N.Y.C. Streets Won’t Be Like This Forever (for Better or Worse)

Herald Square in 1986.

"For now, this is the final installment of Street Wars. But to be clear: The battle for space on New York City’s streets is not over. It’s obvious to anyone on New York’s streets — in buses, on foot, on bikes or in cars — that the current situation feels unsustainable. Street-space conflicts are brewing in all parts of the city, and we — and you — should keep an eye on them. Right now, New York has not only the worst traffic in the United States, but also the worst traffic in the world. In addition to being annoying, traffic is an environmental and public health issue. Idling motors contribute to air pollution that is bad for our lungs. ... A delayed fire truck or ambulance can be a matter of life and death. And there are other battles brewing. ..."


The subway in 1979.
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Walter Benjamin Warned Us Against the Illusions of Capitalist Progress

Membership card for the Bibliothèque nationale de France. 

"The German writer Walter Benjamin has become one of the most influential cultural theorists of the last century. Benjamin took his own life in September 1940 to avoid falling into the hands of the Gestapo, but the Nazi regime could not snuff out his extraordinary intellectual legacy. Benjamin’s unorthodox Marxism and ideas about culture and history have inspired several generations of critical thought about the world made by capitalism. His relationships with figures such as Bertolt Brecht and Theodor Adorno have also inspired a range of scholarly work, while his description of revolution as an 'emergency brake' saving humanity from the disasters of capitalism resonates more than ever in a time of ecological crisis. ..." 





Galerie Vivienne (1916) photographed by Charles Lansiaux
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Israel Strikes Lebanon Again After Killing Hezbollah Leader


"Israeli airstrikes battered areas near Beirut again on Saturday evening, hours after Hezbollah confirmed that its longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah had been killed in an Israeli bombing that flattened residential buildings near Lebanon’s capital the night before. The assassination, which Israel said hit the Iranian-backed militia’s underground headquarters, was a stunning escalation of Israel’s campaign against Hezbollah in a conflict that has gone on for nearly a year. Hezbollah began firing into northern Israel on Oct. 8 in solidarity with Hamas, which is also supported by Iran, and Israel frequently responded, intensifying its attacks dramatically over the last two weeks, fueling fears of an all-out regional war that could draw in bigger players like Iran. Mr. Nasrallah was a towering figure among anti-Israel forces across the Middle East and beyond, and his death struck a tremendous blow to Hezbollah. He played multiple roles in the lives of the group’s members, serving at once as a religious guide, political strategist and commander in chief. ..."






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Silk Roads


"Not many exhibitions turn the history of the world upside down. The British Museum’s mesmerising Silk Roads does, by showing how Asia, Europe and north Africa shared their cultures more than a millennium ago. Far from developing in isolation, let alone in a 'clash of civilisations', east and west were once mutually connected by epic trade routes known as the Silk Roads that carried China’s precious discovery, silk, across the then-known world. If that sounds dry, the British Museum turns it into a fairytale of magic and beauty, as you follow the merchants’ routes to fabulous oases, desert palaces, synagogues, mosques and burial mounds. You reach the first oasis by clay camel, to be precise a two-humped Bactrian camel of painted ceramic, nearly a metre tall, rearing its head in a bellow you can almost hear. ..."




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A career in three acts: The three movies that define Ingrid Bergman


"When Ingrid Bergman arrived in Hollywood in 1939, she was already a celebrity in her native Sweden. With a radiant, cherubic face and quiet intelligence, the 24-year-old wasn’t exactly a carbon copy of glamorous stars like Bette Davis and Vivian Leigh, who were dominating the box office at the time, but she knew what type of actor she wanted to be. She had been spotted by Hollywood mogul David O Selznick, and although she accepted his invitation to come to the US, she refused to change her name or swap her natural beauty for a studio makeover. Throughout her five-decade career, Bergman remained fiercely independent, even as she was typecast as an unassailable 'good girl' in her movies. When, in the 1950s, she was banished from Hollywood and the United States for her affair with Italian film director Roberto Rossellini, she pivoted to European cinema, appearing in some of the best movies of her career. ..."



