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Catching "SATC" the New York way
Spend this weekend disassociating yourself with wannabes. (AP)
New York will be inundated this weekend with tourists seeking to catch a “Sex and the City” screening where it all happened. They’ll do it up right: Dress up as their favorite characters, watch the film with 73 girlfriends and top the night off with yummy-tinis at a swank bar. You, resident New Yorker, can do better.
There’s another route for native fans who want to avoid the bachelorette party-like festivities while remaining true to the essence of “SATC":
1. Dress like your normal fabulous self. You’ve already got New York style. Mimicking Carrie’s ballgown-with-a-cardigan ensemble screams out-of-towner-with-a-costume.
2. Schedule brunch with your best friend. The “SATC” crowd bonded over eggs in the morning probably more often than drinks at night.
3. See the movie in the afternoon. This is a surefire way to dodge the tourists with the matching “I heart SATC” T-shirts. Nice scrunchie, lady.
4. Take an hours-long walk through the city you already know so well, making sure to point out the women who are so obviously visiting just for the movie. But also make sure to point out the men you would “date” if you had Samantha’s audacity.
* See all the New York 'Sex and the City' premiere photos here.— Emily Ngo
Tags: sex and the city, entertainment, movies, fashion
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Last Mitchell-Lama apartment house on UWS saved
The city has stepped in to stop a tony Manhattan prep school from selling an affordable housing complex to a private developer.
The 199-unit Trinity House was built in 1969 and is the last Mitchell-Lama building on the Upper West Side.
Last year, Trinity School, which has owned and operated the building for the last 40 years, informed tenants that they were selling to Pembroke Properties, Inc., who intended to convert the units to condominiums.
“We are thrilled,” said Dina Heisler, who raised her two children in a two- bedroom apartment in Trinity House, at 100 W. 92nd St. She has lived there since 1976 and pays a little more than $1,000 a month for.
“This place was the only way I could have I could have raised my boys in the city. It made it possible for middle income tenants to stay in the city and have good quality housing.”
Representatives from Pembroke Properties and Trinity School both expressed surprise that the sale of the building—which had been projected for upwards of $30 million—had been rejected, and both said they had yet to be informed of the verdict.
Neill Coleman, a spokesman for the city’s department of Housing, Preservation, and Development, said that the high sale price made the agency realize that the developers would not have been able to charge affordable rents for the amount they were spending on the purchase.
Tenants are now looking to purchase the building themselves or find a nonprofit developer to do so.
Mitchell Lama advocates, concerned about losing the stock of affordable housing, hailed the decision.
“We see it as the beginning of a policy, hopefully,” said Amy Chan, an organizer with Tenants& Neighbors, an affordable housing group. “We can’t let these buildings fall into the hands of predatory buyers.”
--David Freedlander
Tags: trinity school, mitchell lama, hpd, development
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An icon of 1960s flight, saved pane by pane
The iconic stain-glassed window is dismantled earlier this year. Below, one of the panels on display at a Chelsea shop. (Credit: Above, chrisl1024 on Flickr; below and after jump, Elisabeth Stuveras)
When American Airlines decided to demolish its Terminal 8 at Kennedy Airport, the fate of an iconic art piece hung in the balance.
An enormous red, white and blue stained-glass window had welcomed travelers since the terminal opened in 1960, its 900 panels signaling a new age of jet-set travel.
Robert Sowers' piece became a beloved landmark, but despite efforts to keep the piece intact, American Airlines had the window dismantled, a project that began this winter and was completed just a few weeks ago.
Portions of the mural will go on display on Long Island and Texas. But nostalgic travelers who recall the terminal's past can own a piece of that era.
A salvaging company, Olde Good Things, brokered a deal with the airline to deconstruct the mammoth artwork. Workers removed the panes with the agreement to give American as many pieces as it wished; the rest of the window was left to the salvaging company to sell in its Chelsea store, said American Airlines spokesman Tim Smith.
The shop received about 750 pieces and is selling them for about $95 a square foot, store employee Diana Harrod said. The pieces are numbered and the store has a map of the original window, so customers can purchase more than one pane and arrange them as they once were.
Eileen Vasquez Clifford, who created the Save America’s Window foundation to keep the piece intact, is disappointed that the piece was not preserved in its entirety.
