What is a hipster?May 09 2012

Lorena Galliot came to NYC from France and didn't know what a hipster was. So she took to the streets of Williamsburg to find out.

(thx, phillip)

Where to eat in NYC?Apr 30 2012

Dozens of books have been written on this topic but for the less obsessive visitor to NYC, Serious Eats' Carey Jones has written an excellent guide to where to eat when you come to NYC. The guide is arranged along a number of different vectors like "on the cheap", "I'll go anywhere", and "five-star chefs, three-star prices". Here's the "with kids" section:

It's sad but true that plenty of New York restaurants will raise an eyebrow if you bring in the kids. But plenty won't! Consider spacious, friendly Coppelia downtown (Latin fare) or Kefi uptown (Greek) for great food that's inexpensive for a sit-down spot and has enough simpler options that there will be something for picky eaters. The next morning, take the kids to Doughnut Plant (if you're willing to sacrifice the notion of a balanced breakfast) for all sorts of flavors they'll stare at wide-eyed. PB-loving kids will love Peanut Butter and Company for lunch, where they can get their favorite sandwich in a dozen ways. Other good options include Shake Shack for burgers or Bark for hot dogs, if you're out in Park Slope.

If you need a snack uptown, the gigantic chocolate chip cookies at Levain should do the trick (take note: these are big enough to share). Kefi's a logical choice nearby for dinner, but if you find yourself downtown, consider Mario Batali's Otto, where parents will appreciate the sophistication and kids will love the huge plates of pasta. (Try to make a reservation as waits can be long, which might not be good with tired kids.)

If there was a "Jason shortlist" category, I would include Ssam Bar, Shake Shack, Gramercy Tavern, Marea, Per Se, Mendy's (chix salad sandwich), Katz's, Ma Peche, Spotted Pig, Fedora, Joseph Leonard, Parm, Despana, Xi'an Famous Foods, Colicchio and Sons, Tia Pol, The Modern Bar Room, Pastis, Patsy's, Morandi, Murray's Cheese Shop, Hill Country Chix, Grey Dog, Nice Green Bo, Peter Luger, Keen's, Artisinal, Bouchon Bakery, Burger Joint, and The Beagle. Ok, not such a short list and I'm sure I forgot some of my favorites. (via @anildash)

More of those historic NYC photosApr 27 2012

Yesterday I linked to the massive trove of photos recently put online by the NYC Department of Records. Alan Taylor from In Focus went through a large chunk of the archive and pulled out some real gems. Great stuff.

Kubrick rides the NYC subwayApr 27 2012

From the Museum of the City of New York, a collection of photos taken by Stanley Kubrick in 1946 of New York City subway passengers.

The museum has in its collection more than 7200 photos taken by Kubrick of NYC while he worked as a photographer for Look Magazine. (via coudal)

Massive collection of old NYC photos put onlineApr 26 2012

The New York City Department of Records has put a huge portion of the Municipal Archive's collection of photos online, more than 870,000 in all. The server is overwhelmed at times due to heavy usage, the searching/browsing interface is not what you'd call cutting edge, and many of the photos are available in thumbnail size only, but this is still an incredible resource.

Painters on the Brooklyn Bridge in 1914:

The unfinished Manhattan Bridge in 1908:

A pair of men lay dead in an elevator shaft after a failed robbery attempt:

Looking east on 42nd Street, circa 1890:

More of these photos can be seen at The Daily Mail. (thx, miro)

New York City guidebook from 1916Apr 23 2012

Marc Cenedella found a copy of a 1916 tourist handbook for NYC on Google Books and teased out some of the more interesting bits.

For New Yorkers and visitors of this time, "Old New York" was the time of the American Revolution. The leaders and generals of that earlier time are described as real people. Even if their actions are described in the most glowing and heroic of terms, they come alive in the pages of Rider's New York as they have not yet transcended into the mythical, distant, unrelatable figures they are today.

George Washington, for example, appears time and again in this guide, not as a statue, or a bridge, or a Square, but as a person who "landed" just south of Laight Street, bid farewell to his men in an Address at Fraunces Tavern, or was greeted on kicking-out-the-British Day (Evacuation Day) at Union Square. Same history, different level of intimacy.

Planet Earth screening outside in ManhattanApr 18 2012

Rooftop Films is screening the first episode of Planet Earth (the Attenborough-narrated version) outside along the East River this Saturday, followed by the premiere of The Making of Planet Earth. Check here for times, location, etc.

Possible art for the High Line: a hanging trainMar 27 2012

The group in charge of the High Line in NYC is considering a permanent installation for the park by Jeff Koons. It is called Train.

Yes. Yes, yes, yes. Love it, make it happen. The NY Times has more.

"We've had a crush on the 'Train' for a while now," Mr. Hammond said in a phone interview on Monday. "To me, it looks very industrial and sculptural. The craftsmanship that went into these industrial engines is quite beautiful."

The sculpture, to be constructed of steel and carbon fiber, would weigh several tons. It would also occasionally spin its wheels, blow a horn and emit steam.

In a statement, Mr. Koons said, "The power and the dynamic of the 'Train' represents the ephemeral energy that runs through the city every day."

(via @sippey)

The Metropolitan Museum of Art's nipplesMar 26 2012

Nipples at the Met is a photographic collection of all the nipples on display in the permanent collection at the Met Museum in NYC.

(via @claytoncubitt)

New season of Put This On beginsMar 14 2012

The first episode of the second season of Put This On is out (as funded on Kickstarter). The episode takes place in NYC and features a segment on Lo Heads, a subculture of Polo Ralph Lauren enthusiasts.

With roots in 1980s street gangs, these Polo Ralph Lauren enthusiasts have made "aspirational apparel" a lifestyle. They once had to boost their Polo from stores and fight to keep it on the streets. Today, their culture is worldwide, promulgated by hip-hop. Their hero is Ralph Lauren -- a working class New Yorker who understood that the fantastical power of style can be transformative. Dallas Penn from The Internets Celebrities, a dedicated Lo Head (and former member of the Decepts crew) with a collection of over 1000 pieces of Polo apparel takes us on a tour of this remarkable fashion subculture.

It's easy to steal a bike in NYCMar 13 2012

Casey Neistat tries to steal his own bike in several locations around NYC and finds it's pretty easy...even if you're doing so right in front of a police station.

I recently spent a couple of days conducting a bike theft experiment, which I first tried with my brother Van in 2005. I locked my own bike up and then proceeded to steal it, using brazen means -- like a giant crowbar -- in audacious locations, including directly in front of a police station. I wanted to find out whether onlookers or the cops would intervene. What you see here in my film are the results.

This is a video of the earlier attempt he mentions. (via ★ironicsans)

Eugene Atget at MoMAMar 01 2012

I've gotta get over to the MoMA to see the Eugene Atget exhibition. PDN has a selection of photos from the show.

ps. And Cindy Sherman!

Skateboarding in NYC in the 1960sFeb 23 2012

Bill Eppridge photographed all sorts of people skateboarding in NYC in the '60s.

Shake Shack gets the NY Times treatmentFeb 21 2012

The Shake Shack gets a lukewarm one-star review from Pete Wells at the NY Times...the main problem was consistency.

How the burger could change lives I never divined, but on occasion it was magnificent, as beefy and flavorful as the outer quarter-inch of a Peter Luger porterhouse.

More often, though, the meat was cooked to the color of wet newsprint, inside and out, and salted so meekly that eating it was as satisfying as hearing a friend talk about a burger his cousin ate.

Even when the burgers were great, they could be great in one of two distinct ways. In the classic Shake Shack patty, a tower of ground beef is flattened against a searing griddle with a metal press and made to stay there, spitting and hissing, until one surface turns all brown and crunchy. A patty handled this way takes command of a Shackburger, standing up to its tangy sauce, its crisp lettuce, its wheels of plum tomato.

Sometimes, though, the grill cook hadn't had the energy needed for smashing and searing. Instead the patty was tall, soft and melting, so pink inside that its juices began to soak the bun at the first bite. Good as this version was, it was anomalous.

The Shack Burger is still my favorite hamburger and sitting in Madison Square Park eating one on a warm night with friends -- hell, even waiting in line for 45 minutes catching up -- is one of my favorite NYC activities.

Short term mobile phone storage for NYC studentsFeb 16 2012

Mobile phones are banned in NYC public schools so a company called Pure Loyalty parks trucks outside of several schools so that students can check their phones, iPods, and other devices for the duration of the school day.

