Photo Credit: Roving Rube. Viewpoint: 48th St. and Broadway, looking north; 4/5/02 9:12 AM.
Notes (Roving Rube): "Look -- there's the building where the side collapsed!" exclaimed a tourist. She was not close enough to see the guy still watching TV on the lazy-boy and apparently confusing it with another building on 8th Avenue which had collapsed that day.
This life-size dollhouse was installed in Times Square by Artkraft Strauss back in 2000, and one of their men in the cherry picker is checking the weather stripping or something. One Christmas they put presents up there for the guy. It seems little sad to the Rube that there is no one to share this house with him and he watches TV all day.
Washington Mutual liked this campaign so much that they put three more dollhouses on 1 Times Square -- in we see one of Lego, one of Lincoln Logs; a third made of sand is on the far side.
In is an Absolut sign on 47th St. representing the prototypical New York studio apartment. It was there for about 6 months. Before that it apparently had been installed at Broad and Lafayette. A search on Google brought a Miami Ad School promo by an alumni, "Bill":
"Have you ever thought of a joke that made someone laugh? Have you ever taken a picture that someone wanted to keep? Have you ever created something that people looked at and said "Hey, that's cool!" ...
As I write this, people are doing just that at a billboard called "Absolut New York" my partner and I created. It is a large New York studio apartment in the shape of an Absolut bottle, with real furniture. It began as a doodle on a notepad. Now this little doodle has been seen by tens of thousands of people, and has been in dozens of newspapers and magazines around the world. ...
I had thought about studying graphic design or something like that for years. I had visited a few art schools, but nothing seemed too terrific. Besides, I was 35 and I didn't want to waste time taking classes I didn't need.
And then I read an article about "Miami Ad School." I was ready to do something new with my life so I went to visit the school. I spoke to a young woman named Pippa. She asked me if I had ever thought about art direction. I didn't even know what that was. ...
School took two years. I had never worked harder. And I had never had so much fun. I got a job as an art director at a great agency right away. In two years, I've produced ads for television, magazines, newspapers, billboards, trains, bus shelters, phone booths - you name it.
Right now, I am working on some new doodles that will be seen by millions of people on the back cover of the annual Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue. Hopefully, some of them will say "Hey, that's cool!"
(from Miami Ad School Online)