“It’s just so sad,” Clifford said, an American flight attendant for 29 years. “The history of it was so great. It captures a moment in time; it had a certain style to it.”
Smith, the airline spokesman, said the airline tried to keep the artwork intact.
“It was a wonderful idea, but after working every possible way that we could imagine, there just was no reasonable financial way to fully preserve it or store it,” he said.
The American Airlines C.R. Smith Museum in Fort Worth will receive a few pieces, and the Cradle of Aviation Museum in Garden City, Long Island, will be receiving four panels.
“This is just another way for people to see that aviation history that originated in the New York area,” said Todd Richman, chairman of the board of trustees for the Long Island museum. “It’s not a very large piece, but at least there will be a piece at the museum that people can look at and say, ‘that was once a really magnificent structure.’ “
The airline is also considering ways to use small parts of the window at its new Kennedy terminal. There may be a small display with an explanation of the window’s history, or panels might be used in nonpublic areas such as flight-attendant break rooms, Smith said.
Still,the glory days of Sowers’ behemoth glass window and the glamorous aviation culture that it symbolized are no more.
“When people made those airline terminals, it was an expression of a certain era,” Richman said. “Our curators will try to place it so that people can recall and experience the wonder that it was.”
Tags: kennedy airport, modernism, endangered nyc, arts, architecture, airports
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MTA gets props for green efforts
Our friends at the Sundance Channel send along an exclusive clip from tonight's episode of The
Green, about how the MTA is trying to be eco friendly and sustainable.
In it, the gleaming Corona maintenance shop is called "the Taj Mahal of sustainability".
Check out the clip below; the episode, airing at 9 p.m. EST, looks at how a variety of city governments and groups are trying to get Americans to ditch our environment-killing cars.
Kind of an interesting mixed metaphor, given that Shah Jahan built the Taj
Tags: environment
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Is it Paris -- or is it the Kinkajou?
"Kinkajous .. are playful, generally quiet and docile, sometimes aggressive, and they have no noticeable odor." That's the way Wikipedia defines Paris Hilton's newest pet, a tiny endangered animal she calls "Baby Luv."
Or is that definition for Paris herself?
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Call them the "Rohans"? Lindsay Lohan rumored to be engaged to Samantha Ronson
Are Lindsay Lohan and D.J. gal pal Samantha Ronson set to take advantage of California's newly minted same-sex marriage laws?
Maybe yes, and then again, maybe no. The only source that claims to have insider info on the starlet's engagement is Britian’s The Daily Star , which is not exactly anybody’s paper of record. Today’s headline: Dani: I Love My New Boobs. You get the idea.
For now, the facts: We know the 21-year-old pop tart actress and openly gay club queen, 30, have kissed. We know they've sent steamy text messges and have been inseparable for months. And now the ripping wildfire of InterWeb betrothal rumors.
But it could very well be a bunch of blog-vomit.
The Star's tale of Lohan's engagement springs from a big ring spotted on her engagement ring finger at the Dolce & Gabbana party at this year's Cannes Film Festival. According to the Star,
Lohan told her ex-beau British model Calum Best that the ring is for real, not a publicity stunt, and that the pair are engaged.
The Star also claims Lohan's friends say she's been referring to herself as 'Lindsay Ronson'. See Gawker's grab of her Facebook page here.
Lohan and Ronson were recently photographed kissing at a Sean 'Diddy' Combs party in Cannes. And Lohan's estranged father told Us Weekly today the nature of Lohan and Ronson's relationship is "evident to anyone with half a brain."
Is the engagement for real? If so, is it likely to last? Probably not, so does it matter?
For now the wheels at the rumor mill are still churning.
Check out closeups of the ring and 58 more of our favorite Lindsay Lohan photos here. [Warning: at least 1 photo not appropriate for children].
- Lauren Johnston
Tags: lindsay lohan, entertainment
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About that beeping sound you don't hear anymore...
(via flickr's DanielleH)
Garbage trucks are the only sector of this noisy city that became quieter this year, according to 311 noise complaint stats.
The back story to Tuesday's cover story shows that the Department of Sanitation has been installing technology that shushes the beeping noise made by backing up trucks and hushes the sound of compacting all the garbage you throw out. While noise complaints have gone up 6 percent citywide so far this year, complaints about raucous sanitation vehicles have dropped almost 18 percent.
