Aaron Schlossberg has spent years showering his fellow New Yorkers with racist abuse, but it wasn't until he went on an unprovoked racist tirade against a server and customers at a restaurant near his law office that he became infamous. Read the rest
Aaron Schlossberg is the triggered snowflake who became internet famous when he went on an unhinged racist rant against some customers and servers at a restaurant near his law office, who had been speaking Spanish. Read the rest
If you are an oligarch or criminal looking to exfiltrate and launder your money, London property markets have been your go-to asset class: London lux is real-estate that behaves like cash, thanks to the long line of oligarchs and criminals who'll pay cash for your safe-deposit box in the sky on a few hours' notice, should you need to liquidate ahead of a purge or an indictment. Read the rest
Leonard Steinberg, a longstanding New York City luxury property broker, claims that the existence of Uber and Lyft has blunted the premium that buyers were willing to pay to live in neighborhoods with good transit links, because they can afford rideshare cars and use the commute time to work, meaning that commutes are less of a factor in calculating the quality of life (because your day starts when you get into the car, not when you get to your desk). Read the rest
Gothamist voted to unionize in late 2017; immediately thereafter, its new owner, the evil, Trump-supporting billionaire Joe Ricketts killed it and all its sister publications in a fit of petty revenge against the uppity laborers in word-mines; but then, in February, a consortium of public radio stations announced plans to revive the beloved site, backed by an anonymous donor and the sites' original founders. Read the rest
When legendary (and deeply private) New York Times street style photographer Bill Cunningham died in 2016, he left behind a photo archive valued at $1M. His family soon discovered he left the world another gift, a photo-filled memoir he penned secretly. It's titled Fashion Climbing and is due to be published in September.
But aside from some scenes of family discord, Mr. Cunningham’s memoir is a rosy account of an irrepressible dreamer who tripped his way from the stockroom of Boston’s newly opened Bonwit Teller to hat shops of his own in New York. He arrives in the city in November 1948 on opening night of the opera — then a tent pole of the New York social calendar — and stays long after the Social Register stopped being anyone’s bible.
Much of the material is new, even to his relatives. “Bill kept his family life in Boston and his work life in New York very separate,” wrote his niece Trish Simonson, in an email. “He told us stories over the years, but nothing that painted a full picture of what he did and how he came to do it. The drafts of the memoir we found, titled and edited and written in his own unmistakable voice, filled in a lot of blanks of how he made it from here to there, and what he thought along the way.”
Also, if you haven't already, do check out the 2011 documentary Bill Cunningham New York. Read the rest
Ever had something life changing happen to you in the Big Apple? Here's your chance to mark that emotional occasion on a crowdsourced map of the city.
To contribute to Kate Ray's "Crying in Public" map, you'll need to first sign up (no signup required to gawk at other people's hot messes). Then, pick an appropriate emoji that matches your life moment (a peach for "NSFW," crying face for "cried in public," swirly lollipop for "peaked at an altered state", etc.) and place it on the map along with its abbreviated story.
P.S. Don't go to the Chipotle at 6th Avenue and W. 13th.
At the Under the Radar Festival in New York City earlier this month, a crowd of soon-to-be singers rehearsed "back ups" for David Bowie's "Heroes." After an hour, they were performing the song with David Byrne as a Choir! Choir! Choir! tribute to Bowie.
According to Consequence of Sound, Byrne gave his thoughts on working with the choir group, in a press release:
"There is a transcendent feeling in being subsumed and surrendering to a group. This applies to sports, military drills, dancing… and group singing. One becomes a part of something larger than oneself, and something in our makeup rewards us when that happens. We cling to our individuality, but we experience true ecstasy when we give it up. So, the reward experience is part of the show.”
Byrne is beginning an ambitious tour in March for his new album, American Utopia. The album is his first solo LP in 14 years. Read the rest
Hosted by the New York City comedy collective Improv Everywhere, the No Pants Subway Ride is an annual New York City tradition where folks go pantless --together-- on the subway. Now in its 17th year, the group has just announced that the 2018 event will happen on Sunday, January 7th. If you're interested in joining in on the fun, be sure to sign up for their mailing list. They'll be sharing more information there closer to the event's date.
