Patell and Waterman’s History of New York
Being a … course, companion, blog, and book.
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Views from Queensboro Bridge [Newtown Pentacle]
Recapping the Bike Shorts screenings at Public Assembly. [Brooklyn by Bike]
Staten Island: Into the Woods. [Ape Shall Not Kill Ape]
And for natural waterfalls, the gold goes to the Bronx! [Bronx Bohemian]
Nothing left but a ghost space: What was once the 125th St. Y. [Harlem Bespoke]
Photo by Mitch Waxman for Newtown Pentacle.
Tags: Bronx, Brooklyn, outer boroughs, Queens, Staten Island
Escape from lower Manhattan … at least in your mind. Maybe even in body!
Roosevelt Island tram will shut down for the spring and summer. Last chance to catch it before renovations is March 1 at 2 a.m. [Roosevelt Islander]
Save City Reliquary, New York’s coolest museum! [Edible Manhattan]
Ice Skating in Concourse Plaza [City Room]
Staten Island’s trees have their eye on you! [Scouting NY]
Will the new Kosciuszko Bridge please stand up? [Queens Crap]
And for kicks — Driving around NYC in 1928:
(via drm)
If that’s not old-fashioned enough — and if you just can’t shake your downtown chauvinism (as I usually can’t) — then take a public sleigh down to the Bowling Green, circa 1860 [Virtual Dime Museum]
Roosevelt Island tram photo via Gothamist.
Tags: Bronx, Brooklyn, outer boroughs, Queens, Roosevelt Island, Staten Island
Check this out! It’s like half a dozen tweets all sent at once!
Kevin Walsh visits Poe Place in the Bronx. [Forgotten NY]
Titanic House leaves LIC. [liQcity]
The repopulation of Downtown Brooklyn [Brownstoner]
Tomorrow: Second Saturday in Staten Island. [Forgotten Borough]
Bald Eagles in Harlem! [Harlem Hybrid]
I missed this first one when it was new, but here’s a tour of prisons in all 5 boroughs. Follow it up with a tour of public restrooms. I’d like to dedicate the first link to Bartleby the Scrivener and the second to anyone who’s ever been cited for public urination. [Untapped New York]
Williamsburg public phone photo by Michelle Young for Untapped New York.
Tags: Bronx, Brooklyn, Harlem, outer boroughs, Queens, Staten Island
Things happening on the Web or IRT outside my neighborhood.
The Jane Jacobs of Gowanus [Found in Brooklyn]
The passing of a Harlem-born Tuskegee Airman [Harlem Bespoke]
Feeling hopeful at Staten Island’s Snug Harbor Cultural Center [snug-harbor.org]
Following Idiotarod 2010 from BK to Queens [Gothamist]
Coming-of-age clichés: Bronx edition [NYTimes]
Photo credit: An ephemeral scene on the Wmsburg Bridge, via Restless
Tags: Bronx, Brooklyn, Harlem, Queens, Staten Island
As ususal, I’m spending my Friday below 14th Street in Manhattan. Hooray for the Internets!
Kevin Walsh heads out to Brighton Beach and Coney Island [Forgotten NY]
And we hear rumors that the new amusement park will be named after an old one [Amusing the Zillion]
Willing to brave the cold? Take a self-guided graffiti tour of Bushwick and East Williamsburg [offManhattan]
Late link to photos of a late lunch with Pale Male [Urban Hawks]
Sunday lecture: Kerouac in Queens [NYC Parks & Rec]
Worst neighborhood name in New York history? Linoleumville, Staten Island, though some commentators would vote for Flushing instead. [Ephemeral New York]
And finally: Video montage of burned-out Bronx cityscapes in the 70s and 80s [Welcome to Melrose; h/t BoogieDowner]
Tags: animals, Bronx, Brooklyn, coney island, graffiti, Queens, Staten Island
East River Plaza’s Costco lays off 160 workers; apparently NYers don’t have room to buy in bulk [Harlem Bespoke]
Benefit TONIGHT for Tuli Kupferberg at St. Ann’s, featuring Flutterbox, John Zorn, Lenny Pickett, Christine Ohlman, Sonic Youth, Lou Reed, John Kruth, Peter Stampfel and Tuli’s fellow Fug, Ed Sanders [Now I've Heard Everything]
Breaking down NYC pizza by borough/neighborhood: The Astoria Slice, pictured above [Newtown Pentacle]
Bronx-based William S. Burroughs look-a-like robbing shops in the Village [New York Times, via BoogieDowner]
A guide to Staten Island’s Hills: Look to them! [Ape Shall Not Kill Ape]
Astoria Slice photo by Mitch Waxman
Tags: Bronx, Brooklyn, Harlem, outer boroughs, Queens, Staten Island
The address for our Facebook page is now http://www.facebook.com/pwhny. Thanks to our first 26 “fans,” who have made it possible for us to get the username pwhny.
Special props to our former WNY TA Kyung-Sook Boo over at Sogang University in Korea, for her efforts on our behalf. Thanks for spreading the word abroad!
Now we’ve got to figure out how to make this site work in tandem with Twitter and Facebook. Any suggestions? What would you like to see us do with the Facebook page? For that matter, what would you like to see us do with this site?
