The Bowery Boys: New York City History
There are many of you who read this blog who remember the 1964-65 World’s Fair well — and maybe even a few who remember the 1939-40 World’s Fair — so I thought you might be interested in this event: World’s Fairs in 3-DSaturday September 27, 6 pmThe Gershwin Hotel 7 East 27th StreetBetween Fifth and… Read More
“Street Arabs,” as they called them, as photographed by Jacob Riis Sorry, it’s been a crazy week! Our second-part podcast on the history of Five Points will be up by this evening or early tomorrow morning.
There are dozens of classics written about the contemporary New York of their creation, including The Great Gatsby and Catcher In The Rye. And thousands of trashy Manhattan stories chronicling gossip girls, magazine editors and cosmopolitan swilling divorcees. But the New York historical novel has only really flourished in the past forty years or so… Read More
This week’s show will be posted on here and up on iTunes tomorrow. Sorry for the delay, but it’s a good one! The show is about a former mayor of New York City. Check out our Know Your Mayors series for little tales on a few prior leaders of the city, the influential and ineffectual.… Read More
Street art in Gowanus After checking out our podcast on Canal Street, stop by Forgotten New York for their beautifully photographed walking tour of the Manhattan Bridge area [Forgotten New York] Better hurry out to Coney Island; the pier and boardwalk may be closed as early as the end of the month. [Kinetic Carnival] It’s… Read More
One very important American airfield associated with the city was omitted from this week’s podcast. Roosevelt Field was actually just outside the city of New York in Nassau County. Today it’s a 50 year old shopping mall! However, the most famous solo flight in human history originated from here over 80 years ago. The Army-owned… Read More
Another angle of Alfred Eisenstaedt’s famous snapshot of some spontaneous love-making in Times Square on V-J Day
Members of the New York Fire Department, circa 1908 Back to normal blog posts starting tomorrow!
Sunday, May 4th is Keith Haring’s birthday! The new 2 Columbus Circle: about as ugly as the old one [Gothamist] Forgotten NY and few dozen friends hit Gravesend, Brooklyn. [Forgotten NY] Totally ridiculous 60s advertisements [Gawker] Say goodbye to the Hog Pit. Oink! [Flaming Pablum] And check out the new and improved Gowanus Lounge!
Cheyenne Diner … saved! [Lost New York] When developers come calling, even the dead have to move. [Queenscrap] Sorry I missed this one — 81 years ago last week, Mae West was imprisoned on Blackwell’s Island for her ‘obscene’ play titled ‘Sex’ [Roosevelt Islander] Curtains close on the historic Provincetown Playhouse. Thanks NYU! [Curbed] Radical… Read More
Above: Grand Theft Auto IV’s version of Times Square Next Tuesday, the world stops for millions of Americans as they finally clutch copies of the hotly anticipated Grand Theft Auto IV. As in a few other incarnations of this bloody, aggressive adventure, the action takes place in Liberty City, an Earth-2 version of New York… Read More
Director Jules Dassin died this week. He just happened to direct a film I wrote about a few weeks ago — The Naked City — featuring one of the most extensive on-location New York shoots of almost any film before 1960. Now you have no excuse not to go rent it this weekend! HE’S SHOT… Read More
Above: new Yankee Stadium We’d like to give a big thank you to Kevin Walsh for giving us a generous shout-out on his site Forgotten NY. Most of you I’m sure are familiar with this great site, the ultimate investigative New York history site that specializes in the unique and sometimes unknown corners of the… Read More
Few events in New York can trace themselves as far back as the annual St. Patrick’s Day parade, a tradition that has been celebrated in some form since 1766. The spirit of ‘everybody’s Irish for a day’ was not in effect; that first parade was a strictly military affair, featured only Irish soldiers in the… Read More
Jack Straw and Condi Rice (as played by the Bowery Boys) sit debating at the U.N. Security Council We’d like to thank Caroline Jeanjot and Dan Schreiber for giving the two of us a smashing behind the scenes tour of the United Nations building last week. We had an absolutely fantastic time. There are regular… Read More