Pure Loyalty LLC is the originator in electronic device storage. We put student safety first and work together with school safety to make sure that phones are checked in and out in a timely fashion for students to go straight to class and then home after school.

Each student is given a security card to ensure that their device is only returned to them!!!! If a student with a security card loses their ticket, not to worry. We have a system in place that secures their phone. Each student is given a FREE security card. Replacement cards are $1.

(photo by Jesse Chan-Norris)

The view from an old time burger jointFeb 02 2012

From the This Must Be the Place series, a lovely short film about the Prime Burger Restaurant in midtown Manhattan. The restaurant opened in 1938 and one of the servers, Artie, has been there since 1952.

For many of the guys that work here, the restaurant is like a second home -- some of them have been slinging burgers, making shakes, and waiting on customers at this location for decades. Opened in 1938, the place hasn't been altered since the early '60s, and it looks all the better for it. Here the waiters and workers of Prime Burger discuss their views on their chosen profession, and the unique nature of the place itself.

(via @daveg)

Update: Over at Serious Eats, Ed Levine gives some advice on how to order properly at Prime Burger.

So why the need to order right? Because to keep up with the fast food chains, the DiMicelis started par-broiling their burgers. Par-broiling produces a less juicy burger. So when you order at Prime Burger specify you want your burger ($5.25 for a hamburger, $5.95 for a cheeseburger) made from scratch, and that you're willing to wait the extra few minutes.

Debunking the Manhattan skyscraper bedrock mythJan 25 2012

Economist Jason Barr and his colleagues measured the bedrock depth in Manhattan and correlated it with building height. In doing so, they busted the long-held belief that there were no skyscrapers between Midtown and the Financial District because of insufficient bedrock.

What the economists found was that some of the tallest buildings of their day were built around City Hall, where the bedrock reaches its deepest point in the city, about 45 meters down, between there and Canal Street, at which point the bedrock begins to rise again toward the middle of the island. Indeed, Joseph Pullitzer built his record-setting New York World Building, a 349-foot colossus, at 99 Park Row, near the nadir, as did Frank Woolworth a decade later.

(via @bobulate)

Shit New Yorkers sayJan 19 2012

A collection of things that New Yorkers say. Like "where's the train?", "you have to go to Brooklyn, it's the law", and "tourists!"

Photos of 1980s New York CityJan 18 2012

From photographer Steven Siegel, a reminder of what a magical shithole NYC was in the 1980s. Oh hey, here's a hole in the Manhattan Bridge walkway:

See also kids digging up graves in Greenwood Cemetary, the abandoned West Side Highway, and what looks like a bombed-out Bushwick. (via gothamist)

Working in solitude on the declineJan 17 2012

Susan Cain argues that the lack of privacy and freedom from interruption in modern offices might not be the best way for those office employees to be creative...particularly for introverts.

The New Groupthink has overtaken our workplaces, our schools and our religious institutions. Anyone who has ever needed noise-canceling headphones in her own office or marked an online calendar with a fake meeting in order to escape yet another real one knows what I'm talking about. Virtually all American workers now spend time on teams and some 70 percent inhabit open plan offices, in which no one has "a room of one's own." During the last decades, the average amount of space allotted to each employee shrank 300 square feet, from 500 square feet in the 1970s to 200 square feet in 2010.

The new offices of Foursquare and Buzzfeed (where I work from) are a perfect example of the New Groupthink Cain refers to....rows and rows of people sitting next to each other in open spaces. Much of this is because of NYC's insane rental market, but Fog Creek's offices are a nice counterexample:

Every developer, tester, and program manager is in a private office; all except two have direct windows to the outside (the two that don't get plenty of daylight through two glass walls).

Girl Walk // All Day online for freeJan 10 2012

Thanks to Gothamist, you can watch the entirety of Jacob Krupnick's Girl Walk // All Day online. GWAD is a feature-length music video set to Girl Talk's All Day.

Bruce Davidson, SubwayDec 28 2011

In an excerpt from the introduction to Subway, his collection of photographs of the NYC subway, Bruce Davidson recalls how he came to start taking photos on the subway in the 1980s.

As I went down the subway stairs, through the turnstile, and onto the darkened station platform, a sinking sense of fear gripped me. I grew alert, and looked around to see who might be standing by, waiting to attack. The subway was dangerous at any time of the day or night, and everyone who rode it knew this and was on guard at all times; a day didn't go by without the newspapers reporting yet another hideous subway crime. Passengers on the platform looked at me, with my expensive camera around my neck, in a way that made me feel like a tourist-or a deranged person.

The NYC subway exits into a Brooklyn townhouseDec 22 2011

Geoff Manaugh of BLDGBLOG took some photos yesterday of a curious townhouse in Brooklyn Heights.

Curious in that the facade is 100% NYC rowhouse but it's actually a secret subway exit. Here it is one Google Maps.

Studio Ghibli films at IFCDec 16 2011

Starting today and continuing for the next four weeks, IFC Center in NYC is showing a "comprehensive retrospective" of films (Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro) made by Studio Ghibli. Most of the films are new 35mm prints and some will be screened in dubbed and subtitled Japanese versions.

Oh, and IFC is also doing midnight showings of Raiders of the Lost Ark this month.

Stanley Kubrick shoots New YorkDec 06 2011

Before he made movies, Stanley Kubrick was a photographer for Look magazine. Here are a selection of Kubrick's photos of New York City life in the 1940s, even then displaying his keen cinematic eye.

Prints are available. (thx, mark)

How to ripen a bananaDec 05 2011

Over at Edible Geography, Nicola Twilley documents the banana ripening process at a facility in the Bronx.

During our visit, Paul Rosenblatt told us that he aims to ripen fruit in five days at 62 degrees, but, to schedule fruit readiness in accordance with supply and demand, he can push a room in four days at 64 degrees, or extend the process to seven days at 58 degrees.

"The energy coming off a box of ripening bananas could heat a small apartment," Rosenblatt explains, which means that heavy-duty refrigeration is required to keep each room temperature-controlled to within a half a degree. In the past, Banana Distributors of New York has even experimented with heating parts of the building on captured heat from the ripening process.

To add to the complexity, customers can choose from different degrees of ripeness, ranging from 1 (all green) to 7 (all yellow with brown sugar spots). Banana Distributors of New York proudly promise that they have "Every Color, Every Day," although Rosenblatt gets nervous if he has more than 2000 boxes of any particular shade.

Philip Glass speaks at Occupy Wall StreetDec 02 2011

Occupy Wall Street went up to protest at Lincoln Center last night during a performance of Philip Glass' opera Satyagraha. New Yorker music critic Alex Ross was there and captured the protest on video, which included Glass himself reading the closing lines from the opera, amplified to the crowd by the people's mic. It is an amazing scene.

When the Satyagraha listeners emerged from the Met, police directed them to leave via side exits, but protesters began encouraging them to disregard the police, walk down the steps, and listen to Glass speak. Hesitantly at first, then in a wave, they did so. The composer proceeded to recite the closing lines of Satyagraha, which come from the Bhagavad-Gita (after 3:00 in the video above): "When righteousness withers away and evil rules the land, we come into being, age after age, and take visible shape, and move, a man among men, for the protection of good, thrusting back evil and setting virtue on her seat again." True to form, he said it several times, with the "human microphone" repeating after him. Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson were in attendance, and at one point Reed helped someone crawl over the barricade that had been set up along the sidewalk.

(via stellar)

Girl Walk // All Day NYC premiereNov 29 2011

Girl Walk // All Day is a feature-length dance music video set in NYC...the soundtrack is Girl Talk's All Day. Kickstarter is hosting a premiere for the film (+ dance party) on December 8 at the Brooklyn Masonic Temple...and it's free (you just need to RSVP). Here's the trailer:

Grimaldi's is moving...and Grimaldi is moving in?Nov 28 2011

Famed pizzeria Grimaldi's is being forced out of their space under the Brooklyn Bridge and is moving up the block...without their coveted coal oven. But now comes word that Patsy Grimaldi, former owner of Grimaldi's, is moving into the old space with a new restaurant called Juliana's. If I recall correctly, about half of the Grimaldi's menu is devoted to a telling of the Patsy's/Grimaldi's feud...looks like they're gonna need another page or two.

