P.F.1 (Public Farm One) is a project designed by WORK Architecture Company for MoMA and P.S.1's Young Architects Program. P.F.1’s intent is to "educate thousands of visitors on sustainable urban farming through the unique medium of contemporary architecture." An artist in Providence, RI developed a similar installation called Green Zone, "an organic vegetable, herb, and flower garden planted in the detritus of wartime consumption: used tires, shopping bags, shoes, and other repurposed containers" at local venue Firehouse 13.
posted on Jul 16, 2008 - View this thread

Mexican and Latin Immmigrants as Superheroes [ via guanabee ]
posted on Jul 3, 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

The opening shots of 1920s New York City are wonderful, then you get a zany high-speed Harold Lloyd blazing down the avenues, and that's fun to watch, but the real killer is the horse-drawn trolley absolutely tearing-ass through lower Manhattan, full gallop. Ends badly. Then it's over to San Francisco for one last bit of homicidal vehicular activity with a bus. Well, they sure don't drive like they used to!
posted on May 25, 2008 - View this thread

Why do New Yorkers seem rude? A quirky and interesting article about the culture of New Yorkers.
posted on May 20, 2008 - View this thread

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

According to the breathless headline in the New York Times, it was "THE WORST STORM THE CITY HAS EVER KNOWN. BUSINESS AND TRAVEL COMPLETELY SUSPENDED. NEW-YORK HELPLESS IN A TORNADO OF WIND AND SNOW WHICH PARALYZED ALL INDUSTRY, ISOLATED THE CITY FROM THE REST OF THE COUNTRY, CAUSED MANY ACCIDENTS AND GREAT DISCOMFORT, AND EXPOSED IT TO MANY DANGERS." It became known as The Great Blizzard of 1888, and it occurred on this date, March 12, 1888.
posted on Mar 12, 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

Times Square: Crossroads of the World is the official website of Times Square in New York City. An estimated 1 million people from all over the world are in Times Square tonight, celebrating New Year's Eve and the 100th anniversary of the ball drop (with a new eco-friendly, LED-lighted ball). Also on the site: A History of New Year's Eve in Times Square, a Then and Now interactive timeline, a Signs of the Times gallery, and much more. The FAQ is also interesting.
posted on Dec 31, 2007 - View this thread

Max's Kansas City closed 25 years ago this night. Although Hilly Kristal's CBGB's is more iconic and perhaps better known today, Mickey Ruskin's Max's Kansas City (and its infamous back room) was every bit as important to fostering the punk scene of the late 1970s and early 80s. Located a 213 Park Avenue South, just up the street from historic Union Square, Max's played host to the Heartbreakers, Bruce Springsteen, the Ramones, Wayne/Jayne County and the Fast, the New York Dolls, and quite a few others. What's standing there today? Why, the 213 Park Avenue South Deli, of course.
posted on Dec 31, 2007 - View this thread

Louis Stettner: Atmospheric black and white photos of Paris and New York by Brooklyn-born photographer who now lives in France. Some are sexy, some amusing, some poignant. A series on Penn station in the 1950s is especially nice, and a big contrast to the candy colored Mad Men palette. Beware mispelled main url. via.
posted on Dec 7, 2007 - View this thread

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

Find He-man! SEPTEMBER 14 - SARAH saw He-Man slicking his hair back, using the fountain water at Madison Square Park. The once dull, dirty, water is now a sparkling lush blue, and is filled with rare tropical fish.
posted on Oct 21, 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

Anatomy of an Authentic Skateboarder
1. Upturned sun visor.
2. scruffy, gnashing teeth, beedy-eyed mug that only Aphex Twin could love.
3. Lots and lots of chest hair.

Meet the Amazing Strangers of Union Square, photographed and commented on by Normal Bob Smith. [previously]
posted on Oct 17, 2007 - View this thread

The Wedding of Amy and Jewels
posted on Oct 11, 2007 - View this thread

Live Loud Acts: archives and playlists for The Pat Duncan Show on WFMU. Hour upon hour of expertly curated punk rock radio. Pat's Myspace page has more info.
posted on Sep 26, 2007 - View this thread

Why New Yorkers Last Longer. Interestingly, urban theorists believe it is not just the tightly packed nature of the city but also its social and economic density that has life-giving properties. When you’re jammed, sardinelike, up against your neighbors, it’s not hard to find a community of people who support you—friends or ethnic peers—and this strongly correlates with better health and a longer life. [New York Magazine article]
posted on Aug 15, 2007 - View this thread

DieKus. Haikus made out of pictures of gravestones, being plastered around New York City by a mysterious artist named Nick Beef. (whose name has some mysterious origins of its own)
posted on Jul 24, 2007 - View this thread

On a summer afternoon in 2006, New York photographer Gerard Maynard captured his neighborhood from a rooftop at 7th Avenue and 110th Street. The resulting 2,045 photographs, stitched together, comprise a 13-gigapixel panorama of Harlem's skyline. Best viewed with HDView option (MS Internet Explorer only).
posted on Jul 18, 2007 - View this thread

