Results tagged “boingboing”

The David Byrne and Creative Time installation, Playing the Building, opened earlier this month and will stay open through August 10th. If you're still unsure about what this endeavor involves, Byrne himself explained it all over at Boing Boing.

The late artist Jim Flora, perhaps best recognized for his album cover art in the 1940s and '50s, was also known for his commercial art, illustrations, paintings, woodcuts and prints. The above is "a limited-edition, archival-quality fine art print of a 1954 Jim Flora hand-tinted woodcut entitled Manhattan." There were 5 of these prints selling on eBay (only 25 were made), but they sold out quick! Here's the seller's description of the coveted work:

The cityscape depicts New York in its 1950s glory, including a number of gotham landmarks such as the Empire State Building, St. Patrick's Cathedral, Madison Square Garden, the Statue of Liberty, famous theaters and legendary musical bistros, Washington Square arch, subways, taxis, horse-drawn carriages and tourists.

Today Lego celebrates the big 5-0, even getting some Google-love for hitting the half century mark.

Think you've seen some big cockroaches around here? Apparently there are far superior critters in space! It's being reported that some cockroaches were conceived in space late last year onboard the Russian Foton-M bio satellite and are developing faster than the common terrestrial ones we see scurrying about the city. Some "highlights":

The other day we visited the past's future by looking at the aero-tropolis, now let's see what how the future of mass transit was envisioned back in the day. The future, straphangers, is all about endless belt trains! Modern Mechanix takes a look at the November 1932 debut of the vision:

Transporation of city inhabitants through subway or overhead tubes on endlessly moving belts, providing more speed and comfort than our present systems of passenger service, loom as a possibility, according to Norman W. Storer, engineer of the Westinghouse Electrical Co., who has developed the idea.

Continue reading "Train of the Future, As Seen in 1932"

The New Yorker invites one and all to create a Eustace Tilley! The now iconic character first appeared in 1925 on the cover of the magazine's debut issue, and has returned every year for the anniversary.

In the November 1939 issue of Popular Science, New York commercial artist Nicholas DeSantis designed a "metropolitan skyport of tomorrow". His five years of study led to a proposal that included a 200-story building topped off with a landing field spanning 8 city blocks long and three wide. And to top that all off, the 50 highest floors in the building were reserved for light aircraft, so one could commute to work in the city and leave their plane in the hangars while 250,000 private cars and taxis awaited to whisk them off to work.

Artist and David Byrne collaborator Danielle Spencer (not to be confused with the Danielle Spencer who played Dee in What’s Happening!! or the Australian actress/singer Danielle Spencer married to Russell Crowe) has some pretty creative friends. Every November this Danielle Spencer hosts a pre-Thanksgiving dinner party in which guests make a fake turkey out of various eccentric ingredients. Some of them, like the Quiche turkey (pictured) or the sushi turkey look to be even...

Should Bob Saget, John Stamos or … that other guy... decide to keep it real by riding the New York City subway, they’ll likely find themselves wondering whatever happened to predictability. That’s right; consider yourselves on notice Danny Tanner, Joey and Uncle Jesse. The Olsen twins are one thing, but our subways are full enough without you and your irreverent hi-jinks, thank you very much. Though we might consider an exception for Stamos if...

We have lots of videos to get you in a Halloween state of mind while you undoubtedly are suffering from a sugar crash after too much office candy. First up, IntoTheBox has a scary New York story with a real estate twist (after all, what's scarier than Manhattan real estate?!) -- travel to Confucius Plaza on Bowery and Canal, here.

Boing Boing has a story that borders on an urban legend we once heard. Nadege Brunacci, owner of Pit Stop in Brooklyn, found a snake in her home's sewage pipes -- and not just any snake, a very large python!

Michael Dory is expanding the definition of graffiti, with his non-visual sonic street art (presented last month at Conflux). His inconspicuous concrete crickets (pictured) recently got some NPR and Boing Boing love, and his own site explains:

Graffiti is one of the most powerful and most personal displays in the urban experience, and can be used to make statements, tag territory, spread messages — urban markup language in practice. However, the output is nearly always visual in nature, making this experience one-dimensional. Furthermore, rarely does the work have a brain of its own, and is usually incapable of reacting to anybody observing it.

Continue reading "Concrete Crickets Are Amongst Us"

Amidst all of the iPhone hoopla there was probably more than one incident of unkind words being exchanged around the long lines. Boing Boing points out one in which a mascot for a hunger-awareness campaign named Hungrr got assaulted by the NBC News crew! This happened outside the Apple store on 5th Avenue as the mascot was handing out pins for the organization. Hungrr was there buying an iPhone to sell on eBay to raise money for the Northwest Louisiana Food bank, helping Katrina victims.

Breathe easy, New York City - the NYPD has removed the LED pieces with Aqua Teen Hunger Force's mooninite Ignignokt from locations. It's unclear where they were, but WNBC reported that one was at 54th Street and 9th Avenue. And don't worry, folks, the Boston police have arrested Peter Berdovsky for planting the LED devices. Berdovsky's website, Zebbler.com, shows the locations of 20 devices (or, as the Massachusetts authorities are calling them, "hoax devices").

-Finally if you somehow managed to not set your clock back an hour today, now would be the time to get around to it.

Since boing boing posted it on Monday, Gothamist has been enjoying Ji Lee's Bubble Project. Lee printed 50,000 "thought bubble" stickers and plastered them over advertisements of all sorts across the city, waited for the vultures to uncap their pens with glee, and then went back to photograph what people wrote. The results are broken up into different sections, such as Social Commentary, Personal Messages and Media and Fashion. Gothamist's favorites are would be this one of Michael Douglas, a Thomas Jefferson quote and a Starbucks thought. If you haven't already, also check out the Seeds section, where it seems like empty bubbles are waiting to be filled like this one.

When Gothamist read about the electronic silencer that can muffle phone calls you get in your office cubicle, we instantly thought of WKRP in Cincinnati's Les Nessman. We've long attempted to create our own special space in our office cubicle, but we have never put down the tape to demarcate our bounty. Anyway, our first thought was whether or not the silencer, the Babble, would be an office expense or something that employees who don't want to their private calls to be aired will pick up. Sure, law firms and other businesses dealing in "highly confidential" matters will probably get them, but something like the Babble would be so much easier than speaking pig Latin.

This whole incident reminds Gothamist why we weren't born into a hotelier-family, why we haven't been in sex videos with skanky men, why we haven't used racial epithets and gotten away with it, why we wear underwear... Gothamist wonders when people will hack Snoop's sidekick, if that's what it'll take to stop people (including ourselves) from saying "shizzle" and whatnot.

You can download the Grey Album at Illegal Art. And our investigative unit in San Francisco found out that the domain name is registered to an Antoine Tinguely in NYC, who works at design company Trollback and won an Emmy for designing the titles of HBO's Hysterical Blindness.

Another way of making friends by the phone, aside from 976 numbers: dodgeball. Earlier thoughts on cellphone etiquette from Ask Gothamist. And Gothamist on computer etiquette at people's houses.

In another spooky step to monkeys taking over the world, Duke University researchers have found that monkeys can control a robotic arm...with their minds! Eeep. boing boing also notes the crazy Flash animation on the Duke site; Gothamist thinks drawings of monkeys are fun, but we want video footage.

I'm getting my wisdom teeth out (just the right side, I had the left side out 5 years ago; they are erupted and not terrible, but they are hard to clean and would be better if gone) in a few days, and Boing Boing had a piece about the panoramic X-rays for facial maxilo images. You stand with your chin in a brace and the machine rotates around you. Pretty exciting. I got one done, so I'll try to get it and post it.