#13 W. Crack-In-The-Universe Street, New York.

You may wonder why I want my father to move out of his apartment so badly. Just enter the building, #13 on the sketchiest block in all of New York City. At four pm the street is a chimney. You get fashionistas, crack addicts, bike messengers, wholesalers, record labels, and Jewish leather workers. All on one block. There's even a pimp and an old guy who loves to sing to anyone who will listen. Dad lives on the fourth floor of a four story building that looks like it was taped between the two mammoth buildings on either side. There's a catwalk connecting the two buildings that you can see from the roof. You can also see the Empire State Building from the roof. And the back side of a cheap new hotel. There's a dingy, gated skylight that hangs over his studio.

We couldn't keep the place clean if we tried. Things go missing. You search the whole place for a broom, finding a dustpan but no broom. Shit. Run back and forth, wild eyed. Finally you find the broom and go sweep. One big pile of staples, hair and bits of toilet paper covered in oil paint later no dustpan. The wild eyed search resumes. Where the fuck's the dustpan?? Someone finds it. You throw away the dust pile. Discard the broom and dustpan in random places you're sure "I'll remember if it's here." And now you're just too tired to do anything else. It's clean enough. 

The florescent lights hum and pulse with a bright white light. Always humming. My dad has an excess of chairs and an absence of lamps. You either sit in the dark office illuminated only by a computer screen, a tv, and this tiny lamp; or sit in the studio with it's excess space and humming florescent. I painted the walls of the office dark blue with a latex paint in 2003. That was stupid of me. I meant to copy the light in New York City at night, but I mixed up the glowing purple of city-level nighttime with the dark blue of the sky and put purple on the ceiling. The room breeds darkness. The solitary desk lamp points at the wall where a little white light pools in a solitary circle on the dark blue wall. The rest of the room is covered in shadow. 

Doors swing on their hinges in the cross-breeze. The plastic my dad put over the windows crinkles and crackles like something is stepping on it. "We've either got ghosts or mice," I say. "Probably ghosts." and everybody laughs awkwardly.

There's an overhead lamp in the office. We've changed the light bulbs about six times in the last year. I keep hoping that this time, if we just break out the ladder again, we can make the light work. The room is actually kind of nice when lit by the soft glow of an overhead lamp. So we'll screw in new bulbs, flip the light switch on, and wait for five minutes to two hours until the lights shudder and blink off. Darkness returns. We screw them back in, light returns, for maybe fifteen minutes this time. Probably less. 

Some times when it's dark in the room you try to turn on the little desk lamp but it doesn't work. You think, It must be unplugged. So you crawl under the desk and start fiddling with the cords. No... The lamp is definitely plugged in. You try the lamp again. This time it works. A little white light pooling in the corner. 

Why do I want him to move? Because the place has bad energy. It's got this bad energy that permeates your very being, making you dizzy and disoriented just entering. Frightened as you turn off all the lights at the end of the night and lock the door. Darkness finally sweeping the entire apartment. Celebrating your exit. Warning you with creaking floors, dripping faucets and the oppressive tension of dark feelings: not to return.

Photos by Paul Barbera http://www.paulbarbera.com/