kottke.org posts about nyc
I’ve not been paying enough attention to Bill Cunningham’s street fashion photography slideshows. Each week, Cunningham goes out on the streets of NYC to find out what people are wearing. Even better than the photos are his enthusiastic descriptions of what he’s found.
This week he looks at women’s handbags, which he calls “the engine carrying the fashion world”. Cunningham finds that bags are growing almost “cartoonishly large” and discovers a unique glove/bag combo. Last week, he looked at the glittery belts that some men are wearing with their saggy jeans. If this was the type of fashion that filled the pages of Vogue, I would subscribe in a second. (thx, alaina)
Update: Cunningham’s video journals are now available on YouTube for easy watching/embedding.
Olafur Eliasson’s NYC Waterfalls starts today in NYC. The project consists of four huge waterfalls erected in the East River. NYC Waterfalls is the new The Gates.
Two bits of news about the High Line and its impending park.
1. Curbed has new renderings of what the park is going to look like. Here’s phase 1 (Gansevoort St. to 20th) and phase 2 (21st to 30th). They’re calling it a park but from the drawings it seems more like a glorified sidewalk.
2. Photos of the High Line taken last weekend show how much progress is being made on construction.
NY Times article about Gramercy Park, one of NYC’s two private parks, and Arlene Harrison, the self-styled “mayor” of the park.
Since Ms. Harrison started the Gramercy Park Block Association in 1994, after her son was attacked and beaten up in front of their apartment building at 34 Gramercy Park, she has effectively remade the area in her own image.
She has added to a list of regulations (no dogs, no feeding of birds, no groups larger than six people, no Frisbees or soccer balls or “hard balls” of any kind) that, in turn, have served to dictate how the park is - and is not - used. Most recently, she helped pave the way for Zeckendorf Realty to redevelop a 17-story Salvation Army boarding house on the south side of the park, and for the company’s plan to convert the 300 rooms into 14 floor-through apartments plus a penthouse duplex. The company would not confirm the transaction.
What a bunch of elitist horseshit. Ms. Harrison sounds like a Grade A wanker. (via anil)
A fancy Manhattan restaurant opened by famed chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten features on its menu a dish called “Sea Urchin Bukkake”. It, er, comes with “all the condiments of bukkake”. (I could go on, but that’s a good place to stop.)
Christopher Hitchens, worried about tall buildings carelessly built in the West Village of Manhattan, makes his case for non-gentrification.
It isn’t possible to quantify the extent to which society and culture are indebted to Bohemia. In every age in every successful country, it has been important that at least a small part of the cityscape is not dominated by bankers, developers, chain stores, generic restaurants, and railway terminals. This little quarter should instead be the preserve of — in no special order — insomniacs and restaurants and bars that never close; bibliophiles and the little stores and stalls that cater to them; alcoholics and addicts and deviants and the proprietors who understand them; aspirant painters and musicians and the modest studios that can accommodate them; ladies of easy virtue and the men who require them; misfits and poets from foreign shores and exiles from remote and cruel dictatorships. Though it should be no disadvantage to be young in such a quartier, the atmosphere should not by any means discourage the veteran.
A wonderful story about how an architect took it upon himself to build a scavenger hunt into one of his client’s apartments, all without telling them.
Finally, one day last fall, more than a year after they moved in, Mr. Klinsky received a letter in the mail containing a poem that began:
We’ve taken liberties with Yeats
to lead you through a tale
that tells of most inspired fates
iin hopes to lift the veil.
The letter directed the family to a hidden panel in the front hall that contained a beautifully bound and printed book, Ms. Bensko’s opus. The book led them on a scavenger hunt through their own apartment.
And it wasn’t an easy hunt either.
In any case, the finale involved, in part, removing decorative door knockers from two hallway panels, which fit together to make a crank, which in turn opened hidden panels in a credenza in the dining room, which displayed multiple keys and keyholes, which, when the correct ones were used, yielded drawers containing acrylic letters and a table-size cloth imprinted with the beginnings of a crossword puzzle, the answers to which led to one of the rectangular panels lining the tiny den, which concealed a chamfered magnetic cube, which could be used to open the 24 remaining panels, revealing, in large type, the poem written by Mr. Klinsky.
(thx, john)
It’s been hot in NYC for the past few days, but I don’t know if it was ice-lickin’ hot.
Yesterday, New York raised the tax on cigarettes by $1.25. With the previous taxes, the city tax of $1.25, and the variable pricing one sees at retail outlets around the city, people are now paying somewhere between $8 and $12 for a pack of cigarettes in NYC. Some smokers are understandably upset about the price but how does it compare to other enjoyments? If smoking a single cigarette takes five minutes and at $10 & 20 cigarettes per pack, smoking costs a smoker $6/hour. Some other NYC diversions, priced roughly by the hour:
Ice skating in Central Park: $4.25/hr
Yankees game (cheap seats): $5/hr
Smoking: $6/hr
Visit to MoMA: $8/hr
After-work drinks: $10/hr
Movie w/popcorn & soda: $11/hr
Dinner @ McDonald’s: $11/hr
Dinner @ Daniel: $85/hr
Helicopter tour of NYC: $600/hr
Spitzer-grade call girl: $1000+/hr
For reference, NY State minimum wage is $7.15/hr. (Digg this?)