The event happens outside of New York City too, but Improv Everywhere doesn't specifically run it. People like you do. They write:
Once again we are encouraging folks in other cities around the world to stage their own No Pants Subway Rides on the same day. Regional organizers must fill out this registration form to have their event included (that form is for organizers only.) The week before the event we will publish a list of all participating cities along with links to Facebook events. Groups have staged the event on trolleys, light rails, and buses in the past, so don’t let a lack of subway system stop you! 60 cities participated last year. Check the list on this page to see if one happened in your city last year as preference will go to the prior year’s organizers...
Here's a look at last year's event:
Full details can be found on Improv Everywhere's site.
(If you go, I want to see pix!)
photo by Katie Sokoler, via Improv Everywhere Read the rest
Matthew Combs, a Fordham University Louis Calder Center Biological Field Station grad student worked with colleagues from Fordham and the Providence College Department of Biology to sequence the genomes of brown rats in Manhattan, and made a surprising discovery: the geography of rats has a genetic correlation, so a geneticist can tell where a rat was born and raised by analyzing its DNA. Read the rest
"Light Up Someone's Holiday" is Improv Everywhere's latest mission and it's a heartwarming one.
...We created a custom-built set that allowed random New Yorkers to instantly deliver a card and light up someone’s holiday. Participants were surprised as Christmas lights lit up the plaza and their message was displayed on a 30-foot wide screen above.
This project is a collaboration with Hallmark, who provided us with an assortment of Hallmark Signature Cards for the project.
See how they pulled off this stunt on their blog. Read the rest
You have many choices when it comes to purchasing a calendar for the new year. Now there's another contender: the 2018 New York City Taxi Drivers Calendar.
Described as a "comedic take on the traditional pin-up," the calendar features the Big Apple's "most scintillating and good-humored" yellow cab drivers and a portion of its proceeds goes to charity.
A portion of each calendar sale will go to University Settlement, America’s oldest settlement house (1886), based in New York City and serving over 30,000 immigrant and working individuals and families every year with basic services like quality education, housing, recreation and wellness opportunities, and literacy programs.
The calendar is available online for $14.99.
Previously: Bearded men don mermen tails for charity calendar Read the rest
This red-and-white designer casket spotted by several people in New York City is real, but is it authentic? There is a Louis Vuitton X Supreme line after all.
BRUUUUUH — pic.twitter.com/1nVdxUwmMA
— Chris Black (@donetodeath) October 26, 2017
That hearse and casket should be driven right into this totally legit carport.
Thanks, Greg!
We Want You in NYC is a group of civic hackers who believe in using technology to improve people's lives; they've launched a provocative campaign aimed at disillusioned Silicon Valley techies who are tired of working on products that are "designed to kidnap our--and our kids’--attention, only to maximize profits" and want to help "large segments of society to participate in the economic benefits of technology innovation." Read the rest
The Property and Evidence Tracking System (PETS) is the NYPD's huge database where it stores ownership information on the millions in New Yorkers' property it takes charge of every year (including about $68m in cash and counting), through evidence collection and asset forfeiture. Read the rest
The Arepa Lady started as a food-cart in Jackson Heights, Queens, owned by Maria Cano, whose son and daughter-in-law have continued the family business, moving into permanent digs, with seating for 30. Read the rest
Buckminster Fuller created this striking 1960 overlay photograph "Dome Over Manhattan" in 1960. It's one of many prints, drawings, models, and artworks in the "Never Built New York" exhibition now on view at the Queens Museum. Co-curated by Sam Lubell and Greg Goldin, and designed by Christian Wassmann, the exhibition "explores a city where you could catch a football game in Manhattan, travel via a floating airport, and live in an apartment also acting as a bridge support." Below, Frank Lloyd Wright's "Key Plan for Ellis Island" (1959), Eliot Noyes’s Westinghouse Pavilion proposal for the 1964 World’s Fair installed at the exhibit as a scaled-down "bouncy house" model, and Paul Rudolph’s "Galaxon Pavilion," designed for the 1964 World’s Fair in Flushing Meadows and recreated in virtual reality by Shimahara Illustration. The exhibition is based on the curator's book, Never Built New York. From an interview with Lubell and Golding in City Lab:
Read the restLubell: The way you experience the show in Queens connects you to the site, makes it real, and then you’re in the salon space before finally walking up to the panorama, looking above the projects with a sense of how it all would have affected the city. The combination of galleries makes for a really powerful experience.
Seeing these projects through our show doesn’t just create a ‘wow’ factor: it can inspire people to learn more about how cities do or don’t work. It clues people into the planning process. I think the emotions that come from looking back at these projects will make people think about what we can do now and in the future to improve New York.
