Good Luck, and Bad, on New York’s Sidewalks

If you find yourself in Washington Square Park on one of these fine spring days, you might see Felix Morelo, bent low over the sidewalk, drawing.

More likely, though, you will see his art.

Look down, and you may find yourself standing in a “good luck spot,” drawn in pastel pink or blue or yellow. Or maybe a “bad luck spot.” Or maybe many bad luck spots. (He draws more of those when he is having a bad day.) His work, smack-dab in the center of New York City’s walkways, challenges busy residents to tempt fate, walking straight through the bad luck, or to take a moment to bask in their good fortune.

“It’s like a practical joke,” Mr. Morelo, 51, said on a recent afternoon, his hands dusty with chalk. “And it is a social experiment, too.”

He likes to toy with people, putting the spots in high-traffic areas or right at the mouths of subway stations. Some days, Mr. Morelo fills an entire stretch of sidewalk with bad luck anemones, leaving only a small path between them. Or he may draw one huge bad luck sinkhole, right where skateboarders gather.

His art is impish without malice. It’s like sidewalk reiki, pressing on the city’s energy points to see how people respond.

“You’ve got to shake people up a little bit — or a lot,” he said.

And almost everyone responds. Many people walk straight through his spots, exasperated. A few destroy the work, spilling water or scuffing it out, or blame him for little disasters.

On one recent day, some New Yorkers took care to sidestep the bad luck blooms. One woman yanked her small dog out of the way. A young man, staring into his phone, dodged the chalk circles with surprising agility.

Miryam Tesfaegzi, a real estate agent, stepped around a bad luck spot, despite her rush to meet a potential client. “I’m not taking any chances,” she said, laughing. (She and her business partner won the listing, she later wrote in an email. Coincidence?)

Mr. Morelo grew up in Colombia and lives in Glendale, Queens. Sometimes, he wonders: What if he really is sowing seeds of bad luck across the city? What if he’s cursing the people who stomp through his art, instead of just playing with the space?

“Even I walk around them sometimes, too,” he admitted.

He has been making public art in New York City for more than a decade. But during the coronavirus pandemic, he started concentrating on the spots, instead of more figurative pieces. He saw an opportunity to build his brand from interactive art at a time when public space in the city felt especially charged.

Mr. Morelo has been homeless in the past. For the last three years, he has stayed in a small room in a house with other roommates. During the day, he folds up his small single bed to make space to work.

He is a full-time artist, but he lives below the poverty line, he said. On tough days, the bad luck spots sometimes feel like a constructive way to handle his anger, his frustration and his pain.

Mr. Morelo’s spots — good luck and bad — can resemble the stay-six-feet-apart decals that characterized the height of pandemic lockdowns. But those were markings of distance. These are more about connection, steppingstones in a city coming together again.

“It’s provocative — it causes you to be aware of where you are,” said Kevin Smith, 45, a product designer and street photographer who has shot photos of Mr. Morelo. “He’s created moments for people to engage with.”

Mr. Morelo also plays with space in other ways, teasing out intimacy and inviting people to be freer. A dancing spot. A singing spot. Even a screaming spot.

“It’s like a dare,” he said. “We want to do it, but — I could just speak for myself — we’re afraid of being embarrassed in public. But the thing is, there’s a big reward afterward. It’s like a release.”

On a recent afternoon, he drew a kissing spot in Washington Square Park.

But Marieke Broeren and Klaas van der Horst, on vacation from the Netherlands, didn’t make it that far. They stopped to kiss in a hugging spot as the city thrummed around them.

“We made a mistake,” she said, laughing.

Zachary Melkemi, 11, was visiting New York from Paris with his three brothers and his parents. He let his father kiss him, despite some reluctance. It was a kissing spot, after all.

As the sun shone late-afternoon orange, Mr. Morelo made one last good luck spot, the last in a path. 

“I need a little bit of that,” Alex Torres, 28, said to a friend.

Mr. Torres had recently moved to New York and just missed out on a job. He closed his eyes, lifting his chin to the sunset. His feet didn’t quite fit in the spot, but he edged them closer together.

“I need a little luck right now,” Mr. Torres said quietly. “A lot of luck, actually.”