theater, natural history and conservation, the utterly mundane, and Etruscan 8-tracks
Erik Eckholm chases migrants in New York.
I haven’t driven across two states to see a rare bird, although when that badly lost, gloriously hued painted bunting showed up in Brooklyn in late November, I did make the eternal subway ride from the Upper West Side to the far side of Prospect Park to get a glance and a picture.
Corey Kilgannon counts the last four outdoor phone booths in Manhattan.
James Somers explains something that I should have understood before: why they call it an interlocking.
A sublime (in the older, aesthetic sense of slightly frightening) piece by N. R. Kleinfield on the death and life of George Bell, who died alone in Queens. Memento mori, indeed.
What’s the fastest way to get to Far Rockaway? (Or at least, the coolest?) Take the A train with Scouting New York.
Juicy views of the model board at NYC’s West Fourth Street control tower.
The spokesmen for the subway system walk that fine line between letting people know that the system is safe, but oh so riddled with technical debt.
Not to be outdone by WAMU’s profile of Randi Miller, the voice of Metro, The New Yorker offers this video video vignette of Charlie Pellett, the voice of NYC’s subway.
Dave Taft offers a splendid 24-hours sampler of the wildlife to be found within New York City, be it animal, vegetable, or fungal; native or alien invasive. He even finds something remarkable about the ickiest species on his list, Macrobdella decora:
Generally an animal no one wants to find, the American medicinal leech is attractive, as far as leeches go. Green or dark brown overall, this native leech has orange spots with a lighter belly.
The color illustrations by Matt McCann, in the online edition of this story, really pop.
A simple, analog solution to SOSED (Sudden-Onset Subway Exit Disorientation): low-profile wayfinding signs on the stairway risers, designed by Ryan Murphy and documented by Vicky Gan. Much more useful than smartphone beacons, also discussed in the post: who wants to be staring at a screen when you and 1,000 of your new best friends are trying to get off the platform and into the light?
Brandon Keim explores vacant lots and bits of waste ground in New York, and likes what he sees (even the non-natives), ruderal plants bursting with life.
… verdancy is not the result of careful management, but life’s inexorable course, present wherever we don’t suffocate it.
At Shorpy, a delicious photograph from 1963 of the Bombay Bicycle Club bar in New York’s Essex House.
Every once in a while, I get a look at New York that turns me into a happy-snapping, cornfed tourist. This view of SoHo, Tribeca, and the Financial District, with 1 World Trade Center in the background, taken from the sky level of the New Museum, is one such.
Can’t resist stopping for building-mounted street name signs. Bleecker Street, just down from the intersection with Carmine Street.
I saw dispensers in two buildings encouraging the BYO water bottle idea: at New York Law School (filling stations from Filtrine), and here at the American Museum of Natural History.
In the United States, warblers number more than fifty species, and during spring migration they are among the bird-watcher’s special joys—their gay colors flitting through the fresh green like vagrant snippets of rainbow.
—Eugene Kinkead, “Central Park Bird Walk,” The New Yorker, 2 August 1969
I took a vacation day Monday, before my training classes midweek, to explore some offbeat places in New York. I’d never been to Roosevelt Island before, so I got that tram ticket punched. The park at the southern tip of the island was closed, but the views across the East River from just outside are just as good.
At the northern point is a lovely, tiny lighthouse, dwarfing the Triborough Bridge in this perspective.
Back on the “mainland” of Manhattan, a painted advertising sign persists on 2nd Avenue. I look at the sloped lettering of PORTOVAULT and now I understand where Ben Katchor’s signs come from