kottke.org posts about NYC
Tomer Hanuka asked his third-year illustration students at SVA to "come up with a post-pandemic New Yorker magazine cover" and posted some of their wonderful & thoughtful work to Twitter. Here are a few that caught my eye:
The second cover down, by Katrina Catacutan, is probably my favorite (the body language of the woman answering the door is just perfect) but the last image by Amy Young hit me like a ton of bricks. The New Yorker should run all of these covers for an issue of the magazine in a few weeks — collect them all!
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The Artifact Artist is a short documentary about urban archaeologist Scott Jordan, who, over the past 50 years in NYC, has dug up all sorts of historical objects that date back decades and centuries, even all the way back to the Revolutionary War. The trailer is above and you can watch the entire short film on Vimeo.
Uprooted from the forests of Connecticut to move to New York City, 9 yr. old Scott Jordan declares "I won't be a city kid!" 45 yrs. later Scott is an urban archeologist. An Indiana Jones in Gotham. Hand digging out centuries old privies, cisterns and landfills across the five boroughs Scott is uncovering artifacts and preserving New York City history by creating artifact art with the treasures he discovers.
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For her forthcoming book New Yorkers, photographer Sally Davies (Instagram) captured portraits of people inside their NYC apartments. I love the creativity of these living spaces, many in styles you just do not see in contemporary design magazines. You can preorder New Yorkers at Bookshop.org — it comes out April 1.
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In 1980, Sol LeWitt created a piece of art called The Area of Manhattan Between the Places I Have Lived Is Removed where he cut out the area between all the places he'd lived in NYC on a satellite image. Matt Miller whipped up an app on Glitch that allows you to make your own map according to those rules. Here's my Between the Places map:
Here is LeWitt's original map:
Looks like Miller's app doesn't optimize for solid, filled polygons — I suspect if I'd been a little more careful about entering my addresses in the correct order, mine would look more like LeWitt's. But still a fun exercise!
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Posing as young apartment-hunting Hungarian billionaire, artist Andi Schmied was able to gain access to more than two dozen luxury apartments in Manhattan and photograph the views from them. The resulting project is called Private Views and you can see some of her photos in this portfolio. Christopher Bonanos interviewed Schmied about the project for Curbed. Regarding the banal sameness of rich people things:
Did you discover anything interesting about the apartments themselves?
They are all the same! I mean, really! For example, the layout of the apartments are essentially identical. You enter, and there's a main view, always from the living room — in the case of Billionaires' Row, everything's facing the park. The second-best view is from the master bedroom, which is usually the corner. Then there's the countertop, which usually a kitchen island in the middle, and there's different types of marble but there's always marble — Calacatta Tucci, or Noir St. Laurent, or Chinchilla Mink, and they always tell you, "It's the best of the best," from a hidden corner of the planet where they hand-selected the most incredible pieces. After five of these, it's incredibly similar, all of them. Also they put a lot of emphasis on naming the designer.
The branding.
Yes. And there's a big competition for amenities, who has the craziest amenities. Of course there's the pool and all of that, but one of the newest things in the past two years in every single development is the golf-simulator room - it's just the standard now.
Private Views is performance art as much as it is about photography and architecture. I love the details about how she conned her way into these buildings by using the eagerness of real estate brokers against them.
But after a while I realized that it absolutely doesn't matter what I wear: From their point of view, you've passed the access, and you can do anything — anything is believable. For example, all the pictures were taken with a film camera, which is [gestures broadly] this big. I'd just ask, "Can I take some pictures for my husband?" which is a very obvious and normal thing to do. There were a few agents who noticed that it was a film camera, not a digital camera, and those who noticed asked, "Oh, wow, is it film?" And I'd always say something like, "Oh, my grandfather gave it to me — to record all the special moments in my life." And they'd just put me in this box of "artsy billionaire," and would start to talk to me about MoMA's latest collection. So anything goes.
For a taste of the real estate banter, you can watch videos that Schmied recorded of her visits in a talk she gave early last year. Schmied is crowdfunding a book based on the project — you can back it here.
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For BBC Future, Sam Arbesman writes about "maps that plot alternative worlds to our own".
These are the "what if" stories that ask us to imagine our world on a different path: what if a battle, election or assassination had gone the other way, or a pivotal person had never been born? Some of these stories involve time travel to make the change, but many alternate histories are simply imagined differences. What if the Nazis had not been beaten, as in the novel The Man in the High Castle, or what if the Soviets had landed a man on the Moon first, like in For All Mankind?
