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Bowery Boys

Guests of the Bowery Boys Podcast: Check out their latest projects

We’ve been incredibly fortunate to have some great guests on a few of our podcasts recently, bringing fresh perspectives into our subjects. Many of them were on the show talking about projects which you can now enjoy and experience from home. Here’s the rundown:   THE LOST ARCADE The guests: Director Kurt Vincent and video game aficionado Anthony… Read More

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Podcasts

The Bowery Boys Live in Brooklyn! Celebrating Ten Years of Podcasting

PODCAST The Bowery Boys podcast turns ten years old in June. Greg and Tom take the celebration to the Bell House for a live show. In early June of 2007, Tom Meyers and Greg Young sat around a laptop and a karaoke microphone, looked out over Canal Street in the Lower East Side and began… Read More

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Planes Trains and Automobiles

The story of how Idlewild Airport was renamed for John F. Kennedy

John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, was memorialized in dozens of ways following his assassination on November 22, 1963. None of these are more vital to the daily lives of New Yorkers than John F. Kennedy International Airport — or Kennedy Airport or simply JFK — the business airport in the… Read More

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Bowery Boys Bookshelf Wartime New York

The marks of World War I, scattered throughout the five boroughs

Echoes of the first World War, one hundred years behind us, can still be found in virtually every neighborhood of New York City. In Kevin C. Fitzpatrick’s revealing and compact guidebook World War I New York: A Guide to the City’s Enduring Ties to the Great War, these memories linger in familiar landmarks and obscure… Read More

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Adventures In Old New York

The Bowery Boys’ next book appearance — June 6 at EXIT 9

We’re happy to announce that our latest appearance relating to our book The Bowery Boys’ Adventures In Old New York will be on June 6, from 7-9 pm, at Exit9 Gift Emporium, one of the coolest places in the East Village. We’ll be at Exit9 reading some special passages from the book, giving you a… Read More

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Museums On The Waterfront

The South Street Seaport Museum, at 50 years old, has gotten some tattoos

The under appreciated South Street Seaport Museum has always had a daunting mission to fulfill — preserving a piece of New York City history on the edge of a volatile and ever-changing waterway. Established fifty years ago this year, the museum has been the guiding presence to this remaining vestige of New York’s 19th century waterfront.… Read More

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Bowery Boys Bookshelf Politics and Protest

‘Fear City’: The unthinkable tale how New York City almost went bankrupt

Fear City: New York’s Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics, the title of Kim Phillips-Fein’s riveting new book on the 1970s financial catastrophe, isn’t wantonly comparing New York City to the devilish landscape of a horror film. It’s the actual title of a grim pamphlet the New York Police Department distributed to tourists in 1975,… Read More

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Religious History

The Lower East Side lost a unique relic, a ruin of historical significance

Last night a haunting and inconceivable ruin of the Lower East Side was mysteriously destroyed in a massive fire. The abandoned shell of the old synagogue Beth Hamedrash Hagodol has been a feature of life of Norfolk Street, stubbornly nestled next to apartment buildings, a vestige of the past clinging to the present without care… Read More

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Adventures In Old New York On The Waterfront Podcasts

The Pirate of Pearl Street: The All-True New York Adventures of Captain Kidd

PODCAST The tale of Captain William Kidd, a respectable New York citizen and landowner, and his transformation into the ruthless pirate of legend. The area of Lower Manhattan below Wall Street is today filled with investment bankers, business people and tourists. But did you know, over 300 years ago, that the same streets were once… Read More

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Landmarks

A Witness to Violence: Colonnade Row and the Astor Place Riots of 1849

On May 10, 1849, Astor Place erupted into bloody violence as crowds took to the streets and battled it out — over a Shakespearean actor. It was the first time in American history that a state militia trained its muskets upon the very population it had been sworn to protect. Yet of the many structures… Read More

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True Crime

‘Dead End’: Reviving a Bogart classic in a space with history of its own

In 1935, the play Dead End by Sidney Kingsley debuted on Broadway, arriving with great anticipation as Kingsley had just won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama the previous year with his play Men In White. Today this is probably the least interesting detail about Dead End. You probably know Dead End for one of two… Read More

Categories
The First

The First Song Ever Recorded (Was Never Meant To Be Played Back)

THE FIRST PODCAST Imagine if we could hear the voices of Abraham Lincoln, Queen Victoria or Harriet Tubman? Believe it or not, somebody was making audio recordings as far back as the 1850s. Had these techniques been widespread, we might have had the words of those famous people preserved, as well as recordings from the Civil… Read More

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Pop Culture

‘War Paint’ and ‘Indecent’: Two views of New York City history on Broadway

History has always been a critical component of theater, especially in musicals, where period sets and costumes assist in creating other worlds on stage quite unlike our normal one. But last year, with Hamilton: The Musical, the stage phenomenon which won the Tony Award for Best Musical (and a million other awards), history became a rock star. Or rather,… Read More

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Planes Trains and Automobiles Podcasts

The Hindenburg Over New York: The Airship Age Comes To An Abrupt End

PODCAST The era of the Zeppelin, how it shaped the New York skyline and the disastrous crash of the Hindenburg on an airfield in New Jersey. On the afternoon of May 6, 1937, New Yorkers looked overhead at an astonishing sight — the arrival of the Hindenburg, the largest airship in the world, drifting calmly across… Read More

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Sports

The Wise Guy of Baseball: Getting To Know Leo ‘The Lip’ Durocher

BOOK REVIEW The history of sports is often written around its most revered role models, as though the noble character of the greatest players comes from the purest devotion to their game. Leo Durocher, a sterling shortstop and manager for some of the greatest teams in baseball history, was no role model. In most ways, he was the… Read More