Listeria: Definition Of Five “B” Words (1912)

March 9, 2011 in Books, Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

(Image by Gonzalo Rivero.)

Baseball: A glorified and systematized development of the old English game of “rounders,” now recognized in the United States as a distinctively national pastime. It is played spectacularly by highly-paid professional experts as well as by skilled amateurs, with a hard leather-covered ball of lightly twisted yarn, over a rubber core, and a rounded wooden bat or club not exceeding 42 inches long or 2 1/2 inches in diameter. Nine men constitute each side: one team takes the field and the others go to bat in rotation. The pitcher of the outside delivers the ball to the selected striker of the inside, who endeavors to hit it so as to elude the fielders and run around the bases without being caught or put out. Occasionally the hit may result in a “home run,” i.e., a round of the bases without being put out; usually the strikes are one, two, but sometimes three “base hits.” As each safe hit is made those on the bases run to the next and so on until one run is scored by the third baseman reaching the “plate.” Should the batsman miss three balls from the pitcher and the third ball be caught by the catcher, the striker is out. Upon three men being put out by catching or touching with the ball when off the bases, the fielding side go in; and after nine innings have been completed the side having registered most runs is declared to have won. The catcher stands behind the striker, to catch and throw to the basemen in the field the balls pitched to the striker. All the fielding side need to be good throwers, swift runners, and sure at a catch. The game is governed by very elaborate rules, and the umpire’s position is very responsible. Baseball is played upon level expanses of turf not less than 500 feet by 350 feet.

Beard: The hair on a man’s face. Little is found among Africans, Chinese and Eskimos. It is heavy with the Europeans and the Semitic races. The Egyptians shaved the whole body, the Greeks and later Romans the whole face, and this was the European custom of the eighteenth century.

Bicycle: A two-wheeled machine (successor to the velocipede of large wheel) which about 1870 came into vogue. It then consisted of one high wheel, driven by the pedals, and a small connecting wheel, behind. In its present form, with two wheels of even circumference, pneumatic tires, and effective gearing, it is a much more manageable affair, and obtained for a while a very wide adoption by all classes, young and old, male and female. The motor-bicycle is the latest form of this two-wheeled road machine.

Birth-mark: A discoloration, like the so-called “port wine stain,” on the skin of a human being. It sometimes disfigures the whole countenance. It is usually a case of enlarged blood vessels and is attributed popularly to some ungratified longing on the part of the mother of the sufferer during her pregnancy.

Black Hand: A secret organization of Italians, Sicilians and Neapolitans mainly, so-called from the emblem used by it in making its demands. Has been active in New York City and wherever there is a large Italian element, giving much trouble to the detective force. The assassination of Giuseppe Petrosino, a New York City detective in Italy, was laid at its door. The better class of Italians in this country have organized to pull it down.

•Taken from the 1912 Standard Illustrated Book of Facts.

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Why Chris Rock Likes The Tea Party

March 9, 2011 in Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

Chris Rock: "It actually feels like racism's almost over." (Image by dbking.)


From Scott Raab’s Esquire interview:

“Scott Raab: Like many nice Caucasians, I cried the night Barack Obama was elected. It was one of the high points in American history. And all that’s happened since the election is just a shitstorm of hatred. You want to weigh in on that?

Chris Rock: I actually like it, in the sense that — you got kids? Kids always act up the most before they go to sleep. And when I see the Tea Party and all this stuff, it actually feels like racism’s almost over. Because this is the last— this is the act up before the sleep. They’re going crazy. They’re insane. You want to get rid of them — and the next thing you know, they’re fucking knocked out. And that’s what’s going on in the country right now.”

 

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Happy International Women’s Day 2011!

March 8, 2011 in Politics, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Batgirl ain’t having it. From 1974.

Immigrants Arrive At Ellis Island (1902)

March 8, 2011 in Excerpts, Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

Hopeful of entering America, immigrants are processed at Ellis Island. (Image by Underwood & Underwood.)

