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Early Addition
The One Times Square building is empty. Why? Because the owner can afford it by selling ad space alone. It costs $300,000/month to advertise on that structure -- one of things you'll learn in this behind-the-LED-screens look at Times Square.
Host John Woods takes a look at the crossroads of commerce, and even talks to the owner of Landmark Signs, Tony Calvano, whose company has been maintaining and installing most ads in Times Square since when they were just painted on. How primitive!
Another fun fact not in the video: The famous news ticker display on One Times Square was first used to announce the results of the U.S. presidential election in 1928.
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The City should build a homeless shelter in Times Square and sell ads on it for funding.
@PBRK
screw that. I wanna live in that unfinished building.
My grandfather was an electrician and worked for the Times during the depression. He retired around 1960. He was a small man and one of his jobs was to crawl out and replace the burned out bulbs in the news crawl running around the building.
He had a key ring that must have opened every door in the place. When he retired he gave me the ring. I'll have to dig it out and take a few pictures.
Why would anyone want to have to live in, work in, in or have to look at this gorgeous marble and terra cotta building, when prime civic space can be occupied by a gutted shell used as a garish billboard to sell soda and beer to gawking passersby?
That building was stripped to bare girders long before it was used purely for advertising, so don't blame it on the billboards. New York often does not love its past. Aside from the original Penn Station, think about the Singer Building that used to be in the Financial District.
Although Appalachia is not on the top of my summer vacation must go to list, aren't these miners getting paid to mine the coal?
Granted mining and quarrying are dangerous jobs, but they are not kept under ball and chain 24/7. So there's an alternative to their life style if they want it. Pick and shovel work never paid well. Just ask all the Irish and Italian immigrants from a hundred years ago. Of course you can't ask them personally because they are dead, but you get the idea.