Poor New Yorkers will get cash rewards for good behavior.

Brooklyn industrial waterfront is the most endangered place in America.

A thrill-seeking heart doctor with three daughters was killed on Father’s Day when he lost control of his classic Ferrari while zooming down the Long Island Expressway at 120 mph on his way to flying lessons.

What’s up in Boerum Hill? Well, last night somebody pooped inside our street level gate.

Mr. Barnett had spent millions of dollars acquiring air rights from properties next to his own lots on the east and west sides of Broadway. These air rights, as the neighborhood came to learn, allowed him to build hundreds of feet higher than the 16-story ceiling that defines much of Broadway above 96th Street.

Virtual Lower East Side.

The future of Coney Island.

The complete road map to New York City street food.

‘Too much, too many people, too much.’ — Grand Master Flash

{ Building mural, Avenue Georges V, Paris, France }

{ Michael Wolf, Architecture of Density, Hong Kong, 2006 }

Andy Warhol made one of his most famous and controversial films, Empire, on July 25-26, 1964. Aiming his camera out of a window of the Time-Life Building [44th Floor], he recorded the Empire State Building for six hours, from the twilight of 8:00 p.m., through the darkness, and until 2:30 a.m. The film contained only one image and extended, rather than condensed, real time. Not only did he use, unedited, all of the footage he shot, but, when the new work premiered the following March, he projected the film in slow motion [at 16 frames per second, instead of 24], bringing the final running time to slightly over eight hours. { Coskun }

Empire is a moment of time captured, more of an experience than a film, like watching a living portrait. { comment on imdb }

“An 8 hour hard-on.” — Andy Warhol

Conversation notated by Gerard Malanga during the filming of Empire
John Palmer: Why is nothing happening? I don’t understand.
Henry Romney: What would you like to happen?
John Palmer: I don’t know. Is the Foundation going to know that you did this?
Henry Romney: I have a feeling that all we’re filming is the red light. (…)

John Palmer: The lack of action in the last three 1200-foot rolls is alarming.
Henry Romney: You have to mark these rolls very carefully so as not to get them mixed up. (…)

Andy Warhol: The Empire State Building is a star!
John Palmer: Has anything happened at all?
Marie Menken: No.
John Palmer: Good. { Continue reading }

During the filming [of Empire], the lights in the office from which they were shooting were temporarily left on. In the beginning of three reels, images of the film crew can be seen reflected in the window, next to the Empire State Building. Warhol’s reflection appears at the beginning of Reel 7. { Warhol Stars }

In 1928, the Los Angeles City Council selected 640 acres (2.6 km2) in the southern part of Westchester as the site of a new airport for the city. The fields of wheat, barley and lima beans were converted into dirt landing strips without any terminal buildings. It was named Mines Field for William W. Mines, the real estate agent who arranged the deal. The first structure, Hangar No. 1, was erected in 1929 and is now a historic landmark.

Mines Field was dedicated and opened as the official airport of Los Angeles in 1930. The name was officially changed to Los Angeles Airport in 1941, and to Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) in 1949.

The distinctive white “Theme Building,” constructed in 1961, resembles a flying saucer that has landed on its four legs. A restaurant that provides a sweeping view of the airport is suspended beneath two intersecting arches that form the legs. The Los Angeles City Council designated the building a cultural and historical monument in 1992. { Wikipedia | Continue reading }

Today, the airport that ushered the country into the jet age in the 1960s and set the standard for international service in the 1980s is ill-prepared for the new planes that are expected to revolutionize air travel.

Fed up with its cramped ticket lobbies and waiting rooms, gridlocked access roads and outdated airfield, passengers and airlines are increasingly taking their business elsewhere.

“It is the Rip Van Winkle of American airports,” said Steve Erie, a UC San Diego political science professor who has written extensively about Southern California’s infrastructure.

Officials are reaping what they sowed on a former bean field near Santa Monica Bay that became the world’s fifth-busiest airport.

Lack of cohesive political leadership, a history of mistrust between the city’s airport agency and nearby communities, grandiose visions for expanding the facility and an incredibly complex planning process have combined to leave officials without a blueprint to modernize LAX. And time is running out.

