A linguist and a sociologist at Hebrew Union College have teamed up to track the inroads made into American English by words and idioms from traditionally Jewish languages, including Yiddish, Judeo-Arabic, Ladino (Judeo-Spanish), and Hebrew. They've created an online survey and are looking for people from all religious and ethnic backgrounds to answer a few questions about their word choices, phrasing, and pronunciation. They're also trying to determine whether certain linguistic quirks usually attributed to Yiddish's influence are actually carried over from Jewish ancestors' speech patterns and accents, or whether they're merely an artifact from growing up in or near New York City. [via]
posted on Jul 23, 2008 - View this thread

Manhattanhenge
posted on Jul 11, 2008 - View this thread

The Boys and the Subway A father's artistic account of his sons' love of the NYC subway system.
posted on Jul 2, 2008 - View this thread

The New York Moon is an internet-based publication adhered to the lunar phases. It is a collection of experimental, reflective, and imaginative projects produced with every other month’s full moon. In the current issue visit the 6th Borough interactive map to discover imaginary precincts, find ephemeral street sculptures on The Trash Map, browse sketches of the moments in between Waiting, or redesign your neighborhood in Blueprints.
posted on Jun 29, 2008 - View this thread

Design plans for the much talked about High Line in NYC were unveiled today. It has been hotly anticipated as one of the most distinctive public projects in generations.
posted on Jun 25, 2008 - View this thread

New York City in (mostly) black and white. A huge collection of photos starting in the 1880s—some beautiful, all fascinating. Previously.
posted on Jun 19, 2008 - View this thread

It began when Mr. Klinsky threw in his two cents, a vague request that a poem he had written for and about his family be lodged in a wall somewhere, Ms. Sherry said, “put in a bottle and hidden away as if it were a time capsule.”
Sometimes when you make a simple suggestion about the remodeling of your $8.5 million 5th Ave. apartment, the designer goes a little overboard. In an awesome way. Don't miss the slideshow.
posted on Jun 12, 2008 - View this thread

I've only ever seen 70 & 80's era New York in movies and I've never really thought about their source of inspiration. Until I saw this.(a few graphic photos on that last link)
posted on May 26, 2008 - View this thread

The [US] National Trust for Historic Preservation has released its 21st annual list of the nation's Most Endangered Historic Places. Among them: Sumner Elementary School in Topeka, Kansas, (where Linda Brown tried to register for school, resulting in Brown vs. Board of Education); New York City's Lower East Side; California's State Parks; Philadelphia's Boyd Theatre, and several others. The previous 20 years of Most Endangered Historic Places can be found in the Archive.
posted on May 20, 2008 - View this thread

A transatlantic tunnel, hurrah!
posted on May 16, 2008 - View this thread

Liberty City vs New York City
posted on May 14, 2008 - View this thread

Influenced by the Modernist documentarian André Kertész, with references to the hard-edged, black-and-white works of Weegee and Diane Arbus, this self-taught photographer captured raw and intimate images, and transformed urban scenes into theatrical dramas. More photos at jillfreedman.com.
posted on Apr 28, 2008 - View this thread

The Brooklyn Elite Checkers Club [flash] is just one of the stories on the recently released site, City of Memory - 'a public map that generates social interaction, personal expression, and collaborative storytelling'.
posted on Apr 22, 2008 - View this thread

Joshua Allen Harris makes inflatable sculptures out of found trash bags: bear, creatures, monster. via wooster collective.
posted on Apr 22, 2008 - View this thread

Ricky Flores photographs of B-Boys in the 80s.
posted on Apr 21, 2008 - View this thread

After breaking the ice with his video message to all Americans, His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI arrives in Washington, D.C. this afternoon for the initial part of his first Papal visit to the United States of America. Watch it all live.
posted on Apr 15, 2008 - View this thread

New York City is the greenest city in America. Eighty-two per cent of Manhattan residents travel to work by public transit, by bicycle, or on foot. That's ten times the rate for Americans in general, and eight times the rate for residents of Los Angeles County. New York City is more populous than all but eleven states; if it were granted statehood, it would rank 51st in per-capita energy use.... But this is not necessarily something people want to hear: In a conversation with a Sierra Club representative involved in Challenge to Sprawl, I said that the organization's anti-sprawl suggestions and the modified streetscapes in the slide show shared many significant features with Manhattan-whose most salient characteristics include wide sidewalks, narrow streets, mixed uses, densely packed buildings, and an extensive network of subways and buses. The representative hesitated, then said that I was essentially correct, although he would prefer that the program not be described in such terms, since emulating New York City would not be considered an appealing goal by most of the people whom the Sierra Club is trying to persuade
posted on Apr 6, 2008 - View this thread

