The doormat of apartment #3D in my building.

Happy Chinese New Year! Yay for old Chinese people!

Rest in peace, you funky place you. At the end of my block on the corner of Broome and Mott there once was a restaurant named Funky Broome. Then it became Jazzy Wok. And lastly it was the Funky Thai Cafe. After each incarnation the decor got greener, purpler, and shimmerier, until it was a beast of funky that no mortal dared to enter. Its food: decent. Its location: great. And yet every time I walked past its panoramic windows there was nothing but a still life of heinous flower-painted tables and opal-cushioned chairs. Two people might be inside the po-mo fever dream on a busy night. They really tried their darndest, claiming “the best pad thai in town” (which wasn’t true but they had good pad see ew). And then came the “free tater tots” sign, which signaled the beginning of the end.

I always sighed a little “oh…” when walking past, rooting for it like the little engine that could. And then it finally dawned on me that I could help! I went in one day and in the nicest way suggested that they could really get more business if it wasn’t quite so purple and ugly inside. I would happily offer my design skills pro bono to turn this neighborhood joint into a bustling local favorite! For the public good! Alas, the woman said she wished I came earlier because the owner was so tired, so very tired, and he had already decided to sell it.

A few weeks later its doors were permanently shuttered, until one day last week when they held a public auction to sell all their kitchen riff raff and funkdefied decor. No one showed up for that either. Oh…

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?

It’s so easy to put off visiting places that will always be a minute away… I’ve been meaning to go to The New Museum since its November opening, but it always seems too cold or too closed or too afternoony when it comes to mind. And it comes to mind often because it’s like a constant mountain backdrop when I’m noodling around the neighborhood. I’ve run out of excuses and finally ventured over to the big gray boxes today.

I’m glad I did because there was a cool project all about neighborhood mapping. It’s called The Last Tourist Cairo by Dutch artist Jan Rothuizen and it’s on the 5th floor. Two posters feature Rothuizen’s hand-drawn maps of the area around his temporary Cairo home, notes about his personal experiences and impressions of the area, and short interviews with local residents. It was modest and casual and totally absorbing. I saw where he got his hair cut and that he too felt silly for having not visited the big museum a few blocks away. I saw the layout of his apartment he shared with a man who loves shoes. I read his interviews, including one with a guy who obsessively photographed a particular poster of a local political candidate.

Through all these snippets I quickly gained an in-depth and poignant portrait of Cairo and his stay, and it reminds me of the ways I want to know and document my own neighborhood and travels. Yay for maps! Unfortunately the posters aren’t online, but you can see a chopped up online version of the project here.