LAX, ca. 1928 (via rick prelinger)
Now, with the same map in overlay (lower right):
LAX flight paths ca. 2004 (source):
]
Category Archives: urban
Hobbesian ’80s
under art, neighborhood, trend, urban
NYTeims takes a walk down memory lane: “Justen Ladda leads people to the basement of an abandoned school in the South Bronx to show them an installation he’s created featuring the Marvel comics character known as the Thing.”
This one, from Ladda's site:
Reality sues fiction
under architecture, crime, security, standards, urban
NYTeims (Bagli, “A Whistleblower at the Deutsche Bank Building Is Now an Outcast,” 30 Nov’09):
[Marshal Greenberg] is suing the contractors who employed him, Bovis Lend Lease and the John Galt Corporation, accusing them of retaliating against him for telling the truth. Bovis, in court papers, has denied his claims.
The kicker:
Galt has yet to file its court papers, and declined comment.
Maybe it's gone?
Flickr Pro, Flickr Con
under crime, digital, government, law, media, military, neighborhood, security, trend, urban
Bernie Kerik’s Flickr photostream includes gems like Officer Kerik in ’93...
...“plainclothes” (modulo the assault rifle) Kerik escorting Susan Rosenberg (ca. ’83?; SR playing ping pong here)...
...authentic arrest scenes...
...and, indeed, pretty much his entire rise and fall. Except for his mugshot:
The kommissar disappears:
(Left: Flickr, plemeljr, 8 Feb ’05 [detail]; right: m3t00, 11 Oct ’09.)
RLcaptcha
Aram Bartholl, just checking to see if you're human:
Tweet tweet: a little birdie told me…
The Guardian reports on an NYC anarcho arrested for twittering whereabouts of police at Pittsburgh G20:
Elliot Madison, 41, from Queens, had his home raided and was put on $30,000 (£19,000) bail after he and Michael Wallschlaeger, 46, were tracked to the Carefree Inn motel in Pittsburgh during the summit on 24 and 25 September. The pair were found sitting in front of a bank of laptops and emergency frequency radio scanners. They were wearing headphones and microphones and had many maps and contact numbers in the room. Official police documents allege the two men used Twitter messages to contact protesters at the summit "and to inform the protesters and groups of the movements and actions of law enforcement".
OTOH...
During the summit, the police openly monitored Twitter to listen in to the protesters' communications.
"Openly."
(rp)
NYC, World Capital of FAIL
under LDCs, architecture, design, economics, environment, finance, government, media, neighborhood, security, trend, urban
Background/figure
under art, media, neighborhood, urban
New Yorker illustrator newyorkerizes the rat:
The rat:
Sandwiched between a parking reg, a for-rent sign, a scaffold, and a traffic jam of SUVs. Very New York. And, of course, it’s not the union rat — it’s the owner rat.
Wilderness of twitters
under digital, government, international, media, network, trend, urban
Breakfast at Tiffany’s 2.0
under money, neighborhood, trend, urban
NYT discovers the “famed” yet previously unmentioned remunerations networks of the wealthy that have subsidized NYC’s “innovation” for a decade and a half:
Famed for its concentration of heavily subsidized 20-something residents — also nicknamed trust-funders or trustafarians — Williamsburg is showing signs of trouble. Parents whose money helped fuel one of the city’s most radical gentrifications in recent years have stopped buying their children new luxury condos, subsidizing rents and providing cash to spend at Bedford Avenue’s boutiques and coffee houses.
Kids the pupal rich today
Luis Illades, an owner of the Urban Rustic Market and Cafe on North 12th Street, said he had seen a steady number of applicants, in their late 20s, who had never held paid jobs: They were interns at a modeling agency, for example, or worked at a college radio station. In some cases, applicants have stormed out of the market after hearing the job requirements. In some cases, applicants have stormed out of the market after hearing the job requirements. “They say, ‘You want me to work eight hours?’”
As the Dead Kennedys put it: Brace yourself, my dear...
On the NYT’s inability to tell the truth on real estate, see also: “Old joke,” “Minor detail,” “Whiter shade of gray,” and “The Paper of 404.”