The map above was created by Andrew Shears and shows what the United States could have looked like if various state partition plans had come to fruition.
One of my favorite alternative history maps not covered by Arbesman is Melissa Gould's Neu-York, a map of Manhattan after a hypothetical conquest of the United States by the Nazis in World War II (which I blogged about way back in 2003, when kottke.org had comments!)
See also Alternate Map of the Americas Features "Long Chile".
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This is an aerial photo of Manhattan taken circa 1931. You can see all the way from 125th Street in Harlem down to the tip of Manhattan and beyond. That tall spike 25 blocks south of Central Park is the Empire State Building, which was completed in 1931. Also visible in the photo to varying degrees: Central Park's Hooverville, the Statue of Liberty, several of the East River's bridges, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Governors Island, and the much more uneven shorelines on both the Hudson and East River sides of the city. See also this aerial map of NYC from 1924, which is also available at NYCityMap (click on "Map Type" in the upper right) and a 1931 aerial photo of lower Manhattan.
Note: I tried and failed to track down the source and exact date of this photo. The earliest instances I could find were uncredited posts on Reddit and Facebook from a couple of years ago. Any idea where this came from? Would love to properly credit the source and nail down the year. (via @marinamaral2)
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For Vox, Julia Belluz takes a look at the approach that's made Vermont more successful than most other US states in combatting Covid-19. The big thing? State officials recognized that those most at risk needed more support.
There's a fatal flaw embedded in the basic Covid-19 test, trace, and isolate trifecta used around the world: It doesn't account for the fact that the coronavirus is not an equal-opportunity pathogen. The people who are most likely to be tested, and to have the easiest time quarantining or isolating, are also the least likely to get sick and die from the virus.
From the United Kingdom to Sweden to Canada, we have evidence that the virus preys on people employed in "essential service" jobs (bus drivers, nurses, factory workers), which don't allow for telecommuting or paid sick leave; people in low-income neighborhoods; and people in "congregate housing" like shelters, prisons, and retirement homes.
People of color tend to be overrepresented in these groups — but there's no biological reason they're more likely to get sick and die from the virus. Simply put: They tend to work jobs that bring them outside the home and into close contact with other people, live in crowded environments ideal for coronavirus contagion, or both.
The state then directed efforts, resources, and money to nursing homes, the unhoused, prisons, and essential workers to make it easier for those folks to stay safe.
I also thought this bit was really interesting:
There's a simple adage in public health: "Never do a test without offering something in exchange," said Johns Hopkins's Stefan Baral. So when a patient gets tested for HIV, for example, they're offered treatment, support, or contact tracing. "We're not just doing the testing to get information but also providing a clear service," Baral added, and potentially preventing that person from spreading the virus any further. "This is basic public health."
With Covid-19, the US has failed at basic public health. Across the country, people have been asked to get tested without anything offered in exchange.
"If we are asking people to stay home and not work, we have to make sure society is supporting them," Baral said. "An equitable program would support people to do the right thing."
"Never do a test without offering something in exchange." To the extent that federal and state governments have been asking to people to stay home, get tested, and wear a mask, many of those same governments have been unwilling or unable to provide people with much in return for doing so. And so, here we are months into this, paying for that inaction with 250,000 lives.
Update: How NYC does "never do a test without offering something in exchange":
You can access a free hotel room to safely isolate from your family, which include meals, Rx delivery, free wi-fi, medical staff on site, and transportation to and from hotel and medical appointments.
(via @agoX)
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New York City has a new digital subway map that reflects the current status of the subway lines. And you can even see the trains moving, right on the map. (Finally!!) Visually, the new map combines the styles of two past maps, each beloved in their own way.1Fast Company explains:
The first map is that by Massimo Vignelli, who simplified the snaking subway system into a clean diagram which traded geographic literality for graphical clarity. This elegant simplification turns the confounding subway into a logical system. But the main Vignelli map was scorned by New Yorkers because it wasn't an actual map, and it was quickly replaced (though a permutation actually lives on as the MTA's Weekender diagram, which signals weekend services). Meanwhile, the primary map the MTA uses today was created by Unimark International and Michael Hertz Associates. It's more geographically accurate, but it actually condenses information that was in the Vignelli map. For example, it combines individual train lines such as the C, D, and E lines into singular trunks.
