50,000 Lights In Canarsie

The Seddio Christmas House in Canarsie, Brooklyn at the Southwest corner of Flatlands Avenue and East 93rd Street features 50,000 lights and can be seen from planes landing at Kennedy:

Clearly there was some hubbub going on between the Seddios and the Department of Sanitation; not sure if it stretches all the way back to 2003, but here’s some evidence of that:

In all, quite a display and worth the trip if you can make it out there!

But What Is It About Model Trains And Christmas?

The New York Botanical Garden’s Holiday Train Show is one of my favorite things about Christmas in New York. I mean, yes, there is that gigantic tree in Rockefeller Center and, sure, the Christmas windows all around Midtown are a sight to behold, but there’s nothing like taking in the collection of 140 New York City landmarks entirely constructed from plant material (!) in the Haupt Conservatory.

I mean, have you ever seen a montage of Midtown skyscrapers built from plant material?

Dr. Chi hipped me to it a while back shortly after I moved here and that was his point — there is this thing that happens each year where people make replicas of New York City landmarks entirely from plant material. He probably said something along the lines of, “The original Penn Station constructed from twigs — twigs!”:

The old version of the old Yankee Stadium:

Rockefeller Plaza’s sunken plaza:

And my new favorite, JFK’s Terminal 5:

Here’s the original:

Are the Barney’s windows fun? No question! But the heartfelt, homespun tradition at NYBG is really something special. It would be demeaning to call it “outsider art,” but the near-obsessive attention to detail evokes that spirit. And I suppose to a certain extent, the inclusion of model trains is a dog whistle of sorts for the like-minded among us who celebrate that spirit. So be it. Let the Lionel-Industrial Complex have its time of year. But really, a G-gauge Brooklyn Trolley is only gilding the lily. The train show runs between mid-November and mid-January at NYBG (details).

Amazing Things Done With Cans For A Good Cause

The 2011 installment of Canstruction New York is taking place at the World Financial Center through Monday, November 21, 2011. The exhibition features sculptures made entirely out of cans of food, and after all is said and done the sculptures will be dismantled and tens of thousands of pounds of food will be donated to local food banks. The creations are quite inventive — they’re made by people who work for places like design firms and architectural firms, and the New York Chapter of the Society for Design Administration organizes it, so, you know, they all look sharp.

Apparently everyone loves Angry Birds:

And the recent Alexander McQueen exhibit at the Met made a splash as well:

The other thing in high demand: puns. The top Angry Bird-themed creation is called “Cangry Birds” and the bottom Alexander McQueen-themed creation is called “Alexander McCan.”