Trailer Park Restaurant

The Trailer Park restaurant on 23rd Street has carved out an interesting brand for itself. The appeal of burgers, Philly steaks, beer, and margaritas is clear enough, but why the trailer park theme? What’s the attraction of poverty and pink flamingos?

There are a few possibilities. You would expect the Trailer Park restaurant to be cheap and unpretentious. No need to dress up, or even refrain from burping.

The lady next to the sign, with her cutoffs, tattoo, and baseball cap, offers another not-so-subliminal signal, suggesting that a trailer park is where you might find young, unemployed women with time on their hands and few inhibitions. (There are actually two women reclining on either side of the sign, in an inadvertent—I would guess—parody of the tomb of the Medici in Florence.)

Get close enough and you can see that the clothes have actually been painted onto a naked mannequin, producing an effectively trashy look.

The joys of the sullen

Seeing this message every morning on the way to the High Line eventually made me curious enough to look up the Brooklyn-based artist Elbow-Toe and to follow his Twitter feed. 

Impact Car Park

Dear Impact Car Park:

Do you really think you picked the best name for your business?

Honest steakhouse

Walking through the West Side after dark, I was charmed to see this sign for the HONEST STEAKHOUSE, est. 1868. I imagined how this place must have built its reputation on giving fair weight for its beef, and not watering the whiskey. It was good to think that honesty was a brand that had served this restaurant well for over a century.

It was only when I got closer that I noticed that sign actually read HOMEST STEAKHOUSE, and that this was because the last three neon letters of HOMESTYLE had burned out. Which, I suppose, is another illustration of the idea that you only see what you are prepared to see. 

Missing billboard

Marshall McLuhan said the medium is the message. This artwork is the perfect illustration of that. The billboard medium is there, but the message is absent.

The framework, which looks three-dimensional but is actually flat, can be seen from the High Line. I passed it many times before I realized it wasn’t the real thing.