Les Parapluies de New York
Verbatim caption offered by Agence France-Presse: “Pedestrians carry umbrellas to protect themselves against the rain and wind as they cross Lexington Avenue 12 April, 2007, in New York.” No, we don’t understand what makes that news, either. But we thought the photo was pretty. Nice use of red.
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The Year of Nappy-Headed Thinking
Okay, so maybe it’s just because we walked past an anti-Imus protest in Rockefeller Center last night on the way to see Didion’s play on Broadway, and maybe it’s entirely in our own heads, but is anyone else getting a bit of a separated-at-birth thing here? (Yes, we know: We’re terrible people.)
in other news
9/11 in Stained Glass
There’s news today of what must be a first in cathedral art: A Dutch bishop yesterday blessed a new stained-glass window for Sint Jan cathedral in Den Bosch, a city 50 miles south of Amsterdam, that includes a photographic image of an airplane headed into the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001. (Click here for a full image of the window.) “It was an assignment by the church to make a stained glass window that was related to the spirit of this time,” artist Marc Mulders said on his Website, where he explained that the pane represents hell on earth. We can understand that rationale, we guess, but we’re less convinced of its artistry. Looks like bad Hieronymus Bosch. —Tayt Harlin
9/11 Pane in Church Blessed [LAT]
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From Far Away, Even the Meatpacking Looks Cute
Flicking through Flickr, we happened across this very cool shot looking south at the corner of Ninth Avenue and 14th Street. We don’t really understand what was done to make the buildings and trucks all look like miniatures, but we do like the nice metaphor of the meatpacking district being nothing more than a collection of overcute playthings. Nice work, random Flickr photog.
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Freddy Sez: It’s Opening Day!
And the Yanks beat the Devil Rays, 9-5, at the Stadium yesterday. Welcome back, Freddy.
in other news
And, Suddenly, the U.S. Attorneys Story Makes Even Less Sense
The Times Website at about 1 a.m. this morning. “And if you testify the wrong way, Kyle, say good-bye to the Endangered Species Act.”
Former Key Aide Testifies Today on Gonzales’s Statements [NYT]
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Happy Teletubbies Day, New York!
We watched them arrive, moptops-at-JFK-style, on Monday, but now we’ve reached the big moment. By proclamation of Mayor Bloomberg, today is Teletubbies Day in New York City. The furry friends crossed Seventh Avenue in Times Square yesterday to prepare for the milestone — and, having noted this, we now promise we’ll never speak of them again.
Earlier: A British Invasion
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A British Invasion
The Teletubbies arrived in New York this morning for their first-ever American trip, apparently by Metro-North. Tinky-Winky, in front, was no doubt seeking directions to Chelsea.
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Candy Land
For no good reason we can ascertain, four teams of New Yorkers gathered at a Tribeca bar last night to attempt to eat all the contents of a vending machine. It was the second annual LVHRD Master-Disaster Vending Machine Challenge, billed as “the world’s only competitive eating vending machine event.” Each team had three members, and The Onion faced off against amNew York while MoMA took on Pocket Change. The inimitable Murray Hill hosted, amNew York and Pocket Change won, and Jaime Lynn-DiScala and Lance Bass were, for some reason, in attendance. Oh, and three people threw up. Fun!
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War, at Ground Zero
The initial plan for the Glassbead Collective’s multimedia antiwar protest at ground zero last night was to project images of war on the still-not-dismantled Deutsche Bank building just south of ground zero. But the building is black, there’s a reason projection screens are usually white, and even with the amazingly bright, 100,000-lumen projector, it seemed another canvas was in order. So the van holding the projector moved from its initial spot Washington and Vesey Streets to someplace on the West Side Highway, projecting north, then U-turned to project the images downtown, onto a building at the southwest corner of the Trade Center site. After about 45 minutes, police finally determined exactly which laws the group was breaking by its overtly public display of protest art: The van was now parked against traffic. The projector was shut down; tickets were written. Then it turned out the van’s driver had a suspended license. He went to the precinct; the others went to a bar. —Everett Bogue
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Campbell Continues Serving Her Community
After all the excitement in this morning’s tabs about Naomi Campbell’s first day of community service yesterday — and, more important, about what she wore to it — let us be among the first to show you what she wore this morning, when she showed up at the Sanitation Department depot for day two. With that jaunty fedora, Naomi, you can throw your phone at us anytime.