The classic photograph above shows the huddled masses being processed after reaching Ellis Island in 1902, hoping to be admitted into America. But sometimes entrée was complicated, even if you were remarkably beautiful. An article in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

“Her Beauty Is Bewildering: A Captivating French Girl Who Is To Be Sent Home” (May 25, 1894): “Sitting in the detention pen at Ellis Island this morning was a French girl of such rare beauty as is seldom seen witnessed by authorities of the immigrant isle. A wealth of golden hair crowned a face, the profile of which is perfect. Her complexion is fresh and rosy, and the large, dreamy blue eyes have a sad expression. The employees have tried in vain to cheer her up and she is continually surrounded by a number of them. She is waiting to be sent back to her home on the next outgoing American line steamship, and this is her story.

Her name is Amelia Caron, 17 years old, and before she sailed for this country on the Paris, which arrived here May 12, she had lived with her parents and elder sister in the village of Chambre, France. which is about an hour’s ride from Paris. There she met and loved a young man named Caesar Hall, 26 years old. They took passage on the Paris together, and upon reaching Ellis Island told authorities they were married. The man was well dressed, good looking and said he was a clerk, They were to live at the Leo house, 6 State street, a semi religious boarding place. Early this week Hall was arrested, charged with stealing 700 francs from a passenger on the voyage across, and was held for trial. The proprietor of the boarding house informed Dr. Senner of the girl’s predicament as her lover had all their funds, which were considerable, and which secured their release from the island.

The authorities took the girl back on Tuesday last. She was examined by the board of special inquiry, when she admitted that she was not married to Hall, but had eloped with him. She was ordered sent back to her home.”

••••••••••

Immigrants arrive at Ellis Island, 1906:

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“The Life Of The Party At A Beefsteak Used To Be The Man Who Let Out The Most Enthusiastic Grunts”

March 8, 2011 in Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

"At a contemporary beefsteak it is unusual for a man to do away with more than six pounds of meat and thirty glasses of beer."

Joseph Mitchell’s great 1939 New Yorker story, “All You Can Hold For Five Bucks.” profiles the NYC tradition of the working-class beefsteak dinner, which was begun in the 1880s by political machines and has long-survived only in obsolescence. An excerpt from the article about how women, who began attending the banquets in the 1920s, “corrupted” the tradition of the beer-soaked beef-fest:

“It didn’t take women long to corrupt the beefsteak. They forced the addition of such things as Manhattan cocktails, fruit cups, and fancy salads to the traditional menu of slices of ripened steaks, double lamb chops, kidneys, and beer by the pitcher. They insisted on dance orchestras instead of brassy German bands. The life of the party at a beefsteak used to be the man who let out the most enthusiastic grunts, drank the most beer, ate the most steak, and got the most grease on his ears, but women do not esteem a glutton, and at a contemporary beefsteak it is unusual for a man to do away with more than six pounds of meat and thirty glasses of beer. Until around 1920, beefsteak etiquette was rigid. Knives, forks, napkins, and tablecloths never had been permitted; a man was supposed to eat with his hands. When beefsteaks became bisexual, the etiquette changed. For generations men had worn their second-best suits because of the inevitability of grease spots; tuxedos and women appeared simultaneously. Most beefsteaks degenerated into polite banquets at which open-face sandwiches of grilled steak happened to be the principal dish.”

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Guy In A Remarkable Exoskeleton Suit

March 8, 2011 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Go to the 3:20 mark to see the unveiling. (Thanks Reddit.)

Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

March 8, 2011 in Misc., Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

"Hey boy! I ain't playin' around!" (Image by Glenn Fleishman.)

Mad at your boyfriend? Sell me his iPad – $200 (Harlem / Morningside)

Is your boyfriend ignoring you? Is he spending too much time playing video games? Do you need to send him a message that says, “Hey boy! I ain’t playin’ around!” My ex put my iPhone in the washing machine by accident– you can be less passive aggressive about it and just sell it to me. A deal by Wednesday would work for me, otherwise I cannot do it because i will be leaving. My girl is a medical student in Ecuador and I am going down there on Thursday and would love to give her a useful tool for all the referencing she has to do.

I know you are mad. I will help you. I will come to you. I will even tell you that you are pretty and deserve better before I go.

King Philip IV Of Spain Signing Autographs

March 8, 2011 in Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Improv Everywhere brings its mobile madness to the Met. (Thanks Kottke.)

