Walk the streets of Dumbo in Brooklyn and you get a feel for the kind of ambiance that SoHo had twenty years ago, after the first waves of gentrification had wrapped up but before the entire area became a giant outdoor shopping mall with brand names everywhere. In Dumbo (the name is an acronym for "Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass") you'll see a once industrial neighborhood finding its feet as a now mostly residential area. You'll also discover a 'hood filled with moneyed and not-so-moneyed creatives. Multi-million-dollar loft conversions with spectacular views of the Manhattan skyline are surrounded by beat-up cobblestone streets, artists studios and plenty of graffiti and street art like "Thinking," a piece of graphica we found pasted up across from St. Ann's Warehouse, an arts-perfrmance space. Part of the poster has been ripped away (was it an advertisement), but enough remains that it still communicates and resonates. The person in the bunny suit (or is it an anthropamorphic rabbit) has something of a Japanese-anime look about his or her or its face. Why is the bunny amid the clouds? What does the kite represent. Is thinking akin to riding a cloud? Or is thinking here simply a substitute for "daydreaming." Maybe that is the message, that daydreaming is a form of thinking. Or maybe that we shouldn't be thinking too much about it at all. Notice the clouds pasted up separately to the right of the main picture. C'est cool. Anyway, we just like the way it looks.

Ivan Corsa Photo