Photographer
Arne Svenson has
sparked a bit of
controversy with his recent show "
The Neighbors," about which he says, "I turned to the residents of a glass-walled apartment building across the street from my NYC studio. The Neighbors don’t know they are being photographed; I carefully shoot from the shadows of my home into theirs. I am not unlike the birder, quietly waiting for hours, watching for the flutter of a hand or the movement of a curtain as an indication that there is life within."
[more inside]
posted by taz
on May 17, 2013 -
323 comments
Once the home of the
Weckquaesgeek tribe, and more recently,
William Shatner, Hastings-on-Hudson might sound like the next village over from Downton Abbey, but according to the New York Times, it's "
a village, in a Wittgensteinian sort of way" seeing an influx of ex-Brooklynites fleeing to the suburbs in the face of creeping real estate prices. Sure, these new hipsturbanites may miss the creative density of urban New York, but at least the river setting matches their
Filson/woolrich heritage-brand aesthetic.
Read on if you set your cultural compass to the Brooklyn Flea, or your NYT Style section appreciation to ironic twee.
posted by deludingmyself
on Feb 18, 2013 -
28 comments
In 1992,
Lynn Brooks founded the non-profit
Big Apple Greeter program, to help make a visit to New York City seem less intimidating and dangerous to first-time visitors: Pick a date, time and neighborhood, and the organization will match you up with a local who will spend several hours with you, helping you find your way around, teaching you the ins and outs of subways and buses, the cool shops, the great places to eat. (Their site also has some outstanding
neighborhood profiles and
cultural attraction guides that should be of just as much interest to local residents.) The idea spread, leading to the formation of the
Global Greeter Network, which now has greeter programs in
cities all over the world.
posted by jbickers
on Jan 18, 2013 -
13 comments
High maintenance: a nameless cannabis delivery guy delivers his much-needed medication to stressed-out New Yorkers in this character-driven web series.
posted by matthewr
on Jan 13, 2013 -
46 comments
"On a good day, the street maintenance team tasked by the New York City Department of Transportation with roadway repair might fill 4,000 potholes in eight hours. In an average week, they could resurface 100,000 square yards of road. After Hurricane Sandy, their crews removed 2,500 tons of debris. And every day, on a Tumblr called
The Daily Pothole, New Yorkers can take a peek inside the workings of a city system few have likely thought about." Storyboard:
A Day with New York City’s Pothole Repair Crew. [more inside]
posted by zarq
on Jan 2, 2013 -
8 comments
Ephemeral New York 'chronicles an ever-changing, constantly reinvented city through photos, newspaper archives, and other scraps and artifacts that have been edged into New York’s collective remainder bin.'
[more inside]
posted by zarq
on Oct 11, 2012 -
5 comments
One man's trash is another man's treasure — we've all heard the old adage, but Nelson Molina, a longtime sanitation worker in Manhattan, takes the saying to an entirely new level: a self-curated, full-fledged art gallery — from other people's trash.
The New York Times toured Mr. Molina's gallery recently, getting a rare peek into the collection that contains everything from a Masters of Business Administration diploma (from Harvard!) to a portrait of Winston Churchill. Via
posted by infini
on Jul 27, 2012 -
11 comments
"A maverick theater and industrial designer,
Norman Bel Geddes is best remembered for creating the undisputed hit of the 1939 New York World’s Fair. Mounted in the midst of the Great Depression, the Fair focused on America’s promise of a utopian tomorrow. Geddes’s
Futurama, a piece of “immersion theater,” took six hundred visitors at a time on a swooping, simulated airplane ride across America circa 1960."
"The City of Tomorrow, a model of Manhattan that Geddes created, in 1937, to promote Shell Oil Company’s new “motor-digestible” gasoline, is often cited as [
Futurama's inspiration.]
But Futurama’s beginnings actually harken back much further, to the meticulous, insanely detailed private games he created in the 1920s and early ’30s for the amusement of his friends."
[more inside]
posted by zamboni
on May 6, 2012 -
15 comments
"
I know you are out there, just wanting to put your wig on, just like me. And I know you're just waiting to have a good time. Just put a little ball earring on, a little bad sunglasses, and a big, bad wig on, 'cause it's good. It feels good, works, it does." It is, or was,
Wigstock, an annual outdoor drag festival held in NYC, starting in 1985 by
"Lady" Bunny and friends. Each year
the party grew, moving to
Union Square in 1991, then
to Christopher Street waterfront in 1994 to deal with the expanding crowd.
2001 was supposed to be the last year, but
the party came back in 2003,
in conjunction with the annual HOWL festival. That carried the tradition on for another two years, and
Wigstock's official website is stuck in 2005, a reminder of the festivities that were. You can
reminisce with Gawker, or take a short journey back to 1987 with
Wigstock: The Movie (part 1 of 4), not to be confused with the longer film of the same name,
capturing Wigstock 1995 (part 1 of 8).
posted by filthy light thief
on Mar 9, 2012 -
18 comments
Lifecycle - A bike in New York is locked to a pole and photographed everyday as it slowly disappears.
[via]
posted by quin
on Jan 21, 2012 -
42 comments
A Year of New York in 5 minutes. Cameraman Andrew Clancy lives in New York City, and was in the habit of shooting footage of what was going on around him whenever he was out. This is a compilation of life in the city, from the point of view of a New Yorker.
posted by Phire
on Nov 7, 2011 -
21 comments
