Monday, March 30, 2009

*Everyday Chatter

I'm not the only one who thinks this economic downturn has a strong upside--Kurt Andersen at TIME magazine agrees: "it's time to ratchet back our wild and crazy grasshopper side and get in touch with our inner ant, to be more artisan-enterpriser and less prospector-speculator, more heroic Greatest Generation and less self-indulgent baby boomer, to return from Oz to Kansas, to become fully reality-based again." [TIME]

A voyeuristic look at our "New Glass City"--maybe New York should change its name to The Big Fishbowl. [NYT]

Take a tour of the destroyed Upper West Side with Tom Dispatch: "you might say that an economic dirty bomb did go off in downtown New York and this city (not to say, the nation and the world) has been experiencing a second 9/11 ever since, even if in slow motion." [TD]

Take a peek back at a time when the city was covered in psychedelic murals and gay men baked casseroles. [ShadowS]

When Wal-Mart comes, there may be a lot of arrests--New Yorkers like to say "fuck." [Consumerist]

Fans of underground New York, check out The Future Beneath Us. [NYPL]

3 comments:

john said...

hey, congrats on the op ed! well done!

Anonymous said...

Detroit is like the EV was in 1976. We are seriously thinking of moving there. Some guy planted crops in one of the empty foreclosed neighborhoods and opened a food coop in an abandoned house. Artists are moving there. It's like the pioneer west. The government should give away those foreclosed houses, so people could build and organic, little 21st century neighborhood.

hntrnyc said...

Having grown up in Detroit, I applaud your interest in going there. There are actually artist enclaves that have been popping up in some of the most unlikely areas.
However, they all deal with one big problem: violent crime. It is the pioneer west in all of those 9mm "Deadwood" ways, with fewer of those "little house on the prairie" visuals.
So if you go, invest in kevlar & Glock.