Peter B. Kaplan is a New York Photographer who made his name by climbing to high locations and taking amazing super-wide angle shots since the 70's -- most notably, the Statue of Liberty restoration project. He recently had to stop after 40 years because he started suffering from vertigo. After laying off ginkgo biloba, Kaplan’s vertigo and fear of heights has apparently disappeared.
posted on Jun 25, 2007 - View this thread

Hear our demands: give us back New York. Just think of the possibilities! Join the struggle. Or else.
posted on Apr 1, 2007 - View this thread

Grand Theft Auto IV (video, SFW despite age verification and Philip Glass) is coming. Even six months before its release, it is promoting rage and anger (...in NYC politicians). Fansite and Wikipedia article.
posted on Apr 1, 2007 - View this thread

Downtown Lives On Are the New Yorkers who lament the passing of cool, outre downtown (victim of high rents and a safer city) just not looking hard enough? Or are Ryan McGinley, Dan Colen, and Dash Snow just punks making bad art? Threat or menace?
posted on Jan 10, 2007 - View this thread

The Automat was a remarkable, culturally ubiquitous part of the history of both Philadelphia and New York City. The basic concept wasn't unusual, but the Art Deco style was unique. Now, BAMN! Food has revived the concept and the name.
posted on Oct 11, 2006 - View this thread

Like old cheese and vomit, mixed with dog food ... Halitosis and aged cabbage ... Rank Swiss cheese ... Sour milk ... Pee in the air every day ... Like an open corpse ... Like a musty homeless person decomposing in musky homeless person urine ... Caramel with a slight undertone of mildly rank underarm ... Rodenticide. It's Gawker's New York City Subway Smell Map.
posted on Sep 26, 2006 - View this thread

New York City Water Tunnel No. 3 has been under construction since 1970 and completion is expected in 2020. (Be sure to click the sidebars.) City Water Tunnels Nos. 1 and 2 have been operating continuously since 1917 and 1936, and currently cannot be shut down for repair without disrupting the city's water supply. Popular Mechanics and BLDBLOG have articles, Newsday has photos, and 60 Minutes has an article with video. Local paper The Villager covers the construction of one of the many shafts that connect to the tunnel. It has inspired a one-woman show. The Sandhog Project covers the workers, called "Sandhogs," with photos, sound, and video. Over twenty sandhogs died building the tunnel.
posted on Jul 29, 2006 - View this thread

Bill Clinton Doesn't Care About Black People. (More. Protest Announcement.)
posted on Jul 24, 2006 - View this thread

The Mystery of Sneha Philip, the Possible 2,705th Victim of 9/11 At 4 PM on September 10th, 2001, Dr. Sneha Philip left her lower Manhattan apartment. Credit card records show that she made a couple purchases at the department store Century 21. Then she vanished. What happened?
posted on Jun 20, 2006 - View this thread

Maohair, Chinese "peasant with a camera": China's Weegee? (Weegee links: The Getty, Int'l Center of Photography, Eastman Collection, 1945 radio interview and weegee.org); (Maohair links: His MSN Spaces page (in Chinese w/pics), more pics.) Warning: Not for the faint of heart.
posted on May 8, 2006 - View this thread

A hate crime in Harlem? Some say it is, some say it isn't. Some are reminded of an incident at Howard Beach in 1986.
posted on Apr 10, 2006 - View this thread

Upset that the NYC Department of Health has ordered(nytimes) restaurants around the city to stop using Sous-Vide methods and machines? Buy your own, do it yourself, or maybe drive to DC.
posted on Mar 17, 2006 - View this thread

The Idiotarod is NYC's version of the Iditarod. (check spelling closely, idiot) - seen here last year. This year's route will be released on Monday. Happy drinking / sabotaging / racing. But maybe that's not your thing. Or maybe you just can't wait to do something a little crazy in NYC. Ok, well, this weekend you can take your pants off on the subway.
posted on Jan 20, 2006 - View this thread

Some 30 billion pounds of steam every year flow beneath the streets of Manhattan from the Battery to 96th Street. While it is unknown to most New Yorkers, Con Edison's subterranean steam system is the biggest steam district in the world, larger than the next four largest U.S. steam systems combined... And it's got a robot. [MI]
posted on Jan 4, 2006 - View this thread

For those who have moved away and miss the sounds, or for those who have never been and wonder what it sounds like, listen to Folk Songs for the Five Points, from New York's Tenement Museum. Dissonance in all it's aural beauty.
posted on Dec 7, 2005 - View this thread

Canstruction is a very cool exhibit at the New York Design Center. Take a look at some of these very well done sculptures made using just cans.
posted on Nov 11, 2005 - View this thread

Avast! Pirates on the prowl in NYC. These folks had the same idea, but different costumes.
posted on Aug 5, 2005 - View this thread

Some Photographs:
New York club scene in the 70's
Mingle's America in the 80's
NSFW (first link is a biggish load on dialup)
posted on Jun 18, 2005 - View this thread

