The Bowery Boys: New York City History
Hopefully some of you are watching the Ken Burns multi-hour epic documentary The National Parks: America’s Great Idea, a fascinating but rather languid celebration of American preservation of its greatest natural treasures. I’m assuming that by Wednesday, Burns should get here to New York with discussion of two national monuments (the Statue of Liberty and… Read More
From this angle, she looks about the same, but looks can be deceiving (see below). I promise, we’re still doing podcasts! We’ll be back on the twice-a-month schedule starting next week. In the meantime, I’ve actually been away on vacation the past week and a half to another fabulous city and the birthplace of the… Read More
ABOVE: 1969 — Central Park’s Sheep Meadow was transformed into ‘Moon Meadow’, a celebration for people watching the Apollo 11 moon landing.We don’t have any regular podcast this week; however I am reposting the second part our Central Park show called ‘The Evolution of Central Park, re-launching it in our secondary feed NYC History: Bowery… Read More
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald with wife Zelda, from 1921 “I began to like New York, the racy, adventurous feel of it at night and the satisfaction that the constant flicker of men and women and machines gives to the restless eye. I liked to walk up Fifth Avenue and pick out romantic women from the… Read More
Above: Diane Cook’s dreamy “Little Red Lighthouse, Fort Washington Park, Manhattan, 2002” You can see the picture above and lots of other impossibly good-looking pictures at the Museum of the City of New York‘s new show The Edge of New York: Waterfront Photographs. The exhibition features an array of images from all eras of New… Read More
But the rent was cheap: ravaged East Village avenues in the 1970s (Pic courtesy here) Spike Lee and Robert Deniro are making a new show for Showtime called Alphabet City, set in the raggedy 1980s culture of the East Village. Expect some graffiti, a little crime, rapping and breakdancing, and lots of performance artists. Note… Read More
And you can dance: Madge performs Borderline at Danceteria Photograph by Charlene Martinez FRIDAY NIGHT FEVER To get you in the mood for the weekend, every other Friday we’ll be featuring an old New York nightlife haunt, from the dance halls of 19th Century Bowery, to the massive warehouse clubs of the mid-1990s. Past entries… Read More
Today is primary election day in New York! Locals, have you voted yet? Current mayor Michael Bloomberg is not on the ballot yet — he’ll be on the November ballot — but primary races for City Comptroller, Public Advocate, some city council seats, and the Democratic candidate for mayor are included on today’s ballot In… Read More
New York 1981: Jim Carroll (middle right) with punk stars Dave Treganna, Dave Parsons, and Stiv Bators of The Wanderers. (Picture courtesy punk turns 30) Writer, punk poet, musician and New York fixture Jim Carroll passed away on Friday. Relive his career via words and pictures on fansite by Cassie Carter, including an exhaustive list… Read More
We’re going back to school with one of New York’s oldest continually operating institutions — Columbia University. Or should we say, King’s College, the pre-Revolution New York school that spawned religious controversy and a few Founding Fathers to boot. Listen in as we chart its locations throughout the city — from the vicinity of Trinity… Read More
ABOVE: Tennis’ great star of the 1940s Bobby Riggs takes a spill at the American National Tennis Championships — later to be called the U.S. Open — at the West Side Tennis Club in Forest Hills, Queens. Believe it or not, the tournament was played at this Queens country club from 1915-1920 and 1925-1978. It… Read More
I snapped this picture of the giant hand of Madame Tussaud on 42nd Street this weekend, a golden appendage which ominously dangles above her popular wax museum. The massive amputation of a French woman reminded me of a similar disembodiment that occurred over 130 years ago. In 1876, in an effort to raise funds for… Read More
A banner celebration: loading up with signs for the 1908 Labor Day Parade in New York Labor Day is one of the few national holidays that New York City can lay claim to as their own. The roots of the U.S. holiday began here, with Union Square as its centerpiece, in 1882. But in fact,… Read More
TEXT: “Sept 16th and 17th 1959‘Ice Capades’Plymouth Hotel Fire at 4:30 AMThursdayMerman in ‘Gypsy’” The Hotel Chesterfield (130-136 West 49th Street), built in 1927, was a luxury accommodation conveniently near Rockefeller Center and various Broadway theaters. The Ice Capades referred to in this card are the well-reviewed Ice Capades program launched at Madison Square Garden.… Read More
Click picture for greater detail Above is a picture, facing east, of Seward Park Library in the ‘lower’ Lower East Side at 192 E. Broadway (picture taken in 1911). This spectacular branch library, funded by Andrew Carnegie, opened in November 1909, two years before the 42nd Street main branch opened. All of the housing behind… Read More