Here's a video from filmmaker Gary Huswit that shows how the team came up with the new map:
Zooming the map in and out, you see different levels of detail, just like with Google or Apple Maps. I like it — a good combination of form and function.2
Update: A reader reminded me of designer Eddie Jabbour's Kick Map of the NYC subway, which effectively melded the styles of the Vignelli and Hertz maps together more than 15 years ago.
What's interesting is that the MTA explicitly rejected and criticized the Kick Map but ended up doing something quite similar with the new digital map. I think Jabbour's effort deserves to be acknowledged here. (thx, nicolas)
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I moved away from NYC more than four years ago, and I still think about Xi'an Famous Foods all the time. I miss going there and pondering the make-up of the mind-bendingly delicious sauces they ladled out onto their hand-pulled noodles — "What the hell is in here that makes it taste so good?" Xi'an is one of my favorite restaurants, but with the pandemic and all, the last time I ate there was nearly an entire year ago. So it's not an understatement to say that I'm overjoyed to see that they are coming out with a cookbook: Xi'an Famous Foods: The Cuisine of Western China, from New York's Favorite Noodle Shop .
CEO Jason Wang divulges the untold story of how this empire came to be, alongside the never-before-published recipes that helped create this New York City icon. From heavenly ribbons of liang pi doused in a bright vinegar sauce to flatbread filled with caramelized pork to cumin lamb over hand-pulled Biang Biang noodles, this cookbook helps home cooks make the dishes that fans of Xi'an Famous Foods line up for while also exploring the vibrant cuisine and culture of Xi'an.
Lemme just highlight the most important part of that paragraph: never-before-published recipes. YESSSSS. The cookbook is coming out next week, but you can pre-order it now from Bookshop.org and Amazon.
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As winter approaches in North America and Europe, cities should be thinking about how to encourage and enable people to spend as much time outdoors as possible to help keep everyone sane and safe from Covid-19. From a great piece in CityLab by Alexandra Lange:
Dress in layers, invest in silk and wool long underwear, get over your prejudice against parkas. Many people do this as a matter of course when gearing up for a day of skiing or a turn around the ice rink. But in cities, people dress for the destination, not the journey. "People dress saying, I'm going from my home to this business. What's the least amount of clothing I can wear for the tolerance of walking x feet?" says Simon O'Byrne, senior vice president of community development for global design consultancy Stantec. "We have to switch that, and dress to loiter."
O'Byrne, who is also co-chair of the WinterCity Advisory Council, adds, "Stickiness encourages people outside. Moscow does year-round farmers markets. The artists' community has been pulverized by Covid. As much as we can, we should embrace things to help the local artists, community." He suggests commissioning visual artists to illuminate dark spaces, via murals or light installations, and hiring musicians for distanced outdoor concerts.
Cities should also invest in places to loiter. All of those outdoor restaurants that are supporting local businesses and bringing liveliness back to the streets? In New York City, at least, they are scheduled to shut down at the end of October, while the mayor and governor bicker over indoor dining. But cities need to catch up to ski areas, which long ago figured out how to make après ski activities like outdoor bars and music venues as much of an attraction as the slopes. Wind breaks (with openings above and below for ventilation), patio heaters and sun orientation can all take outdoor dining further into 2020. WinterCity's Four Season Patio Design Tips also include higher insulation value materials, like wood or straw bales rather than metal seating, as well as simple solutions like blankets, which offer customers the winter equivalent of being able to reposition your chair in the sun — though that works year-round.
And indeed, NYC just announced that the increased outdoor dining that the city has allowed during the pandemic will become "permanent and year-round".
Tens of thousands of parking spaces will be permanently repurposed from free private vehicle storage for use by the city's struggling restaurant owners as part of a revolution in public space unleashed on Friday by Mayor de Blasio.
On WNYC's "Ask the Mayor" segment, Hizzoner revealed that restaurants would be allowed to occupy curbside spaces - which more than 10,000 are already doing — for outdoor dining, not just through the coronavirus pandemic, but all year and, apparently, forever.
It may turn out to be the single biggest conversion of public space since, well, since car drivers commandeered the curbside lane for free overnight vehicle storage in the 1950s.