The Manhattan grid extended worldwideNov 15 2011

ExtendNY extends Manhattan's street grid worldwide. Here's 64908th Street and 12,778th Avenue in Paris, France.

(via @bdeskin)

The secret train platform beneath the Waldorf=AstoriaNov 08 2011

Gothamist has a collection of photos of the abandoned train platform underneath the Waldorf=Astoria.

Over the weekend we had a chance to visit the long-abandoned Waldorf-Astoria train platform, which allowed VIPs to enter the hotel in a more private manner -- most famously it was used by Franklin D. Roosevelt, possibly to hide the fact that he was in a wheelchair suffering from polio. The mysterious track, known as Track 61, still houses the train car and private elevator, which were both large enough for FDR's armor-plated Pierce Arrow car. Legend has it that the car would drive off the train, onto the platform and straight into the elevator, which would lead to the hotel's garage.

Photos by Sam Horine.

If the Nazis conquered AmericaNov 04 2011

Matthew Porter's photo composite Empire on the Platte is arresting.

Pairs nicely with Melissa Gould's Neu-York, "an obsessively detailed alternate-history map, imagining how Manhattan might have looked had the Nazis conquered it in World War II".

In 1942, Life magazine speculated about what an Axis invasion of North America might look like.

Halloween or Williamsburg?Oct 26 2011

Got this from several people yesterday: are these people dressed up for Halloween or just live in Williamsburg? It's surprisingly difficult to tell.

NYC water towersOct 20 2011

One of the many reasons to love the wooden water towers found on the tops of NYC buildings is that the structures themselves reveal the math behind how they work.

The distance between the metal bands holding the cylindrical structure together decreases from top to bottom because the pressure the water exerts increases with depth. The top band only needs to fight against the water at the very top of the tower but the bottom bands have to hold the entire volume from bursting out.

The Social Life of Small Urban SpacesSep 29 2011

A couple years ago, I pointed to a 10-minute clip of a longer documentary called The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces. Some kind soul has put the whole thing up on YouTube:

This witty and original film is about the open spaces of cities and why some of them work for people while others don't. Beginning at New York's Seagram Plaza, one of the most used open areas in the city, the film proceeds to analyze why this space is so popular and how other urban oases, both in New York and elsewhere, measure up. Based on direct observation of what people actually do, the film presents a remarkably engaging and informative tour of the urban landscape and looks at how it can be made more hospitable to those who live in it.

NYC etiquetteSep 20 2011

From Quora, some good answers to the question What are some cultural faux pas in New York?

This one is absolutely vital -- don't interfere with others' privacy. New York is a very crowded place. The way people deal with it is to create their own space. Thus, what outsiders often see as aloofness and isolation is, in fact, a sign of community; there is a shared ethos that everyone respects others' privacy and expects others to respect his own. This is chiefly communicated through eye contact. If you stare at someone on the subway: if you linger in looking out your window into someone else's bedroom; if you react to or interrupt a celebrity; or if you seem to be intentionally listening in to another's conversation, you are violating one of New York's most sacred unwritten rules. Keep yourself to yourself, buddy, and let others do the same.

Bill Cunningham New York DVDSep 13 2011

Bill Cunningham New York, a documentary film about the unassuming king of street fashion photography, is out on DVD today.

"We all get dressed for Bill," says Vogue editor Anna Wintour. The Bill in question is 80+ New York Times photographer Bill Cunningham. For decades, this Schwinn-riding cultural anthropologist has been obsessively and inventively chronicling fashion trends he spots emerging from Manhattan sidewalks and high society charity soirees for his beloved Style section columns On The Street and Evening Hours.

Cunningham's enormous body of work is more reliable than any catwalk as an expression of time, place and individual flair. The range of people he snaps uptown fixtures like Wintour, Brooke Astor, Tom Wolfe and Annette de la Renta (who appear in the film out of their love for Bill), downtown eccentrics and everyone in between reveals a delirious and delicious romp through New York. But rarely has anyone embodied contradictions as happily and harmoniously as Bill, who lived a monk-like existence in the same Carnegie Hall studio at for fifty years, never eats in restaurants and gets around solely on bike number 29 (28 having been stolen).

It got great reviews...currently 98% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Confessions of a "Rape Cop" JurorSep 08 2011

Gothamist is trying something new: long-form articles available for a small fee ($2-3) on the Kindle or as a PDF. The first one in the series is a real corker...Confessions of a "Rape Cop" Juror, a piece written by a member of the jury that acquitted two NYPD officers charged with raping a young woman in her East Village apartment.

The former cop sprang from his chair and rushed toward me, and before I could step back, the stocky arms of the ex-boxer were curled around my shoulders. To my left, I saw a crowd of faces; to my right, a place setting. One knife, one fork, and one dull spoon wrapped in a white cloth napkin -- not much help if he started strangling me. The arms tightened, and then the high-pitched, soft-spoken voice I recognized from the witness stand whispered, "Thank you."

My chest sank with a long exhale, and a whirlwind of high-powered suits and smiles rose from their glasses of Cabernet. They floated toward me with outstretched hands and watery eyes, the aroma of freshly baked focaccia robiolas mixing with their cologne. One floor below, diners in this Murray Hill Italian restaurant chattered away ignorant of the strange encounter at the top of the back staircase. The man hugging me was supposed to be the monster I had spent seven weeks analyzing and seven days judging. This was Kenneth Moreno, Rape Cop.

I haven't read the piece but The Awl's Choire Sicha has:

It's a fascinating read, and I mean that in a very honest sense. In large part it's about how unbelievably important jury service is in America, and about how we treat those accused of crimes. Whether you like the verdict or not, or whether you like the case presented by prosecutors or not (SIGH), this view into the thinking and process of the jurors is really valuable.

The geography of FoursquareAug 30 2011

Great annotated list by Dennis Crowley of places that contributed to the creation of Foursquare.

Foursquare (and it's predecessor, dodgeball.com) were designed and built in downtown NYC. Here's a walking tour of where a lot of the ideas came from.

As Steven Johnson said, this is a "case study in how urban space fosters innovation".

Koyaanisqatsi live performances in NYCAug 29 2011

The New York Philharmonic, joined by Philip Glass himself, will perform the score for Koyaanisqatsi while the film is projected on a screen above the stage.

Lose yourself in Philip Glass's powerful music for the 1982 Godfrey Reggio film Koyaanisqatsi: A Life Out Of Balance, performed live by the Philharmonic and the Philip Glass Ensemble, as the landmark film is projected on a huge screen above the Avery Fisher Hall stage.

There will be two performances, Nov 2 and Nov 3 at 7:30pm at Avery Fisher Hall. There are still tons of great seats available, but get 'em while you can. Excited!

The NYC pizza sceneAug 09 2011

For the Slice pizza blog, Adam Kuban lays down some serious-but-succinct NYC pizza literacy.

One thing you might not be familiar with is the fact that some NYC pizzerias use anthracite coal to cook their pizzas. (Then again, I know that Brooklyn-based Grimaldi's has made inroads into Texas, so maybe you do know coal-fired pizza.) Pizza geeks have long been into coal-fired pizzas. The ovens cook at a hot-enough temperature that a skilled pizzamaker can create an amazing crust that is both crisp and chewy at the same time and that is not dried out and tough. Also, the way that most of these old-school coal-oven places make the pizza, they just sort of know how to make a nice balanced pie, one that doesn't go too heavy on the sauce or pile on too much cheese.

Take five minutes to read this and you'll be talking NYC pizza like an expert.

New Yorker's Goings On appAug 08 2011

The New Yorker took their awesome Goings On magazine section and crammed it into an iPhone (and Android) app. More details here.

In addition to collecting the magazine's listings for theatre, art, night life, classical music, dance, movies, restaurants, and more, the app has exclusive new features. More than a dozen of the magazine's artists and writers have contributed entries to the My New York section, which showcases their personal cultural enthusiasms: Alex Ross introduces readers to Max Neuhaus's Electronic Sound Installation in midtown; Susan Orlean revisits the Temple of Dendur, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art; and Roz Chast drops by the Tiny Doll House, a unique Upper West Side shop. Critics also lead readers on audio tours created specifically for the app: Peter Schjeldahl tours the Frick Collection; Paul Goldberger walks the High Line; Calvin Trillin shares his favorite downtown food; and Patricia Marx goes in search of vintage clothing.