You’re breaking up
under digital, government, media, standards, urban
NYT (Labaton, “Millions Face Blank Screens in TV Switch,” 5 Jun ’09) quotes another Obamatron suggesting that Shrub’s administration had other priorities than, say, doing what government is supposed to do:
Michael J. Copps, the acting head of the Federal Communications Commission, said that the people most likely to lose reception are society’s most vulnerable — lower-income families, the elderly, the handicapped and homes where little or no English is spoken. The transition will also hit inner-city and rural areas hardest, he said. “We are much better prepared than we were in February, when the original transition was to have occurred, but there will nonetheless be significant disruptions,” Mr. Copps said in an interview. “In the past five months we’ve tried to accomplish what should have been done over the last four years.”
But 9/11! 9/11! 9/11!
POTD
under architecture, finance, language, neighborhood, trend, urban
Phrase of the day: see-through buildings.
Anyone who follows the commercial real estate market knows there are buildings in trouble throughout Washington, but as one drives along the Dulles Toll Road or Route 28, it’s hard to miss the signs of distress. “See-through buildings” dot the corridor, bereft of the interior office walls that don’t show up until a tenant does.
Tysons Corner, VA (mindgutter@flickr)
This source says the phrase was coined “during the Texas real estate bust of the 1980s.”
(cr)
2009, 1969 [updated]
under architecture, media, neighborhood, sex, trend, urban
Corporate-sponsored “naked cowboy” in Times Square, 2009 (via streetsblog):
Current context:
Cowboy in Times Square ca. 1969:
[Update: Krugman, ever impolitic, asks this about the new TS pedo zone:
I’m definitely in favor of making part of Broadway a traffic-free area. But you have to wonder—who’s this for? As far as I know, nobody goes to that part of Manhattan anyway—it’s too crowded.
Good question.]
Just another future song
under economics, finance, neighborhood, trend, urban
Audio:
[Rev. ed. 09-05-21: Seeqpod went bust; you can manually reconstruct this post yourself by finding a recording of David Bowie’s “Diamond Dogs.”]
Video:
| The Top 25 Fortune 500 Companies in New York City | |||||||
| rank in: | corporation | Headquarters (New York, NY) |
Fortune 500 industry group | 2007 Revenues ($ million) |
Stock price 2008 |
||
| NYC | NYS | US | |||||
| 1 | 1 | 8 | Citigroup | 399 Park Ave. 10043 | Commercial Banks |
$159,229
|
–77.2% |
| 2 | 2 | 12 | J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. | 270 Park Ave. 10017 | Commercial Banks |
116,353
|
–27.8% |
| 3 | 3 | 13 | American International Group | 70 Pine St. 10270 | Insurance: Property and Casualty (stock) |
110,064
|
–97.3% |
| 4 | 5 | 17 | Verizon Communications | 140 West St. 10007 | Telecommunications |
98,786
|
–22.0% |
| 5 | 6 | 20 | Goldman Sachs Group | 85 Broad St. 10004 | Securities |
93,775
|
–60.8% |
| 6 | 7 | 21 | Morgan Stanley | 1585 Broadway 10036 | Securities |
87,968
|
–69.8% |
| 7 | 8 | 30 | Merrill Lynch | 4 World Financial Center 10080 | Securities |
87,879
|
–78.3% |
| 8 | 9 | 37 | Lehman Brothers Holdings | 745 Seventh Ave. 10019 | Securities |
64,217
|
|
| 9 | 10 | 43 | MetLife | 200 Park Ave. 10166 | Insurance: Life, Health (stock) |
59,003
|
–43.4% |
| 10 | 11 | 47 | Pfizer | 235 E. 42nd St. 10017 | Pharmaceuticals |
53,150
|
–22.1% |
| 11 | 12 | 49 | Time Warner | 1 Time Warner Center 10019 | Entertainment |
48,418
|
–39.1% |
| 12 | 14 | 75 | American Express | 200 Vesey St. 10285 | Diversified Financials |
46,615
|
–64.3% |
| 13 | 15 | 77 | Hess Corporation | 1185 Sixth Ave. 10036 | Petroleum Refining |
39,474
|
–46.8% |
| 14 | 16 | 80 | Alcoa | 390 Park Ave. 10022 | Metals |
32,316
|
–69.2% |
| 15 | 17 | 82 | New York Life Insurance | 51 Madison Ave. 10010 | Insurance: Life, Health (mutual) |
31,924
|
|
