New York City Round-Up #2

Remembering Jimmy Breslin

I came very late to the writing of Jimmy Breslin when I eventually 'discovered' him last year and bought an eBook copy of The World According to Jimmy Breslin, a 1988 compilation of some of his best essays. Since then I have added another seven Breslin books to my collection, and I am slowly working my way through all of them. I’ll let Wikipedia introduce the man:

James Earle "Jimmy" Breslin (October 17, 1928 – March 19, 2017) was an American journalist and author. Until the time of his death, he wrote a column for the New York Daily News Sunday edition. He wrote numerous novels, and columns of his appeared regularly in various New York City newspapers. He served as a regular columnist for the Long Island newspaper Newsday until his retirement on November 2, 2004, though he still published occasional pieces for the paper. He was known for his newspaper columns which offered a sympathetic viewpoint of the working class people of New York City, and was awarded the 1986 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary "for columns which consistently champion ordinary citizens".

Breslin, who passed away last week, was one of the old school newspaper greats, certainly in the same league as Joseph Mitchell, Alistair Cooke, and Meyer Berger, although the focus of his topics was often quite different.

Read A Part Of A Cop’s Past Lies Dead, the column Jimmy Breslin wrote following the murder of John Lennon in 1980.

If you can't find print copies of Breslin's books, many of his most popular works are now available as eBooks for Kindle, iPad, and other electronic devices. If you have never read the man, I urge you to seek out his work online, in secondhand bookshops, or electronically, and spend a few weeks as I am catching up with his remarkable writing.

Wikipedia entry for Jimmy Breslin…

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OpDocs: Who Makes The Bronx?

In the shade of the 4 train’s elevated track, Jerome Avenue’s dense clusters of auto-repair shops, storefronts, and manufacturers have long formed the economic spine of the Bronx, one of New York’s increasingly rare blue-collar neighborhoods. But as the city government considers rezoning the corridor to add residential development, change looms for the neighborhood’s social and economic landscape. 

Against that backdrop of uncertainty, Giacomo Francia, writing for the New York Times presents six short documentaries profiling an orange seller, ice cream vendor, glass cutter, hairdresser, mechanic, and pigeon keeper.

Giacomo Francia writes:

To make these profiles of the people who live and work around rapidly changing Jerome Avenue in the South Bronx, I decided to spend last summer [2015] there. That summer turned into 10 months. I spent so much time with the workers on Jerome Avenue that when I greeted them in the morning, smiling, they would nod back at me and say “cuidate” (“be safe”)! I found that the rhythm of Jerome Avenue is driven by the mechanics and street vendors who line its streets, and the shops run by hard-working families, who are often sustaining small businesses proudly handed down to them from generations past.

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Destination Midtown App

Planning a visit to New York City? If so you might want to check out the newish Destination Midtown app. Some of New York City’s top attractions are highlighted in this interactive tour guide to Midtown Manhattan. 

The app features ten step-by-step walking tours that include 34th and 42nd Streets, parts of Fifth Avenue and Broadway, as well as suggestions for rainy days, nights out, the fashion conscious, and others.

Destination Midtown claims to be “your perfect companion to all the best landmarks, museums, restaurants, and shops.” Along with the ten walking tours users will find:

• Detailed attraction profiles featuring locals-only info, insider tips, photos, hours of operation, and more
• Perfectly-framed selfie spots to help you snag that next profile pic
• Always-up-to-date event calendar with Midtown’s top happenings
• The ability to save your favorite walks, attractions, and destinations in “My Trip” to help plan your day
• “Back of the guidebook” info about eating, drinking, and getting around in the Big Apple

The app, which is available as a free download for both Apple and Android devices, has been developed by the Destination Midtown Alliance, founded last year by Empire State Realty Trust. The Alliance is a coalition of businesses and attractions who joined together to spread the word about Midtown Manhattan as a primary tourist destination. The Alliance provides visitors with a variety of interactive itineraries of Midtown’s best sightseeing, dining, shopping and entertainment, all within a 15-minute walk of the heart of New York City, and the Empire State Building.

Here’s a six minute video from Expedia highlighting some of the main New York City attractions including those around the Midtown area:

New York City Vacation Travel Guide | Expedia from Expedia on Vimeo.

More Destination Midtown information and links to the free apps…

New York Times OpDocs: Pickle

I spend far too many hours online roving far and wide across the interweb. One of my go to sites is the New York Times, where a very reasonable monthly subscription gives me full access to the latest news via daily bulletins, and years of archived articles and content.

