Results tagged “morningsidepark”

Gothamist was driving across southwestern Kansas late last April. It was a hot day, temperatures were well into the 90s, so we stopped for ice cream in Syracuse, Kansas. We got to talking to the ice cream shop owner and when they found out we were from New York City they said "New York? You get lots of snow there don't you? We haven't had snow in five years." From what we saw that was true –southswestern Kansas was close to the center of the Dust Bowl in the 1930s, afterall. The ground was parched and a couple of times the wind blew great amounts of sand and dust a hundred feet or more into the air.

The above clip is as frustrating as it is intriguing. The footage is of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Lucien Carr, Mary Frank and children Pablo and Andrea, as well as Lucien's wife Francesca Carr and their three sons, Simon, Caleb and Ethan. Shot in New York in the summer of 1959 at the Harmony Bar & Restaurant at E 9th Street and 3rd Avenue, the footage is all silent (that's the frustrating part, however - it is somewhat fitting).

Clearly it's Thanksgiving when a wild turkey tries to hightail it out of the city by way of the Triborough Bridge. A 10 pound female bird was loose around the toll plaza on the Manhattan side, and six MTA workers chased her! After fifteen minutes, a construction worker helped catch the bird.

This morning was not our favorite morning. Because of the extreme humidity Gothamist was a big ball of sweat before we had to climb the stairs in Morningside Park. With a dew point of 72 degrees and an air temperature of 82 there's not much cooling power to the air. AccuWeather's RealFeel temperature is up to 98 degrees, but Weather.com's Feels Like temperature is only 87. We noticed another measure of heat and humidity as we climbed the 116th Street stairs. The odors have inspired Gothamist to issue our first U.S.A., or Urine Stink Alert. Any way you look at it this weather is really gross.

NYC Parks Advocates released a report yesterday saying that many parks are actually very terrible, especially those in poor neighborhoods. Saying that it had surveyed all 1,700 city park areas, NYCPA said that Central Park and Bryant Park had the benefit of other funding resources, while parks in lower income neighborhoods aren't maintained as well. And to compound the problem, the Parks Department's funds have been slashed over time. From the NY Times:

The Parks Department said its expense and capital budgets have increased to $283 million in the current fiscal year from $185 million in 1991. But the percentage of the city budget allocated to parks dropped to 0.38 percent in 2004 from about 1.4 percent in 1960, according to the report. The city's budget proposal for parks and recreation for the 2007 fiscal year would cut financing by about $800,000.

The NYCPA also showed slides of "abandoned cars, discarded syringes, 15-foot-high weeds, piles of garbage, barrels containing chemical waste, crumbling piers and stairways, homeless encampments and broken lamps," according to the Times. Parks Commssioner Adrian Benepe disagreed with the report, saying that parks have, overall, gotten better over the years, not to mention that the 29,000 acres of parkland gives ample opportunity to find good and bad examples.

- Prospect Park has Egg-o-rama (Saturday and Sunday) at the Audobon Center, starting at noon, too.

With 0.12 inches of rain falling early this morning Central Park has already had more rain in April (0.84 inches) than all of March (0.80). Because of the rain, and much to Gothamist's delight, Morningside Park was green this morning. As the rain disappears the operative word for the rest of the day is brisk. Brisk as in highs in the mid-to-upper-40s and wind gusts up to 30 mph this afternoon. Spring lovers do not despair, tomorrow will be ten degrees warmer and sunny. Rain returns Friday and Saturday because it is April and we live in the northeastern U.S.

It is not the natural state of a New Yorker to look up at the sky. The skyscrapers block our view and we need to be alert to what our fellow pedestrians are doing. Gothamist has tried to get people to look at the halos, sun dogs and iridescent clouds with limited success. Luckily there are meteorological phenomena to see on the ground. On our way to work in the morning Gothamist walks up the 116th Street stairs in Morningside Park. The top set of stairs are made of pink granite slabs. The mortar between the steps has long since disappeared so air and water move into the cracks (take note Parks Commissioner Benepe!). When it gets cold after warm days when water has seeped into the cracks these little frost patches appear on the steps.

As we all know by now, Staten Island Chuck, Gothamist's favorite rodent (he's bigger and cuter than a rat!), did not see his shadow yesterday morning, meaning an early spring. While Chuck was not seeing his shadow, Gothamist was photographing these snowdrops emerging from the ground in Morningside Park. By our recollection they were coming out a couple of weeks earlier than last year, which one might assume is another sign of an early spring. Now that this morning's rain has stopped we've warmed up to 62. Close to the record high of 64. Another sign of spring's imminent arrival?

- New York magazine's new subway poster ad push will involve new, timely creative every day... the September 15 posters will have the "calorie counts of favorite [San Gennaro] festival foods like calamari, cannoli, pizza and zeppole" which sounds like a reason to revolt - Gothamist don't wanna how bad it is for us to go to Little Italy

- The supermarket at LaGuardia and Bleecker (the Morton Williams?) might be one target of NYU's future Manhattan expansionWhat do you think of NYU's ever-expanding presence downtown? While the conflicts between NYU and area residents are bad, they don't seem as bad as ones between Columbia and Harlem residents - especially after the Morningside Park incident in 1968.

After bounding up the Morningside Park stairs this morning Gothamist could see our breath in the air. We assumed this was because the humidity had increased rather than the corn flakes we had for breakfast. Sure enough, the dew point temperatures had creeped up to over 50 this morning. That's not very humid in an absolute sense, but it does signal that summer is, hard as it is to believe, on the way. Another warming sign is that there's a chance of a thunderstorm tonight and a greater chance for one during tomorrow morning's commute. It probably won't be much of a thunderstorm if it does occur but we can hope.

Walking through Morningside Park yesterday evening Gothamist was pleasantly surprised to find these snowdrops in bloom. Daffodils were poking through the soil but they hadn't flowered yet. The flowers are letting us know that Spring is but twelve days away. The snow, however, is letting us know that it is still winter. This morning's cold front was rather rude don't you think? It got up to 63 in Central Park yesterday! The temperature is down to 25 and lows tonight should be in the mid-teens. Not cold enough to set a record, but you probably won't want to go for a stroll along the river.

News that Columbia has been in talks with Harlem local officials and other city politcos about acquiring 17 acres of land, from 125th Street to 133rd Street, between Broadway and 12th Avenue, to expand its campus interested Gothamist for many reasons. Not only is Columbia our alma mater, it is also one of the largest landowners in the city (the others are the Catholic Church and NYU), and therefore has a huge say in the dynamic of neighborhoods. The relationship between Columbia and Harlem has always been fractured, as Columbia has usually been less interested in getting involve with the community and more concerned with its own interests (example, the Morningside Park gym debacle in the late 1960s). But Columbia's campus is crowded, and could benefit from more buildings, like a new arts center and more dorms. Community officials, thus far, are cautiously optimistic.