Boot Camp [NYDN]
Naomi Makes Boot-y Call [NYP]
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We’re Considering Calling in Sick
The high today is forecast to be 64 degrees, which is even better than yesterday’s 58 — and really makes us wish we could blow off work to go laze on the rocks in Central Park, too. Sigh.
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21 questions
Party Photog Patrick McMullan Is Older Than We Thought He WasName: Patrick McMullan
Age: 99
Job: Photographer
Neighborhood: Greenwich Village
Who’s your favorite New Yorker, living or dead, real or fictional?
There are so many: Andy Warhol, Margie Beck, Thomas Edison, Billie Holliday, Bill Clinton, my son Liam McMullan, Mark Twain, Michael Musto, Amanda Lapore, Zelda Kaplan, F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Ella Fitzgerald, Carolina Herrera, Anderson Cooper, Bruce Weber, Cole Porter, Bettina Zilkha, Michael Bloomberg, Holly Golightly, Alfred Eisenstadt, Julia Roberts — I really could go on and on, especially with the “dead or alive” thing.
What’s the best meal you’ve eaten in New York?
Something at Daniel, Le Cirque, Nobu, or the Pump.
In one sentence, what do you actually do all day in your job?
Read, edit, talk, dress, arrive, take photographs, ask people their names, smile, download, delegate, get confused, make decisions, deal with knuckleheads, dream, struggle, answer questions, imagine.
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Alternatively: Practice, Practice, Practice
Spotted in front of Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall Friday night, just before a New York Philharmonic concert performance of My Fair Lady, starring Kelsey Grammer, Kelli O’Hara, Brian Dennehy, and Charles Kimbrough: a woman desperately soliciting a scalped ticket — in her mink coat. Only in New York, kids.
it happened this week
Baby, It’s the Predictable Headline
There was a double issue of the magazine on Monday, which means no new issue next Monday, which means no “It Happened This Week.” (Funny, from where we sit, it seems like an awful lot happened this week. Apparently not.) Have a good weekend — the forecast high is 50 degrees tomorrow — and we’ll catch you Monday.
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Homeward Bound
We stumbled past this shot, slugged “I snapped this photo while coming into LaGuardia this week,” on Flickr this morning. We’re reminded why we always like coming home from vacations — even on cold, gray, still-slushy winter days.
mgw_802’s photostream [Flickr]
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They’re Here, They’re Black, Get Used to It
We saw this billboard in the subway station at Sixth Avenue and 23rd Street yesterday, we took in its photos of shirtless, sculpted black men, and it all made sense. Then we noticed it starred Bernie Mac, and we realized that we didn’t think this movie was at all what we’d thought it was. And that whoever named it should probably be fired.
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Pride [IMDb.com]
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Come on and Join Your Fellow Man
Forget the old “Join the Army: Travel the world, meet interesting people, and kill them” joke. According to this Bronx billboard, photographed for the blog Razor Apple, if you join the Navy, it’s all just one big rock show. Fun!
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Fight for Moshzilla’s Right to Party [Razor Apple]
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The People Ride in a Hole in the Ground
We happened across this today on gillianleigh’s Flickr. We love it. (Of course, we also wish our whole life had choreography. But still.)
[Snap a Photo Op–worthy shot? Send it to us at [email protected].]
gillianleigh’s photostream [Flickr]
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Pillow Fight!
Hundreds of pillow-wielding kids descended on Union Square Saturday afternoon for a fluff battle of epic proportions, and nearly as many came wielding cameras, to record the event for history, or for their photo blogs. “Like, wow,” said one combatant exiting the fray, “this must have been what the Crusades were like.” Um, yeah. —Everett Bogue
cultural capital
Britney, Artist?