But whatever measures are taken, they need to be inclusive for the diverse populations that live in cities. Here's Lange again, who spends several paragraphs in her piece on this issue:
Snow clearance has become an ongoing political issue for winter cities, with disabled people, the elderly, and parents and caregivers arguing that sidewalks and crossings deserve the same priority as cars, lest people be essentially trapped in their homes. Many physically disabled people have already had their mobility limited during quarantine due to pre-existing health risks, the inability to avoid using elevators and the difficulty of maintaining social distancing. Temporary urban design changes also need to be inclusive.
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Photographer Daniel Arnold and editor Dodai Stewart collaborated on a photoessay documenting the first five months of the pandemic in NYC. That image above is just...wow.
See also COVID-19 Empties Out Public Spaces.
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Using census data (which she acknowledges can be imperfect in capturing the full range of people's identities), data scientist/artist Mona Chalabi created a drawing of 100 people who are representative of NYC's population for a NY Times opinion piece on inequality and coronavirus.
Chalabi writes on Instagram:
When you think about who is most affected by Covid-19, you need to consider inequalities in housing, in access to healthcare, in wealth. And so much of that ends up consistently affecting people of color. You could think of it as overlapping circles in a Venn diagram. Or, you could look at these 100 people.
She's selling prints of this on her website (pink background, black background), with all profits going towards a Covid-19 rent relief fund for families organized by The Conscious Kid.
See also If Only 100 People Lived on Earth...
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The NY Times' Michael Kimmelman has been taking a series of virtual walks around NYC, exploring different aspects of the city. His latest walk is with Eric Sanderson, conservation ecologist and author of Mannahatta: A Natural History of New York City. The pair of them start at the southern tip of Manhattan over 400 years ago, with Sanderson explaining how the island would have appeared when Henry Hudson arrived in 1609.
Michael Kimmelman: Aside from Hudson's ship, what do we see?
Eric W. Sanderson: Whales and porpoises. One of the earliest sketches we have of Manhattan shows a whale in the Hudson River. The charter of Trinity Church includes a provision specifically saying dead whales found on beaches in the province of New York are property of the church, which could use them to make oil and whale bone. So whales were clearly a meaningful part of the local economy and ecosystem.
Kimmelman: What was the ecosystem?
Sanderson: Ecosystems, actually. Manhattan is something like one percent the size of Yellowstone. Yellowstone is 2.2 million acres and it has 66 ecosystems. Mannahatta had 55.
It's an interesting thought exercise to imagine what might have happened had the United States been colonized from the West, instead of from the East. We might have decided to make Manhattan a national park. We would be coming to New York for an entirely different sort of wildlife.
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The NYPL has released an album of sound-based experiences that you might be missing right now as we all shelter at home: Missing Sounds of New York.
It's a short album (16 min) and includes soundscapes like Serenity Is a Rowdy City Park, I'd Call a Cab to Anywhere, and The Not-Quite-Quiet Library.
See also this 3+ hour album of ambient city sounds. There are also many videos of ambient city sounds on YouTube, like this 10-hour video of ambient NYC sounds:
This is a mix of ambience sounds recorded around Christmas Eve as well as St Patrick's Day. Enjoy the sounds of people talking, traffic noises, police sirens, subway sounds, footsteps around NYC. City sounds at night and day.
Or perhaps you'd like to go for a stroll in the city instead? (via the morning news)
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For the cover of this week's New Yorker, Chris Ware drew several vignettes of NYC arranged in his trademark grid as a companion to this incredible piece about a single day of the Covid-19 crisis in the city. About the cover, Ware wrote:
Teeming with unpredictable people and unimaginable places and unforeseeable moments, life there is measured not in hours but in densely packed minutes that can fill up a day with a year's worth of life. Lately, however, closed up in our homes against a worldwide terror, time everywhere has seemed to slur, to become almost Groundhog Day-ish, forced into a sort of present-perfect tense — or, as my fellow New Yorker contributor Masha Gessen more precisely put it, 'loopy, dotted, and sometimes perpendicular to itself.' But disaster can also have a recalibrating quality. It reminds us that the real things of life (breakfast, grass, spouse) can, in normal times, become clotted over by anxieties and nonsense. We're at low tide, but, as my wife, a biology teacher, said to me this morning, "For a while, we get to just step back and look." And really, when you do, it is pretty marvellous.
