not say anything..... it was one of those moments where you really should have said something, but just nothing came out. grrrrr...

ah well, in the end we decided to stay where we are. boston is only the third most expensive city to rent an apartment (after new york and san francisco), with rents of 1- and 2-bedroom apartments being 51% higher than the national average in 2011. (1-bedroom being $1665 dollars on average, in boston. i can only say we pay more... and we dont even live in boston, but another small town!! beeegh. it does hurt..). 3-bedroom apartments are even 70% higher than the national average!

Forgotten drinks

to me, it seems that americans cannot go anywhere without holding some sort of beverage or another in their hands. im not sure how much they drink of it, however. they always seem pretty full, is it more of an accessory than a drink? americans tend to forget it everywhere, as soon as they put it down, somehere, anywhere really, they forget all about it. and thus you see cups with all sorts of drinks standing around everywhere. literally. on the street, in the subway, on some shelf in a shop... one time a guy even forgot his in the overhead compartment in the airplane. until i told him to please take it...

just this sunday we had lunch at some tiny tiny bakery in boston, there were only 6 seats or so. but we managed to get 2. the sandwich and croissant were sooooo good! on top of that, the coffee was yum too. but it came in..... paper cups. my delicious macchiato, and only a horrible wooden stirrer to enjoy the milk foam... :( buuuuhhh! why do even the nicest of places serve coffee in paper cups? (the bread at least was on a real plate).

ah well... above you see a bubble tea, somewhere in chinatown. i tried a sip of bubble tea only once, and thought it was disgusting... so i do understand someone left that behind... :) (just click the link if you want to know what wikipedia has to say about bubble tea!)

Do you...

.. know whats going on here? because i dont! some window, i think an office window, in downtown boston.

not really graffiti, haha, not at all! but all i could find around here... 

for real murals, go here! :)

The universe

im really tired and not at all in a writing mood. i was in the kitchen all night and half of my "experiments" there failed... buuuh. ah well, im not alone, according to the universe. pfew. that was in cambridge, close to the charles river on some lamp post...

Presidents day

this is the side of a house in lowell, massachusetts. this is not an uncommon sight in the usa, i have seen them smaller, and a little bigger (but mostly smaller), but i never managed to take a photo, usually because we were driving by and i saw it too late. here i made tim stop (and we were a bit lost, so it was a good opportunity to look at the map). i thought it appropriate for today, as it is presidents day, a federal holiday in the us.

this day was implemented in 1879, to honor george washington, the first american president. it was originally on his birthday, february 22, and was also the first holiday to honor an american citizen. it was then named washington's birthday, and thats how it is still described in the american law that describes federal holidays. but from 1971, presidents day has always been on the third day in february, as dictated by the Uniform Monday Holiday Act. i find that very funny. the uniform monday holiday act (i dont think they call it UMHA, although americans love these kind of acronyms). i guess thats american regulation and efficiency all in one! as such, many american holidays are always on a designated monday, so that americans then always have a 3-day weekend, instead of some random day off in the week (perhaps also to prevent people from taking off more days in order to MAKE it a long, even longer, weekend?). 

presidents day... i do find it complicated... although by law its still named washington's birthday, its now more known as presidents day, and supposedly more regarded as a day to honor the office of the presidency rather than a specific president. ah well... not much honoring was going on at our place, we got earlier than normal, to be at the dentist at 8 (yuk), then groceries, then major housecleaning (beehh, not done yet), then some work and then it was evening again...

for more monday murals, go here!

How cheesy!!

and its not even a mural... but this is all i got right now. im a little lazy! saw it and ignored it, in boston's chinatown, but then tim said; hey, hey! and well... i took the picture... :)

tomorrow is valentine's day. signs of that are everywhere; the office at our apartment complex asked all residents to pick up their delivered packages as they kept coming in, taking up all the space. shops have entire aisles just for chocolate and other red/heart-shaped candy (they started that beginning of january, some even earlier). and even tonight, at the supermarket one of the employees went crazy over the intercom; "we have roses here, a dozen, they are so cheap, cheaper than anywhere else! we men are in the doghouse, so be her hero, bring her roses. buy some nice chocolate. now do it, really, and here is the place to do it. do your shopping, and get the roses too. and some candy. and since its cheap... you dont even have to spend a lot of money. dont you want to get out of that doghouse... " it went on, and on and on...  (a youtube video about the doghouse (had never heard it before); its rather funny, but a bit long....). 

in the netherlands, valentine's day is not that big (pfew), but here it seems really important...

for some real murals, go here!

