Results tagged “timescity”

There was a NY Times City section about the uneasy equilibrium of dog owners and bicyclists in Central Park. Many a collisions occur between beast and bicycle, especially during off-leash hours. But we think there are actually lots of showdowns of park roads: Runners vs. Rollerbladers; stroller-pushing parents vs. runners; tourists vs. everyone. Which makes us wonder:

Did you happen to read the NY Times City Section essay, Under the Scaffold, a No-Fight Club? The author Allan Ripp writes about a confrontation between some youngsters hanging out under the scaffolding of a building near Columbus Circle. Apparently the teens have been loitering around there regularly during the day, and one day, one of the kids gets shoved into Ripp's way while he's walking. Ripp decides to say something:

“You guys are always here, standing around, bumping into people and fooling around,” I scolded. “It’s not the place, and someone’s going to get hurt.” I’m certain I cursed as well.

Continue reading "Cruising For a Bruising"

There's a fun NY Times City section article about the Queens Museum of Art's Panorama Challenge. The Queens Museum of Art's panorama is a to-scale model of New York City: One inch equals 100 feet (the Empire State Building is 15 inches tall) and the model was originally designed for the 1964 World's Fair, as a "helicopter" ride over New York City. (And, yes, Parks Commissioner Robert Moses commissioned the panorama in 1964, just as he commissioned the Queens Museum of Art's building, the former New York City Pavilion for the 1939's World Fair.)

The NY Times City section has a long feature about Law & Order's dramatization of the Adrienne Shelly murder. It was inevitable that the police procedural warhorse would cover one of the more bizarre and tragic murders in recent memory, and a casting notice for someone to play the illegal immigrant laborer who assaults an woman after she complains about construction noise confirmed that L&O would be tackling the story.

The NY Times City section looked at a fight between East Village bar Heathers on 13th Street and its neighbors, and we took away two things.

Since we've still got the old bus shelters in our neighborhood, we were interested in the rider reactions to the new shelters article in the NY Times City section.

It was inevitable. The NY Times City section has a little feature about the Long Island City vs. Williamsburg as better place to live debate that emerged on the Queens West discussion board last month.

We wrote about the demise of video stores last year, and now one of the saddest days is upon us: The November 30 closing of West 105th Street institution Movie Place, because of a crazy rent increase. There's a big NY Times City section article about the Movie Place's closing as well as those of many other beloved video stores - it's all summarized in this depressing graphic.

Thanks to YouTube, more people can see tagging in action. The Post looks at the YouTubing of graffiti vandals/artists at work in the subways.

The vandals declined to be interviewed, but said that the trend began with graffiti writers who took to photographing their work because of the MTA's practice of painting over cars as soon as they're tagged.

Continue reading "Video of the Day: Tagging the System"

+ Happy 106th Birthday, Nancy DeLise, who believes in home Italian cooking ("You never know what they put in the food" at restaurant, her 79 year old daughter explains)

The age-old question about whether or not there really is one rat per New Yorker arises in today's NY Times City Section. While the number of rats hasn't been officially counted, the Times answers:

As for “one rat per person,” that is a myth that has persisted for at least 100 years. As Robert Sullivan noted in his 2004 book, “Rats,” a naturalist named David E. Davis analyzed New York’s rat population in 1949 and called the one-rat-per-human statistic absurd. (The statistic had come from 19th-century England and was never more than a guess.)

Continue reading "What About the Rat Per Capita?"

How many people have emailed Matilda, the Algonquin Hotel cat? After yesterday's NY Times City section story about the midtown hotel's furry mascot, which included her email address (matildaalgonquincat (at)algonquinhotel(dot)com), Gothamist wondered what if Matilda - and the woman who answers her emails (keyboards aren't very paw friendly), Alice de Almeida - will be seeing some more odd email. Here's some of what she gets now:

Every two weeks, one woman mails a package to Matilda containing cryptic collages; recent ones have featured images of a rabbit on a moped and of the Geico gecko...