I was told that everyone in the NYC online media scene needs to read this NY Times Magazine cover story by and about former Gawker editor Emily Gould and her oversharing problems. I was less than halfway through when I realized I’m not part of that scene, if I ever was. So, the outsider’s perspective: Gould’s story is a familiar one, well-written, and rings with truth in places with regard to microcelebrity and the difficulty of learning how much to share online.
A really nice remembrance of Florent, a beloved meatpacking district restaurant set to close its doors next month, by the people who knew the restaurant best.
The first time I went to Florent I had been out very late at night with some friends and we were looking for somewhere to go for breakfast at about, you know, 3:30 or 4 o’clock in the morning. We went down there and it was very dark and we came onto Gansevoort Street and the restaurant was lit up and it looked - it looked almost like a mirage. It felt magical.
The article is not just a history of Florent but also of a Manhattan and New York City that is all but gone. Says Calvin Klein:
It was alive with real downtown character types who dressed every which way: from straight, creative types of all ages, young and old, to transvestites, to probably local prostitutes. It was downtown. It was real downtown. That’s when they were cutting meat all night long. And that was during the Studio 54 days. We were young and we were having a lot of fun and we were out all night. And we’d end up in the meatpacking district, at the clubs. You went to Florent after the clubs.
One of the most enjoyable sessions at the New Yorker Conference was the chefs roundtable.
Bill Buford talks with the chefs David Chang, Daniel Humm, and Marc Taxiera about their influences and the future of the culinary world.
Buford talks too much and the chefs too little but he manages some good questions and fun is had.
The NY Times’ City Room blog has a short profile of photographer Nikola Tamindzic.
He uses long exposures, then shakes the camera while the shutter is still open, causing colors to blur and lights to streak. “I’m not recording what is really happening, but it’s something like what the brain is seeing late at night, especially if maybe you’re drunk or very excited,” he said. “I like that hour between 3 and 4 in the morning when desperation sets in, when you see all the anticipation of going out starting to fade. The masks drop and everybody realizes the night is not going to be everything they were hoping for.”
You may have seen Tamindzic’s photos on Gawker or on his own site, Home of the Vain. Here’s the photo with Huffington, Murdoch, et al. An archive of his photography is available at Ambrel.
Joan Acocella on the paradox of New Yorkers’ seeming rudeness and helpfulness in public spaces.
[New Yorkers] make less separation between private and public life. That is, they act on the street as they do in private. In the United States today, public behavior is ruled by a kind of compulsory cheer that people probably picked up from television and advertising and that coats their transactions in a smooth, shiny glaze, making them seem empty-headed. New Yorkers have not yet gotten the knack of this. That may be because so many of them grew up outside the United States, and also because they live so much of their lives in public, eating their lunches in parks, riding to work in subways. It’s hard to keep up the smiley face for that many hours a day.
And here’s how New Yorkers deal with celebrities:
Another curious form of cooperation one sees in New York is the unspoken ban on staring at celebrities. When you get into an elevator in an office building and find that you are riding with Paul McCartney — this happened to me — you are not supposed to look at him. You can peek for a second, but then you must avert your eyes. The idea is that Paul McCartney has to be given his space like anyone else.
A list of unconventional but useful tips for visitors to NYC.
Do a bunch of local New York things: Hang out in Central Park, Explore Brooklyn, wear black, enjoy the free WiFi in Bryant Park (use the bathroom there — nice). Attend a lecture at the 92nd ST Y, go to Chinatown in Queens. Buy junk at a street fair, and eat street meat (don’t ask). Have a cigar at the Grand Havana Room (members only). Catch an author speak at a Barnes & Noble (use the bathroom while you are there).
Eventually I hope to write up my How To Be A Pedestrian In NYC guide, a companion to my rules for the NYC subway, only a bit more helpful and less ranty.
Artist Jason Polan (he of the The Every Piece Of Art in The Museum Of Modern Art Book) is on a mission to draw every single person in New York City. If you’d like to be drawn, drop him a line on where you’ll be, and he’ll show up and sketch you.
Tim at Short Schrift, propelled into ranting by an article in the NY Times about NYC’s bike lanes, opines on grandstanding, law-breaking, holier-than-thou, hypocritical bicyclists.