| 16 | 18 | 84 | News Corporation | 1211 Sixth Ave. 10036 | Entertainment |
30,748
|
–55.6% |
| 17 | 19 | 86 | TIAA-CREF | 730 Third Ave. 10017 | Insurance: Life, Health (mutual) |
29,280
|
|
| 18 | 20 | 125 | Bristol-Myers Squibb | 345 Park Ave. 10154 | Pharmaceuticals |
28,655
|
–12.3% |
| 19 | 21 | 139 | Loews Corporation | 667 Madison Ave. 10021 | Insurance: Property and Casualty (stock) |
27,526
|
–43.9% |
| 20 | 22 | 156 | Bear Stearns | 383 Madison Ave. 10179 | Securities |
19,977
|
|
| 21 | 24 | 172 | Bank of New York Mellon Corporation | 1 Wall Street 10286 | Commercial Banks |
17,920
|
–41.9% |
| 22 | 25 | 181 | CBS | 51 W. 52nd St. 10019 | Entertainment |
16,151
|
–69.2% |
| 23 | 26 | 182 | L-3 Communications | 600 Third Ave. 10016 | Aerospace and Defense |
15,985
|
–30.4% |
| 24 | 27 | 186 | Colgate-Palmolive | 300 Park Ave. 10022 | Household and Personal Products |
14,798
|
–12.1% |
| 25 | 29 | 191 | Viacom | 1515 Broadway 10036 | Entertainment |
14,073
|
–54.3% |
| NYC = New York City; NYS = New York State; US = United States | |||||||
See also: “Whiter shade of gray,” “Minor detail.”
(jl | kazys varnelis | wikipedia)
information:history :: globalization:globe
under design, international, media, trend, urban
The Independent (Castle, “Brussels Stories: Playground craze gives Eurocrats' offspring lessons in diplomacy,” 2005):
Every parent knows about playground fads and the nightmare of having to track down that elusive, must-have toy. But for those with children at the European School in Brussels there is an added problem. The pupils here are sons and daughters of officials in the European institutions, diplomats from the 25 member states, plus a few hangers-on like us. Most European nationalities are represented, and that means that a playground craze can sweep in with horrifying speed from any corner of the continent. Parents are then dispatched on a thankless quest for an item which is likely to be unobtainable.
The current craze is for the Tamagotchi, the virtual-reality pets popular in the UK in the 1990s. How this happened is anyone’s guess. Maybe a container-load turned up in the Baltic states, and several made their way, via Vilnius, in a diplomatic bag, to the Belgian capital.
The consequences have been felt in many homes. The internet is virtually useless as a search tool because, despite reports of a revival in the UK, sites devoted to this product tend to say “last updated in 1998”. Meanwhile, Belgian shopkeepers are trying to pass off similar products as the real thing.
Godard, Weekend:
See also: “United Airlines crashes into event horizon.”
“thousands of aspiring models waiting in line to be discovered”
under media, neighborhood, sex, trend, urban
Chariots of the Gods 2: the Keynes Generation
Right on schedule—for example, WRT the decline and fall of Western Civilization currently underway—comes a host of “Atlantis experts” who believe they’ve found the object of their expertise:
“The site is one of the most prominent places for the proposed location of Atlantis, as described by Plato,” the Atlantis expert said. “Even if it turns out to be geographical [sic], it definitely deserves a closer look.” Bernie Bamford, 38, of Chester who spotted the “city”, compared it to the plan of Milton Keynes, the Buckinghamshire town built on a grid design. “It must be man made,” he said.
The “perfect” rectangle “is around the size of Wales,” which means that the subdivided lots were so immense that obviously Atlantis had reached an advanced state of oligopoly before it collapsed or was inundated or whatever.
Maybe now that economico-political collapse suggests we’re due for an efflorescence of irrationalism, we can finally break the studied silence that scholarly and pop commentators have maintained about early-1970s schmysticism. And figure out, for once and for all, what’s really up with all those Lincoln–Kennedy coincidences, for example.