I recently began exploring the OpDocs section of the NYT Online, and have enjoyed watching many great video's ranging in length from five to fifteen minutes. The video embedded below, Pickle, is a delightful look at the parents of Amy Nicholson, who made the film, but more importantly, she documents the many animals, rescued and otherwise, that Amy's parents have cared for over many years. With regard to the video, Amy writes:

For more than two decades, I have been visiting my dad’s farm on the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland, often returning to New York with anecdotes about one member or another of the unlikely menagerie that lived there. I would regale my friends with tales of cross-eyed cats perpetually on the verge of death, ailing chickens convalescing in the house or a paraplegic possum that fancied scrambled eggs for dinner. Practically all of the pets were rescues of some sort with various abnormalities, and the ones that didn’t cling to life well past their prime died prematurely.

I try to find a funny side to everything, and tragedy is no exception. This film’s unrelenting march of death has a light side, but hopefully between morbid curiosity and chuckling at the sheer volume of casualties, the audience will find a bit of themselves in this film. “Pickle” examines the depths of one couple’s devotion to their pets while exploring the complicated relationship that we humans have with all animals. If you find a hurt animal that you’re able to help, is it moral to come to its rescue, as we would with a human? Or is it true compassion to let nature take its course?

Amy Nicholson is a documentary filmmaker who lives in New York City. Pickle is her fourth film.

There are many other great short documentaries on through the New York Times OpDocs portal, and I encourage you to explore the collection on your own. As time goes on I will myself add more to this blog, if only to help spread the word about this great resource.

Magda Love: Global Street Artist

Magda Love: unfinished mural at Hudson and Clarkson, lower Manhattan

In my daily trawl across the internet, I am constantly finding interesting snippets of news, information, videos, and events, that catch my eye and make me wish I was right there where the event was taking place.

The global street artist Magda Love is a perfect example of the serendipitous nature of web surfing. This talented New York based artist (an Argentinian by birth) has been creating vibrant paintings and murals right across New York City, as well as in cities and galleries around the world.

As a traveling artist, a single mother and a mentor to students throughout New York City, Magda (like most other artists) struggles with finding the perfect work/life balance. The short video below documents this struggle, while grappling with her biggest project yet – a massive six-storey wall on the corner of Hudson and Clarkson streets in lower Manhattan. 

As you can see from the Google Maps screen shot illustrating this post, the mural project is only partially completed. I got in touch with Magda yesterday, and in a message to me just this morning she writes that she recently signed the last contract to complete the mural, and that, “…hopefully, soon I’ll get back to it.”

Readers interested in seeing more of Magda’s art work will find plenty online with a simple “magda love graffiti” Google search. You can also connect with her via her Facebook page…

More information:
Magda Love online...
Magda Love: From Buenos Aires to Brooklyn...

UPDATE: After uploading this blog post, I went in search of more of Magda Love's work and found the following video that I thought I just had to add to this post. If you are interested in graffiti art in particular, and even art in general, I urge you to do your own Google search for Magda's work.

The Silicon Jungle, 1985

During one of my periodic trawls through the Gutenberg website, I spotted a recent upload for The Silicon Jungle, which was published in 1985, and which is about when I first started mucking around with computers! I did a quick scan through the book and had to marvel at how arcane the world of computers was, way back when the technology was just beginning to find its feet so to speak.

Rothman’s computer of choice at the time was a Kaypro II, which he considered to be the perfect computer for his needs. I can see why—it had a very impressive—wait for it—64K of RAM. Yes, dear reader, that really is 64,000 kilobytes of RAM (Random Access Memory). Incredibly, the file size of the book cover seen here is a very modest (by today’s standards), 99,000 kilobytes.

Reading through books like The Silicon Jungle, I am reminded of the much quoted statement that was once attributed to Thomas J. Watson, the chairman and CEO of IBM from 1911—1956, which went something like: ‘I think there is a world market for maybe five computers’.

Modern research suggests that it is highly doubtful that Watson ever made this statement, but be that as it may, many other authors and experts have made their own assertions about computers and the software and hardware that is needed to run them, and Rothman was one of them. To choose just one example of many, try reading his thoughts on the humble computer mouse without laughing out loud, thirty-two years after he wrote them.