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It's unfortunate that places like the Brooklyn Botanic Garden need to be closed during this stressful time, because the cherry blossoms are in bloom right now and what a balm that would be to so many souls. Luckily, cinematographer Nic Petry was granted access to the garden a couple of weeks ago to capture a relaxing and meditative walk through the Japanese Garden.
The historic garden is one of the oldest extant Japanese gardens in the United States, and its collection of cherry cultivars was in lovely bloom during filming. Petry, a specialist in moving camera techniques, conceived the piece as a way to recreate the meditative experience of walking through the garden on a glorious, early spring day.
(via laura olin)
Update: See also Gothamist's photos and drone video of the cherry blossoms this year.
Update: Now that more cherry trees are in blossom at the garden, they have uploaded a video of a walk through the esplanade.
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Clad in full PPE, photographer Philip Montgomery visited seven different NYC public hospitals over the course of a week for the NY Times Magazine, documenting the hospital workers' fight against Covid-19, supply shortages, and intense working conditions.
At Elmhurst, the improvisation began as soon as the first surge of coronavirus patients started arriving in the middle of March. In order to more efficiently sift through the crowds and find the most severe cases, the staff set up a divider at the entrance. Medical workers armed with thermometers and oxygen monitors steered people with milder symptoms to a separate treatment tent. Those who were seriously ill went into critical care. Thirteen patients at the hospital died over a 24-hour stretch during the fourth week in March. A refrigerated trailer was parked behind the building to store dead bodies.
In a short behind-the-scenes video about his photos and the piece, Montgomery says "I think if the general public could stand where I was for at least 10 to 30 seconds, I think everyone would be staying home."
From the same issue of the magazine, Dr. Helen Ouyang: I'm an E.R. Doctor in New York. None of Us Will Ever Be the Same. What initially started as an article about the situation in Italy rapidly escalates into NYC hospitals fighting those same battles.
Family members weren't allowed into the hospital because they, too, could get infected or spread the virus to others if they themselves were sick. But Duca asked for permission from his supervisor to let the man's wife and daughter in, just for a few minutes. "I saw his face when he looked at his wife coming inside this room," Duca recalls. "He smiled at her. It was a fraction of a second. He had this wonderful smile." He continues: "Then I saw that he was looking at me. He realized that there was something wrong if only his relatives were coming inside." The man knew in that instant that he was going to die, Duca says. As the man's breathing worsened, morphine was started. He died 12 hours later.
Read the whole thing; it's upsetting, terrifying, and deeply humanizing. I wish Americans watched less TV news and read more — if everyone in the US read these articles, I believe the entire tone of this crisis would change and become more urgent.
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Stuck at home during the pandemic, filmmaker Nicolas Heller decided to hold a contest on Instagram to find the person with the best New York accent.
It would be impolitic to say that the New York accent is the signature American accent. You could argue, though, that the New York accent is the accent of the current crisis. It's there in the burly roundness of the words coming out of Gov. Andrew Cuomo's mouth, or the acidity in the tone of Dr. Anthony Fauci, or the way President Trump scrapes all of his syllables together. (Senator Bernie Sanders's howling woof counts here, too.)
For New Yorkers, that's made the conversation around the coronavirus feel as local as the pandemic's actual impact. Watching the news can feel like watching quarrels between grouchy neighbors.
In this climate, the #BestNYAccent challenge was even more reassuring. A reminder of local resilience and stubbornness in the face of global trauma. A monument to history and place standing firm against titanic winds. A middle finger to life's cruel dice roll.
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For New York Apartment, an art project commissioned by The Whitney, artists Sam Lavigne and Tega Brain compiled actual NYC real estate listings into a listing for one mega apartment for sale.
Compiled from actual online real estate listings, the artwork collapses the high and low ends of the market, architectural periods and styles, and neighborhoods and affordability into a single space that cumulatively creates a portrait of New York's living spaces and the real estate market. Like a standard real estate ad, the listing shows the price, number of bed- and bathrooms, and square footage, all of which are updated weekly based on the city's aggregated real estate listings.
Take some time to explore the project — take the 3D virtual tour, scroll through all of the bathrooms & closets, peruse the apartment features, and take the video tour:
Do you crave brilliant sunshine and the peace Zen behind closed doors at home, and the bustle and excitement of the big city at your doorstep?
Do you dream of a Manhattan life?
Do you dream of Brooklyn living with Manhattan in reach?
