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heyscola.bsky.social
Tom Scola
@heyscola.bsky.social
290 followers 220 following 280 posts
Photographer, Brooklyn
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heyscola.bsky.social
Wallabout, 2019 #BelieveInFilm #UltraMax400
Photograph of the hunter green temporary plywood fencing around an empty lot in the Wallabout neighborhood of Brooklyn, with an elevated section of the BQE in the background. This bit of fencing looks to be on its last legs, as it is leaning over heavily, and looks on the verge of collapse. Behind the plywood fencing is some vestigial chain link fencing, which must have been standing there for a very long time, as you can see tree branches enmeshed in the fence, which were too much of a bother to remove after the actual trees were cut down. This lot sat empty for many years before and after this photo was taken, until 2022, when finally, an apartment building was constructed at this site, offering cheaply-made “luxury” apartments which don’t rent for much more than other apartments in the neighborhood.
January 13, 2026 at 7:03 PM
heyscola.bsky.social
Clinton Hill, 2019 #BelieveInFilm #UltraMax400
Photograph of the front of a black c. 1968 Pontiac Firebird in front of a repair shop in the Clinton Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn. I should say up front that I really fucking hate cars, and that I moved to New York City for the express purpose of never having to own one. But holy shit, this is one fucking sweet automobile. It is in pristine condition, with shiny black and chrome. Behind it, the shop where it is parked is painted green. I hardly ever try to take pictures of cars, because they fucking suck, but I couldn’t pass up this one.
January 11, 2026 at 9:29 PM
heyscola.bsky.social
Clinton Hill, 2019 #BelieveInFilm #UltraMax400 #👖
Photograph of a very short stoop of an industrial building in the Clinton Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn. The building is clad in bright yellow bricks, and the stoop is narrow; just three short steps that jut out perhaps only a meter past the front of the building. The sides of the stoop are two rounded slabs of concrete. Simple, yet functional and perhaps even elegant. The doorway is a cold, unwelcoming grey steel, indicating that this building is not for use by the general public. Lying on the stoop are an abandoned pair of jeans. Which begs the question, why would someone leave a pair of jeans on a random stoop in Brooklyn? I’m sure there’s a story behind it, although ultimately, probably not a very interesting story.
January 8, 2026 at 3:05 PM
heyscola.bsky.social
Clinton Hill, 2019 #BelieveInFilm #UltraMax400
Photograph of a playground in the Clinton Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn. In the foreground is a basketball court, with an old rusty backboard and rim, missing a net, of course. The concrete court itself is painted blue and brown, but the paint is very faded. In the background, behind some fencing, is a handball court, divided as usual by a monolithic vertical slab of concrete. Behind the playground itself is an elevated section of the BQE, indicating that this playground was probably carved out by Robert Moses when he razed the neighborhood to make way for his highway. Handball was probably quite popular back when Robert Moses was building these playgrounds, but it has fallen out of vogue in recent times. These handball courts would probably get much more use nowadays if they were adapted for pickleball, but why go through the expense of ripping out these concrete slabs if pickleball will also fall out of vogue at some point in the next decade or two? On the other hand, NYC Parks probably spends a significant amount of money each year keeping these handball slabs graffiti-free, as it is in this photo. If they tore down the slabs, it might be a net benefit. The courts could then be adapted for multiple uses, like badminton, padel, jombola, etc.
January 6, 2026 at 9:35 PM
heyscola.bsky.social
@gailsimone.bsky.social :
kashana.blacksky.app Kashana @kashana.blacksky.app · 9d
Somebody is about to throw the worst party of all time.
pgh-scanner.com Pittsburgh Scanner @pgh-scanner.com · 9d
Downtown. 242 Fifth Ave - CVS. Caller said someone just stole like 7 full cases of Dr. Pepper and fled. Suspect is currently walking down Fifth with a comical amount of Dr. Pepper.
January 5, 2026 at 7:03 PM
heyscola.bsky.social
Clinton Hill, 2019 #BelieveInFilm #UltraMax400
Photograph of a corrugated steel fence behind some residential buildings in the Clinton Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn. The fence seems to be relatively new, since it has not accumulated any graffiti. There is an orange rubber mat hanging from the fence, which is weird, but adds some vibrant color to the scene. Some weeds sprout out in front of the fence. Note that the rear of Brooklyn townhouses mostly aren’t visible from the street. They’re supposed to provide a private garden sanctuary for their homeowners. The only reason the rear of these buildings are visible is that Robert Moses plowed the BQE through where I’m standing, right behind this scene.
