A review of the new Coney Island: The "Starbucks of Amusement Parks." [NYLF]
A round-up of recently opened Coney businesses. [ATZ]
Check out the Lunch Hour exhibit at the NYPL. [NYT]
Video of people tripping up the subway stairs. [Gothamist]
Before and after photographer Brian Rose on the changing LES. [EVG]
The pleasures of reading a book in a churchyard. [WIC]
Remembering the Stonewall Riots. [NYO]
Filthy message at a pay phone:
Is there some reason that half the people have to pull out their damn cellphones the second they hit the subway stairs on the way up, and stop in their tracks, grinding the procession to a near halt?
ReplyDeleteDo they really believe that they are the only person on the planet?
Thanks for posting the New Yorker 'banks' article. Best line: "The dense, jungle-like chaos of growth represented by those black markers and their swirling, illegible tags covering the interior of the subway car has been replaced by the anodyne blankness of a bank branch, which is to the city’s landscape what dead air is to the radio."
ReplyDeleteThe city has become dead-air, a huge grounding hum. The kind you hear generated from broken stereos.
Lately I've been thinking about the so-called white-flights of the past and wondering when the next 'flight' was going to happen. The changing face of Manhattan now seems to be a inverted case of these previous exoduses of New Yorkers to their respective greener pastures. Any New Yorker will tell you that living here can, at times..maybe alot of the time, can be a real battle. I've lived here for 25 years, and for a long time that battle was worth fighting. These days the value of fighting that battle seems less and less important. Is it defeat? I don't think so. It's more of looking at all of the genericization and the money behind it and asking 'you really want to fuck this up the way you're doing now? Okay...it's your ass'. The new 'flight' is going to be the middle class, the intellectuals, and the artists and musicians. As far as I'm concerned the first good opportunity I have to get out of here, I'm gone. This is what these assholes want New York City to be like now? They can have it. Dead air and all.
If those people are tripping over now, wait until the WiFis are installed at three subway platforms and stations.
ReplyDeleteanon 9:06am: explain the comment. they are installing internet on subway platforms? thats great for muggings especially @ night. did i read this correctly?
ReplyDeleteAnonymous 10:48, I agree, but I worry that there is no place to run to. Alot of what this blog covers is really remaking New York so its just like the rest of the country.
ReplyDeletemaybe there will be flat screen TVs in the subway stations? 24/7, like we get in the cabs? like we get in airports? just thinking......
ReplyDeleteed, NYC will never be like the rest of the country. we have "streets"- we walk like human beings. public transit is nice & is for everyone not just the poor. do you know what people talk about in america? their CARS. distances are described by "minutes", locations by "lights", or near "pancake house" -"@ turn off". they have their own vocabulary. (do you hear new yorkers discuss the mechanic, license, ticket parking? never). americas reality is parking. the parking lot determines which chain store they will go to, or shopping center. residential areas are isolated & you cannot get to a supermarket w/out a car. people buy supersize everything, & put in a trunk. thats why they are so big & fat, they have to carry all those boxes! home delivery is unheard of. the only new yorkers who talk like this drive to manhattan for work then back home to long island. about the USA: dont forget middle america lost its "main street" & was replaced by malls & highways. they lost their culture way before new york did. @least there are streets in new york, & its managable.
ReplyDeleteH&H Bagels...I watched Edward Yang's lovely YiYi again the other night and the shop the teens hang out in, in Taipei, is called New York Bagels and there's a sign on the wall that says "H&H Bagels, from New York". I think YiYi was made in 1999.
ReplyDelete