Stay safe.
“New York Drawings,” a new hardcover from Drawn & Quarterly that is out today, is a wonderful celebration of the artwork of the cartoonist Adrian Tomine. The book is filled with his work from The New Yorker as well as some of his comics and sketches. The book achieves a great balance between allowing the drawings room to breathe and a notes section that details how the assignments came about and the artist’s process.
The cover for the book, “Missed Connections,” which is pictured, was Tomine’s first cover for The New Yorker. “I’m sure it never would’ve happened without the tireless coaxing and immeasurable guidance of art editor Françoise Mouly,” he writes. “The main thing that Françoise stressed throughout the process was that the image should contain at least a kernel of a story — not necessarily a ‘gag,’ but something beyond just a pretty picture — and I think it’s that quality that made this drawing resonate with people.” Indeed, as someone who reads a lot of graphic novels and who often finds himself focusing more on the words than the pictures, I had a different experience of reading “New York Drawings”: I lingered over the illustrations and imagined the narratives that could go along with them. One other image, in particular, stayed with me: “Be Kind,” in which a commuter must decide to get on his train or help a woman up the stairs with her baby stroller.
The book was designed by Jonathan Bennet, and it was Tomine’s first time working with a designer. “I’ve always designed all my books from cover to cover,” he said. “This was the one that I thought would really benefit from an objective eye.” The results are pleasing: the book feels elegant and minimal, and avoids any temptations to cram too much onto every page.
“New York Drawings” is also a testament, in part, to Tomine’s move from the West Coast to the East coast. Tomine was born in California and went to college in Berkeley. “It’s hard to be objective about the two places,” he said. “When I was in Berkeley, I was living alone, in a crummy student-styled apartment. It has a lonely, gloom-type of memory. In New York, I’m married and I have a 3-year-old daughter, so I associate New York with a happier, more fulfilling part of my life.” He has tried to express his frustrations with the change — including his struggle to acclimate to the climate — in his illustrations, to mixed results. One image, “Waiting It Out,” depicts New Yorkers waiting at the base of the subway stairs for the rain to stop. Tomine thought of it as an unpleasantly scented stairwell. Others had a different reaction: “What a beautiful, romantic image of the city,” he recalled. “You really know all the things that we love about the city.”
Two strangers, both reading the same novel, share a fleeting glance between passing subway cars. A bookstore owner locks eyes with a neighbor as she receives an Amazon package. Strangers are united by circumstance as they wait on the subway stairs for a summer storm to pass.
New York Drawings by Adrian Tomine
It’s so different. But it’s all different. There’s gentrification of Cobble Hill. Fort Greene’s gentrified, Harlem was gentrified, Bed-Stuy’s gentrified, and Williamsburg is gentrified.
People lived on the Lower East Side and got priced out of there. Then you moved to Williamsburg—oh, it became too hip. Now they are going to Bushwick. What is going to happen to Bushwick? Next thing, after Coney Island, there is the Atlantic Ocean.
-Spike Lee
It was a common scam to circumvent the payment of fares by jamming the token slot in an entrance gate with paper. A passenger would insert a token into the turnstile, be frustrated when it did not open the gate, and have to spend another token to enter at another gate. A token thief would then suck the token from the jammed slot with their mouth. This could be repeated many times as long as no police officers spotted the activity. Token booth attendants would often coat the token slots with soap to discourage “token sucking”. Token sucking (also known as stuff ‘n’ suck) was charged under Theft of services, Criminal tampering and Criminal mischief.
A Young Obama in Love 
Obama’s first apartment in New York, which he shared with Phil Boerner, a friend from Oxy, was at 142 West 109th Street. Heat and hot water were scarce commodities. When the nights turned colder, the roommates took to sleeping bags for warmth and spent as little waking time in the apartment as possible, holing up in Butler Library, at 114th, parts of which were open all night. Some mornings, eager to flee their quarters, they walked to the corner of Broadway and 112th to eat at Tom’s Restaurant, the place immortalized later as the fictional Monk’s, a familiar meeting place for the characters on Seinfeld. A full breakfast went for $1.99.
nathanaelturner: A few images from my first summer living in Brooklyn (2009). I spent most of my free time riding different subway lines to the last stop, walking around and making pictures.
justinchungphotography: Manhattan.
A series of highways flowing through the heart of Manhattan’s West Side, 1964. Photo by Evelyn Hofer.