The backup beepers, as the department calls them, have sensors that detect the ambient sound and then adjust the beep volume accordingly. A quiet residential street will have softer beeps and a noisy thoroughfare will produce beeps that can be heard about the racket.
The department has also been installing technology that makes compacting garbage quieter. The trucks can now pack garbage at idle speeds, instead of sending the engine into a loud whir while garbage is crunched.
The majority of the department's fleet of 6,000 vehicles have been converted, leading to quieter city streets, Rocco DiRico, a sanitation assistant commissioner who manages the fleet.
"They’re real true to form technological advances that certainly have contributed to a quieter truck," DiRico said.
Additionally, every new truck has to be tested with a decibel meter to make sure it measures up (or quiets down) to city noise code regulations. And trucks will become even quieter yet: DiRico said the department is in the process of testing less squeaky disc brakes as an alternative to drum brakes.
"In all likelihood it will be just fine and it will be another feather in our cap," he said.
Tags: zany
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Give peace (ice cream) a chance!
In a peace "Bed-In" a al John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Ben & Jerry's ice cream will today launch its new flavor "Imagine Whirled Peace."
Working with the Lennon Estate, the Ben & Jerry's people created the new flavor, which they describe as a, "whirly mixture of toffee cookies and fudge peace signs."
Actress Maggie Gyllenhaal will be at the Ben & Jerry's Times Square Scoop Shop today at 11 a.m. to re-enact the famous Lennon-Yoko bed-in and officially launch the new flavor.
The first bed-in in 1969:
-- Lauren Johnston
Tags: john lennon, ice cream, zany, food, entertainment
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Armchair architects, which buildings need a facelift?
The Verizon Building, a mistake from the 1970s, is going to be reclad -- at last. Photo via BILLBINNS on Flickr.
The Verizon building is to architecture what the burlap sack is to fashion, and what’s worse is it rises in lower Manhattan across from the Brooklyn Bridge, damaging one of the city’s most beautiful views.
Sure New York has plenty of buildings that are an offense to beauty, but few are so grotesque and so misplaced as the Verizon building. Thankfully, the tower at 375 Pearl St. is about to get a makeover that might make it a little less intrusive on the skyline as seen from the Brooklyn Promenade.
When Taconic Investment Partners announced a deal to buy the majority of the building from Verizon they also announced a major renovation. In reporting the renovation project, the New York Times called it “The Tower That Has No Friends,” seemingly to reflect that no one will miss the Verizon eyesore.
Now, the question is will the Verizon logo still flicker atop the 32-story building? Let’s hope not.
Now, you don’t have to be an architecture expert to know what you like. So, amNewYork is asking readers this question: Which other city buildings need a facelift? Let us know in the comments, and we'll publish the results in the paper and here.
* Click here to see photos of endangered buildings we think need to be saved
* Click here to see 2007's version of the list of endangered buildings to be saved
* Click here for more of our coverage about endangered New York buildings and institutions
-- Garett Sloane
Tags: verizon, verizon building, skyliner, development, architecture
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Duly Noted
The list of places that have closed during the past few years is enormous. This old photo we took of Jahn's in Richmond Hill had us wishing we could enjoy their Kitchen Sink sundae one more time. Jahn's closed last November, and only one outlet of the former chain remains, in Jackson Heights.
* Endangered NYC is in the air. It's a worthy investment of your time to explore the hundreds of comments about New York's vanished traditions and institutions that two blog posts elicited this weekend. City Room premised the discussion on the planned return of double-decker buses, and Gawker visited the subject, alarmed by the spate of notable places closing of late. Some of Urbanite's ongoing coverage is here.
* The art of street photography. [Gothamist]
* If you're a Grey Gardens aficionado, you'll enjoy the tidbits from a woman who lived among Big Edie and Little Edie out in that East Hampton mansion. [Grey Gardens News]
* Brownstoner reacts to the New York magazine cover story about the blog and its "culture of commenting." [Brownstoner]
* Woodhaven Lanes is history -- here are the pictures to prove it. [Queens Crap]
* MAS produces video to help underfunded Landmarks Preservation Commission. [Brownstoner]
-- Rolando Pujol
Tags: duly noted
