The result, after much whacking, is, I think, compelling, but you’ll have to see for yourself. The general idea it that the history of subway ridership tells a story about the history of a neighborhood that is much richer than the overall trend. An example, below, shows the wild comeback of inner Williamsburg, and how the growth decays at each successive stop away from Manhattan on the L train.
The CBC has a clip of Jane Jacobs talking about Toronto and Montreal from 1969. In it, she makes the distinction between the two urban organizational forces at work in Toronto, a sort of “civil schizophrenia”: the vernacular spirit (“full of fun”) and the official spirit (“stamp out fun”). I also found a video on YouTube about Robert Moses and his difficulties with Ms. Jacobs which concludes with a cheeky update of Arnold Newman’s iconic photo of Moses.
This is a little bit brilliant. Here and There are a pair of maps of Manhattan that start from an on-the-street viewpoint and curl up as you gaze uptown or downtown until you see the rest of the island from a traditional “flat map” view.
As the model bends from sideways to top-down in a smooth join, more distant parts of the city are revealed in plan view. The projection connects the viewer’s local environment to remote destinations normally out of sight.
Prints are available. This is like a 3-D version of the spider maps for London buses, in which a local street grid relays information about the immediate vicinity while the surrounding schematic shows connections to the rest of the system.
Update: Ooh, these science illustrations from NISE use a similar technique to simultaneously show the internal and external structure of their subjects.
These illustrations show familiar objects across ten orders of magnitude-from familiar aspects down to the level of their constituent atoms. Vast scale differences are usually shown through separate images (e.g., the Eames’ Powers of Ten). This illustration employs the artistic convention of perspective-typically used by landscape painters-to show multiple scales in one frame.
It’s one thing to become a New Yorker; it’s so much weirder to become a New Yorker that all the other New Yorkers know.
Lauren Hutton wasn’t going to stay in NYC at all:
I was supposed to meet a friend in New York, and we were going to take a tramp steamer to Tangier. It was going to cost $140. Once I got there, my plan was to take a bus for ten cents to the outskirts of town and see elephants and rhinoceroses and giraffes. I was as ignorant as a telephone pole.
The first night I moved here, I met Madonna. She walked up to me at the opening of Club USA with a lollipop and a beer, and she was like, “Hmmm, you look cute.” And I was like, “You’re Madonna!” I’m like, This is New York. Wow.
Danny Meyer eventually realized he should be in the food business:
I entertained all the time, hosting lovely brunches where I would go out and source the best cheeses and pates I could find, which was a big deal for a 22-year-old back then.
Nick Denton moved here from San Francisco:
I finally decided to come here after 9/11. The foreign press was full of love letters to New York. Writers like Martin Amis were waking up and thinking, “Oh my God, we almost lost it!” I know it sounds sentimental, but no one would ever write a love letter to San Francisco.
My wife and I decided to move here after a visit in early 2002, which visit was influenced by some of the same writing Nick refers to. All these people writing so passionately about a place, it must be pretty special. We decided to check it out. But more specifically, we moved here so that Meg could start a company with Nick.
While the company didn’t work out so well, moving here was one of the best decisions we’ve ever made. We picked the smallest apartment on the fifth floor of the crappiest building on one of the best blocks in NYC. I sporadically freelanced for Gawker and a few other companies but didn’t find a full-time job until about 6 months in. But a pleasant walk home down tree-lined streets, good light into our small bedroom, an apartment layout suited perfectly to our furniture, and the intense immensity of the city made all the difference.
Everything was still new and exciting to us. Your first year in New York is great because there’s so much you think you and your friends discovered, like “a great little burger place called Corner Bistro” or “the best corn in the world at this place Cafe Habana.”
Ha! Meg and I discovered “these great cupcakes at this place called The Magnolia Bakery” shortly after moving here.
I met one of Ricky’s partners, Zach Klein, through Nick Denton (him again!); we had brunch together one Satuday morning shortly before their New Yorker piece ran. The meal probably couldn’t have gone much worse. I’d just had all four of my wisdom teeth pulled the day before, so I was all bloody and jacked up on Vicodin, trying to eat salad even though I don’t care for it very much and wasn’t that hungry anyway, and wondering why in the hell Nick wanted me to meet this guy who ran a joke and boobs site for college kids. After recovering my health and senses, I eventually met Ricky, Josh, and Jakob and got to go to a couple of those fantastic parties. The cabinet of crystal was indeed weird. (thx, andy)
It will be high, it will be long, and it will be outdoors in a very recognizable location that he does not want revealed quite yet — arrangements are not final.