Continue reading "The Algonquin as Scratching Post"

- Check out these photos from that SoHo fire last night.

There was a NY Times City section about the almost $30 million Houston Street construction project that will start this August and last for many, many years, from West Street to the Bowery. From the jawdropping scope of the project to the not-incidental project cost, Gothamist's first thought was "Wait, you mean the construction already on Houston isn't associated with this project?" Our second thought was, "No, not the part of Houston west of Broadway! It's so nice and quiet, relatively speaking!" As we read on, the city will be installing "new curbs, new traffic signals, new sidewalk space, new shrubbery, new sewers, new water mains, new everything" and many shop owners along Houston are unhappy, as they have already been living in construction hell. Translation: Walking along Houston Street will be noisy and dusty for years to come - and good luck trying to cross town in a cab. We tried to look for some more information, but all the Department of Design and Construction has on it is that it'll end in January 2008 (which will mean November 2008 if we're lucky). We stumbled on this interesting Department of Transportation page about protected streets, as in streets where construction cannot occur for five years because construction has already been completed; Houston is not listed here at all.

Frederick Brosen has been painting watercolors of New York for 30 years, and it shows. The Times City section has a selection from his new book, "Still New York" to be published in October, which capture that wonderful time in the morning before the streets fill up. The paintings will be exhibited at the Forum Gallery next month, and at the Museum of the City of New York in November. In the meantime you can take a look a slideshow of some of his paintings here.

From bridges to pandas, Gothamist loves a lot of things (what can we say, we're passionate people) but if there is one thing we have an undying love for its the history of our fine city. Which is why it was with great pleasure that we found the lead article in the Times City section today on the University of Michigan's Making of America digital archive. Sponsored by Lawrence J. Portnoy, a Manhattan lawyer, the archive currently include over 300 books from the turn of the century on the state of New York City. We're talking about titles like "The nether side of New York; or, The vice, crime and poverty of the great Metropolis" from 1872, "Who's who of the Chinese in New York" from 1918 and "Working girls in evening schools: a statistical study" from 1914. The Times selections from the archive include such juicy tidbits as what a 20s "shop-girl" ate to stay on her feet (gumdrops and éclairs), the best way for a prostitute to rob her john blind (have a co-conspirator hidden in the walls of her bedroom) and how much it cost to live in luxury while incarcerated in the Ludlow Street Jail (anywhere from $15 to $100 a week depending on how much luxury one wanted).

To start of this coverage of the head-to-head matchup let's look how the two camps treated the New York Times City article that started this whole mess. Gawker alluded to the smackdown piece twice(1 and 2), and linked to it straight in it's Remainders section. Fishbowl never mentioned it. Chickens! Score +3 for Team Gawker.

Continue reading "Snarky Blog Stuff, Day 2"

Be warned, anyone who works in media or anyone who knows anyone who works in media or anyone who knows anyone who consumes media. Apparently, a line in the sand has been drawn between blogs that cover NY media - a line in the sand, people! Or at least that's what an article in the NY Times City section suggests. The facts: In one snarky corner, there's Gawker with snarky publisher Nick Denton and snarky editor Jessica Coen, and in the other corner, there's Mediabistro, with less-snarky founder Laurel Touby and new uber-snarky editor Elizabeth Spiers (formerly of snarkcorp Gawker- still with us?) who is co-authoring the Mediabistro media gossip blog, FishBowlNY - add some quotes about competition, snarketition, rivalries, bitch-smacking, and Tara Reid's boobies (we made two of those up!). It's like Million Dollar Baby, except without the million dollars, and with more snark, and um, what were we talking about?

The New York Times City section profiles Domenico DeMarco, who has operated Di Fara Pizza for 40 years. Although pizza has become fast food, he says, "[t]his one is slow food. Anything you do, when you do it too fast, it's no good." Amen to that.

Never before have Hall & Oates' Rich Girl lyrics been truer.