Hey, Dali!

sorry, no post last night, i was suddenly exhausted and fell asleep on the couch.. (actually quite a while ago since that happened. at some point it happened almost daily!).

just a quick post to make up.. here we were just driving around, not too far from our apartment (but have no clue anymore where this was). i suddenly saw this (i think) stencil-painted face of (must be) salvador dali on this piece of street furniture. hahaha, almost every day i learn something new, because of this blog (as a result, it also always takes me much longer to write a post than i intended. as it is usually the last thing i do before going to bed.... i usually end up going to sleep later than i should) i was looking up how you call this thing. well, its a fire alarm call box, but normally they are painted red, so im wondering whether this one is still in use (and so i learned that in the UK they call everything placed on streets, like benches, fire alarms etc "street furniture"). 

anyways... these boxes look very ancient, and they are! but they still work, and for example after 9/11 they proved useful in new york (there are 15,000 of those in new york). power and cell phone service were down in large parts of the city, but those boxes are powered from a separate supply and continue to work in the face of outages of both electrical and telephone systems...

behind is a fire hydrant. you cannot park in front of a fire hydrant. always frustrating, when you think you have found a parking spot (parking in boston is horrible!!), the fire hydrant pops up... grrrr. if you do park there, you can expect a parking ticket. or.... if there is a fire... firemen will not hesitate to damage your car... (picture here).

and once again... i wrote much more than intended! i just wanted to show this pic, and write that this is a typical residential street with use houses. that i like these streets, and that they are just as you see them in the movies... :)

Ghost sign

i took this pic 2 weeks ago or so, when we had some snow. this is on cambridge street in boston (i wonder whether cambridge has a boston street? i actually dont think so... :)). although i walk here every now and then, i never noticed this faded mural before. its an old advertisement for quaker oats, "the world's breakfast" (yuk! defenitely not for me!). actually, if you look carefully, you see such faded advertisements on houses/buildings here and there, i like them, as they always look nicely old-fashioned. i was googling around to find more info on this specific one, but... nothing. i just found 2 other blogs that also pictured the one i have here, but no further info.

on wikipedia i did find that these are called ghost signs, brickads, or simply fading ads. the copied wiki-defenition: "a ghost sign is an old hand-painted advertising signage that has been preserved on a building for an extended period of time. the signage may be kept for its nostalgic appeal, or simply indifference by the owner." many of these signs were placed between the 1890s to 1960s, so this one might be decades old! in a time when billboards did not exist and there were no committees deciding as to whether a building would be ruined by such an advertisement or not... 

i think they are interesting, its like peeking into another time, however briefly.... moreover, they are so much more interesting than huge mass-produced billboards! having never noticed this one before, i saw the exact same one somewhere in cambridge later that day, equally faded. from now on i will pay more attention to these signs, so perhaps i'll show you another one sometime...

for more murals, go here!

Roa mural

i had a really hard time choosing one of the pics i took from the mural i want to show this week. finally i choose this pic, but to see the entire mural, you have to click on it! unfortunately, my pics dont do this piece justice... :( it was sooo impressive! this is in miami, the sunbather that i showed earlier is on the wall to the left. if you go here, you can see a few more pics, close ups etc.

the one above is made by the street artist roa. of course, i had to look what i could find about him online (where would i be without the internet!). roa is from ghent, in belgium. he has painted in many cities in europe and the usa, including london, paris, new york, los angeles, and recently he had a show of his work in paris. he mostly paints animals, in various stages of decay. in this interview i found, he mentions that the type of animal depends on the region where he paints, as he likes to paint the ordinary animals from that location. quote; " I dream to go one day to Africa or Australia to extend my choices". he likes to paint abandoned places, as you can see here (you should really check it out! many beautiful, and funny murals). i think his work is really beautiful, and very well fits the locations!!

here you can see more monday murals.

Banksy, cancelled

i like the monday mural theme, but, as i said before, its not that easy to find graffiti in boston. im sure the graffiti busters have something to do with that, combined with zero-tolerance policies (recently they arrested someone who tagged subway cars and stations in boston, plus other cities, and he could goto prison for 3 years!). but there is a little here and there.. (and actually a lot along the orange line, but this is not legally accessible). just read somewhere that boston spends around 6 million/year to get rid of graffiti!! above is in chinatown. and as you can see, its very ugly! i wouldnt call it a mural either, but.... underneath this used to be (most likely) a real banksy. the only thing remaining is a tiny part of the man, in black, underneath the white R. this is what it used to look like, in 2010. then someone decided to paint over the man, as you can see here. and at some point at least 2 more people went over that, as you can see above. we actually had been looking at this wall before, seeing nothing but ugliness. haha, its still ugly, but just wanted to show that many graffiti-writers do not care on which wall they write, or whether they overwrite someone else's "work". i think its too bad that something this ugly replaced the banksy, although all of them did something that was illegal; defacing a wall that is not theirs... but still, something like this is much more interesting than a grey empty wall, right? (but this person had permission to paint that wall).

last week someone told me about "hanksy", a kind of a prank on banksy, but with the face of.... tom hanks. hahahaha. here you can see an example. no clue who is placing those..

for more monday murals, click here...

Side street

just a side street in new york, somewhere in chinatown. i was so surprised to see so many of these scooters lined up, and a bike behind... looked more like rome to me!

we had some snow here last night, and more is expected tomorrow, hopefully i will be able to take some pics...