Long before Chelsea Piers was a sporting complex and the South Street Seaport a mall, the city was lined with active piers. The city's residents were amply employed by the shipping trade, but containerization needed more land than would ever be available in the city: Massive ports sprouted in Elizabeth and Newark, and ships disappeared from the city. Efficient cranes replaced longshoremen, and the time in port for ships shrank from about a week to about a day. "The technology changed the geography," says William Fensterer, a chaplain who has been with SIH almost since its new building opened in 1964. "It doesn't look like On the Waterfront anymore," he adds. When he started out, he says, he would wander on foot from pier to pier in Manhattan and Brooklyn and board ships, with nary a guard in site. But those piers have largely vanished. And along with them, the seafarer, once ubiquitous in New York, has become invisible.
posted by jason's_planet on Dec 18, 2009 - 14 comments

Nabokov, Meet 50 Cent: Zadie Smith's Changing My Mind. "Those who have been paying attention to Zadie Smith since her White Teeth debut likely already know about her affinities for E.M. Forster, Lil Wayne, George Eliot, Kafka, and Fawlty Towers. She's one of probably three working writers capable of smuggling a riff on the perils of "keeping it real" into The New York Review of Books."
posted by geoff. on Nov 11, 2009 - 15 comments

The Village Voice and IndieWire have both put out their dueling film critic's polls this year, with Wall-E and Flight of the Red Balloon topping the lists, respectively. [Previously] [more inside]
posted by Weebot on Jan 4, 2009 - 16 comments

The Confederacy of Dunces. The Village Voice's comprehensive election-season guide to right-wing political bloggers, by Roy Edroso of alicublog.
posted by XQUZYPHYR on Apr 15, 2008 - 54 comments

Bert Stern took pictures of Marilyn Monroe over 3 sessions [nsfw] in 1962. They're called the Last Sitting as she died of an apparent overdose 6 weeks later. In February 2008, he recreates the shoot using Lindsay Lohan [nsfw]. Not willing to let a good opportunity to spoof celebrities fly by, Village Voice's Michael Musto recreates Lindsay Lohan's photo session [nsfw].
posted by Stynxno on Mar 5, 2008 - 68 comments

Tom Tomorrow presents Bill O'Reilly's Very Useful Advice for Young People. Also available as read by Keith Olbermann.
posted by XQUZYPHYR on Dec 1, 2007 - 28 comments

In the grand Village Voice tradition of slagging off musicians for being white and/or harmless, VV scribe Chris Ott writes an irrationally antagonistic critique of Decemberists frontman Colin Meloy, in an ostensbile concert review. Oh snap! Meloy's girlfriend Carson Ellis sticks up for him in the comments section!
posted by Bizurke on Nov 15, 2006 - 98 comments

the voice fires robert christgau the decimation of what was once the village voice continues apace.
posted by sdn on Sep 1, 2006 - 42 comments

Advice for weary, wandering Democrats Note to Democrats: "Barack Obama put it exquisitely in his victory speech: "Government can help provide us with the basic tools we need to live out the American dream." Here's a dirty little secret. The Republicans know this. Nothing scares them more than us returning to our simple answers. ..."
posted by Postroad on Apr 11, 2006 - 93 comments

Cindy Sheehan for President Or Senate. The anti-war left seeks a challenger for Hillary Clinton
posted by Postroad on Nov 1, 2005 - 78 comments

Remember the Noir Genius Exam? Wanna know the the answers?
posted by lilboo on Jan 7, 2005 - 3 comments

Take the Village Voice's Noir Genius Exam. Created to promote the "Essential Noir: Classics of American Film Noir 1941-1958" film fest at the FilmForum. Nov26th-Dec 23. Difficulty: essay questions - good luck...
posted by lilboo on Nov 24, 2004 - 14 comments

Becoming what you hate : Nathan Sproul, case study in moral relativism on the Religious Right "former head of the Arizona Republican Party and of the Arizona Christian Coalition....Sproul is connected with the Republican National Committee-funded voter registration organization, Voters' Outreach of America Inc." - Sproul's firm is accused of fraud and the destruction of voter registration forms. He also failed to pay his workers and his office rent. Rick Perlstein, in the Village Voice, comments on the Sproul scandal : "Both sides are not equally bad, and any reporters who don't recognize that conservatism's very core has become shot through with a culture of mendacity should turn in their press badge..... It used to be that we could count on the conscience of conservatives to protect our democratic institutions."
posted by troutfishing on Oct 22, 2004 - 37 comments

The Great American Man-Dog Marriage Panic. Muttrimonial bliss could be yours, now that the gates of hell are opening!
posted by archimago on Mar 24, 2004 - 45 comments

The 2003 Pazz & Jop results are in! Apparently it was the year of hip hop (sort of), in both albums and singles. Country music gets kudos for being so "cocksure" in a world of uncertainty. Acoustic jazz scores a big win with The Bad Plus coming in at number 60!
posted by boltman on Feb 19, 2004 - 10 comments

