I’ve lived on Mott Street in Chinatown for two years and there are still nearby businesses that I’ve only just discovered… There’s a dusty little aquarium store tucked away down the block, a hole-in-the-wall print shop around the corner, and a spare hair salon with paisley office chairs and a sad-looking palm tree. Some of these places look like they’ve been there for years and they have the yellowed posters to prove it. Others have replaced the ones-that-didn’t-make-it, like the business downstairs that was once a clothes shop and then a strange bracelet/baseball cap store run by three Chinese guys who smoked cigarettes by the door all day. I never saw anyone else in there…
Most of these small storefronts look closed because their windows are blocked by boxes and posters. All of this fodder has piled up to form a new medley of American and Chinese things from posters for Tony Bennett concerts and Sheryl Crow albums to packaging for hair loss tonics and natural plant foot patches. It’s a Chinamerican collage and it all fuses together in this pharmaceutical poster above with old white people and a Chinese headline. Who is this for?
