The Bowery Boys: New York City History
PODCAST The Bowery Boys head to northwestern Queens to uncover the origin of two close neighborhoods with divergent histories. The borough of Queens has a history unlike any in the New York City region, but the story of its northwestern region — comprising Astoria, Long Island City and about a half dozen other, smaller neighborhoods… Read More
Ravenswood is a dramatic name for a New York City neighborhood and certainly wasted on its primary resident today — Big Allis, the Con Edison generating power station that provides the Queens waterfront with its most unattractive feature. This pocket district is situated on the western edge of Queens just north of Hunter’s Point. Situated… Read More
The Bowery Boys’ Greg Young, an aficionado of comic strip and comic book history, will be appearing at two events this week tied to New York Comic Con. Â The first event on Monday is general admission in the East Village, so come on out to kick off the week. The second event is at NYCC… Read More
Columbus Circle, a center of media and shopping at the entrance to Central Park, has a history that, well, runs against the grain. Counter-clockwise, if you will. LISTEN TO OUR NEW EPISODE HERE: When the park was completed in the mid 19th century, a ‘Grand Circle’ was planned for a busy thoroughfare of horse-drawn carriages.… Read More
The 1980s in New York City were defined by glossy magazines and gallery shows, the earnest giving way to irony, the facile passed off as profound. What would ring hollow in the following decade might have seemed still crisp and dangerous in the Ed Koch years. At the Strangers’ Gate Arrivals In New York by… Read More
Pabst Brewing Company, the Milwaukee beer dynasty founded in 1844 by Jacob Best (and his son-in-law Frederick Pabst), became one of America’s best known beer beverage distributors in the 20th century. Part of their strategy for popularizing their brand was by cracking into a market well saturated with beer at the start of the century… Read More
PODCAST 42nd Street After Hours. Cinema and sleaze. Nostalgia and fantasy. The story of a real and imagined New York. Take a trip with us down the grittiest streets in Times Square — the faded marquees of the grindhouses, the neon-lit prurient delights of Eighth Avenue at night. LISTEN TO OUR LATEST EPISODE HERE: [geo_mashup_map]… Read More
Writing about New York City often means making big, bold statements — flamboyant, absurd and ridiculous — especially if you love it. And even more if you hate it. New York Is Hell Thinking and Drinking in the Beautiful Beast by Benjamin DeCasseres w. introduction by Peggy Nadramia Underworld Amusements Vanishing New York How A… Read More
This is the final part of our three-part NEW YORK IN THE JAZZ AGE podcast series. Check out our two prior episode #233 The Roaring ’20s: The King of the Jazz Age and #234 Queen of the Speakeasies: A Tale of Prohibition New York Something so giddy and wild as New York City in… Read More
THE FIRST PODCAST The story of Benjamin Franklin at the end of his life — at the birth of a new nation. Part Three of The Invention of Benjamin Franklin. Check Part One (Franklin Gothic) and Part Two (Lightning Strikes) to catch up on his extraordinary story! Benjamin Franklin was the most famous American in… Read More
Greg Young has been doing several appearances on the Travel Channel program Mysteries at the Museum with Don Wildman. He’s on tonight talking the construction of a bridge in Niagara Falls. Check your local listings and tune in Mysteries at the Museum — KITE BRIDGE featuring Greg Young of the Bowery Boys Aug 24 premiere… Read More
PODCAST Dry wit! Wet lips! The story of Prohibition during the Jazz Age and the movie star-turned-hostess who became the toast of New York nightlife. Texas Guinan was the queen of the speakeasy era, the charismatic and sassy hostess of New York’s hottest nightclubs of the 1920s. Her magnetism, sharpened by years of work in… Read More
On Wednesday, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced that the busts of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, located on the campus of Bronx Community College, would be permanently evicted, following the removal and dismantling of several sculptural depictions of the Confederate generals across the country in recent days. There are many great Americans, many of them… Read More
LOCATION: Subway Tavern Bleecker and Mulberry, Manhattan In operation 1904-05 The early planners of the New York City subway negotiated that very first route through some of the city’s mostly heavily populated areas, those obviously in need of rapid transit. The locations of the first underground stations were based on the amount of available… Read More
The passage of the 18th Amendment in 1919 — prohibiting the sale of alcohol in the United States — failed to sober up the country. It merely drove its unquenchable thirst underground. Prohibition came about because of an extraordinary union of disparate groups — religious folks, racists, progressives, nativists — all possessing different motivations for… Read More