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Runaway Jury - Gary Fleder (2003)


"Runaway Jury is a 2003 American legal thriller film directed by Gary Fleder and starring John Cusack, Gene Hackman, Dustin Hoffman and Rachel Weisz. An adaptation of John Grisham's 1996 novel The Runaway Jury, the film pits lawyer Wendell Rohr (Hoffman) against shady jury consultant Rankin Fitch (Hackman), who uses unlawful means to stack the jury with people sympathetic to the defense. Meanwhile, a high-stakes cat-and-mouse game begins when juror Nicholas Easter (Cusack) and his girlfriend Marlee (Weisz) appear to be able to sway the jury to deliver any verdict they want in a trial against a gun manufacturer. ..."




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Mayor Is Defiant as He Is Charged With Bribery and Fraud


"Mayor Eric Adams was defiant on Thursday in the face of five federal charges of bribery, fraud and soliciting illegal foreign campaign donations, insisting he would stay in office and imploring New Yorkers to hear his defense. The indictment against him, which was unsealed on Thursday morning after a search of the mayor’s official residence, followed an investigation that started in 2021. Prosecutors said the scheme had begun when he was a top elected official in Brooklyn and continued after he became mayor. The investigation focused on whether Mr. Adams, 64, had conspired with the Turkish government to receive illegal foreign campaign contributions in exchange for acting on its behalf. ..."







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Was Roy Lichtenstein a Plagiarist?

"Roy Lichtenstein is one of the most famous modern artists from the United States. There is no doubt that his comic book style made him one of the most well-known artists of the last century. However, over the past few weeks and months, the talk around Lichtenstein been more about his appropriation of the work from comic artists and less about his impact on the art world. The reason for that is the release of a new documentary entitled Whaam! Blam! Roy Lichtenstein and the Art of Appropriation. Though released in November 2022, the documentary has been getting a great deal of media attention in the recent weeks, including The Guardian, CBR, Artnet News and more. Though I’ve long been familiar with the allegations against Lichtenstein, I was curious to see if the documentary provided any new information or at least new arguments in favor or against the artist. ..."

Plagiarism Today

Lichtenstein and the Art of Letters

Roy Lichtenstein: Pioneer Or Plagiarist?

Deconstructing Lichtenstein

YouTube: Whaam! Blam! Roy Lichtenstein and the Art of Appropriation - OFFICIAL TRAILER, Whaam! Blam! Roy Lichtenstein and the Art of Appropriation 1:18:34

2012 July: Roy Lichtenstein: A Retrospective, 2013 December: Roy Lichtenstein Foundation Donates Shunk-Kender Photo Trove

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How Does a Baseball Team Lose 120 Games? Every Way You Can Think Of.

The White Sox played the Athletics at Guaranteed Rate Field on Sept. 13.

"In the fourth inning of a ridiculous baseball game — ridiculous even by the standards of the 2024 Chicago White Sox — I wandered out into the stands to meet Beefloaf. Beefloaf sits in Section 108. ... I’d heard about Section 108. I’d been told that, even during this shambolic season, as the White Sox slumped toward the 1962 Mets’ seemingly unbreakable record of 120 losses — a mark they tied on Sunday and, with six games left, seem all but certain to break — throughout all that misery, Beefloaf and his friends kept showing up, sitting in Section 108 to argue and cheer and complain. They represented a small, lonely remnant of a mysterious and dwindling species: the Chicago White Sox superfan. ..."


White Sox fans express their feelings about a season that is in the running for one of the worst in baseball history.
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50 Facts About The Power Broker to Celebrate Its 50th Anniversary

"Today is the 50th anniversary of the release of Robert Caro’s The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York(Fact #1). The book remains incredibly popular—it’s currently in its 74th printing and has has never been out of print in hardcover or paperback (#2), despite Caro initially believing the naysayers who said no-one would be interested: '…I really did believe what people said, that nobody would read the book. I did believe that.' People not only read it, but praised it: The Power Broker won the Pulitzer Prize for biography and the Francis Parkman Prize for American history, and was a finalist for the National Book Award (#3). Every book Caro’s written has appeared on the cover of The New York Times Book Review, a perfect six-for-six record (#4). ..."