The terroir of NYC's tap waterJul 27 2011

New York City's tap water used to taste of fish and cucumbers but now is some of the best tasting water in the country.

A handful of New York Times articles from the same month describe attempts to wipe out the "flavor bug," which tastes "fishy to some palates and like cucumbers to others," and "may even have tonic properties" despite its unpalatability. City officials began their efforts by building a bypass to cut out the Kensico reservoir at Valhalla from the New York water supply system. However, as the Times laments later in the month, "that Synura taste again taints water," with a newly discovered colony in the Ashokan reservoir producing the "most pungent fish-and-cucumber flavor" yet recorded.

Urban evolution in NYCJul 26 2011

Evolutionary biologists are increasingly studying organisms (like mice, fish, and bacteria) in urban areas like New York City to find out how they evolve to urban conditions.

Dr. Munshi-South and his colleagues have been analyzing the DNA of the mice. He's been surprised to find that the populations of mice in each park are genetically distinct from the mice in others. "The amount of differences you see among populations of mice in the same borough is similar to what you'd see across the whole southeastern United States," he said.

Free beatsJul 21 2011

Can rap be charming? Maybe so...Chris Sullivan set up in Union Square and beatboxed so that anyone who wanted to could come up and rap:

(via @dens)

The Royal Tenenbaums' HouseJul 18 2011

The Onion's A.V. Club takes a field trip to see the Harlem house where the exteriors (and many of the interiors) were shot for The Royal Tenenbaums.

(via devour)

Fastest driven lap around ManhattanJul 01 2011

This guy drove the entire way around Manhattan (24 miles) in just 26 minutes, averaging 56 miles/hour and topping out at 111 miles/hour.

Someone left this typically New York comment:

I am an NYC cab driver and I promise I could beat this record in my crown Victoria. Simple factors that are unaware to the civilian driver the cabby knows. This cabby knows to drive sunday night when theres no construction work being done, this cabby knows what speed to maintain to time the lights on the westside highway and this cabby knows the quickest way from the FDR to the West side highway.

(via ★fakeisthenewreal)

1982 street views of NYCJun 20 2011

A bunch of street level panoramas of midtown Manhattan from 1982. 1982 has never seemed so long ago. This link has been up and down for the past two weeks so it may not be available, so bookmark it for later checking-out.

NYC summer moviesJun 16 2011

Today's service journalism: here's a simple one-page list of outdoor movie screenings in NYC this summer. The lineup includes Rosemary's Baby, Airplane!, and Spiderman. (thx, matthew)

Fellowship of the Ring back in theaters tonightJun 14 2011

A bunch of theaters in NYC (and around the US I would assume) are showing the extended edition of Fellowship of the Ring at 7pm tonight.

The event will include a personal introduction from director Peter Jackson captured from the set of his current film and "Lord of the Rings" prequel "The Hobbit," immediately followed by the feature presentation.

The same thing will happen with Two Towers on June 21 and Return of the King on June 28. Can't believe Fellowship came out 10 years ago already.

Brooklyn in pictures, 1974Jun 09 2011

No idea what these have to do with business or being inside business or whatever, but Business Insider has a nice selection of photos by Danny Lyon of Brooklyn in 1974.

The dangerous three-way dance at NYC street intersectionsJun 07 2011

3-Way Street is a fascinating video by Ron Gabriel that highlights bad interactions between cars, bikes, and pedestrians at a typical NYC street intersection.

There are lots of ways to show these interactions...the overhead view and highlighting are particularly effective design choices. Well done. (thx, janelle)

Subway waltzJun 03 2011

Two NYC subway trains dancing down the tunnels...what a charming little video.

(via ★leela)

What song are you listening to?May 27 2011

Tyler Cullen went out on the streets of NYC and asked random passers-by what song they were listening to on their headphones.

Turned out to be more interesting than I expected.

NYC groceries cheaper than in rest of the USMay 27 2011

It seems that item for item, food in New York City is actually cheaper than in many other parts of the country.

Using data from the ACNielsen HomeScan database, which employed bar-code scanners to track every purchase made by roughly 33,000 U.S. households in 2005, the two economists compared identical products sold in cities big and small, both at high-end grocery stores and discount retailers. In nearly every case, New York products were cheaper than in places such as Memphis, Indianapolis and Milwaukee.

(via stellar)

NYC subway exits into buildingsMay 25 2011

Noah Brier (and his commenters) are collecting NYC subway stations that open into buildings...like the BC stop that exits right into the Museum of Natural History.

Cory Arcangel exhibition at The WhitneyMay 16 2011

Cory Arcangel has a solo exhibition coming up at The Whitney.

Cory Arcangel: Pro Tools, an exhibition of new work, revolves around the concept of "product demonstrations." All of the works featured in the exhibition -- ranging from video games, single channel video, kinetic sculpture, and prints, to pen plotter drawings -- have been created by means of technological tools with an emphasis on the mixing and matching of both professional and amateur technologies, as well as the vernaculars these technologies encourage within culture at large.

Opens May 26 and runs through September. Interview Magazine has a recent profile and interview.

The Frick Collection's secretsApr 30 2011

I love this "bowling saloon" in the basement of The Frick Collection museum in NYC.

Gothamist has a bunch more photos of the Frick's secret places.

Graffiti is a crimeApr 28 2011

From the NYC transit authority, a 1988 video about the consequences of painting graffiti in the subway.

Intense! (via ★vuokko)

Solitude among millionsApr 27 2011

Melissa Febos writes about crying in public in NYC...as well as other private things that people do in public here.

One afternoon, I was riding a Brooklyn-bound Q train with my mother, who was visiting from Cape Cod, when our conversation lulled. We each glanced around the subway car at the other passengers, their heads bobbing in unison, the eyes of the man across from us doing a creepy back-and-forth twitch as he watched a train whizzing by in the opposite direction behind us. Some people read, or pushed buttons on their smart phones, but most just stared without expression at the floor or the garish overhead posters for Dr. Zizmor's cosmetic dermatology. My mother (who is, notably, a psychotherapist) leaned into my shoulder and whispered, "Everyone on this train looks depressed."

I snorted, whispering back: "No, Mom, they just have their train-faces on." In a place where we are so rarely alone, we find privacy in public.

The "privacy in public" thing is essential in understanding New York.

The mafia and NYC pizza cheeseApr 26 2011

Why can't you get a slice of pizza at John's on Bleecker or Patsy's? Allegedly because of Al Capone:

In his 1981 book on the mob called Vicious Circles: The Mafia in the Marketplace, the late Jonathan Kwitny detailed how Al Capone -- who owned a string of dairy farms near Fond Du Lac, Wisconsin -- forced New York pizzerias to use his rubbery mob cheese, so different from the real mozzarella produced here in New York City since the first immigrants from Naples arrived in Brooklyn around 1900.

As the story goes, the only places permitted to use good mozzarella made locally were the old-fashioned pizza parlors like Lombardi's, Patsy's, and John's, who could continue doing so only if they promised to never serve slices. According to Kwitny, this is why John's Pizzeria on Bleecker Street still has the warning "No Slices" on its awning today.

(via ★kathryn)

The stores, they are a'changin'Apr 18 2011

Great series of photos of a Harlem store front, taken every 2-5 years from 1977 to 2004. (via ★vuokko)

Update: These photos were taken by Camilo Jose Vergara; there are many more like them at his web site. (thx, andrew)

Cave of Forgotten Dreams at IFCApr 18 2011

Starting April 29, the IFC Center in NYC will start showing Werner Herzog's Cave of Forgotten Dreams in 3-D. A refresher on the film:

The visionary director of Grizzly Man leads us on an unforgettable journey 32,000 years back in time to explore the earliest known images made by human hands. Discovered in 1994, France's Chauvet caves contain the rarest of the world's historic treasures, restricted to only a handful of researchers. Granted once-in-a-lifetime access and filming in 3D, Herzog captures the beauty of a truly awe-inspiring place, while musing in his inimitable fashion about its original inhabitants, the birth of art and the curious people surrounding the caves today.

Herzog first heard of the Chauvet caves from this Judith Thurman piece in the New Yorker.

Cherry blossoms at the Brooklyn Botanic GardenApr 14 2011

The cherry blossoms are starting to bloom at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden!

The Space Shuttle takes ManhattanApr 12 2011

NYC is getting a Space Shuttle! It's never actually been in space, but hey!