We’ve already established that today is contemporary- art day in New York. But is it possible that seemingly bottoming-out Britney Spears is actually mounting a shockingly highbrow and witty performance piece? Consider: At left is Ms. Spears on the cover of today’s Daily News; at right is half of Pipilotti Rist’s Ever Is Over All, a 1997 video installation in MoMA’s collection. Coincidence? —Karen Rosenberg
Brit Freaks Again as Train Wreck Rolls On [NYDN]
Pipilotti Rist. Ever Is Over All. 1997. [MoMA.org]
Earlier: Daily Intel’s coverage of the Armory Show
intel
Take the J Train. Please.
We were standing in the Bowery and Delancey subway station a few minutes before nine last night when we heard the most unusual sound. It wasn’t the rumbling of ancient, rusted steel that typically precedes the J/M/Z line’s antique subway cars; it was instead a fresh, clean, newly minted sound. It sounded good. Commuters’ heads turned. It was a brand-new R160, the sleek train that runs on the L line. Even better, it seemed to want to be there: A bright, bold “J” glowed on each LED screen. The crowd yearned to board. But it was not to be: A sign on each door announced “Test Train - Train Is Not In Service”; it paused for only a brief moment in the station, opened and closed the doors on the wrong side of the train, and trundled off toward Canal Street. We were left with questions. Are new trains really coming to this unloved line? Does this mean Bushwick has been irredeemably gentrified? Will our rent go up? The answers: Maybe. The MTA will say only that they’re testing the trains on several lines, and a spokesman wouldn’t confirm any J plans. We’re still choosing to believe. —Everett Bogue
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Off Broadway Audiences Are Even More Unsophisticated Than You Feared
Spotted the other night in the restroom of a small Off Broadway theater. The “Stop Disease Method of Hand Washing” includes the following steps: Use soap and running water, rub hands vigorously, wash all surfaces, rinse well, and dry.
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Atlantic Yards Begins Not With a Bang But With a Bulldozer in a Snowy Lot
There it is, folks: The start of demolition for Bruce Ratner’s Atlantic Yards. Reports say they’re knocking down a disused bus depot to create a temporary rail yard so that construction can begin. From the AP’s pictures, it just looks like they’re using a really big bulldozer to move some barrels and take down a chain-link fence. Either way, historic!
Earlier: Bruce Ratner Swings His Ball
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Saks Now Offering Package Deals?
We couldn’t help noticing this mannequin in a Saks window as we walked past last night. We have no idea what they’re actually trying to sell with it. Or, come to think of it, maybe we do.
[Snap a Photo Op–worthy shot? Send it to us at [email protected].]
intel
Dan Doctoroff Claws His Way into New ‘Observer’One more thought on the new Observer, with its real-estate-as-sports back cover, and Dan Doctoroff as its first back-coverboy: Doctoroff really needs to cut his fingernails.
Modern-Day Robert Moses [NYO]
Earlier: Who Moved David Carr’s ‘Observer’?
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You Will Never Be Hungry Again
We had no mail at our apartment when we got home last night, but we’re pleased to see that neither sleet nor snow nor dark of night keeps a Chinese-food delivery guy from the swift completion of his appointed rounds.
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You Love the High Line, You Got to Boogie
Taking a perhaps-illegal tour of the High Line this weekend, one of the bloggers at the Fagat Guide (get it? like Zagat?) found this lone rainbow-colored disco ball, noted an Anderson Cooper billboard in the background (at left), and deemed the park-to-be “the gayest thing since the Christopher Street piers.” Indeed.