Spock (nsfw) -- titled "Planet New Hampshire," part of Superhero Lonely, a 2005 exhibition of paintings by John Jacobsmeyer.
posted on Mar 31, 2008 - View this thread

NYPD in action. There is really not much anywhere written about this, but here is the youtube link of some policemen threatening and beating people in front of the UN building in New York. Some pics (stills from the video) here.
posted on Mar 25, 2008 - View this thread

In an information age, telecommunications such as the Internet and the telephone bind people across space by eviscerating the constraints of distance. To reveal the relationships that New Yorkers have with the rest of the world, New York Talk Exchange asks: How does the city of New York connect to other cities?
posted on Feb 20, 2008 - View this thread

Was your invite to Fashion Week lost in the mail? Have no fear- you can watch video of some of your favorite designers and models at the official Mercedes Benz Fashion Week website. If you're more into schadenfreude than Sean John, check out the Zac Posen show to see Karen Elson take a tumble .
posted on Feb 8, 2008 - View this thread

Mixed With Love: The Musical World Of Walter Gibbons: "This tale begins with a skinny white DJ mixing between the breaks of obscure Motown records with the ambidextrous intensity of an octopus on speed. It closes with the same man, sick with Aids and all but blind, fumbling for gospel records as he spins up eternal hope in a fading dusk. In between, Walter Gibbons transformed the art of DJing and marked out the future co-ordinates of remixology."
posted on Feb 7, 2008 - View this thread

The Upside of the Downside "I never imagined I’d find myself in the curious position of having so much more than my parents ever had, of having more, frankly, than I ever thought I would have—and yet simultaneously feeling like I’m falling behind, that I need to earn more, save more, invest more, acquire more. When did I begin to feel this anxiety of acquisition? How did I become such a jackass?"
posted on Feb 5, 2008 - View this thread

Erika Gunderson got into a taxicab in New York City this past New Year's Eve and found a digital camera on the back seat. The cab driver had no information or interest in which previous passenger might be the rightful owner. Bringing the camera home, Gunderson's fiancé, Brian Ascher, took on the task of trying to find the owner. Using clues from 350 photos and two videos stored on the camera he was able to track down the owner, Irishman Alan Murphy in Sydney, Australia and return the camera to him.
posted on Jan 27, 2008 - View this thread

"An obsessively detailed alternate-history map, imagining how Manhattan might have looked had the Nazis conquered it in World War II." A project by artist Melissa Gould. The neighborhoods (Charlottenburg, Neukölln, etc.) are named for corresponding Berlin ones. Schrecklich fun. Via strange maps.
posted on Jan 10, 2008 - View this thread

Hell’s Kitchen duo wheel friend’s corpse around midtown Manhattan to cash his Social Security check.
posted on Jan 10, 2008 - View this thread

For Sale: Max Yasgur's Farm
posted on Jan 9, 2008 - View this thread

Mannequin, Fake Boobs and Real Meat in a Swing. Fake hand, holding a real heart. Self-portrait, with octopus. Mannequin with real tongue. Unborn pigs on a meat background.
posted on Jan 8, 2008 - View this thread

Hugh Ferriss: Delineator of Gotham. Through his charcoal renderings of dramatic, imaginary skyscrapers in early 1900s New York City, Ferriss influenced the aesthetics of numerous architects with his bold compositions.
posted on Jan 6, 2008 - View this thread

There are seven sex offenders living together in this house.
posted on Jan 5, 2008 - View this thread

What to my wondering eyes should appear but the suggestion that "A Visit From St. Nicholas," the classic poem which has defined the American Santa Claus, from red suit and big belly to reindeer and chimney-delivery method, was written not by classics professor Clement Clarke Moore but by poet and military man Henry Livingston. Though some think the authorship controversy is sugarplum vision of Livingston's descendents, other scholars the claim: literary 'detective' Donald Foster agrees (though his sleuthing record is not unblemished). Leading historian of Christmas Stephen Nissenbaum, says that either way, St. Nick is the product of the same social world, that of the wealthy white elite in the New York of the early Republic. If the claim is true, then in the convoluted history of the manuscript we've gotten some reindeer names wrong.
posted on Dec 24, 2007 - View this thread

Working Class Cats documents the lives of gainfully employed felines in NYC. There is, of course, some controversy. [via]
posted on Dec 22, 2007 - View this thread

New York No Wave Archive. "No Wave was a short-lived but influential music and art movement in downtown New York in the late 1970s and 1980s. The name was a reaction to the sanitized Punk Rock trading under the name 'New wave' for those people who wanted a sanitized version of punk." Also, outside of "No New York."
posted on Dec 17, 2007 - View this thread

Punk Guitar Heroes - Television's Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd Television, and its guitar pas de deux between Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd, fit into the punk scene only because they are the ones basically responsible for CBGB becoming a punk rock club. Verlaine convinced Hilly Kristal to let them practice there and play shows, and the rest is history.
posted on Dec 17, 2007 - View this thread