With the Discovery headed to the Smithsonian, the museum will no longer have need for the Enterprise, the shuttle that has been on display there since 2004. The Enterprise, which was used for early glide tests but was never sent into orbit, will now go the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum in Manhattan.

How Manhattan got its gridMar 21 2011

The NY Times has an interactive look at how the Manhattan grid came to be.

In 1811, John Randel created a proposed street grid of Manhattan. Compare his map, along with other historic information, to modern-day Manhattan.

This article has more about the map. (via ★raul)

400-year-old king signs autographs at the MetMar 08 2011

For their latest mission, Improv Everywhere got someone who looked very much like King Philip IV of Spain to sign autographs in front of a Velázquez painting of the monarch.

Every building in NYCMar 07 2011

James Gulliver Hancock is attempting to draw every building in NYC. Here are a few buildings on Rivington:

See also Every Person In New York.

LCD Soundsystem ticket debacleFeb 14 2011

So, LCD Soundsystem is retiring and to see off their fans, they decided to perform one last show at Madison Square Garden. Except that they didn't think they'd sell the place out and didn't pay too much attention to how the tickets were being sold. When the tickets went on sale last week, they sold out immediately. Many fans didn't get tickets, the band's family and friends didn't get tickets, and even some of the band didn't get tickets. Scalpers bought thousands upon thousands of tickets and the band is hopping mad. So they're adding four more NYC shows right before the MSG gig to give their fans a chance to see them and to screw the scalpers by increasing the supply (and therefore lowering demand and prices).

oh-and a small thing to scalpers: "it's legal" is what people say when they don't have ethics. the law is there to set the limit of what is punishable (aka where the state needs to intervene) but we are supposed to have ethics, and that should be the primary guiding force in our actions, you fucking fuck.

It would be fun if all those scalpers got stuck with thousands of unsellable MSG tickets.

Musical subway mapJan 31 2011

Alexander Chen made a version of the NYC subway map that plays music as the trains intersect routes.

At www.mta.me, Conductor turns the New York subway system into an interactive string instrument. Using the MTA's actual subway schedule, the piece begins in realtime by spawning trains which departed in the last minute, then continues accelerating through a 24 hour loop. The visuals are based on Massimo Vignelli's 1972 diagram.

Check out the full version; there are more details here. See also Isle of Tune. (via about 20 people on Twitter just now)

Amazingly detailed map of Central ParkJan 27 2011

This illustrated map of Central Park individually depicts, labels, and categories by species every single significant tree in the park. All 19,630 of them.

Central Park Entire, The Definitive Illustrated Map is the most detailed map of any urban park in the world. I spent over two years creating it, walking more than 500 miles as I documented over 170 different kinds of trees and shrubs. Central Park contains over 58 miles of paved paths and many more miles of obscure woodland trails. I hiked along every one of them multiple times in order to identify and pinpoint each major tree. There are 19,630 trees drawn and placed in position on this map. There are no filler trees, no fluff. Every tree symbol represents a real tree in the Park, and you can identify its genus or species with the accompanying tree legend.

If you've got a subscription to the New Yorker, you can read about the map in this week's issue. (thx, @bamstutz)

Bill Cunningham filmJan 24 2011

Looks like Bill Cunningham New York will be showing around the US starting with New York on March 16th. (Film Forum!) And hark, a trailer.

If you don't take money, they can't tell you what to do. That's the key to the whole thing.

1770 map of NYCJan 19 2011

The Brooklyn Historical Society recently restored a 1770 map of New York City, one of a handful of "Ratzer maps" that have survived to the present day.

A British Army officer in America, Lieutenant Ratzer was a surveyor and draftsman, and his map was immediately praised as a step forward from those of his predecessors. For his trouble, his name was misspelled on initial versions of his maps, called the "Ratzen plan."

The map included a detailed rendering of the island's slips and shores and streets in Lower Manhattan, the familiar mixing with the long gone. Pearl, Broad, Grand and Prince lay beside Fair and Crown and the "Fresh Water" pond.

"Manhattan, at least the part shown here, was mapped as precisely as any spot on the Earth at the time," said Robert T. Augustyn, co-author of "Manhattan in Maps: 1527-1995". "There was no more beautiful or revealing a map of New York City ever done."

The side-by-side comparison of the restored map with the pre-restored map is worth a look. And compare with the Viele map of Manhattan made in 1865.

Temporary restaurantJan 05 2011

Chef John Fraser's new NYC restaurant will be designed to be open for only nine months...until the building it's in is demolished. Some other unusual things about the restaurant: diners set their own tables, chairs are from eBay, and it's funded in part via Kickstarter.

With little more than two weeks before the planned opening, he was still formulating the initial menu and pricing. For one appetizer he envisioned a Gruyere, leek and potato veloute; for another, Arctic char in aspic. For entrees he was mulling a pork cheek, a veal shank, Dover sole for two. These would probably be served as part of a three-course prix fixe for $58, he said.

Nothing too unconventional there. But beyond the plate, he said, anything goes. Although he'll take reservations, he's bypassing the Web service Open Table (too cumbersome). And he's curious about having a marching band stomp through some night. Obligatory resourcefulness has given way to revolutionary thoughts.

The carless streets of ManhattanDec 22 2010

Bruce McCall imagines the Manhattan street with no room for cars...but there's a baby stroller lane, a Segway/skateboarding lane, and a runner/jogger lane. (via @bldgblog)

Old photos of New York CityDec 16 2010

The Museum of the City of New York has put a sizable chunk of their photography collection up on their web site. The interface is a little hinky, but it's worth wading through. This is 220 Spring St from 1932, from right near Sixth Avenue:

Photo credit: 220 Spring Street by Charles Von Urban. From the Collections of the Museum of the City of New York. (thx, @bamstutz)

You know what they call a Quarter Pounder in the Czech Republic?Dec 10 2010

McDonald's in the Czech Republic has introduced a line of NYC-themed hamburgers, including the Wall Street Beef and SoHo Grande:

Grilled beef, spicy salami pepperoni, cheese, crisp, with cheese sauce and salsa mexico-tion in the bun, cheese.

Mmmm?

Twenty Minutes in ManhattanDec 07 2010

Michael Sorkin's Twenty Minutes in Manhattan is an account of the author's daily walk to work from his Greenwich Village home to a Tribeca studio. From reaktionbooks:

Over the course of more than fifteen years, architect and critic Michael Sorkin has taken an almost daily twenty-minute walk from his apartment near Washington Square in New York's Greenwich Village to his architecture studio further downtown in Tribeca. This walk has afforded abundant opportunities for Sorkin to reflect on the ongoing transformation of the neighbourhoods through which he passes. Inspired by events both mundane and monumental, Twenty Minutes in Manhattan unearths a network of relationships between the physical and the social city.

Here's a chapter listing:

The Stairs
The Stoop
The Block
Washington Square
LaGuardia Place
Soho
Canal Street
Tribeca
145 Hudson Street
Alternative Routes
Espri d'Escalier

Robert Campbell, the architecture critic for the Boston Globe, says of the book:

Not since the great Jane Jacobs has there been a book this good about the day-to-day life of New York. Sorkin writes like an American Montaigne, riffing freely off his personal experience (sometimes happy, sometimes frustrating) to arrive at general insights about New York and about cities everywhere.

Sounds great!

"Much of what investment bankers do is socially worthless"Dec 03 2010

From the New Yorker a week or two ago, John Cassidy has an article about the social value of what Wall Street and investment banking. It's not a pretty picture.

Lord Adair Turner, the chairman of Britain's top financial watchdog, the Financial Services Authority, has described much of what happens on Wall Street and in other financial centers as "socially useless activity" -- a comment that suggests it could be eliminated without doing any damage to the economy. In a recent article titled "What Do Banks Do?," which appeared in a collection of essays devoted to the future of finance, Turner pointed out that although certain financial activities were genuinely valuable, others generated revenues and profits without delivering anything of real worth -- payments that economists refer to as rents. "It is possible for financial activity to extract rents from the real economy rather than to deliver economic value," Turner wrote. "Financial innovation...may in some ways and under some circumstances foster economic value creation, but that needs to be illustrated at the level of specific effects: it cannot be asserted a priori."

Turner's viewpoint caused consternation in the City of London, the world's largest financial market. A clear implication of his argument is that many people in the City and on Wall Street are the financial equivalent of slumlords or toll collectors in pin-striped suits. If they retired to their beach houses en masse, the rest of the economy would be fine, or perhaps even healthier.

