Poetry Jukebox in Ruth E. Wittenberg Triangle in Manhattan.

Poetry Jukebox is a simple but ingenious project that plays poems on demand. Installed in Greenwich Village, visitors can press a button and hear poems from such New York City residents as Edna St. Vincent Millay, Sara Teasdale, Grace Paley, James Baldwin, Edgar Allan Poe, and Jack Kerouac, among others. Originally started in Prague by Ondřej Kobza, a café owner and cultural activist with passion for poems and literature, along with producer and writer Michaela Hečková, the project has spread to Slovakia, Ireland, Scotland, Bulgaria, and Germany, all with different poems in each location to reflect the literary heritage of each place. The creators of the Poetry Jukebox are focused on animating public spaces in cities and showing “how people can make their own cities more livable.”

After taking a tour of Melbourne, Sydney, Beijing, and Shanghai, the Paparazzi Dogs are in New York City! The dogmen, as they are also called, were created by contemporary artists Gillie and Marc, and are currently “taking photographs” in Greenwich Village, after having visited Brooklyn’s DUMBO. “We’re so excited that our Pap Dogs are in New York!” Gillie says on their website. “They’ve traveled the globe taking photos, and now they’ve arrived at the place that has been photographed more than anywhere else.” The Sydney-based husband and wife duo created the series of four life-sized dog sculptures in 2013 and the dogs quickly created such a buzz that celebrities such as Snoop Dogg came to have their photo taken with the dogmen. Gillie and Marc created the sculptures in hopes of raising awareness about the tragic death of the late Princess Diana, which has been blamed in part on overzealous paparazzi. Although the message behind the sculptures is serious, don’t worry, the dogmen are pretty adorable. And don’t worry: they won’t bite!