“If you’re a trained, high-volume production typist,” asked Seymour Rubinstein, the WordStar* developer, “what are you going to do with a mouse except feed it cheese?” Score one for Rubinstein. He says mice are great—if you have three hands. Doing graphics? A mouse, maybe. But damned if I’m going to take my hands off the keyboard to push the cursor from one spot on the screen to the next. It’s simply too much wasted motion. I instead just press the cursor keys right above the main keyboard. Or I use WordStar’s cursor-moving commands. And even if I hadn’t learned touch typing a quarter century ago, I’d still wonder if a mouse for word processing wasn’t the Silicon Valley version of The Emperor’s New Clothes. Next time you’re in California, maybe you’ll see Apple execs naked in the streets as well as their hot tubs. Well, maybe not. The mouse could be a great marketing tool for sales reps peddling Macs or Apple IIc’s to people hoping to do word processing. But experienced typists? Many would probably groan over all the excursions that the mouse forced them to take from the main keyboard.

By the way, my first computer was a state-of-the-art Commodore 128D. So take that, Mr. Rothman. My system had double the memory of your flashy Kaypro II. Sadly (or should that be, happily?), it wasn’t long before Rothman’s Kaypro II, and my Commodore 128D were superseded by much more powerful computers with virtually unlimited amounts of RAM and hard drive storage. If you don’t believe me, look at the advert here for a 10MB hard disk—a bargain at just $3,398.00. At that price, I bet people were snapping them up!

*Note: WordStar was one of the most popular early word processing programs. Of course, it was soon to be relegated to the dustbin of software history with the rise and rise of Microsoft Windows and the new graphics-based word processing software which included MS Word, WordPerfect, Lotus Word Pro—and those pesky mice that somehow found their way into the hands of every computer user.

53,000 Free Books and Counting

I know I have mentioned the Gutenberg website before, but it won’t hurt to mention it again. The site is a clearing house for almost fifty-four-thousand books, all of which are in the public domain, and all of which can be either read online, or downloaded for free to eReaders such as Kindle’s, iPads and other portable devices that can use the ePub format. If you are a keen reader, and you have never checked out the site, you are surely missing out on a great treasury of amazing literature.

New York City Round-Up #1

LinkNYC by The Numbers

Last year when I was in New York City, I began to notice a number of tall, futuristic-looking kiosks located on Manhattan pavements. I soon learned that they were part of a bold new experiment, funded (and owned) by Google. The kiosks provide free WiFi access to users as well as allow people to make free telephone calls, use USB ports to charge devices, access maps, and initially at least, use the built in browser for the usual online purposes.

Unfortunately, I never got a chance to use the kiosks since those that I did find, seemed to have been commandeered by one of the many street people in the city. Not that they didn’t have a right to use the kiosks, but from what I could see, they would sit by the kiosks, sometimes for hours, listening, watching, reading, and accessing who knows what content. Well, as it happens, we do know what some people were accessing (although not necessarily street people), with the result that the internet browser function of the kiosks has now been disabled after complaints that people were using the kiosks to watch pornography.

The installation of the LinkNYC kiosks was just a few months into its schedule when I visited New York over the summer of 2016. After a full twelve months of ongoing work, the system continues to be expanded across the city. Michael Garofalo, in this online article provides the following statistics about the program. All data is current as of the week of February 27, 2017.

• 631 LinkNYC kiosks currently active, of a planned 7,500

• 1,256,450 unique devices connected to the Wi-Fi network to date, approximately one for every seven New Yorkers

• 115 million Wi-Fi sessions served to date

• 870.86 terabytes of data transferred to date, the rough equivalent of streaming 33 years of high definition video on Netflix

• 150 feet wireless signal range of each kiosk

• 600,000 Wi-Fi sessions served in year one by the city’s most popular kiosk, at 1313 Broadway in Herald Square

• $0 spent by New York City taxpayers on the system, which is operated by a franchisee and generates revenue through advertising and sponsorships

More Information

LinkNYC Website…
Here are the current LinkNYC locations...

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Native American Art at The Met, Fifth Avenue

Housed in the old Customs House close to the foot of Manhattan, and across the road from the Bowling Green (4 and 5 trains) subway, is New York City’s National Museum of the American Indian. There is also another National Museum of the American Indian in Washington DC, and no doubt there are more museums touting their own collections in cities across the United States. 

Not to be outdone or ignored, is the collection of Native American artefacts housed at the Metropolitan Museum on Fifth Avenue. 