I particularly enjoyed the characterization of banking as a utility:

Most people on Wall Street, not surprisingly, believe that they earn their keep, but at least one influential financier vehemently disagrees: Paul Woolley, a seventy-one-year-old Englishman who has set up an institute at the London School of Economics called the Woolley Centre for the Study of Capital Market Dysfunctionality. "Why on earth should finance be the biggest and most highly paid industry when it's just a utility, like sewage or gas?" Woolley said to me when I met with him in London. "It is like a cancer that is growing to infinite size, until it takes over the entire body."

p.s. Thanks to Typekit, the New Yorker's web site now uses the same familiar typefaces that you find in the magazine. Looks great.

TGI Friday's, the first singles barNov 26 2010

Over at Edible Geography, Nicola Twilley has a fascinating interview with Alan Stillman, the founder of TGI Friday's and Smith & Wollensky. Stillman started Friday's because, essentially, he was interested in meeting girls.

I wanted T.G.I. Friday's to feel like a neighbourhood, corner bar, where you could get a good hamburger, good french fries, and feel comfortable. At the time, it was a sophisticated hamburger and french fry place -- apparently, I invented the idea of serving burgers on a toasted English muffin -- but the principle involved was to make people feel that they were going to someone's apartment for a cocktail party.

The food eventually played a larger role than I imagined it would, because a lot of the girls didn't have enough money to stretch from one paycheque to the other, so I became the purveyor of free hamburgers at the end of the month.

I don't think there was anything else like it at the time. Before T.G.I. Friday's, four single twenty-five year-old girls were not going out on Friday nights, in public and with each other, to have a good time. They went to people's apartments for cocktail parties or they might go to a real restaurant for a date or for somebody's birthday, but they weren't going out with each other to a bar for a casual dinner and drinks because there was no such place for them to go.

The subway announcement ladyNov 15 2010

A profile of the woman who does the announcements -- the ones you can actually understand -- for the NYC subway. Since becoming "the voice", she hasn't actually ridden the subway.

On the telephone, her voice does not have quite as much oomph as it does on the subway. "My husband says he doesn't hear the nice voice as often as he'd like," she said.

But the nice voice cannot be disobeyed. Before 9/11, when they lived in Louisville, Ky., he drove to the airport to pick up her. He was early. He parked right in front of the terminal. He could hear her on the public-address system, saying no one was supposed to park there.

A traffic officer came along and said he had to follow the voice's orders.

Her husband said, "I don't listen to that voice at home; I'm not going to listen to it here."

Downtown from behindNov 10 2010

If you crossed The Sartorialist with The Selby and put the whole thing on a bike, you'd get Downtown From Behind, a collection of photographs of creative people biking the streets of downtown Manhattan, shot from behind.

311 is not a jokeNov 09 2010

Steven Johnson on what NYC and other cites are learning from services like 311.

But the service also helps city leaders detect patterns that might otherwise have escaped notice. After the first survey of 311 complaints ranked excessive noise as the number one source of irritation among residents, the Bloomberg administration instituted a series of noise-abatement programs, going after the offenders whom callers complained about most often (that means you, Mister Softee). Similarly, clusters of public-drinking complaints in certain neighborhoods have led to crackdowns on illegal social clubs. Some of the discoveries have been subtle but brilliant. For example, officials now know that the first warm day of spring will bring a surge in use of the city's chlorofluorocarbon recycling programs. The connection is logical once you think about it: The hot weather inspires people to upgrade their air conditioners, and they don't want to just leave the old, Freon-filled units out on the street.

The 311 system has proved useful not just at detecting reliable patterns but also at providing insights when the normal patterns are disrupted. Clusters of calls about food-borne illness or sanitary problems from the same restaurant now trigger a rapid response from the city's health department.

Not discussed in the article is an assertion by my pal David that exclusive access to 311 data gives incumbent politicians -- like, say, Michael Bloomberg -- a distinct advantage when it comes to getting reelected. For instance, when campaigning on a neighborhood level, the incumbent can look at the 311 data for each neighborhood and tailor their message appropriately, e.g. promising to help combat noise in a neighborhood with lots of noise complaints or fix the streets in a neighborhood with lots of calls about potholes.

Photo finishersNov 08 2010

The NY Times has a photo slideshow of some NYC marathon participants right after they crossed the finish line yesterday. Why don't any of them look exhausted?

FoursquarathonNov 06 2010

If you're running the NYC marathon tomorrow, have an iPhone, and are a Foursquare user, 4SQ CEO Dennis Crowley has the low-down on how to track your progress throughout the race by auto-checking-in to 4SQ at all the mile markers.

I'm going to use Mayor Maker tomorrow during the NYC Marathon to auto check me in to every mile marker as I run past them. I'll be running w/ my iPhone in my pocket (with GPS turned on). Every time I run over a mile checkpoint, Mayor Maker will send that checkin to foursquare and foursquare will send it back out to Facebook and Twitter. Cool, right?

1899 trip across the Brooklyn Bridge filmed by EdisonNov 05 2010

This was filmed in 1899 from a train crossing the Brooklyn Bridge from Brooklyn to Manhattan by Edison Manufacturing Co.

The film sold for $22.50 in the Edison films catalog.

Building the Empire State BuildingNov 04 2010

New York, the documentary film by Ric Burns, contains a great segment on the Empire State Building that is available on YouTube in three parts.

The first two parts are particularly interesting, especially the construction stuff that starts around the five minute mark of part one. Oh, and don't miss the steelworkers throwing red hot rivets around to each other...that starts right near the end of part one and continues into part two. Some other highlights:

- The original Waldorf-Astoria hotel was torn down (with no small amount of glee from the ESB's developers) to make room for the new skyscraper. The hotel was built by William Waldorf Astor, heir to the forture created by his father and grandfather (John Jacob Astor & John Jacob Astor III), on the site of his father's mansion. WW Astor's cousin, John Jacob Astor IV, went down on the Titanic and the Senate hearings into the disaster were held at the hotel.

- The steel beams were custom forged in Pittsburgh and shipped immediately to the building site...some arrived still hot to the touch from the furnaces.

- At the peak of construction, the workers were adding 4-5 stories a week. During one 22-day stretch, 22 new floors were erected. From start to finish, the entire building took an astonishing 13 months to build, about the same amount of time recently taken by the MTA to fix the right side of the stairs of the Christopher St subway station entrance.

- The building didn't become profitable until 1950.

(thx, lily)

The anthropology of trashNov 04 2010

An interesting interview with the anthropologist-in-residence of the NYC Department of Sanitation.

The money set aside for street cleaning was going into the pockets of the Tweed and Tammany politicians. Eventually, it got to be that it was so dirty for so long, no one thought that it could be any different. Imagine, on your own block, that you can't cross the street, even at the corner, without paying a street kid with a broom to clear a path for you, because the streets were layered in this sludge of manure, rotting vegetables, ash, broken up furniture, debris of all kind. It was called "corporation pudding" after the city government. And it was deep -- in some cases knee-deep.

The city as idea incubatorNov 01 2010

Steven Johnson on why New York has become a growing hub for technology startup companies.

As a diverse city that supports countless industries and maverick interests, New York excels at creating those eclectic networks. Subcultures and small businesses generate ideas and skills that inevitably diffuse through society, influencing other groups. As the sociologist Claude Fischer put it in an influential essay on subcultures published in 1975, "The larger the town, the more likely it is to contain, in meaningful numbers and unity, drug addicts, radicals, intellectuals, 'swingers', health-food faddists, or whatever; and the more likely they are to influence (as well as offend) the conventional center of the society."

NYC what ifs: merging Manhattan and BrooklynNov 01 2010

In 1916, Kennard Thomson, consulting engineer and urban planner for New York City, wrote an article for Popular Mechanics in which he advocated (among other things) filling in the East River to merge Manhattan with Brooklyn.

Strange Maps explains:

By Dr Thomson's estimates, enlarging New York according to his plans would cost more than digging the Panama Canal - but the returns would quickly repay the debt incurred and make New York the richest city in the world. He then goes on to describe how he would reclaim all that land. The plan's larger outlines: move the East River east, and build coffer dams from the Battery at Manhattan's southern tip to within a mile of Staten Island, on the other side of the Upper Bay, and the area in between them filled up with sand. This would enlarge Manhattan to an island several times its present size.

