Big Bambú is part sculpture, part engineering, part adventure sports, and all about the living organism of the city.

At its most literal, it’s a building-sized bird’s nest of bamboo lashed together with nylon cord on the roof of The Met, rising over the canopy of Central Park. It opened this week. Artists Doug and Mike Starn and their team of rock-climber assistants are planning to keep building it higher until the installation closes in October. The city considers it a construction site; it gets inspected and weight-tested.

There are two ways to see it. One is to go up to roof of The Met any time, where you can view it from the solid footing of the concrete deck. The other way is to take a tour, in which the Met staff lead you and 14 other people up a bamboo walkway that winds through this nest and up into the sky. Trust me: Go do the tour. I went this morning, getting to the Met at 9:15 and securing a ticket for the first tour at 10 a.m. It’s an enveloping art experience not dissimilar from The Gates in 2005. I’m a total sucker for stuff like this. What a view!

By the way, the full title is Big Bambú: You Can’t, You Don’t and You Won’t Stop, which Beastie Boys fans know comes from this song.

This post first appeared on the History Eraser Button blog.

This week I read that Sesame Workshop is publishing some free e-books for children. One of them is “The Monster at the End of This Book,” first printed in 1971. I have dim memories of this book being read to me by my mom.

According to one article, this is the best-selling Sesame Street book of all time. When I read it this week—probably for the first time in 25 years—it struck a powerful chord of nostalgia. It’s a hoot, with funny illustrations of lovable, furry, old Grover freaking out about the supposed monster on the last page. The more pages you turn, them more uptight he gets. At the end of the book, he realizes there’s no reason to be scared—the only monster is himself. Go check it out.

All books for young children are secretly books for young parents. “The Monster at the End of This Book” is great for kids, of course. It has bright pictures and simple words and the kind of humor that makes children laugh. Even as a kid, it’s empowering to bust through some arbitrary rules set up by someone with no authority over you. (“I would just like to see you TRY to turn this page,” Grover dares the reader.)

But I think adults might identify with Grover. Just like Grover, we’re scared of our own monsters. They’re the internal doubts telling us we’re flawed, incapable people. No matter how good we try to be, our worst qualities will prevail. Horror of our own creation lurks just out of sight. Part of growing up is finding the confidence to face down the monsters.

Maybe I’m over-thinking it, but I can imagine my 30-year-old parents reading this book to my brother and me and getting that message out of it.

This post first appeared on the History Eraser Button blog.

Photos from Central Park, February 2005. More about Jeanne-Claude.

This post first appeared on the History Eraser Button blog.

It’s obviously a riff on this standard MTA poster seen in many stations:

Who would post a pre-civilization map of New York City in place of the regular subway map? And why? It’s either an artistic statement or a teaser for an ad campaign. Take your best guess.

I’m not suggesting a connection, but it brings to mind the cover story in National Geographic Magazine this month, “Before New York”.

This post first appeared on the History Eraser Button blog.

On my recent trip to Ohio I got two of the new pennies back in change. First time I’ve seen them. I received the second of four 2009 commemorative penny designs honoring President Lincoln’s 200th birthday. It shows, according to the U.S. Mint, “a young Lincoln educating himself while working as a rail splitter in Indiana.”

Currency design is hard, and trying to tell a man’s life story on the reverse side of a tiny coin is nearly impossible. I’m not crazy about the Lincoln log design, but it was the first time in memory that I actually stopped to look at a penny. The standard penny design is so familiar that we couldn’t evaluate it if we wanted to. This new series is the American penny’s chance to say “Look at me! Pay attention!” This is a good thing. It manages to make the penny less annoying!

That’s my two cents anyway. What do you think of Lincoln thinkin’?

This post first appeared on the History Eraser Button blog.

Item: The new Tropicana juice carton, designed by Arnell Group and introduced last month, is so loathed by customers that PepsiCo is switching back to the old design.

Let us raise a glass of juice and toast Tropicana for messing with the juice carton! The rejected design (which, by the way, took 30 people five months to develop) was just right for these times. It had simple graphics, bold san-serif type and a functional color scheme. The only illustration was a picture of the product in its purest form: juice in a glass. The horizontal bar on the top of each carton made it easy to spot the kind of juice you wanted in the supermarket. And best of all, the Tropicana carton included exactly one whimsical indulgence: A plastic cap shaped like an orange – easy to grip and twist, a surprise-and-delight feature.

Unfortunately, customers were unprepared for this bold leap toward modernism. And Tropicana caved once initial feedback proved negative. (Wasn’t at least one of those 30 design people in charge of customer research?) I enjoy orange juice at breakfast, and this carton was a nice thing to look at for a few seconds every morning. It will be missed. [Sound of "Danny Boy" being played on bagpipes.]

This post first appeared on the History Eraser Button blog.

Are we in the dark ages of logo design? Just look at the above examples – beginning with the Payless logo introduced in 2006 and continuing through the Kraft Foods logo introduced yesterday. I mean, really? Is everybody using the same WordArt template?

Even the new Pepsi logo has been derided variously as a rip-off of the Obama campaign logo to an exercise in delusional self-importance.

This post first appeared on the History Eraser Button blog.

Make your own at Obamicon.me.

This post first appeared on the History Eraser Button blog.

This post first appeared on the History Eraser Button blog.

Recently they announced the winning design, and guess what won? Right! From the design competition blog:

“Ian Mahaffy and Maarten De Greeve’s design reflects a modern simplicity that will greatly enhance the City’s streetscape. The rack is round with a horizontal crossbar, evoking an abstracted bicycle tire. Constructed of cast-metal, the design is elegant yet sturdy enough to withstand the harshest street environments.”

Here’s hoping the city installs these racks in pairs, both for convenience and aesthetics.

(From The Times, spotted first at Cityspecific.)

This post first appeared on the History Eraser Button blog.