Spots Before His Eyes? At last, the Paper of Record publishes a story about something I've known and experienced for years. This retired math professor believes that New York is "...a parking paradise." Want a free parking spot, just believe you'll find one, and you will. When I lived in the SF area and had to go to The City for business, I would visualize parking and something always turned up. How about you? How do you conjure the parking Goddess?
posted on Jun 17, 2005 - View this thread

The New York City Draft Riots: "As a hot and muggy Monday morning dawned on July 13, 1863, a large crowd of New York working people moved uptown, gathering workers from workshops and factories along the way... They banded together to express their collective outrage at the new draft law. Once they reached the Provost Marshall's office on 46th Street and Third Avenue, the scene of Saturday's first draft lottery, the crowd attacked the building, setting it on fire."
Maps, commentary, history. The main site is pretty cool too: Virtual New York City. Previously in the blue: a primary account from The Brooklyn Daily Eagle archives.
posted on Jun 6, 2005 - View this thread

My lost city: Low Life author Luc Sante reminisces about a youth spent in the ruins of 1970s New York:

"... when I was a student at Columbia, my windows gave out onto the plaza of the School of International Affairs, where on winter nights troops of feral dogs would arrive to bed down on the heating grates. Since then the city had lapsed even further ... if you walked east on Houston Street from the Bowery on a summer night, the jungle growth of vacant blocks gave a foretaste of the impending wilderness, when lianas would engird the skyscrapers and mushrooms would cover Times Square."

Sante talked about the period a bit more in a 2004 interview with The Believer.
posted on Feb 16, 2005 - View this thread

The Patrick Mimran Billboard Project, an eyesore to New York City inhabitants for the past few years, has imposed the French "artist's" lame, clichéd grievances about the art industry onto anyone driving or walking down W24th, 25th, or 26th Street in Chelsea. It's an infestation. Now, happily, some New Yorkers who have tired of M. Mimran's pretentious sloganeering have decided to fight back. Hurrah!
posted on Dec 17, 2004 - View this thread

Thomas Shine, a former Yale student, is suing David Childs for copyright infringement Mr. Childs of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill for copyright infringement over the design of the Freedom Tower located at Ground Zero. Shine alleges in his lawsuit that the proposed Freedom Tower was "strikingly similar" to his "Olympic Tower" design for the proposed 2012 Olympic Games in New York.
posted on Nov 10, 2004 - View this thread

A long-lost treasure too toxic to touch: Construction at New York City's Harlem Community Justice Center recently revealed a room piled high with records documenting the building's former life as an early 20th century prison. They offer a peek into the street life of ca. 1900 NYC and scholars are already interested - there's only one problem: the room also contains decades worth of toxic pigeon droppings. (NY Times - registration required). Photos (click on the "records rescue" link at the bottom) of the room are available at the great correctionhistory.org which also offers histories and photos of other out-of-the-way corners of NYC like the Hart Island Potter's Field.
posted on Nov 5, 2004 - View this thread

ADD, Esq. In browsing part-time jobs in NYC, I came across this gem. It would blow my mind to watch this dude in the courtroom... if he doesn't get sidetracked along the way.
posted on Nov 4, 2004 - View this thread

The inimitable Coney Island Mermaid Parade. OK, it was a month ago, but these photo galleries make for some fun browsing. Planning your costume for next year? Our resident mermaidologist offers some inspiration. (some nudity - it's mermaids after all!)
posted on Jul 25, 2004 - View this thread

The Triangle Factory Fire of 1911. 'This site includes selected information on a terrible and unnecessary tragedy involving the death of many young working women in a New York City sweatshop at the beginning of the 20th century and the resulting investigations and reforms. '
posted on Jul 22, 2004 - View this thread

Love on the Quiet. One breezy evening a few months ago, 19-year-old Joseph Briggs did something he had never before dared to do growing up gay in New York: he held hands with and kissed his boyfriend in his own neighborhood... While New York is legendary as a place where gays and lesbians can live openly and free from prejudice, Mr. Briggs's story reveals a great deal about what might be called the other gay New York. Life in this New York unfolds far from the chiseled Chelsea boys, funky Village bars and relatively gay-friendly neighborhoods like the Upper West Side and Park Slope, Brooklyn, that represent the public image of gay life in the city. In the farther reaches of the boroughs outside Manhattan, gay life is often harder and nearly always more complicated. In these neighborhoods, the national debate over gay marriage can be much less important than the search for a doctor who does not squirm when talking about homosexual sex.    And here is your NYC Gay And Lesbian Population Distribution--a handy, color-coded map in pdf format, which comes from The Gay And Lesbian Atlas to provide more snapshots of life as lived, block by block, butterfly wing by butterfly wing, hometown and homeboy, in a time of more cultural evolution than, say, revolution.
posted on Jul 18, 2004 - View this thread

Drag Race Ride through the streets of Manhattan with some of the fastest urban bicyclists in existence as they race in the wintertime. Thrilling and unbelievable. The mpg is from a head mounted camera worn by one of the racers. More here. Also don't miss the cameraman riding on top of a Jersey barrier here. And here I was thinking that Times Square to Park Slope in 25 minutes was pretty quick. Thanks to nervous.net.
posted on Jul 15, 2004 - View this thread