Also, the New Yorker has a story in this week’s issue (subscribers only) about Alain Robert, another Frenchman with a thing for tall buildings.
Robert is a vertical tourist. He has traversed the planet on a dogged, gutsy tour of the world’s high-rises and, then, its jail cells and holding pens. Of the world’s ten tallest buildings, he has climbed five. Most of the remaining half are in China, which he has been banned from entering since 2007, when he climbed the Jin Mao Tower.
Banh Mi Saigon Bakery, one of my favorite places to get my lunch on, gets a shout-out in the NY Times. The bread is really fantastic. I’m intrigued by the sandwich at Silent H called the Greenpoint:
Elsewhere in Brooklyn, where authenticity is not as strictly enforced, Vinh Nguyen has created a succulent banh mi at Silent H called the Greenpoint: a tribute to the area’s many traditional Polish butcher shops. Instead of cha lua, smooth pork terrine, he lays on Krakowska kielbasa, a smoked sausage. “That smokiness and pepperiness makes perfect sense on a banh mi,” he said. “I would be a fool to ignore these great traditional products being made in my neighborhood.”
In 1879, Brooklyn papermaker Robert Gair developed a process for mass producing foldable cardboard boxes. One of the paper-folding machines in his factory malfunctioned and sliced through the paper, leading Gair to the realization that cutting, creasing, and folding in the same series of steps could transform a flat piece of cardboard into a box.
Gair’s box, a cheap, light alternative to wood, became “the swaddling clothes of our metropolitan civilization,” Lewis Mumford wrote. Eventually, the National Biscuit Compnay introduced its first crackers that stayed crispy in a sealed paper box, and an avalanche of manufacturers followed. Gair expanded to ten buildings on the Brooklyn waterfront. Massive migration from Europe to the United States created a manufacturing workforce in Brooklyn, to curn out ale, coffee, soap, and Brillo pads — and Gair made boxes right beside them.
Gair’s concentrated collection of buildings eventually led the area between the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges to be called Gairville. That area is now known as Dumbo and, in addition to tons of residential space, the neighborhood is home not to manufacturing but to architecture firms, web companies, and other creative industries.
The Gair Company’s most iconic building was also its last: the Clocktower Building, also known as Gair Building No. 7. I tracked down several of the other Gair buildings and put them on this Google Map.
This was true for me, at least, while I was making these; Hand erasing buildings through SoHo, TriBeCa, and the LES was an eery experience as I tried to imagine what these places would really look like if my brush was a bulldozer.
An organization called FIGMENT is building an 18-hole mini golf course on Governors Island and they are accepting design proposals through March 31 from artists, designers, and other would-be mini golf course builders.
The Challenge: Design and construct a single hole for this mini golf course, following the theme “City of Dreams.” Designs will be judged and selected on creativity, structural integrity, playability, feasibility, adherence to theme and budget.
Drain (1975) MTA and unknown artists Mixed Media on Metal and Concrete
Describing the irresistibility of natural urges, and situated thematically near the restroom, this drainage grate offers deliverance. Consequently, here lies an indeliable yellow nitrogen stain, as evidence of the passings of hundreds, if not thousands of strained commuters. Each straphanger, surreptitiously seeking relief, has helped create this totally organic, revolutionary art piece.
5. Fill in the Harlem River, which separates Manhattan and the Bronx. The Harlem River did not become a navigable waterway until 1895, when the Army Corps of Engineers dredged a shipping canal that provided direct passage for vessels from the East River to the Hudson. Nineteen years later, the creek that had served as the northern boundary of Manhattan was filled in, leaving the neighborhood of Marble Hill, still technically part of Manhattan, physically attached to the Bronx.
In a bid to avoid the wrecking ball, Venturi’s Lieb House is traveling by barge from the New Jersey coast to the north shore of Long Island. During the two-day trip, the house will journey through the Atlantic Ocean, across New York Harbor, up the East River, and into Long Island Sound — a distance of about 75 miles, as the seagull flies.
