nyc

/ Don

The MTA’s Financial Posture

15558In April 2005, I sent an email to the NYC’s Metropolitan Transit Authority (or MTA) with a suggestion for helping them be more green.

You may or may not know that the MTA has 5,800 subway cars that run on 656 miles of track through 68 bridges, 14 tunnels and four boroughs, and carry 4.7 million people (1.7 percent of the US population) each weekday though 468 stations. You also may not know that the MTA, like most of NYC, runs off of electric power generated by oil-heated, steam-powered generators. So while the impression is that the MTA is green (because it’s not diesel-powered), it still consumes oodles of fossil fuel each day.

This is what prompted me to write them back in 2005, and to resend my letter on the four-year anniversary of it’s lack of a response. Read more

/ Don

NYC Subway Art Collages

NYC Subway Art Collage
NYC Subway Art Collage
NYC Subway Art Collage
NYC Subway Art Collage
NYC Subway Art Collage
NYC Subway Art Collage

Nearly all subway stations have inlays in the tiled walls for advertising. For over a century, these inlays have been plastered with wheat-paste and posters were rolled on top, only to be shredded off, re-plastered, re-rolled, and re-shredded, again and again. The resulting collage of color in this accidental artwork is often quite compelling.

Over the last decade, whenever I encountered one I really enjoyed, I snapped a photo. Mostly, I just put these on my Flickr “Textures” gallery, or temporarily use it as the wallpaper on my phone. But recently, I’ve been thinking of printing/framing some of them and hanging them in my apartment or giving them to friends as gifts. What do you think? Leave a comment below or drop me a line if you’re interested.

Other [d]online “Art Collage” Posts:
March 11, 2016 — NYC Subway Art Collages
November 5, 2018 — NYC Wall Art Collages

/ Don

The Complex

This is a novel I wrote when I moved to New York City. As with all hobby-novelists, its only in its second draft and far from being complete. All of the characters in this manuscript are fictional (though some of the names are close to friends of mine). If anything, the central character is loosely based on my dealings with relationships from high school to the time I met my girlfriend. In fact, unknown to her, she changed me so much that she actually changed the ending.

The Premise
A Midwesterner leaves her family and friends to try to find love in the Big Apple. She finds herself managing a three-story-building, a coffee house and a crisis of feelings, all of which she struggles to understand.

Download The Complex (PDF)
Includes: PDF of The Complex, a novel by Don Citarella.
/ Don

Manahatta: (NYC Subway Map v. 1937 Buffalo Nickel)

Every time I look at the MTA’s system map, I always see a Native American’s face in profile: Manhattan is the stately bridge of the nose, Riker’s Island is the gleaming eye, and even the Rockaways are a feathered headdress. Partially because of this physiognomy, but more due to its sartorial charm, I presume it looks the most like Sioux, Crow— probably the ethnicity of my great-grandfather on my mother’s side—Blackfeet, Cheyenne, or Plains Cree.