Results tagged “thedoors”

Last year we visited 1520 Sedgwick Avenue's past and uncertain future. The "Birthplace of Hip Hop" was, and still is, in danger of losing its lifeblood when the landlord (BSR Management) announced they wanted to abandon the Mitchell-Lama program. Essentially buying out of the program and leaving the doors open for a rent increase. Then things got worse when BSR made it clear they would be selling the building to a real estate mogul Mark Karasick, which was set to happen next month.

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"

It's been quite some time since we hopped the virtual F train to the virtual Lower East Side (that's VLES, for those in the know), but it seems one NY Times scribe has been making some frequent visits to the online world. In fact, he may even prefer it to its real life counterpart.

There were no imperious bouncers or foul odors to contend with, and no fluids of any kind expectorated on my shoes. Except for a slightly choppy video feed, it was by my standards a pretty successful evening on the town. Despite knowing that its real-life inspiration exists right outside my door, I have spent the last few months making such visits to the Virtual Lower East Side (vles.com), a three-dimensional, Internet-based social network fastidiously modeled on a small but influential swath of Manhattan real estate.

An argument between two men on a Manhattan bus this morning ended in a homicide, as one man stabbed the other to death. The incident occurred at 9:40 a.m. on the M101 bus that runs northbound on 3rd Avenue. A 52-year-old man was arguing with a 40-year-old man, when the bus stopped at 96th St. on the Upper East Side and the older man stabbed the younger in the leg. The victim was taken to Metropolitan Hospital where he died from his wounds.

In Following the Equator, Mark Twain wrote:

“In America the ice-storm is an event. And it is not an event which one is careless about. When it comes, the news flies from room to room in the house, there are bangings on the doors, and shoutings, ‘The ice-storm! the ice-storm!’ and even the laziest sleepers throw off the covers and join the rush for the windows.”

When the stagehands’ strike ended late Wednesday night, the general consensus was that not all Broadway productions would be able to pull it together in time for Thursday night re-openings. But as it turned out, all 27 strike-darkened shows were up and running last night, despite the challenges that larger productions faced after 19 dormant days. Chicago, for instance, had two stars joining the cast – Vincent Pastore and Aida Turturro of “The Sopranos” –...

A report compiled by New York City Transit indicates that delays in on-time performance by subway trains have increased every since 2004. According to The New York Times, the delays are worst during the subway rush hour, when 8% of trains fail to perform according to schedule. The NYC Transit report cited track work as by far the largest cause of delays, as transit employees attempt to modernize or even repair the subway. But...

Mr. Brownstone is reuniting this weekend with a show at Bowery Ballroom. The Guns n' Roses cover band is led by Clap Your Hands Say Yeah drummer Sean Greenhalgh (who makes for a pretty good Axl!) and touts themselves as the World's Drunkest Tribute to G n' R. We asked them to give us their Top 5 all-time best reunions list to commemorate the event. THE FIVE GREATEST REUNIONS by Mr. Brownstone, the World's Drunkest...

Yesterday we opened the doors to Gothamist House and hopefully you were able to drop by or listen in on WOXY. In just a couple of hours we'll be opening up the doors again, for day two -- here's the lineup:

The New York Times has an interesting profile of the Senior Vice President for subways at NYC Transit, Michael Lombardi, who will retire next month after 45 years with the agency. He began working for the city making $2.63 an hour as a machinist's helper in 1962 and at the age of 18. He feels, along with many others, that his greatest contribution during his career was the work done to pull the subway system out of the slump it had fallen into in the 1970s and early 1980s.

A couple renting an apartment at the legendary Ansonia building on the Upper West Side filed a lawsuit claiming their apartment is "completely uninhabitable" due to cockroach infestation. The lawsuit from lawyers Alan Arkin (no relation to the actor) and Suzanne Bagert details these nightmare-inducing incidents:

They crawl across the floor, on the walls, on the ceilings, on the curtains and even in the bed...Perhaps most disgustingly, cockroaches have crawled in their food and coffee maker. Killing them does very little. Recently after the cockroaches were crushed, killed and vacuumed away during the day, (they) counted 16 cockroaches in the hallway outside the apartment....The hallway outside their apartment is constantly covered with cockroaches; on any given day, there can be 20 to 30 cockroaches crawling on the walls and the doors of the apartments.

A Columbia Law grad is suing a cabbie for grabbing her by the hair and bashing her head against his cab's partition after calling her and her friend "bitches." According to The New York Post and court papers filed by 25-year-old Mei Ying Lai, cab driver Fazal Wali picked up the young woman on West 51st St., but became impatient when asked to wait for her friend, Nancy Hon, at West 29th St. Hon reportedly wandered off from the meeting point and Wali became infuriated.

There's a band looking for a frontman in Brooklyn...and they're bypassing Craigslist postings, MySpace bulletins and good 'ol fashion flyers to get the open position filled. They say "we like internet" and are therefore selling their frontman position on eBay in this Buy a Rock Band auction.

CMJ is coming up next month, and as we've mentioned we'll be opening the doors to Gothamist House again this year. We've got a big announcement to share, along with some little details of interest if you plan to attend any of the shows:

Hollaback! A man was arrested for menacing, stalking and exposing himself to a woman on the B and Q trains on Monday. The Post reports that the police caught 24-year-old Jay Arungah after the victim showed them a camera phone picture of a naked Arungah.