January 4, 2026 at 10:23 PM
heyscola.bsky.social
Clinton Hill, 2019 #BelieveInFilm #UltraMax400
Photograph of a townhouse in the Clinton Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn. The home is clad in green vinyl siding, with is covered in dirt and grime. The siding under the second story window is a slightly different shade of green, indicating that it was patched over at some point, probably at the same time the window had to be replaced. The home has a rather high stoop, which leads down from the second floor, then turns 90° before arriving at the ground. The railing for the stoop was also painted a matching green, but it has rusted through at most places. There is an entrance to the ground-floor apartment under the stoop, which is topped with an aluminum awning, also painted green. The brick foundation of the building was painted white, but the paint has started to flake off, revealing the deep red bricks underneath. The front door, at the top of the stoop, is also painted white, but it also could seriously use a fresh coat of paint. A window to the basement apartment is enclosed with a metal gate, also painted green, and also starting to rust away. Overall, this home shows a great deal of neglect from its owner, and Street View shows the present condition of the building to be unchanged in the present day. The estimated selling price of this building on Zillow is $2.3 million.
December 31, 2025 at 4:08 PM
heyscola.bsky.social
Directed by Jonathan Demme, at Maxwell’s in Hoboken.
December 31, 2025 at 3:47 PM
heyscola.bsky.social
Williamsburg, 2019 #BelieveInFilm #UltraMax400
Photograph of a long abandoned store front in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The glass and wooden doorway, whose finish has long since been stripped away, has an American flag in the window. The windows have venetian blinds in them, but are misshapen and drooping from age and neglect. This space has been sitting there, unchanged, for literally *decades*. Seriously, go to Google Street View and look at 539 Driggs Ave, and click on “see more dates”. The first date that they have, August 2007, looks almost *exactly the same* as it does in this 2019 photo, and in the latest street view they have from 2024. This is mind-boggling, considering the drastic amount of gentrification and change that Williamsburg has undergone during this period. Every single photographer in Brooklyn has a photo of this in their archives.
December 29, 2025 at 3:24 PM
heyscola.bsky.social
Williamsburg, 2019 #BelieveInFilm #UltraMax400
Photograph of a bright-red fire alarm call box in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. As you might expect, the box is covered in stickers. Most of the stickers are weathered, faded and illegible. Sitting on top of the box are two abandoned cups of ice cream from the defunct ice cream purveyors Republic of Booza. The ice cream has begun to melt and cover the box with a gooey mess. The scanning gods were kind to me, because this photo is really, really red. I’m rarely able to achieve this level of bright intense red from my film scans.
December 26, 2025 at 3:02 PM
heyscola.bsky.social
Williamsburg, 2019 #BelieveInFilm #UltraMax400
Photograph of the side of a building with an old metal mailbox attached. Next to that is a sliding gate in front of a window. Everything about this photo is wabi-sabi as all fuck. The mailbox is old and rusted and dented. The texture of the stucco-covered wall is almost touchable. The metal gate is covered with a lush patina. Looking on Street View nowadays, this building was refurbished, and now the mailbox and gate are gone, and the wall is a smooth, flat black.
December 23, 2025 at 6:06 PM
heyscola.bsky.social
My My Metrocard
YouTube video by Le Tigre - Topic
www.youtube.com
December 22, 2025 at 3:28 PM
heyscola.bsky.social
Williamsburg, 2019 #BelieveInFilm #UltraMax400
Very close up photograph of a rolling gate of an industrial building in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The frame of the gate is covered in patina, the details of which are what I wanted to capture in this photograph, which is why I have zoomed in so closely. It’s wabi-sabi as fuck. To the left of the gate is a metal doorway, which is covered in red, white, and black graffiti, but I am zoomed in to close to see what the graffiti tag is. You can, however, make out the stickers that have been applied. One of the stickers is for a locksmith, which every rolling gate in New York City accumulates. Then there are a couple of stickers proclaiming the name MUSK THE PHARAOH, which I guess was an OK graffiti name to have in 2019, but hoo boy, he must be really ashamed to have picked that name now in 2025. Next to those stickers is another sticker advertising a protest for Extinction Rebellion. According to Google Maps, this building was torn down some time in 2023 or 2024.
