Barry Diller

You are currently browsing articles tagged Barry Diller.

“It Is Another Vision That Could Come Straight From The Set Of Avatar”

November 18, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

As beautiful as the plans are, it’s concerning that a billionaire like Barry Diller can decide to build by fiat (and with $40 million in public funds) a lavish park off Manhattan at the pier where Titanic survivors came to shore, and for that reason it’s dubious. Just as interesting: Dial back just a little over two years ago to another waterlogged disaster, when Hurricane Sandy struck the city, and imagine such an island scheme even being suggested then. The wonder at that point was whether Manhattan was long for this world. I guess, in some ways, it’s good we can forget tragedy, but we don’t want to forget entirely. From Oliver Wainwright at the Guardian:

“There’s a combination, it seems, of trees and water and fairytale stories told by a charming inventor, that persuades people to part with many millions – and allows conventional urban planning to be gleefully suspended.

No sooner has the cloud of fairydust surrounding London’s garden bridge proposal begun to settle – after Lambeth council granted half of it planning permission last week (Westminster, across the river, has yet to decide) – than Thomas Heatherwick has sown the seeds for a second magical park to sprout from a river, this time in New York.

It is another vision that could come straight from the set of Avatar – fecund flowerbeds erupting from mushroom-shaped columns, their canopies joining to support parkland above the water. But instead of two toadstools spanning the Thames, there will be a thicket of 300 fungi rising from five to 20 metres above the Hudson River to form an undulating platform of parks and performance spaces.

Replacing the crumbling ruin of Pier 54, where survivors of the Titanic landed, Heatherwick’s Pier 55 park promises to be a ‘place of discovery, where visitors can wander and wonder,’ with ‘places to lounge, eat lunch, or just lie in the grass,’ building on the appetite for al fresco lazing proven by the success of the nearby High Line park.”

Tags: , ,

“Sumner Redstone Would Only Be Of Interest To Gawker Readers If He Were To Soil His Adult Diapers—On-Camera”

September 27, 2010 in Excerpts, Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

"That image of Murdoch dyeing his hair in the sink is indelible—though the coloring may not be."

Michael Idov of New York magazine has a really insightful, colorful profile of acerbic Gawker Media kingpin Nick Denton. The British-born blog titan has been able to predict the next wave in NYC’s tumultuous media landscape as well as anyone over the last few years. An excerpt:

“Eight years into Gawker Media’s existence, the standard line on Denton is still that he’s an outsider of sorts, a rude alien come to torment—and supplant—media civilization as we know it. If you’re Bill Keller, say, or Tina Brown—whose Daily Beast gets one-tenth of Gawker Media’s readership on a good month—it’s much easier to view Denton as an upstart thug from nowhere, as opposed to an equal who’s kicking your ass. That plays directly into Denton’s strategy: Thuggish is the reputation he wants. ‘If I am a cornerstone of the new Establishment, then there is no new Establishment worth talking about,’ he says. ‘The only interesting people are on the West Coast, ‘he adds, then launches into a series of classic shameless Gawker riffs on the old New York media titans. ‘People used to quake when Barry Diller picked up the phone. Now he’s laughable. That image of Murdoch dyeing his hair in the sink is indelible—though the coloring may not be. Sumner Redstone would only be of interest to Gawker readers if he were to soil his adult diapers—on-camera. But the hard truth is that the golden age of New York media is largely over.’”

Tags: , , , , ,