DJ Danger Mouse has been making waves recently with his Grey Album that cross-pollinates the music of The Beatles' classic White Album with the lyrics and delivery of Jay-Z's recent swan song, the Black Album. The results? "One of the more interesting pirate mashups ever done." (Pitchfork). "Most ambitious remix." (Village Voice). "As fun as it is daring." (Boston Globe). "Ultimate remix record." (Rolling Stone). Not surprisingly, EMI is far from amused by the unsanctioned and unapproved project and the limited release will no longer be distributed. So, download it now (or check out these Real Player samples).
posted by boost ventilator on Feb 18, 2004 - 92 comments

Al Sharpton... Republican stooge? A Village Voice investigation finds that his presidential campaign is being financed and staffed by Roger Stone, "the longtime Republican dirty-tricks operative who led the mob that shut down the Miami-Dade County recount in 2000." Article details some interesting financing arrangements and reveals that Stone has bragged that he gave Sharpton the ax handle he waved at a NAACP meeting to denounce Democratic racism. Sharpton wants to teach the Democrats a lesson (as he did in helping to elect Republican Mike Bloomberg mayor of New York), and Republicans are anxious to help create a division with black voters. But black voters must have seen through him, refusing to give him the South Carolina victory he needed to speak for them at the convention.
posted by Slagman on Feb 4, 2004 - 53 comments

The Future is Now. "It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself—anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face… was itself a punishable offense. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime…"
posted by the fire you left me on Jul 9, 2003 - 15 comments

Booty Bumping and Disco Dumping It's not the newest dance craze, but I'd buy stock in the plastic straw and underwear industries if this fad takes off. (4th paragraph - scroll down for reference)
posted by turbanhead on Mar 13, 2003 - 16 comments

Pazz & Jop 2002 - The Village Voice has tabulated the top albums and singles from 695 critics (and 10,2002 LPs). Some of the ballot-fillers even got a little personal. The usual essays are included. If your fav CD didn't make the cut, perhaps it made it onto the dean's list.
posted by boost ventilator on Feb 11, 2003 - 28 comments

Path of a Pipeline: Oil, Empire, and Influence in the New Eurasia While so many of us talk about Iraq and war in terms of oil, it might prove useful to note what is going on close by. Not mentioned, however, in the article is the guess that China will have stupendous energy needs in the next decade, and what is taking place here will have an impact on their needs.
posted by Postroad on Feb 11, 2003 - 2 comments

The Self-Healing Minefield From the current Village Voice: "Utilizing commercial off-the-shelf computer chips and 'healing' software, the networked minefield detects rude attempts to clear it, deduces which parts of itself have been removed, and signals its remaining munitions to close the hole using best-fit mathematics."

Bonus ubertasteless Flash animation courtesy of DARPA here. Color me fascinated and repulsed in equal measure.
posted by Armitage Shanks on Nov 27, 2002 - 40 comments

Post-War Jazz: An Arbitrary Road Map In this two-part Village Voice piece, Gary Giddins presents a personal road map to post-war jazz, introducing 57 of his most cherished tracks from 1945 to 2001. Any glaring ommissions? I'd add Witchitai-To by Jim Pepper. In addition to being one of the first jazz-rock fusion proponents, Pepper, a Native American, also blended the music of his people into his compositions.
posted by martk on Jun 11, 2002 - 12 comments

One Defining Jazz Track Per Year, From 1945 To 2001? An Impossible Task! Well, not for Gary Giddins, arguably our greatest contemporary jazz critic. He's just spent five months going through his record collection to come up with a terrific and deliciously debatable list for The Village Voice. Yeah, how could he leave out...*insert your particular obsession here*...?[Here's a 74-page 1996 interview with him(in pdf format) that's practically a mini-history of jazz.]
posted by MiguelCardoso on Jun 11, 2002 - 14 comments

New York post fires reporter for story on Disney ... but publishes no corrections ...
posted by magullo on Mar 20, 2002 - 14 comments

If you're anything like me, you like to know something about your gay male escort before you spend your hard earned money... Well, now you can!! That is, thanks to a blurb from Michael Musto in the Village Voice. Introducing: Male For Male Escort Reviews! Musto calls it: "The Zagats of pay-for-gay!" I call it..err...disturbing?
posted by adrober on Feb 13, 2002 - 4 comments

Village Voice Pazz & Jop Pool is out. Albums and Singles.
posted by rex on Feb 12, 2002 - 34 comments

White Rap Revisited: Following up on last month's discussion, here's the reader blowback from "N. Bedford Crouch's" article, featuring confirmation of the put-on and a tip of the pen to Metafilter.
posted by ryanshepard on Dec 17, 2001 - 2 comments

Fighting Words on White Rap: but not what you'd expect, especially from the Village Voice:

Our children—are in crisis, trapped in the grip of a culture that glorifies drug use and debauchery, slovenly dress, and lack of respect for authority. A culture whose worship of antisocial behavior and debasement is rivaled only by its amoral concessions to the dictates of mammon.