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“One Of The Most Memorable Ones We Played Was Up In Wisconsin Called Nudestock”

March 8, 2011 in Urban Studies | Permalink

"It looks like you walked into a Piggly Wiggly grocery store and suddenly everybody was naked." (Image by Paul Adonis Hunter.)

Newmark’s Door pointed me to Worst Gig Ever, a site that allows musicians and other performing artists to recall terrible jobs they’ve survived. So far, I think the classic rock group Kansas is “winning”:

“One of the most memorable ones we played was up in Wisconsin called Nudestock. It was a nudist colony. Foreigner was on the bill and Alan Parsons. But you expect up in Wisconsin there’d be all these beautiful blonde women. But the reality is never what you imagine. You get there and it looks like you walked into a Piggly Wiggly grocery store and suddenly everybody was naked. And you’re standing there playing and there’s some guy with a baseball hat and tennis shoes standing in front of you, wiggling around and playing air guitar with his pecker swirling around. It bothers you.” — Rich Williams, Kansas

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“I Took Back A Barrel Of Bones To New York. They Were My Symbols Of The Desert.”

March 8, 2011 in Excerpts, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Open Culture posted this cool video of a 92-year-old Georgia O’Keeffe.

An excerpt from “Horizons of a Pioneer,” a 1968 Life cover story about O’Keeffe, who found other artists in New York but truly found her own art in New Mexico:

“When I came to New Mexico in the summer of 1929, I was so crazy about the country that I thought, how can I take part of it with me to work on? There was nothing to see in the land in the way of a flower. There were just dry white bones. So I picked them up. People were pretty annoyed having their cars filled with those bones. But I took back a barrel of bones to New York. They were my symbols of the desert, but nothing more. I haven’t sense enough to think of any other symbolism. The skulls were there and I could say something with them. To me they are as beautiful as anything I know. To me they are strangely more living than the animals walking around–hair, eyes and all, with their tails switching. The bones seem to cut sharply to the center of something that is keely alive on the desert even though it is vast and empty and untouchable–and knows no kindness with all its beauty.”


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“Stock Markets Are Now Dangerously Short-Sighted”

March 8, 2011 in Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

"Mass media, especially TV today, is so short-term that few in its audience grasp the lasting damage." (Image by Kowloonese.)

Going public on the stock exchange was traditionally a way for small businesses to raise capital to grow their companies. But what if the shortsightedness of the markets–and the media that attends them–is more injurious to a company than helpful? Facebook recently passed on going public in favor of private investors and the number of public American companies has shrunk from 7,500 to 4,100 since 1997. That means that the average person has less access to potential wealth-building opportunities while the monied few have more to gain. An excerpt from Jason Kirby’s “The Stock Market Is for Suckers” in McClean’s:

“In 2004, at the age of 92, the late Sir John Templeton, a pioneer in the world of mutual funds, issued a stark warning to investors. ‘The stock market is broken,’ he said in an interview. He went on to predict the housing bubble would spark the sort of terrible market crash we witnessed four years later. But Templeton saw a bigger problem than just the bubble then emerging. Stock markets are now dangerously short-sighted. ‘Mass media, especially TV today, is so short-term that few in its audience grasp the lasting damage and corrective impact which will continue to linger from the greatest financial crash in world history,’ he said. In the wake of that very crash, short-term thinking is as much a problem as ever before.

The stats behind investors’ amputated attention spans are astonishing, and reveal the damage caused to the wider economy. According to the New York Stock Exchange, in the 1960s the holding period for stocks was eight years. By 1990 it had fallen to two years and today the average stock is held for just nine months. As investors have shortened their time horizons, companies have been focused on each next quarter’s financial results at the expense of the next decade, say experts. Last spring, the U.S. Senate banking committee held hearings to examine the plague of short-term thinking in capital markets. Some astonishing revelations emerged. In a survey of 400 chief financial officers, 80 per cent said they’d cut research and development spending to goose short-term performance. To make matters worse, when companies do beat expectations, executives are lavished with huge paycheques and millions of stock options that dilute existing shareholders even further.”

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Slow Loris Loves Tiny Umbrella

March 8, 2011 in Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

In case it rains. (Thanks Reddit.)