The countdown prompted us to start working on our own CMJ-week event a bit early this year. So we'd like to announce that Gothamist House will be back! Since we had a great time there last year it will be at White Rabbit on East Houston Street again from October 17th to 20th (running from 2pm to around 8:30pm). Last year we had some great bands play, including Loney, Dear, Apples in Stereo, Charles Bissell of the Wrens, Bound Stems, Land of Talk, Pela and a whole lot more.

After GBH announced that Courtney Love was to play a free show at Hiro Ballroom, the biggest question besides what she'd sound like or how badly would Hiro screw up the crowd control, was what type of raucous scandal would Love cause during the set. Would she be trashed? Would she get into a fight? Would she show at all? Well, to the pleasant surprise of any real fan, the show went on without a hitch, and Love played a solid set of some old favorites as well as a bunch of new songs, many of which were co-written by professional hitmaker Linda Perry. Check out Freshbread for some pics (like the one above), and Ephemerist and Productshop for some more reviews.

With lines of potential customers snaking around the block, New York's Apple Stores on Fifth Avenue and in SoHo opened their doors at 6PM for the launch of the iPhone, the unbelievably hyped multi-functioning personal accessory.

Langston Hughes came to New York to study at Columbia in 1921, but after a year he left due to racial prejudice at the institution. He aimed his focus towards Harlem, becoming a large influence on the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, even when he was physically worlds away.

Happy Father's Day! For those of you who have dads, are dads, or know dads, this one's for you, from all of us at the Gothamist network."

It's beginning to look a lot like...LA. The NY Sun reports on a new walk-in "Botox store" offering impatient patients a chance to take a dip in the artificial fountain of youth during their lunch break.

Gutenberg! The Musical! may not have been about the Police Academy star, but tonight's installment of Inside Joke is. But before The Gute heads off to The UCB Theater to discuss the art of comedy, he sat down with Gothamist to discuss what he's hiding from TMZ.

Last week, the Sun reported that the "Bonnie & Clyde" burglars who robbed twenty-five apartments would face criminal charges next month. A couple from Savannah, Georgia, Robert Nestingen and Melissa Pavozehr, managed to steal about $350,000 in jewelry and cash since January 31 by targeting penthouse apartments.

With much fanfare, the city announced a new public space recycling pilot program last month at the Staten Island Ferry Terminals. Six locations across the city are getting blue and green recycling bins to encourage people to separate their glass bottles and newspapers from regular trash. Not a groundbreaking idea, an important step for the city to expand its recycling efforts.

Yesterday at the Time Warner Center, Chef Marc Murphy somewhat stealthily opened the doors to the uptown outpost of Landmarc, his 3 year-old, well-regarded Tribeca restaurant. Murphy began to look northward last year when he opened Ditch Plains in the West Village. With Landmarc firmly established as a neighborhood bright spot with serious food (like the $12 roasted marrow bones with onion marmalade and grilled bread, pictured), and with Ditch Plains going strong with its clam bar/set count aesthetic (the only thing better than its all-day breakfast is its bric-a-brac seafood add-on options- you can order Anson Mills grits with oysters and lobster if you want), many have wondered if the new version of Landmarc can possibly retain the charm of the original inside the glass and steel canyons of a giant mall. With the same Brasserie/New American menu and a big emphasis on straightforward kids' meals (from carrot sticks & peanut butter to orecchiette with plain butter sauce, and toothache-inducing cotton candy), as well as a thoughtful wine list, the new Landmarc stands to remedy the fine dining fatigue suffered by diners who aren’t really feeling another array of microscopic quail egg custards, or truffled whatever du jour (you know who you are). Additionally, Chef Murphy and crew seem to have a fully formed battle plan that includes delivery from Fifth to West End Avenue, from 55th to 66th, and 300 seats to work their magic.

Yesterday, Metro had an article about a guerrilla art piece called "No Train Like Home": A group of artists were going to decorate an F train at Stillwell Avenue with homey touches.

They plan to hang blue curtains with white flowers and duct tape welcome mats to the areas by the doors. A blue runner will warm up the middle of the car. They’ll distribute magazines and hang fake plants from overhead bars.

Continue reading "Make Yourself At Home"

Oooh - according to the NY Times, the MTA has been investigating the possibility of installing floor-to-ceiling glass walls and sliding doors at the Second Avenue subway. Apparently, having walls and doors might "allow substantial energy savings" and "reduce temperatures by about 10 degrees." Whoa, imagine that - no more super hot platforms on those summer days?

Smith doesn't like to have her photo taken, so we left our camera at home. The Hotel Chelsea bloggers snuck in and took some shots of the action off-stage. Above is their photo of Smith entering the hotel before her performance.

Open House New York opens the doors to many New York spaces that you wouldn't likely ever see. Past tours have included 7 World Trade Center and the Lost City Hall Subway. Each October these tours are free, and throughout the year the series costs money. The Spring tours will include:

With construction set to begin yet again on the 2nd Avenue subway, the Times takes a look at the "subway car of tomorrow", the R11, which was built in anticipation of being used on the 2nd Avenue line once the line opened. As we all know, the line was never finished, so the ten cars with porthole window in the doors, were scattered to compatible trains around the system.