LitHub

W - The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York

New-York Historical Society Celebrates The Power Broker at 50

NY Times: Robert Caro Reflects on ‘The Power Broker’ and Its Legacy at 50

Marvel: Who Is Power Broker? (Comics)

amazon

YouTube: Robert Moses: The Power Broker Who Built (and Demolished) New York

Notes from Caro’s interview with Moses associate Sidney Shapiro on display.
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Best Alt.Country Musicians: 9 Essential Artists

Lucinda Williams 

"The musicians who came to define the alt.country boom of the late 80s and 90s believed themselves to be outside of the country music establishment and its ethos of the time. As Lucinda Williams, one of the best alt.country musicians of the era, put it, 'I definitely don’t feel a part of what I call the straighter country music industry of Nashville. I’m definitely not connected with that world. I guess I’m sort of considered an outlaw here, along with Steve Earle.' The term alt.country (sometimes dubbed “insurgent country”) describes a number of musicians who eschewed the pop-infused country music that had begun to take hold in the late 70s and 80s. ... Though its roots reach back to country music icons such as Hank Williams, Merle Haggard, Waylon Jennings, and Willie Nelson, the most direct relevant forerunners to alt.country are Gram Parsons and The Flying Burrito Brothers, who were playing a mix of traditional country music and rock from the late 60s. ..."


Gram Parsons
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The Hotel Chelsea’s iconic neon sign heading to auction

"The Chelsea Hotel in New York is auctioning off pieces of its history, including the iconic neon sign that has hung on the outside of the building since 1949. For culture fans with money to spend, there is a chance to own one of the letters are they are set to b sold one-by-one. In any photo of the hallowed hotel, its neon sign proudly proclaims its name. It became an iconic symbol for an establishment that has housed so many icons. Throughout the 1960s and ‘70s, especially, the Chelsea was home to some of the more influential names in music, literary and cinematic history.  ..."

Far Out (Video)

2010 October: Hotel Chelsea, 2014 January: Arena Hotel Chelsea, 2019 August: The Chelsea Affect - Arthur Miller, 2022 July:  ​‘Dreaming Walls: Inside the Chelsea Hotel’ Review: Bohemia’s Holdouts, 2022 November: Stop and admire the Chelsea Hotel’s beautiful iron balconies

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Futuristic Dereliction - Alphaxone & Onasander (2024)


"In a meeting of the minds, Alphaxone and Onasander (Mehdi Saleh and Maurizio Landin, respectively) begin Futuristic Dereliction with dramatic pianoforte waves that are eventually joined by a background drone and synthesized beat structures. This first track sets forth the tone of the overall album – desolate post-apocalyptic soundscapes in which echoes of advanced technologies reverberate throughout the ruins. To that point, the second track, titled Time Fracture, employs rapid sequencer runs atop bassy drones. The following pieces, all in the 6-8 minute range, continue to use low frequencies to evoke haunting images of buildings in collapse and the metal-on-metal of failing machinery. Sculpted static, acousmatic sounds, and/or field recordings accentuate the mix. An overall dark airiness permeates the mood. ..."
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Black Sun Press


"The Black Sun Press was an English-language press noted for publishing the early works of many modernist writers including Hart Crane, D. H. Lawrence, Archibald MacLeish, Ernest Hemingway, and Eugene Jolas. It enjoyed the greatest longevity among the several expatriate presses founded in Paris during the 1920s, publishing nearly three times as many titles as did Edward Titus under his Black Manikin Press. American expatriates living in Paris, Harry Crosby and his wife Caresse Crosby (American inventor of the modern bra) founded the press to publish their own work in April 1927 as Ã‰ditions Narcisse. ... They enjoyed the reception their initial work received, and decided to expand the press to serve other authors, renaming the company the Black Sun Press, following on Harry's obsession on the symbolism of the sun. They published exclusively limited quantities of meticulously produced, hand-manufactured books, printed on high-quality paper. During the 1920s and 1930s Paris was at the crossroads of many emerging expatriate American writers, collectively called the Lost Generation. ..."



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Here Are Cases of Trump Rivals Who Were Subject to Investigation


"Former President Donald J. Trump and his allies have suggested that his constant threats to prosecute rivals and perceived enemies if he is elected again should not be taken literally. 'His vengeance is going to be by winning and making America great again, not going after his political opponents,' Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, told CNN. But as president, Mr. Trump tried repeatedly to use the powers of the federal government to investigate or penalize those he considered foes. While a few of them had engaged in conduct that made them legitimate targets of inquiry, there was no legal basis for the investigation of many. None were ultimately put behind bars, but they had to fend off criminal investigations, civil suits brought by the Justice Department and other forms of government pressure. The decisions to pursue Mr. Trump’s rivals cannot always be traced back to a direct, formal order from him, but they are consistent with public or private pressure he exerted. Here are some of the more prominent examples from his time in office. ..."