Mary Gregory reports that: A small but extraordinary collection of Native American masterpieces is in its final days at the Met Fifth Avenue. Consider a visit to this show as a concise course in Native American art history. From the second century to the 20th, from the Plains to the Southwest to the Northwest Coast, “Native American Masterpieces from the Charles and Valerie Diker Collection” highlights some of the best works ever made in each age and place. It’s like a greatest hits compilation, and not a single piece disappoints.

The exhibition ends in ten days—March 31, 2017—so be quick. See it before it ends.

Read more here…

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Leslie-Lohman Museum reopens with 250-work Exhibition

A bit less conventional for some, perhaps is a new exhibition which opened this month at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art in New York’s SoHo neighbourhood.

Clair Wang writes: The large, wooden cross hibernating in the back corner of the spacious studio resembles a cactus from afar. Pinned against a white wall, its body is punctured by dozens of colorful glass vials, each containing an assortment of objects that represent a day in the life of mixed-media artist Edward A. Hochschild.

The “Vial Cross” is one of roughly 250 works displayed at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art’s current exhibition, “Expanded Visions: Fifty Years of Collecting,” which opened March 10. The exhibit is the Wooster Street museum’s first following an expansion that nearly doubled the size of its original space. The effort, begun in October, will allow the museum to operate year-round, offering a mix of ongoing and future exhibitions, film screenings and artist lectures.

IF YOU GO

The Leslie-Lohman Museum…

26, Wooster Street, New York City

Ph: +1 212-431-2609

U.S. Capitol Building Tour

During my all too brief five night stay in Washington DC, I managed to squeeze in a tour of the Capitol building, and I do mean squeeze. I got into the last tour of the day, and within minutes realized my mistake. At the end of a long day, tour guides and security staff just wanted to go home, and our one hour tour - that included the awe-inspiring Rotunda and National Statuary Hall - lasted at most 45-minutes, as we were rushed from room to room with barely enough time to admire the Capitol's internal architecture, or time to pause and appreciate the wonderful collection of monumental paintings and the vast sculpture collection.

Sadly, those of us in the tour group who wanted to spend more time visiting the numerous displays and exhibition spaces in the Visitor Center had no time at all to do that. Clearly, visitors will need to allow another hour or two for this, and time their visit accordingly.

A Day In The Life of The U.S. Capitol Visitor Center

The two minute time-lapse video below, depicts a day in the life of the Capitol’s Visitor Center, and shows a constant stream of large school and veterans groups, along with thousands of other visitors pouring in and out of the building on what I assume is a typical day at the Capitol. So while joining the last tour group of the day may not be the best idea, visiting during the morning rush or mid-afternoon may not be such a great idea either.

Watching Congress In Session

The Senate and House galleries are open to visitors whenever either legislative body is in session, however the galleries are not included as part of the U.S. Capitol tour. Passes are required to enter either gallery at any time. American citizens can obtain gallery passes from the offices of their Senators or Representative. International visitors must inquire about gallery passes at the House and Senate Appointment Desks on the upper level of the Capitol Visitor Center.

Do Your Research

This student orientation video provides a good introduction to the Capitol Visitor Center and is worth watching, as are the numerous video on the U.S. Capitol’s YouTube channel here…

The official Capitol Visitor Center website has vast array of useful information that can either be examined online, or downloaded if visitors want to read through the numerous brochures highlighting different aspects of the building and its facilities. 

Permanent and temporary exhibitions at the Capitol

Last Thoughts On My Visit

Despite the rush through the Capitol Building, it was fascinating to hear some of the stories behind the works of art and the significant rooms in the building, and since the tour was free I can't complain about not getting my money's worth,.

 and despite my caveat about the obvious crowds of visitors during the day, I recommend that if you are planning a visit, go early, take a tour, and then allow plenty of time to wander on your own through the building, taking as many photos as you want—but only in areas where photography is permitted, of course.

Having given my truncated visit some serious thought, my recommendation would be to book a late afternoon tour, when the crowds have started to thin out, but get to the Visitor’s Center two to three hours before the tour begins if you want to view the exhibitions, visit the Senate and House galleries, or join one of the separate Specialty Tours or Activities, that also take place throughout the year.

Click here to download a .PDF map of the Capitol site…

IF YOU GO

East Capitol St NE & First St SE, 
Washington DC, DC 20004

Phone Number: +1 202-226-8000
U.S. Capitol Visitors Center...