Proximity and easy access to the new Battery would increase the total land value of Staten Island from $50 million to $500 million. "This would help pay the expenses of the project," Dr Thomson suggests.

The project would also add large areas of land to Staten Island itself, to Sandy Hook on the Jersey shore just south of there and create a new island somewhere in between. The East River, separating Manhattan from Queens and Brooklyn, would be filled and replaced by a new canal east of there, slicing through Long Island from Flushing to Jamaica Bays.

Paris vs New YorkOct 29 2010

The Paris vs New York blog presents a series of illustrated comparisons between the two cities: macaroons vs. cupcakes, baguette vs bagel, and espresso vs American coffee:

The perfect poached eggOct 28 2010

Kenji Lopez-Alt learns the secret to the perfectly poached eggs at Maialino. They basically use the Momofuku slow-poach technique and then finish in a simmering water bath.

New male sartorial technology messes shit upOct 26 2010

Mary HK Choi observes that NYC's men have suddenly learned how to dress and now she can't tell who's who anymore, socioeconomically speaking.

I can't figure out how old anyone is. I can't figure out how gay anyone is. On silent subway morning commutes there are no tells. The brogues, desert boots and quickstrike high-tops not only have me manic-fantasy-banging every well-dressed dude on the F BECAUSE IT IS ALL SO GODDAMN GOOD but the fact that so many are suddenly well shod plus the prevalence of hard-bottoms straight CRIPPLES my ability to tell how rich anyone is. And that is fucking my game up major. Aaaaaaaaaand everyone's watch is now the old timey Timex from J.Crew for $150 so yeah, 360 IDK. Plus, also, seriously, there must have been some clandestine colloquium workshop situation where all the dudes in all the land shucked to skivvies and got sized for their perfect pair of Uniqlo jeans and nobody said "no homo," not even one time, because, Hi, y'all all look fantastic FUCK YOU.

NYC subway photos, 1917-presentOct 22 2010

Slideshow of almost 100 years of photography of the NYC subway system by the NY Times.

The caption for the photo above reads:

1940: In a view north from 106th Street, only the supports of the old Ninth Avenue elevated line remained as the push to go underground continued.

The complete MetropolisOct 18 2010

If you're in NYC, they're showing the restored version of Fritz Lang's Metropolis (including 25 minutes of recently discovered footage) at the Ziegfeld on West 54th from Oct 22 - Nov 4.

If you're not in NYC, the complete Metropolis is out on Blu-ray and DVD on Nov 16.

NYC non-profits need designersOct 15 2010

DesigNYC connects non-profits with designers; they've just announced their second call for project submissions and designers:

We're proud to announce the second call for submissions for project ideas and design collaborators. DesigNYC will select the most compelling projects and match them with design leaders across the fields of architectural, landscape, interior, lighting, and communication design.

Our projects focus on the themes of well-being and sustainable communities -- creating solutions that address a range of social and environmental issues impacting the city, including affordable housing, sustainable development, social justice, human health, green space, urban farming, local food systems, youth leadership, and more.

Designers and non-profits can sign up here.

Joseph Leonard, one year inOct 01 2010

Eater has an interview with Gabe Stulman and Jim McDuffee, proprietors of Joseph Leonard, on how the first year of their West Village restaurant went. Watching the chefs make such good food out of such a small kitchen an impressive spectacle.

The limitations that we have are, I think, severe. We don't have a freezer, anywhere. We don't have ice cream or sorbet, we don't have anything that needs to be frozen, it's all fresh, fresh, fresh. We've got refrigerators touching each other over there. We've got ten burners, two ovens, a fryer and a salamander. That's what most people have as a prep kitchen. It's really impressive when I look at how we've got five seafood entrees, five meat entrees, thirteen appetizers, all done with these varying, beautiful techniques and preparations. I tip my hat to everything that Jim and the team in the kitchen have been able to pull off.

It took awhile for my wife and I to warm up to it, but Joe Leo is our go-to neighborhood restaurant now. On our one child-free night out a week, we generally end up there.

NYC maps exhibitionSep 23 2010

Starting tomorrow and continuing through November, Pratt Manhattan Gallery has an interesting show about maps and NYC. Among the works displayed will be:

- a three-dimensional map of the lower Manhattan skyline made of a Jell-O-like material by Liz Hickok
- a "Loneliness Map" from Craigslist's Missed Connections by Ingrid Burrington
- personal maps created from a call for submissions by the Hand Drawn Map Association
- Bill Rankin's maps of Not In My Back Yard-isms showcasing various geographies of community and exclusion
- a scratch-and-sniff map of New Yorkers' smell preferences by Nicola Twilley

Opening reception is tonight from 6-8. (via edible geography)

Your TV might contain even more John Hodgman soonSep 20 2010

John Hodgman is filming a pilot for an HBO show called Good Evening, My Name is John Hodgman. Jonathan Coulton and Spike Jonze are involved.

THE THEME OF THIS PARTICULAR PROGRAM is "JOCKS vs. NERDS," the culture war of our time, and a subject that you know I have been thinking about for some time now, and also talking about with the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.

IN THIS CASE, the "NERD" shall be played by me, John Hodgman, and the "JOCK" shall be played by the New York Jet, NICK MANGOLD, as I confront all of my deepest fears (humiliation/being punched/Nick Mangold) and attempted to learn from him the virtues of jock culture and the rules of football.

And YOU are invited: September 28th in NYC. Tickets are free and they have an unlimited supply because they are filming it in some sort of massive rocket ship hanger. All you Little Hobos (that's what Hodgman calls all his fans) click through for details on how to get your tickets.

NYC transportation eventSep 14 2010

This week's Geeking Out, Gelf Magazine's nerdy event series, is all about NYC transportation.

The evening will feature Benjamin Kabak (Gelf interview), author of popular subway blog Second Avenue Sagas discussing the MTA; Sharon Zukin (Gelf interview), author of Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places, on gentrification; and Charles Komanoff (Gelf interview), creator of the Balanced Transportation Analyzer, discussing how to optimize the city's transportation network.

Free. Sept 16, 7:30p in Dumbo. Click through for more details.

Off the avenuesSep 10 2010

Cutting through parking lots, hotels, and department stores, Tad Friend one-ups John Updike by walking all the way from 33rd Street to Central Park without walking on 5th or 6th Avenues.

It was after 5 P.M., so I ducked in for a drink a few doors down at the Whiskey Trader bar, where the weekend was noisily under way. Downstairs, by the rest rooms, was a door with a sign warning "Siren Will Sound." But siren didn't sound. In the adjacent basement were a mop and a bucket, odds and dead ends-and a stairwell, leading up. On the landing I eased open a fire door... into a gleaming lobby off Fifty-sixth. Ha!

Updike only made it to Rockefeller Center. You may remember a similar effort from last year. Who will take up Friend's mantle and stretch this down to 14th Street? And would Broadway be allowed? (I think not.)

Job opening: NYC transit map designerSep 09 2010

The MTA in NYC is looking for someone to keep their transit maps fresh.

As part of a two-person team, the incumbent of this position is responsible for the design and timely updating of NYCT's printed and online map products, including the extensive service schedule panels on the reverse side of all "pocket" bus maps; researching and responding to map design and information issues; identifying, researching, recommending, and adapting evolving map drawing and production technologies; adapting Transit's map products to the agency website and providing modified products for third party publications; advising on or producing custom maps for major agency initiatives and proposals; advising and assisting on other product design, graphics technology procurements and related staff training for all graphics services in Marketing and Service Information.

This has to be some kottke.org reader's dream job...go get it!

A unified theory of New York bikingSep 07 2010

Felix Salmon's dissection of the awkward and often dangerous pedestrian/bike/car dance on NYC's streets is exactly right. If this was a manifesto, I'd sign it.

Bikes can and should behave much more like cars than pedestrians. They should ride on the road, not the sidewalk. They should stop at lights, and pedestrians should be able to trust them to do so. They should use lights at night. And -- of course, duh -- they should ride in the right direction on one-way streets. None of this is a question of being polite; it's the law. But in stark contrast to motorists, nearly all of whom follow nearly all the rules, most cyclists seem to treat the rules of the road as strictly optional. They're still in the human-powered mindset of pedestrians, who feel pretty much completely unconstrained by rules.