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Tender Buttons - Gertrude Stein (1914)

"Tender Buttons is a 1914 book by American writer Gertrude Stein consisting of three sections titled 'Objects', 'Food', and 'Rooms'. The short book consists of multiple poems covering the everyday mundane. Stein's experimental use of language renders the poems unorthodox and their subjects unfamiliar. Stein began composition of the book in 1912 with multiple short prose poems in an effort to 'create a word relationship between the word and the things seen' using a 'realist' perspective. She then published it in three sections as her second book in 1914. Tender Buttons has provoked divided critical responses since its publication. It is renowned for its Modernist approach to portraying the everyday object and has been lauded as a 'masterpiece of verbal Cubism'. ..."

Wikipedia 



Archive: Tender Buttons - Gertrude Stein (1914)

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Deities and disciples: Patti Smith at St. Paul’s Cathedral


"Before Patti Smith came on stage at St. Paul’s Cathedral, after everyone had milled about utterly awed by the surroundings, the priest came out and told us all to put our phones away; no videos, no photos until the end. This is my recollection, realistically more for me than for you. When I was about 14 or so, there was a book in HMV on sale for £4, and I liked the cover. All black with one single polaroid image, titled Just Kids. I bought it, and I read it. It sounds embarrassing, but every writer ends up having to say it: I’ve always been a writer. There has never been a moment in my life where I thought about doing anything else, but when I prepped to start GCSEs and actually began zoning in on a path, that singular desire was starting to feel like a curse as the confidence of childhood disappeared into a teenage doubt that maybe I’d amount to nothing and all of it would be a waste. ..."


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7 Beautiful Places for Fall Foliage That Aren’t in New England

The South Santiam River along the McKenzie Pass-Santiam Pass Scenic Byway, in central Oregon.

"Every fall, visitors seeking out fall colors throng to hot spots like the Green Mountains of Vermont, the White Mountains of New Hampshire and the Berkshires in Massachusetts. But North America is vast and rich in forests, so why does New England get so much love? According to Prof. William Keeton, a forest ecosystem scientist at the University of Vermont, the region’s diverse array of trees — including beech, birch, maple and oak — produces a wide variety of colors when the leaves begin to change. Add to this, Dr. Keeton said, a mix of elevations, as well as slopes that face in different directions, producing climate variation, and you have a wide range of colors and stages of revealing. OK, sure, New England is beautiful, but stunning autumn colors don’t belong to any one region: Picture the deep orange dogwood trees of the Pacific Northwest, the golden shimmer of the aspens in Colorado and the rusty red of swamp chestnut oak in West Virginia. ..."


The South Santiam River in the Cascade mountains of Oregon.
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Radical playfulness: The abstract music compositions of Marcel Duchamp


"What else is there to do when you’ve already fucked with just about every art tradition going? The mission to disrupt the art world never ends. Abstractism demands no surrender; a rule-breaker could never just return to making pretty pictures and fitting in with the crowd; they must keep marching forward into new, weirder, wilder places. Marcel Duchampmarched right around the typical parameters of what art is and wandered right into the neighbouring realm of music. But really, to him and his class of radical creatives, the words ‘art’, ‘music’ or any other categorisation meant nothing. They were on a mission to destroy those lines and smash through any and all borders so that all that was left was a kind of vague yet huge question of 'What does all this mean?' ..."
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‘Money Jungle’: Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus And Max Roach’s Revelatory Summit


"First released in 1962 via the United Artists label, Duke Ellington’s collaboration with bassist Charles Mingus and drummer Max Roach, Money Jungle, was a momentous jazz summit. Though often seen as the moment where the old guard (Ellington) squared up to jazz music’s young lions (Mingus and Roach), the generational differences between its three participants are often exaggerated. Certainly, Ellington was entering his twilight years – he had just turned 63 – but Mingus, then aged 40, and the 38-year-old Roach were hardly wet behind the ears when the album was recorded. Perhaps a more accurate way of looking at the trio’s musical marriage is to see Ellington as a revered establishment figure pitted against modernist revolutionaries. Ultimately, though, the result of their collaboration wasn’t a confrontational face-off but a joyous celebration of jazz created by three unlikely kindred spirits. ..."







