The Bowery Boys: New York City History
Hugh Ryan’s When Brooklyn Was Queer embarks on a modern quest to find the roots of the LGBTQ community in the pages of history. A reader might hope to pick up Ryan’s book and find a reflection of their own world in the back alleys and parlors of Old New York — or rather, Old Brooklyn, the… Read More
UPDATE (March 11, 2019): The city has announced that it will commission a Billie Holiday memorial, joining new statues for Elizabeth Jennings Graham, Katherine Walker and Dr. Helen Rodríguez-Trías. Graham, the subject of a landmark case that desegregated New York City mass transportation, was also suggested by our readers. The city previously announced the creation of a monument to Shirley Chisholm. Here’s our pitch for a monument to Holiday which ran back… Read More
PODCAST: How the Tweed Courthouse became a symbol for everything rotten about 19th century American politics. The roots of modern American corruption traces themselves back to a handsome — but not necessarily revolutionary — historic structure sitting behind New York City Hall. The Tweed Courthouse is more than a mere landmark. Once called the New York County… Read More
Greg Young of the Bowery Boys podcast is just one of the many New York City experts and historians to be featured in a new PIX11 four-part mini-series debuting Friday, March 8. (CW affiliate Channel 11) Only in New York chronicles some of the most controversial moments in New York City history, a subway shooting that ignited a racial firestorm,… Read More
The GANYC Apple Awards, given out by the Guides Association of New York City, celebrate the best in New York City culture, tourism and preservation. The Bowery Boys podcast has been deeply honored with two GANYC Apple Awards in the past — for Outstanding Achievement in Radio Program or Podcast (Audio/Spoken Word) and for Outstanding Achievement in Non-Fiction NYC Book… Read More
“Hickok was a celebrity. He was famous. He was feared. He was already a legend. It is estimated that over fifteen hundred dime novels were written just about Buffalo Bill Cody, beginning in 1869, when he was only twenty-three, into the 1930s, and during the early years. Wild Bill was in that category of iconic… Read More
PODCAST How did one of the greatest composers of the 20th century end up buried in Queens in a pauper’s grave? Scott Joplin, the “King of Ragtime”, moved to New York in 1907, at the height of his fame. And yet, he died a decade later, forgotten by the public. He remained nearly forgotten and buried… Read More
Films honored annually at the Academy Awards usually have a historical backdrop — lavish sets and period-accurate costumes plucked from the past. Most of the nominees for Best Picture this year take a time machine to a past generation. The Favourite peers at the backroom (and bedroom) intrigues of Queen Anne. Roma dives into Mexico City in the early 1970s; BlacKKKlansman visits… Read More
Head over to Chinatown this Sunday afternoon (February 17, starting at 1pm) for the Lunar New Year Parade and Festival, topping off two weeks of celebrations in honor of the Year of the Pig. (Find the parade route here. And get there early for a great spot.) [We also did a podcast episode on the history of New Year’s Eve… Read More
Sometimes an artist’s biography can work on two levels, providing both the sweep of history within the subject matter of the artist’s own output and a grand view of American art history in the artist’s working life. In Mary Schmidt Campbell’s absorbing biography of the painter, illustrator and collagist Romare Bearden, we get to look at… Read More
Events such as these used to be unthinkable, anomalies of history that once played like speculative fiction. But this really did happen. Eighty years ago this month — on February 20, 1939 — over 20,000 members of the German American Bund, a pro-Nazi organization, gathered at Madison Square Garden (at its Hell’s Kitchen location on Eighth Avenue) to unite the philosophies of… Read More
A very special episode of the Bowery Boys podcast, recorded live at the Bell House in Gowanus, Brooklyn, celebrating the legacy of Walt Whitman, a writer with deep ties to New York and its 19th century sister-city Brooklyn. On May 31, 1819, the world will mark the 200th anniversary of the birth of Whitman, a journalist who revolutionized American… Read More
NOTE: This post features a slight spoiler of an event which occurs in the film’s first five minutes. The period film Green Book — nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Picture — goes cross-country with pianist Don Shirley (played by Mahershala Ali) and his chauffeur/bodyguard Tony Lip (played by Viggo Mortensen), depicting the varying gradients of class and race relations in… Read More
Welcome to the Bowery Boys Movie Club, a new podcast exclusively for our Patreon supporters where Tom and Greg discuss classic New York City films from an historical perspective. As we are currently prepare the newest episode for our patrons, we thought we’d give our all our listeners a taste of the very first episode (which was released… Read More
PODCAST The fascinating history of Brooklyn’s most bustling — and most frequently misunderstood — neighborhood. Downtown Brooklyn has a history that is often overlooked by New Yorkers. You’d be forgiven if you thought Brooklyn’s civic center — with a bustling shopping district and even an industrial tech campus — seemed to lack significant remnants of… Read More