ON THE SIDEWALKS OF NEW YORK: EL BUNCHO'S ZERO-BUDGET SIGHTSEEING SAFARI

The building you're looking at is where I live in Brooklyn's nauseatingly gentrified — translation: ruined by yuppie fuckheads — Park Slope, and maintaining even the tiny studio I reside in eats up a good chunk of my meager budget. I'd like to spend some of that cash on a proper trip to some foreign land, perhaps to look up Jewish Warrior Princess or my pals in the Ginger Squad, but that ain't gonna happen anytime soon so I just have to content myself with wandering around the five boroughs and seeing all the gonzo shit and free entertainment that's a vital part of the mundane, day-to-day existence in New York City. But what passes for mundane in NYC would be vacation photo album gold anywhere else in the world. Please allow me to prove my point.

This is the front window of an artist who lives around the block from me on Union Street. Every month this person puts up something new and mildly offensive/silly, and I can't wait to see what goes up this Halloween.

The building directly across the street from the barbecue joint I worked at for two years. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.

How to practically apply STAR WARS geekery.

Apparently the local Uncle Louie G.'s ice cream franchise was giving away Spider-Man himself as that week's prize. Note to Spidey: dude, I know your recent comics and last movie sucked, but that's no reason to start selling boy-pussy as an alternative. You're the idol of millions, for fuck's sake!

Once a mainstay of the NYC landscape, the wild Hare Krishna is now an endangered species. I was lucky to get this shot, as it's the first time I've spotted a flock of them in the wild in over twenty years.

Only in the obnoxiously posh sections of the Rotten Apple can you find gumball machines that dispense liver biscotti for your dog. I genuinely hope some starving homeless guy busts this fucker open, gorges on the treats, and takes a huge, steaming, liver-flavored shit all over the front stoop of the place that displays this dispenser.

A life-size Silver Surfer in the window of Jim Hanley's Universe. I have no doubt that some sicko bought this thing and has subsequently fucked it or dressed it in assless leather chaps and a cowboy hat. This is, after all, New York City.

Life-sized replicas of Elwood and Jake Blues. Depending on what time of evening the costume shop they stand in front of closes, I'll bet some freak has either fucked, jerked off, or pissed on them.

Note Elwood, nimbly sidestepping the scat left by an appreciative pervert.

Jake, shaking a rain-coated passerby's genetic payload from his leg.

Just what a city full of vermin, drugs, whores, criminals, perverts, and violence needs: "flower power" cabs!

In case you ever wondered who was on hand to deal with this blight upon the city, now you have an answer.

Is it just me, or does this look like an intimate closeup of some woman giving birth to Cthulhu?

When I saw this oversized billboard of a tattooed man, it took me a few moments to realize that the graffiti was not a part of the ad.

Once thought to be a dying art in the wake of hip-hop graffiti, examples of the fine tradition of humorous and rude billboard vandalism can still be found by those who care enough to pay attention. This shot of the bridge on a rescue boat features a barely readable word balloon coming from the guy with the hand-mic that says, "I SMELL ASS." The fellow to his left helpfully explains to his shipmate, "I JUST FARTED." Juvenile as hell, totally defusing the gravitas of the ad's intent, and a fine example of a whole story being told in a mere two sentences. Literary economy in action!

Then there's the classic grafitti sub-genre of drawing big cocks on otherwise innocent advertisements. Here the much-played-out Geico gecko, this time packing a bacon bazooka that would have done John Holmes proud (it's a little hard to see, but it's there if you focus). Sadly, this is funnier than the entire run of his TV spots.

Yours Truly, representin' for the year's third-best movie (RATATOUILLE coming in at number two, and the mighty GRINDHOUSE taking first place).

I've been so horny lately that, even though there's plenty of the real thing about, I still see tits everywhere I go...

The same can be said for glistening beavers.

My mom meets Times Squares' infamous Naked Cowboy.

Who needs a gun when you can get laser rings out of a gumball machine?

If I lived in this neighborhood, I would have no choice but to steal this awesome piece of five-foot-tall kitsch and display it in my living room.

This innocent billboard...

...gave way to a more local flavor once baseball season got underway. "Freakin'," indeed.

I don't know about you, but I don't think I would frequent a beauty and hair salon that allows an image of what is apparently the Frankenstein monster cracking open a forty of Rheingold to be displayed on its off-hours gate. No fucking way would I let a wasted, made-from-spare-parts revenant go anywhere near my precious cranial topiary.

I know the woman who rendered this sign, and she meant it exactly like my dirty little mind interpreted it.

Last weekend I got tanked at 23rd Street's Live Bait and walked my pal Lia to her subway stop several avenues to the West. As we walked we passed by a home depot and saw this odd window display in which a bunch of dolls paraded in front of a doll-sized Home Depot storefront, each holding the tethers to a balloon that the window dresser neglected to depict.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't attempting to make Jesus famous a tad redundant?

This amazingly obscene ad not only urges you to "experience wide open refreshment," it also has the distinction of featuring a gushing — read "wet" — orifice that can also be interpreted as a jizzing/pissing dick thanks to the cylindrical can that would look quite erect in 3-D. Sheer genius, this was taken down not two days after I saw it and replaced with an innocuous ad for a health spa.

This next one's a real heartbreaker to me, and I'm sure many of you feel the same way. CBGB, the music landmark that brought the world the Ramones, Blondie, and the Talking Heads, is dead, and it's familiar awning has been transplanted to the overpriced tourist trap that is St. Mark's Place, just a stone's throw from the odious Trash & Vaudeville. On a street littered with places where you can buy rock t-shirts for $25, CBGB is now no more than a glorified souvenir kiosk, and with talk of a possible national franchise in the works it's destined for an even sorrier fate as the punk rock answer to Banana Republic.

All I have to say to this one is, "???"

I first saw this motherfucker about twenty-two years ago while wandering around midtown out of my mind on mushrooms, and I swear to God it turned and looked at me.

A brand new newsstand on East 42nd Street. I give it two weeks before it's festooned with graffiti.

Technically speaking, this is underneath the sidewalks of New York, but how could I not close this entry with "Godbuns?"