It’s a new decade: change is in the air!
Our revels now are ended. It’s hump day of the first week back to work after New Year’s. Hell, it’s the first work week of the New Decade.
And how are we all feeling about New York’s prospects in the decade ahead?
Optimistic? (Perhaps, then, you agree with George Steinbrenner’s pronouncement: “New York City should resolve to rise above the tough economic times and maintain its determination, energy and spirit. New York is a city of winners, and it shouldn’t let its spirit sag even for a minute.” See “New York’s Resolutions” on nytimes.com.)
Pessimistic? (Perhaps then, you agree with my fellow Trinity alum Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of The Nation magazine: “I think it’s very serious — it’s actually almost Dickensian — that we’re planning to cut reduced student fares on the subway. … The crisis of the economy is a hugely serious one, but there’s also a crisis of the spirit.” See “New York’s Resolutions” on nytimes.com.)
Sanguine? Guardedly hopeful? (See most of the subjects interviewed for “New York’s Resolutions” on nytimes.com.)
Well, if you want to recapture a little of that feeling of romance that New York manages to conjure up every now and then, I suggest taking a twirl on the ice at Bryant Park behind the New York Public Library. “The Pond at Bryant Park” continues until January 24. It’s free, Sunday–Thursday (8:00am–10:00pm), Friday & Saturday (8:00am–Midnight). Gliding around the ice, surrounded by skyscrapers, listening to jazz: “Birds do it, bees do it / Even educated fleas do it / Let’s do it, let’s fall in love.”
Who knows, you just might fall in love — with the city — once again.
Tags: Bryant Park
I’ve enjoyed the year-end retrospectives several of my favorite blogs have posted over the last week. Here’s one version of what the year looked like around these parts.
January was about endings and beginnings: Amato Opera announced it was closing (very, very sad); William Zantzinger bit the dust (not so sad); we reflected on historic inaugurations.
February saw death spreading: Holiday Cocktail Lounge’s Stafan Lutak; Joe Ades, the Peeler Man. The Bowery hit hard times, but not in the traditional sense. I couldn’t stop thinking about Sing Sing marble and prison labor, while Cyrus couldn’t stop thinking about the creation of the world.
In March I inadvertently followed John Lennon to Bermuda; I also, somehow, watched Watchmen twice. Meanwhile, Cyrus had a welcome excuse to write about baseball; Gossip Girl went all Edith Wharton; and the Queensboro Bridge turned 100.
In April we participated in the Mercantile Library’s Big Read of James Washington Square; Cyrus thought about Fitzgerald and Allen and the recently repainted centenarian Queensboro, as well as Allen and Lee and cinematic NYC; I wondered, as I’m wont to do, how we got from the Beats to the Punks; and we learned James Franco would be howling.
In May we both got good news from the folks over at 33 1/3, just as our yearly Writing New York course was wrapping. I went underground looking for NYC’s oldest subway tunnel. And we almost had some early beach weather!
June saw snafus at the Provincetown Playhouse site; Cyrus, braver than I, headed for Plattsburgh; DKNY’s mural was Californicated; MJ died; and Kermit helped us tease out a missing chapter in hipster history.
July was still MJ at every turn; Connie Converse came into my life; and so did a kid named Charlie — making me a new parent again, after almost 13 years.
August brought new book love from Betsy Bradley and David Freeland, along with a new NYC song superblog. Cyrus indulged our mutual obsession with all things Moby-Dick.
In September the city celebrated the Hudson 400. My neighborhood lost its beloved video store, one of the last of its kind, but we gained the new and improved MoCA. Meanwhile, Woolworth was finally eclipsed by the new Gehry tower on Beekman. Also, Cyrus and I started gearing up for our Lost New York conference; we also ran an interview with some friends who couldn’t participate.
October’s Lost New York conference was followed by some useful transcriptions from Cyrus; we loved Royall Tyler’s The Contrast on stage at the Metropolitan; and just in time for Halloween, a tombstone popped up in Washington Square.
In November we celebrated Sesame Street’s 40th anniversary; Cyrus tracked Diedrich Knickerbocker’s bicentennial and the history of the Macy’s Parade; and the Metropolitan Playhouse came in with a second slam-dunk revival of the season: Augustin Daly’s Under the Gaslight.
December saw us teaming up with a group of nice NYC blogs to produce a 2009 holiday guide. We like the folks we were asked to work with, and encourage readers to check in with them from time to time.
We’re looking forward to 2010. Our Writing New York class starts again in a couple weeks, and we’ll be sure to supplement the course with a new spate of posts here. Thanks for riding along with us so far; if you’re new, here, buckle your seatbelts! (Neither of us has a car, though, and we’re posting kind of slowly lately, so make of that advice what you will.)
If you’re looking for a warm nook to shelter you from the storm, today’s the last day for the DBA East Village crafts fair. Last week I bought some knitted goods, homemade jams and butters, and some handsewn bags and such for the ladies in my life (who, luckily, don’t really read this site and hence won’t have their surprises spoiled). Today I’m going back for some small ceramics. Everything’s sold by the folks who made it. I stole some truffles when my daughter wasn’t looking and can say with confidence she’s onto something good.
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