With Diane Von Furstenberg Involved, You Already Knew This Thing Was Going to be Pretty Special [Fagat Guide via Curbed]
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Not Everybody Loves GraydonThe most amusing review of Graydon Carter’s Waverly Inn we’ve yet read (and perhaps the most honest one), photographed in the window of the Old Town Bar on East 18th Street and offered today by our old friends at Gawker:
Old Town Bar at War With Waverly Inn [Gawker]
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Baby, It’s Cold Outside
But that doesn’t mean you can’t look fabulous, as this pic posted to Gothamist late yesterday reminds us.
Extra, Extra [Gothamist]
in other news
The Heat Is On in Baghdad
We’re not the sort to typically find media bias everywhere we look, the kind who believe the Times is regularly scoring partisan points with its photo selections. But we can’t be the only ones who looked at today’s front page and were immediately reminded of a certain other helicopter picture from a certain other disastrous war. (Or maybe just, by the color palette, of a certain poster for a certain musical about that certain other war.) Are we?
Copter Crashes Suggest Shift in Iraqi Tactics [NYT]
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Staten Island’s Spring Awakening
Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow this morning, and so did Holtsville Hal on Long Island. But the only weather marmot residing in New York City — Staten Island Chuck — woke up, saw no shadow, and thus allows us to confidently predict spring will come early for our fair (if, granted, soon to be inundated) city. The good people at Gothamist provide the picture we’ve been looking for, and it reminds us — in case we’ve forgotten — that Brooklyn Chuck will never miss a chance for a photo op.
Early Spring, Says Staten Island Chuck [Gothamist]
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How’re You Doin’? Not So Good, Ed
At Bush’s you-people-make-too-much-money speech on Wall Street yesterday, onetime Democrat Ed Koch’s ever-increasing embrace of Republicans became disconcertingly literal.
Earlier: Bush Visits Wall Street, Discovers Income Inequality [NYT]
But It Was Easy Being a Photog Shooting the Hell’s Angels
Yesterday’s NYPD siege of the Hell’s Angels club on East 3rd Street couldn’t have been much fun for the Angels. (Well, we’ve seen Gimme Shelter: Maybe this is how they have fun.) But it did manage to bring together a happy little balcony party just down the block. Shawn Anderson is a gregarious 37-year-old painter and set designer who lives on the fifth floor of a tenement at First Avenue and 3rd Street. On the street, it was a crush of cops, TV news trucks, and neighborhood onlookers. But up on Anderson’s scruffy terrace, it was a cozy (well, frigid) klatch of news photographers training their cameras on the action below.
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It Was Either This or Try That New Trend of Rapping on the Subway
Prince Charles shot hoops in Harlem yesterday, and we just can’t get enough of the photos. That’s all.
The Prince, in the City, Dribbled and Scores [NYT]
Earlier: Next on NPR: Sometimes Panhandlers Ask for Money on Subway Cars
in other news
TV Ratings Go to College, and ‘Times’ Photog Goes to Penn
The front page of the Times business section today excitedly reports that Nielsen Media, the TV-ratings people, are now for the first time including college students in their sample. This is predicted to be exceedingly good news for young-skewing shows like Family Guy and America’s Next Top Model, according to the article. Judging by the accompanying photo, it is also good news for marketers of high-end denim, black shirts, and hair straighteners.
At Last, Television Ratings Go to College [NYT]
Educators Want to Eliminate Middle School, PubertyToday’s Times is reporting on the newest wrinkle in radical school reform since Bard president Leon Botstein proposed doing away with high school altogether — doing away instead with its younger sibling, middle school. Performance is historically so abysmal in those three-year programs that the question among administrators and researchers is no longer whether it’s a good idea but rather whether K–8 or 6–12 is the better solution. But how do the children feel about it? For that we direct you to reporter Elissa Gootman’s accompanying photo essay on P.S. 105 in Far Rockaway (K–8) and Harlem’s Frederick Douglass High School (6–12). The mortified faces on the middle-school-aged students suggest an even more radical reform idea that would no doubt make the teens happy. Never mind middle school: Can they just do away with adolescence?
