Early this morning,
the law that legalized Same-Sex Marriage in New York State
went into effect, with many couples choosing to tie the knot
at the stroke of midnight. In New York City, the city clerk will be working overtime to process marriage licenses for the 823 same-sex couples expected to wed there today, having adding extra capacity to ensure that all couples who signed up in advance would not be turned away. LGBT weddings are
expected to bring an additional $155 million in tourism revenues into the state over the next 12 months, and governor Andrew Cuomo's
approval ratings are currently the highest of any US state governor following the passage of the bill.
posted by schmod
on Jul 24, 2011 -
149 comments
One day in 1984 character actor
Stephen Tobolowsky (
Groundhog Day, the original, unaired pilot of
Buffy The Vampire Slayer) was walking down the street when
Jonathan Demme pulled up and asked if he wanted to see a movie he was finishing. Tobolowsky accepted: taking his girlfriend
Beth Henley, they went to the
Academy Linwood Dunn Theatre to watch the rough cut of the movie,
Stop Making Sense. The audience in the otherwise empty theatre consisted of
Tobolowsky, Henley, and Demme, along with members of
Talking Heads, including
David Byrne and
Tina Weymouth. Later,
Byrne passed
Tobolowsky on his
bike and asked if he wanted to work on a
new movie. Interest sparked again, and during the ensuing collaboration Tobolowsky shared his past experience of psychic phenomena. Inspired, Byrne went on to write
Radio Head. The song was heard by
Thom Yorke and became the name of his
band. All of this is a true story, based on
puzzling evidence.
[more inside]
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul
on Jul 17, 2011 -
46 comments
"Better a broken bone than a broken spirit". So said the appropriately-named Lady Allen of Hurtwood, pioneer of adventure playgrounds - play spaces which sacrificed a little security in the interests of imagination and creativity. Her work on adventure playgrounds - along with the sight of young Londoners playing in the bombed-out sites of post-Blitz London - inspired a young
Richard Dattner, a New York architect now probably best-known for the
Bronx Public Library Center.
[more inside]
posted by running order squabble fest
on Jul 13, 2011 -
65 comments
The Age of Mechanical Reproduction by Paul Ford.
When it comes to IVF, in-vitro fertilization, nothing is normal. Your world is upside-down. Your doctor compliments your wife on her monkeys. Then, when every dollar and exertion has gone toward a single hour of hope, it begins to snow.
posted by foggy out there now
on Jul 11, 2011 -
98 comments
The
long-polluted New York rivers are
getting cleaner, but can still be dangerous to swim in. There are
efforts underway to clean up the Bronx River, but that will take years, if not decades. Until then,
signs are posted, warning would-be swimmers, yet people still risk sickness to battle the heat. One current safe solution is
the Floating Pool Lady, a barge that was remade into an 82-foot-long city parks department swimming pool.
She first arrived in the Bronx in 2008, and
she'll return to the Bronx in a week. There's a new Big Idea to bring swimmers back into the rivers:
the +Pool, a floating swimming pool located within a river, designed with a series exterior walls to filter the river water and make it safe to swim in. While that's in the early design stages, you can take a chance and
jump in a swimming hole.
posted by filthy light thief
on Jun 24, 2011 -
26 comments
Wijnanda Deroo: Inside New York Eateries "Continuing her long-term exploration of the architectural interior as a genre of photographic investigation, artist Wijnanda Deroo has scoured New York's five boroughs documenting the full spectrum of the city's culinary institutions. From Café des Artistes to Papaya Dog, the Russian Tea Room to Yonah Schimmel's Knishes, Deroo's viewfinder alights on diverse sites (and sights) where we New Yorkers sit (or stand) to consume our daily bread." More interiors at the artist's website --
Indonesia ::
Curacao ::
Mexico ::
Berlin
posted by puny human
on Mar 20, 2011 -
5 comments
"Anyone who was around New York City in the late 1980s and early '90s couldn't have missed the work of the
AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power, better known as
ACT UP. Its group's activism reached a fever pitch during the early '90s, when the iconic black '
Silence=Death' posters and t-shirts seemed ubiquitous downtown and served as somewhat more defiant symbols for the Gay community than the rainbow flags that took over to serve that role slightly later. ...
So what were we to think as we wandered through
Barneys Co-op in Chelsea yesterday when we spied a whole shelf full of
T-shirts featuring ACT UP's famous imagery [priced each at $50 ... 'a portion of that price tag will go to the activist group'] as if they were magically transported there from 20 years ago?"
[more inside]
posted by ericb
on Mar 14, 2011 -
48 comments
The Madoff Tapes "One evening, my home phone rang. “You have a collect call from Bernard Madoff, an inmate at a federal prison,” a recording announced. And there he was." [more inside]
posted by zarq
on Feb 28, 2011 -
30 comments
The Coolest Locksmith Shop in New York City "From a distance, it looks like a bunch of golden squiggles and spirals have been added, snaking whimsically across the facade. But get a little closer and you’ll find the real magic… The new design is made up entirely of keys, literally thousands, and thousands, and thousands of keys, twisting into wonderful assortment of swoops and twirls."
posted by ocherdraco
on Feb 8, 2011 -
45 comments
"Feathered Hussy Moves in on Pale Male." Famous Central Park raptor
Pale Male has taken a new mate, which most likely means that Lola, his companion of the last eight years, has died. Though some birders
hold out hope for her return,
one expert says, "This is not the season that experienced [female hawks] cavalierly absent themselves from their established territories."
Pale Male is known to have sired at least 26 chicks, and inspired both controversy and counter-protests when fancy Upper East Siders tried to evict his nest from their fancy building. The birds won that conflict. Next argument on tap: what to
name his new mate.
posted by BlahLaLa
on Jan 18, 2011 -
31 comments
In the 1960's, 70's and 80's, urban decay and high crime rates caused retail chain supermarkets to
flee New York City.
(google books link) Korean immigrants filled the gap with corner grocery stores. For nearly two decades they were ubiquitous -- symbols of the group's ongoing quest to achieve the American Dream. But 30 years later,
Where Did The Korean Greengrocers Go? [more inside]
posted by zarq
on Jan 18, 2011 -
19 comments
Ballerina Project — Nine years ago, young photographer
Dane Shitagi walked up New York City’s Broadway towards the highly patronized and well known
STEPS dance studios in search of a ballet dancer who could help him begin his project: to capture images of ballerinas in urban environments. Those images first started appearing on Blogspot, but have since migrated to
Facebook. [
via]
posted by netbros
on Dec 10, 2010 -
9 comments
Where will you be one week from today? "In this age of restless wanderings, how can you be certain where some urgent
call may take you? What guarantee have you that a feeble cry in the night, a
sudden emergency call, or a "date" will not summon you hurriedly to 431
Eighth Avenue?"
[more inside]
posted by pollex
on Nov 19, 2010 -
11 comments