The result is decidedly suboptimal for all concerned, but mostly for the bicyclists themselves. New York needs to make a collective quantum leap, from treating bicyclists like pedestrians to treating bicyclists like motorists. And unless and until it does, bike relations will continue to be marked by hostility and mistrust.

This car/pedestrian duality in the manner in which bicyclists behave is also why the City's Summer Streets initiative is becoming almost unusable by pedestrians. We tried walking on the last Summer Streets weekend, but the cyclists were going way too fast, were routinely weaving in and out of pedestrians, pretty much refused to stay in their lanes, and there were just too many for the width of the street. We bailed out after several blocks. There will likely be even more bikes next year because the word's getting out: it's just too dangerous for walking.

Intimate strangersSep 03 2010

Susan Orlean writes about the lopsided intimacy of big cities and social media.

Life in Manhattan is like living inside a gigantic Twitter stream. What you get to know about people you don't know simply by accidental adjacency is astonishing.

MoMA iPhone appAug 16 2010

The only reason I ever go to MoMA anymore is so that my son can see the helicopter and whatever motor vehicles are on display in the design collection, but if I get a chance to sneak away soon, I'm definitely making use of the MoMA's new iPhone app: tours, a catalog of thousands of works, events calendar, etc.

Redesigning the NYC subway mapAug 04 2010

In a long excerpt from O'Reilly's recent book "Beautiful Visualization", KickMap designer Eddie Jabbour talks about his process for redesigning the NYC Subway map.

While I felt that it was important to show certain shapes aboveground, I also felt that it was important to leave out certain pieces of belowground information. There are several places where the subway tunnels cross and overlap each other beneath the surface. This may be important information for city workers or utility companies trying to make repairs, but for the average commuter, showing these interactions just creates visual noise. I tried to reduce that noise by cleanly separating the lines on the map so they don't overlap. Consider the different depictions of the 4 line and the 5 line in the Bronx; sure, the MTA's paths may be accurate, but they're also confusing, and riders don't really need to see those particular details to understand where they're going.

(Via @TheJames)

Airport contrabandJul 30 2010

Taryn Simon spent five days photographing items confiscated from people flying into New York's JFK airport. This one is "mystery meat":

These images are from a set of 1,075 photographs -- shot over five days last year for the book and exhibition, "Contraband" -- of items detained or seized from passengers or express mail entering the United States from abroad at the New York airport. The miscellany of prohibited objects -- from the everyday to the illegal to the just plain odd -- attests to a growing worldwide traffic in counterfeit goods and natural exotica and offers a snapshot of the United States as seen through its illicit material needs and desires.

Here's more about the project, which will be released in book form and also put on display in galleries in LA and NYC.

Brand New ConferenceJul 22 2010

Meant to post about this when it was announced: the Brand New Conference, Nov 5 in NYC.

The Brand New Conference is a one-day event organized by UnderConsideration, focusing on the practice of corporate and brand identity -- a direct extension of the popular blog, Brand New. The conference consists of eight sessions offering a broad range of points of view with speakers from around the world practicing in different environments, from global consultancies, to in-house groups, to small firms.

Speakers include boldface names Michael Bierut, Paula Scher, and Erik Spiekermann. Surprisingly, tickets are still available.

Interview with a window cleanerJul 13 2010

NY Times readers recently had a bunch of their questions answered by a NYC window washer. (This is more interesting than it sounds.)

For safety reasons, music and cellphones are not allowed up in the scaffolding, but some of us listen to our own music in our heads.

Here's part two. (via @nicolatwilley)

Early films of NYCJul 01 2010

The Library of Congress has uploaded a whole bunch of early film footage of NYC to their YouTube account. Like this 1905 pararama from the top of the Times Building in Times Square:

Open Culture has more information. (via @brainpicker)

Goodbye, Rubber RoomsJun 29 2010

Last year, the New Yorker ran a story on NYC's Rubber Rooms, the common name for the rooms which house NYC schoolteachers accused of classroom misconduct.

The teachers have been in the Rubber Room for an average of about three years, doing the same thing every day -- which is pretty much nothing at all. Watched over by two private security guards and two city Department of Education supervisors, they punch a time clock for the same hours that they would have kept at school -- typically, eight-fifteen to three-fifteen. Like all teachers, they have the summer off. The city's contract with their union, the United Federation of Teachers, requires that charges against them be heard by an arbitrator, and until the charges are resolved -- the process is often endless -- they will continue to draw their salaries and accrue pensions and other benefits.

Yesterday, the Rubber Rooms were finally closed down. It seems like a purely cosmetic move; the real problems outlined in the NYer article remain unaddressed. Shouldn't the Times article at least mention that?

New section of the High LineJun 24 2010

Fast Company has a sneak preview of what the new section of the High Line park will look like. (thx, damien)

Skyscraper Subway is a moveable feastJun 17 2010

A new Subway has recently opened in Manhattan...hanging on the outside of the 27th floor of the skeleton of 1 World Trade Center. The Subway will move upwards as the building is constructed and it is hoped that construction workers will dine there instead of heading off-site for long lunches via a slow hoist.

"I don't think the veggies will be a big seller," said Mr. Schragger, who owns four other Subways in Manhattan. "I imagine most of the guys will want protein. Philly Cheesesteaks and the Feast."

Philly Cheesesteaks and the Feast would be a great name for a band.

The 101 best sandwiches in NYCJun 16 2010

I've only had a few of these...I am clearly not exercising my sandwich muscles enough these days. (Although the Brazilian sandwich at Project Sandwich has been treating me well lately.)

Pictory: New York CityJun 04 2010

Pictory has a slideshow up of New York City photos. Design by Nicholas Felton, photos curated by Josh Haner of the New York Times Lens blog.

Taming Manhattan's trafficMay 28 2010

In an attempt to eliminate Manhattan's travel inefficiencies and encourage more use of public transportation, Charles Komanoff spent three years creating an Excel spreadsheet (you can download it here) that details "the economic and environmental impact of every single car, bus, truck, taxi, train, subway, bicycle, and pedestrian moving around New York City". Based on that research, he's come up with a plan for changing how transportation is paid for in Manhattan below 60th St. (the CBD or central business district).

It would charge $3 to cars entering the CBD on weekday nights, $6 for most of the day, and $9 during rush hour. The subway fare also varies, but is always less than the $2.25 it is today: $1 at night, rising to $1.50 as day breaks, and peaking at $2 during weekday rush hours. Buses are always free, because the time saved when passengers aren't fumbling for change more than makes up for the lost fare revenue. Komanoff's plan also imposes a 33 percent surcharge on every taxi ride, 10 percent of which would go to the cab driver and the rest to the city.

Komanoff's plan is vastly more sophisticated than a simple bridge toll. Instead of merely punishing drivers, he has built a delicate system of incentives and revenue streams. Just as a musical fugue weaves several melodic lines into a complex yet harmonious whole, Komanoff's policy assembles all the various modes of transportation into a coherent, integrated traffic system.

New NYC subway mapMay 28 2010

Next month, the MTA will release a new subway map. The NY Times has a look at the new map.

The new subway map makes Manhattan even bigger, reduces Staten Island and continues to buck the trend of the angular maps once used here and still preferred in many other major cities. Detailed information on bus connections that was added in 1998 has been considerably shortened.

Manhattan will be shown on the map as nearly twice as wide as in real life. Cut back on the chili-cheese fries, my friend!

My new favorite New YorkerMay 02 2010

A Times Square tshirt vendor alerted police to an oddly parked truck near his stand. A bomb squad found a crudely built bomb inside the truck.

When asked if he was proud of his actions, he said: "Of course, man. I'm a veteran. What do you think?" The vendor said that he had served during the Vietnam War and had been selling wares on the street for about 20 years. "I don't have too much of a choice, nobody's giving me a job," he said.

Eating on the go in NYCApr 26 2010

From Serious Eats, an extensive guide to eating on the go in NYC.

NYC's 34th Street makeoverApr 23 2010

The Bloomberg administration is considering splitting 34th Street into three parts: an westbound-only section from the Hudson to 6th Ave, an eastbound-only section from 5th Ave to the East River, and a pedestrian-only section from 5th to 6th Aves.

Buses would still operate in both directions, and through the pedestrian plaza as well, but in dedicated lanes separated from passenger cars by a concrete barrier. [...] A city study showed that only one in 10 people travel along 34th Street by car, including taxis; the rest walk or use mass transit. Faster buses would benefit "the majority of the people who are actually using the street".

Wow!