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I was on 18th St. on Thursday & saw this display. It's a quiet block in a fairly low-key area of Manhattan, a few blocks away from the Village. A few doors down from this brownstone there is a row of houses that are among the oldest remaining in Manhattan, more than 150 years old & on the National Register of Historic Places. I'd wanted to take a picture of these houses for quite some time but am not often in that neighborhood. I'd heard about the bloody Santa display but didn't know it was on that block.

The building where the display is has some of the most amazing gargoyles I've ever seen. Some looked like fairly recent additions, but there were many where it was difficult to tell how old they were. These brownstones are typically around 80-100 years old. Thing is, when you see a collection like that, it's usually a tip-off that the owner is some type of eccentric, to one degree or another.

The display itself was much ado about nothing, with the exception of Santa's bloody knife, and a prominently displayed, bloody & decapitated Barbie doll strung in a tree a few feet away. It was certainly one of the more extreme & nonsensical expressions of opinion on something like a holiday that I've seen, but I certainly didn't think it was worth wasting any time thinking about. There's always going to be some wacko looking for attention. And there's always going to be someone whose feelings steer them toward misguided acts who will give them that attention.

I snapped a few pictures & went on my way. While I was there, a few people stopped to look, had some sort of reaction, & continued on their way as well. Nothing to see here? Perhaps that's overstating it. Little to see here, is more like it. If you care about Christmas & think it was somehow disgraceful...well, I saw a poster above state that this was not 'destruction of property,' which is probably true. However, to say that it was not trespass is completely inaccurate.

Anybody has the right to protest on the street & call attention to this if they find it offensive. I would suggest that if it bothered this guy so much, that's what he should have done. Of course, then he's calling attention to something that should be ignored as much as possible, in my view. Even more obviously, what he did called even more attention to it.

Brilliant.

I will not disagree that this is probably more of a protest on Christmas than one about the commercialization of it. Nevertheless, unless I care to call the person a liar, then I may accept that they are sincere. To be honest, though, I fail to see why anyone would care all that much. This is not a school block, so, outside of neighbors (and I will point out that this is a very expensive area in which to own such property), I don't think all that many children are going to see this display. Until it made the news, that is. (There was a report on the local cable news outlet about it early last week, but a minor one) I do like the idea that children raised properly will either understand the ridiculousness of this, or will have it explained to them by their parents. I realize that there are many scenarios in which this is not going to be the case, but in the bigger picture I don't think this is something that's going to damage or scar a child, especially one who's growing up in a place like Manhattan.

I will not post the photos I took, because I will not give this the sort of attention they're so eagerly seeking. I did show them later that day to one of the most rabidly liberal people that I know. He was shocked, outraged, and looked physically ill when he was handing my camera back to me. He didn't say 'hate speech,' but, knowing liberals as I do, I have a feeling it was on the tip of his tongue. He's lost interest in throwing that term out at me, though, at this point. In any case, I understand the outrage, but there are things I find far more outrageous--such as what looks like a transit strike in this city 12 hours from now--and I say let a jerk put something like this in his front yard, and let the rest of us roundly ignore it.