Do you have a thing for top floor apartments?
Do you have vision?
Do you like light?
Do you love to cook?
Do you love to entertain?
Do you need lots of closet space?
Do you own or plan to buy a car?
Do you prefer simple shaker style wood cabinets with solid surface counters or custom lacquer cabinets paired with a travertine marble?
Do you want a home just steps to the beach?
Do you want Katz Deli, Russ and Daughters or maybe some Economy Candy?
Contact information for all of the brokers is listed on the site in case you're interested.
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In 1994, legendary street fashion photographer Bill Cunningham gave a six-hour interview about his life and work. This interview was recently rediscovered and made into a documentary called The Times of Bill Cunningham. Here's a trailer:
The movie is out in theaters, but the reviews so far are mixed, especially when compared to the rave reviews received by 2011's Bill Cunningham New York. Still, Cunningham is a gem and I will watch this at some point soon. (via recs)
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New York artist Jason Polan has passed away at the age of 37. The cause was colon cancer. From the NY Times obituary:
Mr. Polan's signature project for the last decade or so was "Every Person in New York," in which he set himself the admittedly impossible task of drawing everyone in New York City. He kept a robust blog of those sketches, and by the time he published a book of that title in 2015 — which he envisioned as Vol. 1 — he had drawn more than 30,000 people.
These were not sit-for-a-portrait-style drawings. They were quick sketches of people who often didn't know they were being sketched, done on the fly, with delightfully unfinished results, as Mr. Polan wrote in the book's introduction.
"If they are moving fast, the drawing is often very simple," he wrote. "If they move or get up from a pose, I cannot cheat at all by filling in a leg that had been folded or an arm pointing. This is why some of the people in the drawings might have an extra arm or leg — it had moved while I was drawing them. I think, hope, this makes the drawings better."
See also obituaries and remembrances from Gothamist and Ghostly. You can check out his blog and buy some of his work from 20x200.
I never met Polan in person — we corresponded via email occasionally, were admirers of each other's work (I have several of his drawings), and I linked to his stuff sometimes (not enough) — but many of my friends knew him well and are reeling. There was a gentleness, a loving attention, that really came through in his work and in talking with the folks who knew him, that's the way he was in person too. A kind soul, gone too soon. Rest in peace, Jason.
Update: Polan's friend and long-time collaborator Jen Bekman posted a lovely tribute to him on 20x200.
Jason noticed. This was his thing. The effortlessness with which he could hone in on a person in the endless stream of the city, pick out just one or two details that made them unique and make art of them. People often asked me if I thought he had a photographic memory, and yea, maybe he did, but it wasn't really the source of his genius. The source, I think, was his bottomless empathy and interest.
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In the 1850s, the well-heeled residents of Manhattan were convinced the city needed a grand park like the European capitals had. And so, a park located in the middle of the city was proposed, a Central Park, if you will. The only problem? There were people living in the park's proposed location, including Seneca village, a small, integrated, predominately black neighborhood.
It's a story that goes back to the 1820s, when that part of New York was largely open countryside. Soon it became home to about 1,600 people. Among them was a predominantly black community that bought up affordable plots to build homes, churches and a school. It became known as Seneca Village. And when Irish and German immigrants moved in, it became a rare example at the time of an integrated neighborhood.
See also 'The City Needed Them Out'.
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Filmed during Uncut Gems, Goldman v Silverman is a short film by the Safdie brothers starring Adam Sandler & Benny Safdie as dueling street performers dressed up in metallic paint. In addition to the paint, Sandler has a mask on and doesn't really talk, so no one in Times Square realizes it's him. (via gothamist)
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Inspired by a trip to Venice, the world's most prominent example of what life could be like in many of our coastal cities in the years to come, Hayden Williams made a series of 3D rendered images showing what our world might look like underwater. (via the morning news)
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The Endangered Language Alliance has produced a map of the 637 languages and dialects spoken by the residents of NYC (past and present).
It represents ELA's ongoing effort to draw on all available sources, including thousands of interviews and discussions, to tell the continuing story of the city's many languages and cultures. The patterns it reveals — the clustering of West African languages in Harlem and the Bronx, a microcosm of the former Soviet Union in south Brooklyn, the multifaceted Asian-language diversity of Queens, to name a few — only hint at the linguistic complexity of a city where a single building or block can host speakers of dozens of languages from across the globe.