This can largely be attributed to the unfortunate dominance of black popular culture, and—more specifically—hip-hop. In the past, mainstream culture refined raw black cultural materials, resulting in musical zeniths such as the recent neo-swing movement, which briefly presented a viable outlet for young dancers unwilling to subject themselves to the degrading influence of rap and rave music. This has got to be a put-on . . .
posted by ryanshepard on Nov 29, 2001 - 87 comments

Bin Laden, Al Qaeda, BBC, CNN, Times of London, Tom Ridge, the public - who is duping whom ? On November 15, the BBC and the Times of London report Bin Laden's nuclear secrets have been found. The next day CNN also reports nuclear weapons-related documents found in an al Qaeda safe house . Tom Ridge confirms the story. The same day, the Village Voice reports the hoax spotted by the Daily Rotten given their command of thermo nuclear science. God help us all.
posted by Voyageman on Nov 17, 2001 - 13 comments

Michael Musto's column this week features snippets from the upcoming Friar's Club roast of Hugh Hefner. Of course, for the Friar's, no topic is too sacred and the WTC topic was broached with aplomb (as opposed to aplane). Sorry, but if you thought that was tasteless, follow the link...
posted by adrober on Oct 8, 2001 - 7 comments

The ever catty Michael Musto (of The Village Voice) first gives us a sad look at Windows on the World's Executive Chef Michael Lomonaco and the great loss he sufferred. But what makes this column linkable, I think, is Musto's defense of preserving irony in the face of those who declare it dead: "I'm also going borderline thanks to all the columnists, editors, and talk show hosts declaring the end of irony (excuse me, but a wry, mocking sense of perspective is the hallmark of a free society), and saying that what they do is now trivial and irrelevant and they're having trouble continuing. Funny, they did their trivial s**t all through the AIDS crisis and other globe-threatening horrors, but now they're thinking twice? Well, I've always thought my subject matter was smallish and specialized, but I approach it with utter seriousness, because it matters to me and aims to provide relief, entertainment, and sometimes even information to others. If I could cure cancer or reattach limbs, I would, but this is what I do, and in the face of threats to our liberty, it's crucial to seize back the chance to do what we do! Besides, there are enough people beating their chests, waving the flag, and screaming, 'Get the bastards!'"
posted by adrober on Sep 26, 2001 - 12 comments

A four part tale(1993) of deception, covert operations and secret revelations, which covers :
How The Blind Sheikh Came To USA
CIA's Friends Against Soviet Union
Was Mossad Behind WTC 1993
How The CIA Won It's Jehad

Search These Terms
"Mossad World Trade Center", CIA, Hekmatyar, Hekmatyar Heroine, The Blind Shiekh, ISI, The Village Voice, Robert I. Friedman, Victor Ostrovsky
posted by adnanbwp on Sep 20, 2001 - 2 comments

Is the music industry headed in a new direction after the events of last week? And I'm not talking about the release of the new Jay-Z album.
posted by saladin on Sep 20, 2001 - 27 comments

Pssst -- buddy, wanta buy a kidney? There is a regular trade from China of transplant organs taken from executed prisoners. People from the US have been travelling there and buying organs, then coming back to the US. Should we do anything about this, and if so what?
posted by Steven Den Beste on May 5, 2001 - 21 comments

Never mind the Oscars, here's the Pazz And Jop Poll: which for some reason seems to have more cred than other music end-of-year lists. A double whammy for Outkast, and critical vindication for Eminem? What did they get right, what did they leave out, and what do these big crit-fests prove anyway?
posted by freakytrigger on Feb 13, 2001 - 34 comments

Revealing look at Bush's policy and cabinet. Scary.
posted by skallas on Feb 11, 2001 - 14 comments

Nat Hentoff on the Supreme Court and Bush v Gore: "Far from stealing the election for Bush, the majority of the Supreme Court shamed the politicians of both parties who, for so long, have failed to secure everyone's meaningful right to vote."
posted by aaron on Jan 9, 2001 - 10 comments

perfect headline: Chad Is a Country in Africa Racism—Florida's Real Scandal
posted by palegirl on Nov 21, 2000 - 1 comment

Neo Nazis holding pro-Bush rally I think even Shrub would find this distasteful...
posted by owillis on Nov 16, 2000 - 11 comments

The Village Voice Endorses Ralph Nader for President This comes on the heels that Nader reportedly refuses to accept a bribe to drop out of the race.
posted by snakey on Nov 1, 2000 - 4 comments

Some are just lucky (via Donkeymon), others, not so.
posted by tamim on Aug 30, 2000 - 0 comments

The Village Voice is doing a great job covering the RNC protests (isn't it a little odd that these stories aren't all over the place?) and to top it off their new design features snazzy dHTML navigation.
posted by sudama on Aug 7, 2000 - 38 comments

Gotta love New Yorkers, especially in the springtime. Pay special attention to the occupations of the participants.
posted by veruca on Apr 10, 2000 - 0 comments