The floating house will be shown in an upcoming documentary about Venturi, his wife, and their architectural practice. (thx, ed)
The NY Times has a nice interactive map showing the results from a city-wide poll that asked New Yorkers to evaluate how they feel about crime, education, the 311 service, and dozens of other things. Correlation is not causation but you can almost see the broken windows theory in effect here…high crime areas generally seem to correlate with neighborhoods that have graffiti, subpar trash pickup, and are unclean.
Today, the Transportation Department has gotten serious about biking, and in just three years, the agency has painted bike lanes (good), constructed bike lanes separated by parked cars (great) and bike lanes separated by medians or barriers (the best) and installed bike signals, bike signs and many bike symbols painted on the street.
Sullivan also notes that because of this increased use, pedestrians and car drivers (usually natural enemies) now share a dislike of bikers who run red lights, ride on sidewalks, weave through traffic, and blow through busy crosswalks. He offers four ways that bikers can improve their perception with the public.
NO. 1: How about we stop at major intersections? Especially where there are school crossing guards, or disabled people crossing, or a lot of people during the morning or evening rush. (I have the law with me on this one.) At minor intersections, on far-from-traffic intersections, let’s at least stop and go.
Suggestions for pedestrians (don’t cross against the light when a bike is coming, don’t stand in the bike lane while waiting to cross the street, etc.) and cars (don’t park in the bike lane, don’t wait to turn in the bike lane, etc.) would be helpful too.
The clip shows an analysis of the plaza of the Seagram Building in NYC and what makes it so effective as a small urban space.
A busy place for some reason seems to be the most congenial kind of place if you want to be alone. […] The number one activity is people looking at other people.
The video was adapted from a book of the same name by William H. Whyte, who is perhaps most well known as the author of The Organization Man. The video is largely out of print — which is a shame because that clip was fascinating — but I found a DVD copy for $95 (which price includes a license for public performance). (via migurski)
Due to the quirks of the NYC-area bridge toll system, truckers traveling between New Jersey and Long Island often take the Verrazano Bridge on the way into town (for free) but cut across downtown Brooklyn and lower Manhattan and out via the Holland or Lincoln Tunnels (for free) on the way out of town to avoid the steep toll on the Verrazano, creating a daily truck tsunami in areas of the city that aren’t equipped to handle it. (thx, david)
A Continuous Lean found some great Life magazine photos of Sherman Billingsley, the owner of a famous NYC nightclub called The Stork Club, which club was frequented by celebrities, artists, and the well-to-do from 1929 to 1965. In the photos, Billingsley is pictured at his club giving secret hand signals to his assistant while sitting with guests.
Closeup of Stork Club owner Sherman Billingsley [with his] palm up on table, one of his signals to nearby assistant which means “Bring a bottle of champagne,” while sitting w. patrons over his usual Coca Cola, in the Cub Room.
Billingsley’s signals cleverly allowed the club to provide seamless good service to his favored patrons while also letting him be the bad guy with less favorable customers without them knowing it. Billingsley went on to be the third base coach for the Yankees in the late 60s. (Untrue.)
The doorbell rang at seven p.m. at the family house in Fort Lee, New Jersey, right across the Hudson River from Manhattan. “I opened the front door and there was Marlon Brando, James Caan, Morgana King [who played Don Corleone’s wife], Gianni Russo [who played Don Corleone’s son-in-law, Carlo], Al Ruddy [the film’s producer], and my uncle Al [Lettieri],” recalls Gio. “We all went downstairs into the family room, where the table was set and where we had the pool table and the bar.”
Hannah Emily Upp suffers from dissociative fugue, “a rare form of amnesia that causes people to forget their identity, suddenly and without warning, and can last from a few hours to years”, which caused her to disappear from her usual life for three weeks until she was found floating, alive, in New York Harbor.
Its most famous sufferer is the fictional Jason Bourne, the secret agent made flesh on film by Matt Damon. The Bourne character takes his name from Ansel Bourne, a Rhode Island preacher who suffered the earliest recorded case of the condition when he was en route to Providence in 1887. The preacher continued to Norristown, Pa., where he opened a store and lived with another family, until one day he “woke up.”
Although it seems counterintuitive, officials believe the move will actually improve the overall flow of traffic, because the diagonal path of Broadway tends to disrupt traffic where it intersects with other streets.
The streets will become pedestrian malls instead. Love this.
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