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N.Y. / REGION

Talking to the City With Chalk

Character Study

By COREY KILGANNON SEPT. 14, 2012

ON Thursday evening, Robin Lane was out there with his stick of chalk, standing at his spot on the northeast corner of Second Avenue and 33rd Street in Kips Bay, Manhattan.

In the middle of the Midtown bustle, he dropped to one knee and began scrawling one of his chalk messages on the gum-pocked sidewalk.

“New Yorkers tend to walk looking down, not up,” explained Mr. Lane, who for the past 15 years has made a weekly ritual of creating an underfoot billboard on the same four-foot square of sidewalk here, never missing a week.

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