Photo Essay: The Middle School Dilemma [NYT]
Taking Middle Schoolers Out of the Middle [NYT]
It’s Snowing! (Briefly)
After the record-setting dearth of snow this winter, Daily Intel is pleased to report we saw the first flakes fall at 9:49 this morning, in the West Village. Our Carroll Gardens correspondent reported snowfall in that Brooklyn neighborhood shortly thereafter, although our Park Slope correspondent says his location remains unflurried.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.
UPDATE: As we were typing, the snow stopped and the sun came out. So much for that.
ANOTHER UPDATE: An email correspondent reports flurries in Park Slope at 9:30.
Wacky Weather Hits New York City as Temperatures Hit Record High [Newsday]
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’Tis Always the Season
Just a quick reminder from building staffs across New York — this one was posted in a Chelsea elevator and photographed by a correspondent — that tipping is always appreciated. (N.B. to Daily Intel’s doormen and porters: We’re on it. Really.)
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A Winter Wonderland
It may have reached 70 degrees on Saturday, but Coney Island still knew it was winter; the Cyclone, like nearly all the other attractions there, was shuttered for the season.
[Snap a Photo Op–worthy shot? Send it to us at [email protected].]
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January Continues Bustin’ Out All Over
The city’s odd new June-in-January weather system — high of 61 today! high of 67 tomorrow! — isn’t confusing only to Brooklyn’s cherry trees; a walk near the office this morning revealed hard-bitten midtown flora is equally flummoxed. Grass growing in Rockefeller Center tree planters in the dead of winter? Madness!
[Snap a Photo Op–worthy shot? Send it to us at [email protected].]
Earlier: January Is Bustin’ Out All Over
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‘Floodwall’
In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans artist Jana Napoli collected hundreds of drawers from destroyed furniture abandoned by Big Easy residents. Starting today, she installed them as “Floodwall,” a 230-foot-long piece being exhibited at the World Financial Center. Under the collection of salvaged drawers, an LED displays the words of the people who left them behind. You can see the installation at the Liberty Street Bridge through February 9.
in other news
Trans-Fat Ban to Become Just Another Law for Busta Rhymes to BreakBusta Rhymes surrendered to police last night; he allegedly beat up a former employee. From the Post’s coverage of his arrest we learn that Rhymes has lately been:
• Kicking his driver in the head and chest.
• Beating up a fan.
• Keeping a machete in his car.
• Refusing to tell investigators who shot his former bodyguard.
• And — as the photo makes eminently clear — eating a lot of doughnuts.
—Ben Mathis-Lilley
Busta Busted [NYP]
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January Is Bustin’ Out All Over
Warm weather in January: delightful, right? Well, yes, for us. For the cherry trees in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, less so. Their branches should be bare at this time of year — and for a few months longer — but were blossoming exuberantly today. Happy global warming, kids!
The Five-Year Forecast [NYM]
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On the Ninth Day of Christmas…
Courtesy of Curbed, perhaps the iconic New York post-holiday image.
It’s Official: The Holidays Are So Over [Curbed]
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City to Build Bike Racks, Evict Clydesdales
Yesterday we received a forwarded — actually, a several-times forwarded — press release from the New York City Department of Transportation. Next year, the city will expand the sidewalk into the street at the southeast corner of North 7th Street at Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg, removing several parking spots but creating space for more bicycle racks. The forwarders were enthusiastic: “A truly progressive move by DOT,” said one; perhaps the first time the city has removed vehicular parking spots to make room for bike parking, suggested another. But what does that corner look like at rush hour now? Photog and Williamsburger Everett Bogue checked it out on his way to work this morning, and we can’t help but wonder: Once the new bike racks go in, how will they get the Bud to Williamsburg?
DOT to Widen Sidewalk & Install Bike Racks in Williamsburg, Brooklyn [PDF]
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Brownstone Brooklyn: Not as Clean and Safe as You Think
A section of the CVS at Court and Pacific Streets in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn. One wonders if Bruce Ratner has really done enough due diligence about this borough he’s so insistent on colonizing.