Bicyclists drive me nuts. In Philadelphia, as in cities across this great country, bicyclists routinely flout the law, riding on the sidewalk when it’s convenient and holding up traffic in the street whenever possible. I can count on one hand the number of times I have seen a bicyclist at a stop sign or even a red light, or wait behind a car that is correctly stopped at such an intersection. Instead, the man or woman on the bicycle will weave between parked, stopped, and moving cars to gain a fractional advantage. Yet if an automobile so much as grazes a bicycle lane, all hell breaks loose.
Sometimes it seems as though the NY Times writes articles just for me: Seven New Sandwiches Try to Make it in New York.
One day last year at the Watchung Deli, at the request of a student from a nearby school, Ben Gualano piled mac-and-cheese onto a chicken cutlet sub with barbecue sauce and bacon, squeezed it shut somehow, and the Benny Mac was born… It’s a full-body experience — like a mud bath, but with extra ooze. One taster said afterward, “There was bacon in there?”
You may remember that I’m a sandwich fan. For dinner last night, I had a surprisingly good turkey sandwich of my own making (the little bit of onion and the pepper was the secret) and have made friends with a particularly good meatball hero and a banh mi near the office. My present sandwich life is entirely satisfying.
Free Richard Dawkins! (That’s free as in lecture, not free as in spring from jail.) Each year in honor of Harvey David Preisler, a lecture is given and this year’s will be delivered by Richard Dawkins on May 3 @ 9am at The New York Academy of Sciences.
The lecture is entitled “The Purpose of Purpose,” and Professor Dawkins will make himself available for a question/answer period afterward. If you are in the New York City area (or can be on Saturday), I urge you to attend.
As noted the lecture is free; all you need to do is RSVP in the comments of this thread.
Update: The event filled up quickly…only the first 25 RSVPs will be able to attend.
Gar, I missed another one of Tobias Frere-Jones’ NYC Typographic Walking Tours but luckily Jason Santa Maria — a fellow so nice they named him thrice — has photos. Photos from his first tour here. (via airbag)
Why is New York-style pizza so difficult to replicate in other areas of the world? Perhaps the answer lies with NYC’s legendary tap water.
“Water,” Batali says. “Water is huge. It’s probably one of California’s biggest problems with pizza.” Water binds the dough’s few ingredients. Nearly every chemical reaction that produces flavor occurs in water, says Chris Loss, a food scientist with the Culinary Institute of America. “So, naturally, the minerals and chemicals in it will affect every aspect of the way something tastes.”
Update: That legendary tap water was supposedly responsible for NYC-style bagels as well until Finagle A Bagel founder Larry Smith drove some Boston tap water to NYC and compared bagels made with the water from the two cities.
“There was absolutely no difference between them,” Smith reported. “What makes the difference is equipment, process and ingredients.”
Well, ingredients except water. (thx, darrin)
Update: Jeffrey Steingarten, among others, believes that temperature is the key to great pizza and that coal is the key to great temperatures. (thx, hillel)
Update: I knew we’d eventually end up on Slice…the web’s premiere pizza site hosts an account of Jeff Varasano’s attempt to reverse engineer a NYC pizza, specifically from the 117th St. Patsy’s. Among his findings:
There are a lot of variables for such a simple food. But these 3 FAR outweigh the others:
1. High Heat
2. Kneading Technique
3. The kind of yeast culture or “starter” used along with proper fermentation technique
All other factors pale in comparison to these 3. I know that people fuss over the brand of flour, the kind of sauce, etc. I discuss all of these things, but if you don’t have the 3 fundamentals above handled, you will be limited.
(thx, ian)
A little something for my officemates: a guide to bakeries in Manhattan’s Chinatown. We usually go to the Fay Da on Elizabeth, mostly for convenience.
Four chefs talk about how their kitchens are laid out in this month’s Metropolis. Here’s Dan Barber talking about his role at Blue Hill at Stone Barns:
At the same time, I don’t think the cooks look at me as a real community member. I’m not that cozy paternal figure. I’m always doing different things, and it creates this atmosphere where the cooks are on the balls of their feet. They’re thinking, Where’s he going next, what’s happening next? There’s a little bit of confusion. I think that’s good. It’s hard to articulate, because you think of the kitchen as very organized; and, like I said, the more control you have, the better. But a little bit of chaos creates tension. And that creates energy and passion, and it tends to make you season something the right way or reach for something that would add this, that, or the other thing.
The other chefs are Alice Waters, Grant Achatz, and Wylie Dufresne. The one thing they all talked about is the importance of open sight lines, both between the dining room and kitchen and among the chefs in the kitchen.
After 10 years, kottke.org favorite New Green Bo (still the best soup dumplings in town, IMO) has changed its name to Nice Green Bo.
We’re 10 years old, and we have so many nice customers, so we made it Nice Green Bo.
(via eater)
Update: My officemate Scott snapped a photo of the new signage during lunch.
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