{ LA Times | Continue reading }

The “X” in LAX
Before the 1930s, existing airports used a two-letter abbreviation based on the weather station at the airports. At that time, LA served as the designation for Los Angeles International Airport. With the rapid growth in the aviation industry, the designations expanded to three letters, and LA became LAX. The letter X does not otherwise have any specific meaning in this identifier. Moreover, the X perhaps indicates a blank letter or empty space in the code.

India’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani, is building a 60-storey palace with helipad, health club and six floors of car parking. The building will be home for Mr Ambani, his mother, wife, three children and 600 full-time staff. { Continue reading | The Guardian | Mumbai Mirror}

A Texas driver who failed to heed height warnings on the New Jersey side of the Lincoln Tunnel early Thursday reached Manhattan to find that his truck’s top had peeled back. The tunnel also suffered damage. { NY Times | Continue reading }

Two of the world’s leading architects, Rem Koolhaas and Norman Foster, have clashed over claims of a “remarkable similarity” between two of their most ambitious projects.

Three weeks ago Foster + Partners announced the creation of Masdar, a 6 million square meter (right), solar-powered development in Abu Dhabi that will be “the world’s first zero-carbon and zero-waste city.”

Koolhaas revealed his practice had sought an explanation from Foster’s because of perceived similarities, including scale, shape, sustainable aspects and the grid system both cities will employ.

“It needed a conversation [with Foster & Partners] about how plausible it was that these similarities could happen.”

Fellow OMA partner Reinier de Graaf said its scheme (left) was the “most radical in the world” in terms of density and its mix of functions. But a spokeswoman for Foster’s insisted that “apart from the square shape”, there were no similarities between the schemes. { Building Design | Continue reading }

Anyone who lives in Orlando knows that if you dig deeper than 6 feet, you’ll hit water. So how can there be tunnels under DisneyWorld Magic Kingdom? Well, because the park is built on the 2nd floor (technically speaking). The tunnels are at ground level, and the park is built on top of them. They serve many purposes, the main one being the ability to get from wardrobe to your spot, “on stage,” without crossing lands. It also gives cast members a much easier way to get to their destination without having to fight crowds. (…)

Disney has an amazing trash system called the AVAC system. The trash is sucked through tunnels to a centralized collection area, so you never see any trash truck. (…) They deliver merchandise to each area via the tunnels so you never have to see a delivery truck “on-stage.” There are also offices, storage, kitchens, break rooms, two employee cafeterias, including the Fantasyland Dining Room, Kingdom Kutters (a hair salon), a Fire Prevention Center, Studio “D” and many of the support departments for the Magic Kingdom.

{ EkDay | Continue reading }

photo { Diane Arbus, A castle in Disneyland, 1962 }

Ultra-luxury five-star hotels, the largest supermarket in the Northeast, apartments renting for $80 a square foot, condominiums selling for $1,500 a square foot, top-flight restaurants, a hip nightlife scene, and high-end boutiques: It’s not TriBeCa, the meatpacking district, or the High Line area I’m talking about — it’s the Bowery and the Lower East Side.

After several years of stratospheric growth and a number of new developments dotting the skyline, the area once known for Gus’s Pickles, discount clothing, and a fair amount of vagrancy now commands real estate prices for new developments higher than found in parts of the Upper East Side, and comparable to Chelsea and the financial district. { NY Sun | Continue reading }

The Lower East Side today refers to the area of Manhattan south of East Houston Street and west of the East River. The Lower East side is bordered in the south and west by Chinatown (which extends north to roughly Grand Street), in the west by NoLIta and in the north by East Village. { Wikipedia | Continue reading }

photo { the Lower East Side in the 30s | Early Kodachrome Images }

+ previously { Shapiro Hardware Co, 320 Bowery, NYC, 1958 }

Somewhere in this lakeside Central American town, there’s a woman who lives beside a yellow car. But it’s not her car. It’s her address. If you were to write to her, this is where you would send the letter: “From where the Chinese restaurant used to be, two blocks down, half a block toward the lake, next door to the house where the yellow car is parked, Managua, Nicaragua.” (…)

“We don’t have a real street map,” concedes Manuel Estrada Borge, vice president of the Nicaragua Chamber of Commerce, “so we have an amusing little system that no one from anywhere else can understand.”

Welcome to Managua, quite possibly the only place on Earth where upward of 2 million people manage to live, work, and play—not to mention find their way around—in a city where the streets have no names. No numbers, either. { The Toronto Star | Continue reading }