Whiter shade of gray
under architecture, finance, government, media, neighborhood, urban
For decades, NYC’s politics have been twisted like a Moebius strip (i.e., one-sided) around real-estate developers; through every trend, the NYT has indulged in coke-fueled cheerleading binges and breathtaking sins of omission, breezily drifting whichever way the wind blew. Now, in its own words, comes the beginning of endgame of its abject inability to utter a single meaningful truth on the subject of real estate. Of its proud new 52-story HQ,
the Times Company would sell the 19 floors it currently uses in the building but not the 6 floors it leases to other tenants. The Times Company would continue to occupy and manage its floors and would have the right to buy back the space at a predetermined price when a 10-year lease expires.
See also: “Turn gray,” “Minor detail.”
GWOT ca. 1974
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three:
The whole thing online for free. (Now Mr. Hollywood, that didn’t hurt so much, did it?)
See also: “Minor detail,” “1974est guys in the room” [and “What a diff 24 years makes”].
Minor detail
under economics, finance, government, trend, urban
In his State of the City address, NYC Mayor Bloomberg offers a litany of initiatives to deal with the impact of the Decline and Fall of Western Civilization on NYC. But what about the skyrocketing rents that have been sucking the lifeblood out of the city’s residents? Apparently, only public-housing residents and seniors are affected; everyone else can, as they have for the last three decades, go f— themselves.
Hidden hands
Kellaway (FT, 8 Dec. ’08):
Over the past month, I have picked up 247 men. Fast work in just four weeks but I’ve been putting my back into it. During my sabbatical from the Financial Times, I have obsessively e-mailed strangers on an adultery website, thereby taking part in what I find is the hottest recessionary activity in town.
See also: “Reduce, reuse, recycle.”
(nettime)
Past shock, future shock
under economics, finance, government, law, media, neighborhood, security, trend, urban
The New Yorker (MacFarquhar, “Outside Agitator,” 8 Dec ’08):
“Americans remembered that they thought Rudy Giuliani was their daddy after September 11th, which was why they’re a little less inclined to say that Paulson and Goldman Sachs were going to take care of them this time,” [Naomi] Klein told the audience at the Bloor Cinema. “I think actually their biggest mistake with the bailout was how short it was. It’s just two pages and three paragraphs, and so the weirdest thing happened: people read it.” Everyone laughed. “It sounded like a coup.”
A New Yorker (20 Sep ’08):
The White House trotted Bush himself out, first for a two-minute talk, then for a nine-minute talk, both of which might as well have been written using Markov text generator. But then came the proposed legislation his administration sent to Congress as its decisive effort to address the unfolding economic meltdown. At 148 lines of text allocating US$700B that doesn’t exist yet, it’s well worth reading—especially when you consider that initial loss estimates in this area have typically grown by large factors and, more than occasionally, by an order of magnitude. Congress may quibble about various details, but of course a crisis is no time for partisan or ideological debate—so the administration will get most of what it has asked for. And i[f] it turns out that $700B wasn’t enough, the administration will get most of what it asks for again for exactly the same reasons.
This procedural charade shouldn’t disguise what this “legislation” is. The events that led to it show beyond any doubt that the more staggeringly manifest the incompetence of the Bush administration becomes, the more likely it is to get what it wants. What the administration couldn’t accomplish through even its own cynical version of governance, it will accomplish by, in effect, emergency decree.
The details of this “law” won’t matter much, because neither the text nor its consequences will ever be subject to the kind of scrutiny that a normal law might receive. The amounts are too immense, the violations of traditional practice are too extreme, and the phenomena it seeks to address are too baroque and pervasive in their derivative ramifications. US governance systems won’t be any more able to contemplate or manage what’s coming any more than they were able to contemplate the structures—technical, financial, institutional—that precipitated the current crisis. As a result, this legislation is a step in the creation of a provisional framework for a reformulation of the US economy (and therefore US society) for decades to come (and therefore forever).
Next up: a botched analog–digital switchover, an inventory tax tsunami leads to emergency state and fed legislation, empty shelves and fenced-off aisles, Culture Wars 2.0 (aesthetic/theory carnage as newly laid-off arty types ‘fight’ over dwindling resources), mall riots, new trends in breaking and entering, endless media omphaloskepsis as formerly conspicious consumers get all ‘authentic’ on our ass, the “discovery” of “pockets” of suburban poverty...