The Middleton Family at the New York World's Fair (1939). The Original Futurama. Featuring Elektro, the Smoking Robot.
posted on Dec 12, 2007 - View this thread

Luc Sante has started a blog (according to Sasha Frere-Jones). Two entries so far, the first on a book cover from the 60's and the second on a picture of a rockabilly band. From the 2nd blog post: And that is why we come here once a year to lay a wreath at the tomb of the unknown rockabilly band: to persuade them to rest, and lay off the young. But just have a look at them--they were never meant to be! They should never have tried occupying the same stage, and they should have left music to find its own way home. The piano player, with his incipient Mickey Mouse ears, was clearly destined for a career working with puppets. The twins on guitar and bass were natural-born casino greeters. The other guitarist has the fine tapered hands of a pest-control agent specializing in silverfish. And the drummer--he was meant as an example. What happened to him should have been shown to driver-safety classes in every high school in the country.
posted on Dec 8, 2007 - View this thread

Maritime New York
posted on Dec 6, 2007 - View this thread

New York State goes after Amazon "affiliates." So if you, as a New Yorker, link to your book on Amazon, you are now an independent contractor and shall be taxed accordingly (PDF).
posted on Nov 13, 2007 - View this thread

EveryScape launched this morning. It's a ground-level mapping service similar to Google's "Street View", only it offers you an "autodrive" feature that automatically moves you through a city or down a ski slope. There are links to information about stores and restaurants in the view and the ability to go inside buildings and look around. It currently features views from Aspen, New York, Boston, and Miami. And of course the obligatory view of a colorful mime with a man-bag. [via]
posted on Oct 29, 2007 - View this thread

The Buffalo State Hospital is a vast complex of moldering Victorian buildings, sitting right in the middle of a residential neighborhood of Buffalo. It is also an architectural gem, not only by Buffalo standards, but for the nation as a whole. It is one of the largest and most complex commissions of New England architect H. H. Richardson, who is known for promulgating his unique, heavy looking stone Romanesque variant of the then dominant Queen Anne style. The Buffalo asylum’s grounds were planned by landscape architect (and designer of Central Park) Fredrick Law Olmsted.
posted on Oct 26, 2007 - View this thread

Build your wild self using a flash game from the New York zoos and aquarium and the wildlife conservation society.
posted on Oct 23, 2007 - View this thread

"New York City 1968-1972" Some very compelling black and white street photography by Paul McDonough. via
posted on Oct 18, 2007 - View this thread

A narrated bike-ride through NYC with David Byrne (requires Quicktime)
posted on Oct 15, 2007 - View this thread

"Since 1862, many have heard the tale of a wandering vagrant who traveled in an endless 365-mile circle between the Connecticut and Hudson rivers. The strange man only spoke with grunts or gestures and dressed in crudely stitched leather from his hat to his shoes."
posted on Oct 11, 2007 - View this thread

"First we kill the architects..." Photographer Danny Lyon [1, 2, 3, 4] offers ten suggestions for New York City. Suggestion #6: "Leave the World Trade Center excavation exactly as it is and use the space as a freshwater pond planted with pink, white, and yellow lilies..." His essay is only one of many from names you'll recognize in a book called Block by Block: Jane Jacobs and the Future of New York. An associated exhibition opened yesterday [museum, NYT review]. Is New York City moving in the right direction? Is your city? [via]
posted on Sep 26, 2007 - View this thread

Randall's Lost New York City Collection "documents the destruction of many of New York City's 19th century tenement and other buildings, so that we can mourn the lost [and] appreciate the endangered." Gallery 1, 2.
posted on Sep 20, 2007 - View this thread

YouTube for an old generation, a new site by Rich Collier.
posted on Sep 11, 2007 - View this thread

The Near-Fame Experience: A fascinating interview with former contestants of Bravo reality television shows Project Runway and Top Chef, presenting the fickle nature of fame and how it can come at significant professional and personal cost, if at all.
posted on Aug 24, 2007 - View this thread

I'm tired of looking at attractive, fashionable people.. Behold: Ugly Outfits New York.
posted on Jul 23, 2007 - View this thread

Jessica Dimmock: I was approached by a cocaine dealer who made it clear that he was a dealer. Over the course of the conversation he made it clear that if I wanted to follow him and photograph him I could. He took me to a variety of places - parties, people's apartments, the owner of an escort service. The last place he ever took me was the apartment where the project starts. Jessica Dimmock is the 2006 recipient of the Inge Morath Award to encourage young female photojournalists. Her series, The Ninth Floor is epic in its savage and true depiction of the reality of drugs in New York City. NSFW.
posted on Jul 9, 2007 - View this thread