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
Out in the Sort is a 2005 New Yorker article that provides a look behind the scenes at UPS. From repairing laptops, to warehousing every available Bentley car part, to running its own postsecondary institution, UPS is expanding beyond its traditional role as a shipper of goods.
posted by reformedjerk
on Nov 19, 2009 -
20 comments
For hundreds of years, mariners have dreamed of an Arctic shortcut that would allow them to speed trade between Asia and the West. Two German ships are poised to complete that transit for the first time, aided by the retreat of Arctic ice that scientists have linked to global warming.
Arctic Shortcut Beckons Shippers as Ice Thaws.
posted by flapjax at midnite
on Sep 11, 2009 -
24 comments
Straight from the Department of Things Everybody But Me Probably Knew About Two Years Ago, it was only yesterday that I discovered the mind-boggling usefulness of the
Amazon Filler Item Finder, which allows you to enter the exact price of the item you need to pad your order up to $25.00 for free shipping. Happy postage-free holidays.
[more inside]
posted by XQUZYPHYR
on Dec 4, 2007 -
54 comments
New Orleans: A Geopolitical Prize A very enlightening article for anyone needing a little refresher in geography.
New Orleans is not optional for the United States' commercial infrastructure.
The United States historically has depended on the Mississippi and its tributaries for transport. Barges navigate the river. Ships go on the ocean. The barges must offload to the ships and vice versa. There must be a facility to empower this exchange... Without this port, the river can't be used. Protecting that port has been, from the time of the Louisiana Purchase, a fundamental national security issue for the United States.
posted by well_balanced
on Sep 4, 2005 -
17 comments
Interview with Jim Gray, head of Microsoft's Bay Area Research Center. "Clear your schedule, because once you've started reading this interview, you won't be able to put it down until you've finished it.
Who would ever, in this time of the greatest interconnectivity in human history, go back to shipping bytes around via snail mail as a preferred means of data transfer? (Really, just what type of throughput does the USPS offer?) Jim Gray would do it, that's who. And we're not just talking about Zip disks, no sir; we're talking about shipping entire hard drives, or even complete computer systems, packed full of disks."
posted by mooncrow
on Jul 11, 2003 -
23 comments
Ever Try Getting Wine Shipped in the U.S.? Looks like Montana had set up a "wine connoisseur" rule that allowed for some shipping into the state if you filled out some paperwork, blah blah blah. PAIN!
As someone who enjoys a good wine and wanted to order a bunch of it earlier in '02 when I was in Sonoma, CA and have it shipped home, only to be crushed when I couldn't have it done, I'm looking for a way to get this to work.
Anyone else come across these various laws? Anyone else live in a state where they CAN get wine shipped in to them? 13 states allow reciprocal shipping from other partner states, and 14 others have some strict rules about it. Will opening these rules up allow minors an easy way to get alcohol?
Some great links at the bottom of the article, too.
posted by djspicerack
on Nov 26, 2002 -
30 comments
Thinking of shipping valuable stuff by UPS? Think different! Every time I forget exactly why I never, ever want to ship anything at all by UPS ground, a story like this one pops up that reminds me. The last time I had something sent to me using that "service" (and I use the term loosely) my Athlon desktop system showed up at my door with the case dented and the CPU & heatsink
loose inside the case as the box was jolted so violently that it broke the notch (on the ZIF socket) which usually keeps the assembly in place. Use FedEx if it positively, absolutely has to be there in one piece, I guess.
posted by clevershark
on Nov 15, 2001 -
20 comments
Red Envelope.com claimed that if you ordered your gifts before midnight last night (Dec. 23), they'd have the package to you by noon today. I was listening to an NPR radio program where they tested this and it failed miserably, with nothing showing up as of 5pm today. Looks like e-commerce's weakest link is still the final, but most important, step in the fullfillment chain.
posted by mathowie
on Dec 24, 1999 -
0 comments
I buy a lot of stuff online:
books,
music,
stereo stuff,
clothes,
camping equipment,
watches, and
computers, but I can never find shoes online. Yeah, I know it's pretty hard to try on shoes over the web, but I have big feet (size 13 or 14 depending on shoe manufacturer) and finding shoes in a store is usually a problem. So I found
some skate shoes at
Fogdog the night before last, and
I noticed the package is going to be here tomorrow. They only charged me $2.99 for shipping, but they sent it 2nd day air. Does Amazon share their records with anyone? Does Fogdog have access to my VISA records? I'm happy to get my stuff quicker and cheaper than I thought, but it seems a bit weird. I keep thinking I'm flagged somewhere in a database as the gullible impluse buying type...
posted by mathowie
on Nov 5, 1999 -
0 comments