December 21, 2025 at 2:29 PM
heyscola.bsky.social
Williamsburg, 2019 #BelieveInFilm #UltraMax400
Another photograph of an industrial building in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. This is the same building I posted a few pictures ago, but this time taken at a different angle, in better light. This side of the building is painted white, with a very elaborate graffiti tag painted on the side. The street artist is PURO. The corner of the building has a rolling gate, which has a picture of a chicken painted on it. The chicken kind of morphs into a stylized painting of some other street artist's initials; it's unclear if the initials were painted on top of the chicken, or if it was part of the original painting, as the initials have the same color palette as the chicken. Below, weeds grow out of the sidewalk through cracks in the concrete. Today, this building has been painted a dull brown, part of the conspiracy to remove color from all of our lives.
December 17, 2025 at 4:12 PM
Reposted by Tom Scola
nytpitchbot.bsky.social
After four years of Democrat Party chaos, America is finally under the resolute leadership of President Donald J. Trump, who reminds me of my alcoholic father.

by Susie Wiles
December 16, 2025 at 11:36 PM
Reposted by Tom Scola
seamus.bsky.social
Hilariously, we have created a commerce model where it’s increasingly impossible to buy something locally today, but you can have nearly anything on earth delivered tomorrow.
December 16, 2025 at 9:05 PM
heyscola.bsky.social
Williamsburg, 2019 #BelieveInFilm #UltraMax400
Photograph of a street corner in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. A shipping container, covered in graffiti, sits in front of a grey one-story building, also covered in graffiti. In the foreground is a fire hydrant; as if that weren’t enough of a warning not to park there, an orange safety cone is on the street in front the hydrant, surrounded by two bollards. The main subject of the photo, however, is in the midground. For some reason, there is a whole row of major appliances sitting on the sidewalk. I count ten refrigerators, and four washing machines. Some of the fridges have the doors removed, indicating that all these appliances are going to be disposed of. Why would someone need to throw out at least fourteen large appliances simultaneously? Maybe a landlord made a bulk purchase of new appliances for his building? I don’t know.
December 15, 2025 at 4:03 PM
heyscola.bsky.social
Williamsburg, 2019 #BelieveInFilm #UltraMax400
Photograph of a seemingly abandoned ATM against a wall in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn. A surprisingly monochromatic photograph from me. The ATM is colored a beige, while the wall is painted a dull white. Above the ATM, hanging from the wall is a bicycle frame, and below it to the right is a bicycle wheel. If you were to guess that the building is a bicycle repair shop, you would be correct. At the end of last year, I started this project of me writing little essays in the alt-text of the photos I post to BlueSky. I hoped that if I kept at it, I would somehow find my writing voice that would enable me to talk about my art more lucidly. I have mostly failed at this task. After a year of doing this, I am still unable to say anything profound about my art. I think this is a pretty damn good photograph of an extremely mundane scene. Since I started photographing seriously circa 2003–2004, I’ve always had the proverbial “good eye”, and in the years following, I have refined my skill at it. This photo fucking rocks, but for the life of me, I can’t talk about why. I’m too burdened by self-doubt and an unwillingness to look inward to have a meaningful conversation about my art.
December 12, 2025 at 1:41 PM
heyscola.bsky.social
Williamsburg, 2019 #BelieveInFilm #UltraMax400
Photograph of a commercial building underneath the Williamsburg Bridge in Brooklyn. The corner of the building is cut off in a 45° angle, and the doorway is enclosed with a rolling gate, which is covered in several layers of graffiti. The bottom of the doorway has a thick nest of weeds, indicating that this entrance is not being used. The side of the building has even more layers of graffiti, which itself is covered with a wheatpaste poster.
December 10, 2025 at 2:47 PM
heyscola.bsky.social
Williamsburg, 2019 #BelieveInFilm #UltraMax400
Photograph of a Mexican restaurant in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn. This restaurant, Donna, is sadly now defunct. This photograph highlights a window on the side of the building that functions as a taco stand. The window has a sign that says “TACOS TO GO”, and it has a lovely rustic wooden shutter. Next to the taco stand are some more rustic wooden planters. On the other side of the taco stand is an ATM, which is covered in graffiti tags and stickers. The building itself, built in 1900, is painted a peach color, and it has decorative metal columns, which are painted a complementary powder blue. Of course, this quaint scene no longer exists. The space was taken over by a cocktail bar, the taco stand was closed off, and the building was painted black and white, part of the ongoing conspiracy to remove color from our lives.
