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.
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 }
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 }
As a child, Stephen was mute and did not relate to other human beings. Aged three, he was diagnosed as autistic. He had no language, uncontrolled tantrums and lived entirely in his own world.
At the age of five, Stephen was sent to Queensmill School in London, a school for children with special needs, where it was noticed that the only pastime he enjoyed was drawing. It soon became apparent he communicated with the world through the language of drawing; first animals, then London buses, and finally buildings. These drawings show a masterful perspective, a whimsical line and reveal a natural innate artistry.
Aged eight, Stephen started drawing cityscapes after the effects of an earthquake (all imaginary) as a result of being shown photographs of earthquakes in a book at school. He also became obsessed with cars and illustrations of cars at this time (his knowledge of them is encyclopaedic) and he drew most of the major London landmarks. { Stephenwiltshire.co.uk | Continue reading }
In this short excerpt, Wiltshire takes a helicopter journey over Rome and then draws a panoramic view of what he saw, entirely from memory.
+ { Stephen Wiltshire draws Tokyo from memory | video }
Think a stratospheric office always means sky-high compensation? Turns out some of New York’s top executives sit closer to earth than you’d think. { Portfolio | Flash app }
1964: The top 30 floors of the building were illuminated by a new series of floodlights in April transforming the Empire State Building into a nighttime landmark at the beginning of the New York World’s Fair.
1976: Colored lighting was first introduced by Douglas Leigh. The tower was lit in red, white and blue in celebration of the American Bicentennial.
1977: A lighting system, permitting a wider range of colors, was inaugurated on October 12, when blue and white lights flashed to announce that the Yankees had won the World Series. The installation of 204 fixtures, utilizing metal halide lamps, plus 310 fluorescent lamps, light the building from the 72nd floor to the base of the TV antenna.
1984: Designed by Douglas Leigh, 880 vertical 75 watt fluorescent tubes in the mast and 220 horizontal fluorescents at the base of the mast can now be changed at the flick of a switch. Each of the 176 panels contains five tubes and each tube is a different color: red, green, blue, yellow, and white.
Blue/Blue/White UN World Summit Blue/White/Red Bastille Day Green/Green/Green St. Patrick’s Day Green/White/Green Pakistan Independence Orange/Orange/Blue NYC Marathon Pink/Pink/Yellow Tribeca Film Festival Red St. Valentine’s Day Red/Black (no lights)/Green Harlem Week Red/Red/Gold NYC Celebrates Fortune 500 Red/White/Blue 9/11/01 Memorial / Independence Day / Republican National Convention… Red/Yellow/Yellow Lunar New Year
Hu Jun, 53, a retired accountant, was mesmerized by an advertisement for Venice Aquatic City and had put down cash for a new apartment within a week. “It’s just like being abroad, like living in Venice,” Hu said. (…)
The place looks a lot like a small town on the Thames River, but Wu’s new home is actually in a suburb of Shanghai. As China’s modernization continues to pull hundreds of millions of people from farms to cities and suburbs, a construction boom has given rise to a vast landscape of foreign-looking settlements.
These real-estate developments are the latest manifestation of the technique that has fueled China’s economic boom: making copies.
In Nanjing, there are Balinese retreats and Italian villas. In the southeastern city of Hangzhou, there are Venice and Zurich. In downtown Beijing, everything is about Manhattan, with Soho, Central Park and Park Avenue.
“Many people in China today associate the exotic with wealth. They buy into these developments to differentiate themselves from ordinary people,” said Tino Wan, a manager of ERA Real Estate in Shanghai. { Seattle Times | Continue reading }
A lawyer leaded to his death from a 69th-floor office at the Empire State Building yesterday, severing a leg that crashed to the sidewalk in front of horrified onlookers.
Cops raced to the 102-story landmark just before 3 p.m. after several witnesses called 911 to report a body part on the ground on W. 33rd St. A police source identified the dead man as Moshe Kanovsky, 31, of Brooklyn.
The left leg, severed below the knee, was bare except for a gray and black argyle sock. Police said the rest of Kanovsky’s body was found intact on a 30th-floor landing.
Investigators questioned employees at Levine & Blit, a personal injury practice, and at Ashok Karmaker. Both law firms share a suite on the 69th floor where Kanovsky “did odds-and-ends work” for Karmaker.
It wasn’t immediately clear what prompted Kanovsky’s suicide.
“He was interviewing a client,” said a man who works in the suite. “He just got up, opened the window and jumped.”
At least 30 people have jumped from the Empire State Building since it opened in 1931. { NY Daily | Continue reading }
New York City wants to strengthen its hand against recalcitrant landlords by giving itself broad new powers not simply to make patchwork emergency repairs in long-troubled buildings but to overhaul entire systems, like heating or plumbing, and then force the landlords to foot the bill.
A bill to be introduced in the City Council, with the support of the Bloomberg administration, would give the city’s housing agency the right to go into buildings with dozens of serious housing-code violations and a history of unpaid emergency repairs, do a “cellar to roof inspection” and fix not only immediate problems but whole underlying systems.
Under the new rules, the city would not only patch a leak in the ceiling of a tenant who had called in a complaint; it might replace the plumbing lines, if necessary, for several adjacent floors. And if the inspectors also found that the cause of heat problems was an antiquated boiler, the city might replace the boiler and charge the landlord.
A homeowner has offered to give his house away, to anyone with the wherewithal to take it away. New York restaurateur Tony Spiridigliozzi bought the three-bedroom, two-story Colonial-style home for $820,000 last year, but he wants to build a new one on the property.
Spiridigliozzi, 49, said he “fell in love with the neighborhood,” but the house’s kitchen and dining room weren’t big enough for his frequent family get-togethers.
Real estate agents persuaded him to try to give away the 1926 house instead of tearing it down. There are sizable strings attached to Spiridigliozzi’s offer. A potential taker needs to have vacant property nearby, ideally within two miles, and up to $90,000 to move the house and utility lines in its path.
The move would also require various permits, according to local officials. Still, real estate agents said at least a dozen people expressed serious interest Saturday, a day after word of the offer emerged. { 1010 WINS | Continue reading }