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Inside a West Village passageway leading to a hidden courtyard and 1820s backhouse


"One is the Village of cobblestone streets, enchanting houses, and sidewalk cafes. The other is the secret Village behind brick walls, embowering trees, iron fences, and horsewalk doorways. But sometimes you find a portal into this secret West Village. ... Under the arched entrance is a locked gate, which leads to a slender outside passageway that takes you to a small courtyard and a second house. This backhouse, as it’s called, feels right out of a fairy tale—with rounded windows, decorative ironwork on the fire escape, and rustic wood shutters. Backhouses aren’t unusual in downtown neighborhoods; an estimated 75 of them still stand in Greenwich Village, according to a 2002 New York Times article. ..."


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Sardines - Apollo Brown & Planet Asia (2023)


"... The names Apollo Brown and Planet Asia evoke a rarefied set of expectations. The raps are as hard as galvanized steel. The syllable placement is meticulous and intricate. The beats bang: simmering in a soulful but warped inferno. They are maestros of raw and unalloyed hip-hop: full of as much grit and craftsmanship as anyone to ever incinerate a microphone or master an MPC. After all, high standards are essential. ... Press play and the wind starts to howl and you hear glass shattering somewhere outside. This is hip-hop as hard-bodied wizardry. Apollo cauterizes soul samples offering new alchemy out of old spells. Planet Asia spits acid rain. ..."





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Lady Pink Paints Berlin Facade as 'Love Letters to the City'

Lady Pink. Detail. WIP. Urban Nation Museum Berlin. Love Letters To The City.

"'Love Letters to the City is a homage to the city, the idea of the universal city,' curator Michelle Houston reflects while seated at a picnic table outside a Thai restaurant in Berlin’s Schöneberg neighborhood. As final installations are taking place in Urban Nation, Houston’s gazes upward at the new mural on its façade being painted by OG train writer Lady Pink on a cherry picker at the museum. This mural is part of Houston’s upcoming show, 'Love Letters to the City.' ... The museum’s exhibition features a diverse array of works, including full-scale three-dimensional installations and sculptures. A significant portion of the pieces are borrowed from the museum’s permanent collection, while others are newly commissioned from both national and international artists. ..."

Brooklyn Street Art

Lady Pink. Detail. WIP. Urban Nation Museum Berlin. Love Letters To The City.

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10 Homemade Musical Instruments That Rocked The World

Close-up of Bo Diddley's Gretsch Guitar 

"From Bo Diddley to Björk, musicians have often created their own homemade musical instruments. Such bespoke pieces of equipment may sometimes be bizarre, but they’ve helped artists realize the sounds in their head when nothing else on earth could. Here we present 10 of the most iconic and interesting homemade musical instruments of all time. Let us know in the comments if there are any other favorites you like. ... The Cigar-Box Guitar: When The Beatles arrived in the United States, in 1964, John Lennon was asked, 'What are you most looking forward to seeing here in America, John?' He replied instantly, 'Bo Diddley!' Diddley, who had hits for Chess Records in the 50s, fashioned homemade guitars from cigar boxes (something sharecroppers had done to make a cheap instrument), an old blues tradition that gave his signature instrument its distinctive rectangular shape. ..."

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Over Man: On Nietzsche and our crisis of masculinity


"Like many others, I first read Friedrich Nietzsche as a teenage boy. In the fall of 2001, at the age of fifteen, I learned that I was to have brain surgery, and I needed reading material for the recovery period. In preparation for a month or so spent largely in bed, I browsed the Barnes & Noble philosophy shelves and selected Plato’s Symposium and Republic and Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals and Thus Spoke Zarathustra. These texts were my first foray into philosophy. Post-surgery, when I could do little but read, Plato and Nietzsche competed for my affection. Nietzsche won. Plenty of authors had been presented to me as radical or revolutionary voices, but only with Nietzsche did the act of reading itself feel thrillingly subversive. ..."
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A Digital Archive Features Hundreds of Audio Cassette Tape Designs, from the 1960s to the 1990s


"Audio cassette tapes first appeared on the market in the early nineteen-sixties, but it would take about a decade before they came to dominate it. And when they did, they’d changed the lives of many a music-lover by having made it possible not just to listen to their albums of choice on the go, but also to collect and trade their own custom-assembled listening experiences. By the eighties, blank tapes had become a household necessity on the order of batteries or toilet paper for such consumers — and just as with those frequently replenished products, everyone seemed to have their favorite brand. ... Somewhat improbably, in this age where even home CD-burning has been displaced by near-instantaneous streaming and downloading of digital music, the cassette tape has made something of a comeback. The near-mythological allure of the mixtape has only grown in recent years, during which artists both minor and major have put out cassette releases — and in some cases, cassette-only releases.  ..."


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