December 8, 2025 at 6:37 PM
heyscola.bsky.social
Bed-Stuy, 2019 #BelieveInFilm #UltraMax400
Another photograph of the side of an industrial building in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. The top half of the building is painted lime green; the bottom half is painted grey, no doubt to cover up all the graffiti the building has accumulated. This grey layer is covered with even more graffiti tags. The second floor of this building has a doorway that opens out onto a fire escape attached to the building. I hope that this building isn’t occupied and that a fire doesn’t actually occur, because the ladder that can be lowered onto the street is seriously bent and does not look like it would be very functional at letting people egress during an emergency. The midday sun shines down on the fire escape and projects a fascinating shadow pattern on the wall below it. The fire hydrant on the sidewalk in front looks sad. Its once bright red paint has faded to a weak brown, and it too is covered in graffiti tags.
December 4, 2025 at 10:10 PM
heyscola.bsky.social
Bed-Stuy, 2019 #BelieveInFilm #UltraMax400
Photograph of an industrial building in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. The building has a loading bay, raised off of the ground for easy access by a truck, and a doorway which is raised off of the ground and is accessed by a set of steps. These entrances are closed off by rolling gates. You can also see the outline of what were windows, but are now closed off. The doorway occupies the space of what was previously a window, which explains why it is raised off the ground like it is. Looking at the current state of the site on Street View, it looks like the building is being converted to residential, and the loading dock has been removed, and all the windows that were previously covered up have been restored. Scattered on the sidewalk in front of the building is an office chair, which is now in two pieces, and a snow shovel. I’m not sure what the shovel is for, since this photo was taken in late summer. The wall is tagged with the name BOOKS; I assume it’s a name, and not some graffiti artist encouraging people in the neighborhood to read more.
December 3, 2025 at 3:23 PM
heyscola.bsky.social
Crown Heights, 2019 #BelieveInFilm #UltraMax400
Photograph of the side of a bodega in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn. The façade is painted peach and gold, and blue and red graffiti is scrawled over it. You can see patches where past graffiti was covered over by a slightly different shade of gold paint, which was again covered with more graffiti. A window on the right is covered with metal bars, which were also painted gold, but the metal has begun to rust and the gold paint has begun to flake away. On the left is an outdoor freezer, labelled WE SELL THOMAS ICE. Upon closer inspection you can see that the freezer has been wrapped with vinyl, which was printed with a grid of boxes, each one containing the text THOMAS ICE CUBE CO., and the phone number of the ice purveyors. Sitting on top of the freezer is an empty iced tea bottle. The overall feeling this photo evokes for me is one of simultaneous sadness and joy. On the one hand, seeing this space being given over to entropy reminds us all of our inevitable end, just like all ruin porn does. Yet this place remains a viable, active business, open twenty-four hours a day, and provides vital neighborhood services, and the owners and employees are probably far too busy to constantly repaint an exterior that will be inevitably be retagged anyway. Plus, the bright colors provide a much-needed respite to the normally drab and monochrome cityscape.
December 1, 2025 at 8:14 PM
heyscola.bsky.social
The Castro, 2025 #BelieveInFilm #UltraMax400 #SF
Photograph of a typical-looking two-story Victorian home on the corner of a street in the Castro district of San Francisco. Typical of the city, the foundation of the building is ahistorically painted a bright green, while the rest of the building is painted a lighter shade of green, with yellow highlights. The base of the building curves as it goes around the corner; replacing the wood siding of this building must be an expensive endeavor, as each plank of wood has to be meticulously steamed and curved. On the second floor, an even curvier window bay juts out of the corner, with delicate patterns carved into the eaves. I caught this building in the afternoon sun, and the color is spectacular. The deep blue late summer sky provides tension with the green, and the sidewalk has a bright yellow ADA pad, which helps to break up some of that tension. The scene was so bright it was pushing the limits of the 400 speed UltraMax, yet the film held its own against the onslaught of color it was presented, and yielded something beautiful as a result.
November 28, 2025 at 6:55 PM
Reposted by Tom Scola
seantcollins.com
Virtually our entire leadership caste across multiple segments of society simultaneously tore their masks off to reveal black holes where humans should be. It's quite something!
November 28, 2025 at 2:11 PM