New York Stories

For those of you who were at today’s tour but had to leave, I am happy to report that F. was safely rescued from the elevator. The tour of the Met Life tower turned out to be more eventful that I had imagined.

Hi everyone,

As said in class several times, Mayor Koch will be at Baruch this Wednesday, March 16. Please arrive at 6:30pm in VC 14-220. Mayor Koch will be speaking and there will be a Q&A session followed by a reception with some food after that. You will get to mingle and speak to Mayor Koch.

Hope to see you there!

Harman writer-in-residence Adrian Nicole LeBlanc is giving a reading on March 22 at 5:45pm. Here is all the information about her and the event.

Hines photographs of Empire State Building construction:

http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/dgkeysearchresult.cfm?parent_id=131032

Building of Empire State building

http://ci.columbia.edu/0240s/index.html

King Kong

Skyline controversy

http://www.dnainfo.com/20100823/midtown/city-council-mull-new-skyscraper-near-empire-state-building

As I mentioned in class, Ben and I took a class together few semesters back with professor John Maciuika.

One of the best resource for the class was the PBS series simply entitled New York. The videos cover the story of our beloved city form its establisment till today.

More here: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/newyork/series/index.html

–> RadioLab – Cities <–

This piece is about cities and what makes them unique. A part of it talks about the speed of people in different cities around the world; apparently all locals walk at the same pace.

As a side-note, if you do not know about RaidoLab it is the most awesome radio show on the planet, all their shows are available as podcasts on their witty website: http://www.radiolab.org/

One the last traditional arcades in the city has finally closed down. It was truly a staple of Mott Street and Chinatown. When I was younger, I went to school just up the road from this arcade and was told to never go in there by my dad. He said it was full of hooligans and kids who never did anything but play games.

As I got older, I had the chance to finally walk into the arcade and actually see what it was all about. Though it was nothing special to me, I knew it was really important to the people who were regulars there. In general, it just sad to see anything get shut down, especially after 50+ years.

I’m sure some of you feel the same way about shops that have closed down (especially Grimaldi’s recently). Let me know what you think!

Source: http://nyctheblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/chinatown-fair-last-arcade-in-chinatown.html

Hey guys, just wanted to share something that I think is quite appropriate for our class. Here is the link for the project, “Humans of New York.”

Here is the description (taken from the website):

Humans of New York is a multi-year project to construct a photographic census of the city of New York.   The team consists of one man, who walks the streets several hours a day, looking for interesting people, and taking their photograph.  Currently, the project is in the gathering phase.  Nearly 1,400 portraits have been collected thus far.  The goal is 10,000.  Photos are uploaded as they are collected, and arranged by date.  When a substantial body of portraits has been gathered, they will be grouped by neighborhood and displayed geographically.  Upon completion, an interactive map will show every neighborhood in New York through the faces of its inhabitants.

I really think that everyone should check out this website. There’s a lot of great stories out there that we probably don’t even know exists.  I also think it’s pretty cool that they’re going to put up an interactive map after the completion of the project; though I guess it can never really be completed since there are just so many faces of New Yorkers.

It has given me a lot of inspiration for our multimedia project, because I know that for a lot of these people, I would have probably never thought of approaching them.

One of my favorite stories is about the traveling girl with her dog; the story is called “The Road Dog.” If any of you guys have time to have a look, I want to know this: what are your favorite stories?

This is just a reminder that the schedule listed on the syllabus has been changed slightly. We will have guest speaker Dan Wakin on Wednesday, March 9. Please read his article, The Heist, the Getaway and the Sawed-off Leg, before class.

Also, please note that your multimedia, One In 8 Million features will be due Monday, April 4.

In case you do not read the weekly CUNY newsletter, there is this up-coming event at the Graduate Center that is “plagiarizing”  our class:

MORE NEW YORK STORIES

What do Jonathan Rosen, Dorothy Gallagher, Jennifer Gilmore, Suketu Mehta, and David Hajdu have in common? Each suffers from an incurable love affair with the Big Apple, and each contributed to the canon of writing this city has inspired by way of the New York Times City Section, a part of the paper that once defined Sunday afternoon leisure for the denizens of the five boroughs. In More New York Stories, former City Section editor Constance Rosenblum has again culled a diverse cast of voices that brought to vivid life our metropolis through those pages in this follow-up to the publication New York Stories. Join the above writers for a reading and then a book signing to follow. Click the Online Box Office icon above to purchase tickets or call 212-868-4444. No surcharge! To join the Graduate Center’s Membership Program and receive an instant 25% discount code, visit www.gc.cuny.edu/events/membership.htm.

Date: March 9, 2011
Time: 6:30 PM – 8:00 PM
CUNY Graduate Center
Address: 365 Fifth Avenue Manhattan
Room: Elebash Recital Hall
Admission: $8, Members $6

And there is this website: www.GothamCenter.org

You can find literature, history, events and much more related to our beloved city.