The online map embedded in the page works ok, but a $50 donation to the organization will get you a 24″ x 36″ print for your wall.
According to a Gothamist post about the map, the size and diversity of the city sometimes means that a significant chunk of a language's worldwide speakers live in NYC:
Seke is a language spoken in just a handful of towns in Nepal-worldwide, there are fewer than 700 people who speak it. More than 100 of those people live in Brooklyn and Queens, according to the Endangered Language Alliance, a group that seeks to document and preserve smaller, minority, and Indigenous languages across New York City.
(via gothamist)
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File this under "I Love NYC". On Sunday night, riders on a Brooklyn-bound L train were treated to a full Thanksgiving dinner, courtesy of some of their fellow straphangers. For more than 20 minutes, a group of riders dined and passed out plates of turkey, collards, stuffing, squash, and mashed potatoes to other folks in the car. Here's a 21-minute chunk of the action:
They started the meal with a prayer and everything. An onlooker said of the event:
It was a 7 PM Sunday L from union square and was not crowded at all. They said it was an inclusive gesture to emphasize no one should go without food on Thanksgiving. They were loud but not rowdy or a nuisance. They even handed out plates to everyone in the car — I got one and the turkey was a solid 7/10 and collard 8.5/10. I'm glad I got to experience something like this. Makes a great story!
There were even MTA employees amongst us but no one objected.
Here's a shorter video with some of the highlights:
(thx, johana)
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Using almost 1300 photos from Instagram of iconic/stereotypical shots of NYC, Sam Morrison spent 200 hours creating what he calls a crowdsourced hyperlapse video of the city. I love it. Reminds me a little of the old Microsoft application Photosynth, which could stitch together hundreds of online photos of, say, the Eiffel Tower or Golden Gate Bridge into a composite 3D image. (via a newly resurgent waxy.org)
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That's much of Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens captured by Maxar's Worldview-3 satellite, but at an unusually low angle. Here's a closer view of the southern tip of Manhattan:
Says Daily Overview of the shot:
This particular shot is made possible due to the focal length of the camera in this satellite that is roughly 32 times longer than that of a standard DSLR camera.
I don't know what practical value low-angle satellite photos have, but they sure are beautiful.
See also a low-angle satellite photo of San Francisco.
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Last week, the beloved NYC eating establishment City Bakery closed its doors due to financial troubles.1 Rachel Holliday Smith dug into what happened for The City. It sounds like the company over-expanded, couldn't get out of the debt it took on, and got into a series of increasingly bad lending situations.
One of those bad deals was borrowing $75,000 from a financial services firm called Kalamata Capital Group and promising to pay back $105,000. That's a 40% interest rate, firmly in loan shark territory. But this is the bit that really got my eyebrows heading north (especially the bit in italics):
In a statement, the chief operating officer of Kalamata Capital Group, Brandon Laks, said the company "is truly sorry City Bakery decided to close" and stressed that many Kalamata Capital Group employees loved the establishment.
He said KCG made amendments to the funding agreement as City Bakery struggled and "without KCG's capital and amendments, City Bakery would have closed, and jobs would have been lost, much sooner."
"Unfortunately, many small businesses close and it is a risk KCG takes when we help fund and support these businesses," he said.
Let's be clear here: City Bakery was primarily a place for folks who can afford $5 croissants, but this is one of those instances where capitalism has become deeply disconnected from the people it's allegedly supposed to benefit. All those KCG employees that loved City Bakery? Meaningless bullshit. A local lender that wants to invest in the community and its businesses doesn't charge 40% interest. City Bakery needed some solid financial advice, a plan for getting out from under their debt (if possible), and a loan with decent terms. All KCG did was give City Bakery more rope to hang themselves and called it "support".
Update: A couple people have pointed out that we don't know the length of the loan and so cannot calculate the annual interest rate. Even so, as the article details, these "merchant cash advance" loans are under increasing scrutiny for being predatory:
As the Duncans soon learned, tens of thousands of contractors, florists, and other small-business owners nationwide were being chewed up by the same legal process. Behind it all was a group of financiers who lend money at interest rates higher than those once demanded by Mafia loan sharks. Rather than breaking legs, these lenders have co-opted New York's court system and turned it into a high-speed debt-collection machine. Government officials enable the whole scheme. A few are even getting rich doing it.
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