Listeria: Definition Of Five “A” Words (1912)

March 8, 2011 in Books, Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

Abduction: A term for the forcible carrying off of a woman, either against her own will or the right of her legal protector. It is an offense severely punished as a felony. The abduction of an unmarried girl under sixteen is punishable as a misdemeanor even when there has been no intent of detention against the will of her parents or guardian.

Abortion: The expulsion of a fœtus from the womb before it is capable of life. Prior to the sixth month of pregnancy it is called miscarriage. It is hereditary and may be prevented, by repose, good regimen and the avoidance of constipation. If intentional it is a statutory offense and if the woman dies it is felony. In domestic animals it may be avoided by isolation, proper food and level stalls.

Alcoholism: The symptoms of alcohol poisoning. In acute alcohol-poisoning the victim’s face becomes flushed, his hands shaky, his speech rapid and incoherent, his control of his limbs uncertain and finally his entire nervous system becomes paralyzed so that he falls into a coma from which he cannot be moved. Others instead of becoming conscious grow frantic and try to injure those about them, and thus, especially after a long debauch, the most frightful crimes are committed.

Astrology: The science of discovering the past and determining the future by the movement of the stars. It was the science of sciences in olden times, but today has only a small number of adepts, besides the always numerous number of persons easily victimized by charlatans claiming to be able to read the “past, present and future.”

Automobile: The name generally applied to a self-propelled vehicle which carries its own fuel. The pleasure of moving at great speed and for great distances has made automobiles a permanent feature in modern life, thought and action, though law has not been able to control the abuse of this new force. They are coming more and more into employment for commercial purposes, and their great cleanliness in the streets is a sanitary advantage. In time they will diminish the loneliness and hardship of life upon the farm.

•Taken from the 1912 Standard Illustrated Book of Facts.

Guy With Soccer Ball Climbs Pole

March 7, 2011 in Sports, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Skillz. (Thanks Live Leak.)

“McLuhan Did Not Want To Live In The Global Village. The Prospect Frightened Him.”

March 7, 2011 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

From Gary Wolf’s 1993 Wired article about Marshall McLuhan, “The Wisdom of Saint Marshall, the Holy Fool”:

McLuhan did not want to live in the global village. The prospect frightened him. Print culture had produced rational man, in whom vision was the dominant sense. Print man lived in a world that was secular rather than sacred, specialized rather than holistic.

But when information travels at electronic speeds, the linear clarity of the print age is replaced by a feeling of “all-at-onceness.” Everything everywhere happens simultaneously. There is no clear order or sequence. This sudden collapse of space into a single unified field ‘dethrones the visual sense.’ This is what the global village means: we are all within reach of a single voice or the sound of tribal drums. For McLuhan, this future held a profound risk of mass terror and sudden panic.

The current idea of a global village as a place of universal harmony and industrious basket-weaving is a tourist’s fantasy. McLuhan gave in to the intoxication of this hope for a few years in the early ’60s, and it is evident throughout Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, his most optimistic work. In that book, McLuhan sings of the furthest reaches of electronic culture, when computer technology has replaced language with instant nonverbal communication. He compares this mystical unification of humanity to the Christian Pentecost. But McLuhan soon realized that before the Pentecost comes suffering and crucifixion, and while we are all waiting for the Holy Ghost to descend, Jerusalem is likely to be scary as hell.•

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Steve Martin As “The Elephant Guy” (1981)

March 7, 2011 in Videos | Permalink

With Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray, Lynn Redgrave, and Paul Shaffer as Jo-Jo, the Dog-Faced Boy.

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Old Print Article: “A Talking Skeleton,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle (1883)

March 7, 2011 in Old Print Articles, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

"A more repulsive sight to any lover of the 'human form divine' it would be difficult to imagine."

Isaac Sprague was a nineteenth-century dime museum performer who was billed as the “Living Skeleton.” He had some sort of progressive muscular disease and was invited into classrooms as well as sideshows, so that medical students could study his malady. Such a visit to academia was covered by the Brooklyn Daily Eagle in truly insulting fashion in its November 25, 1883 issue. An excerpt:

“Isaac Sprague, who is usually advertised in museums or traveling shows as the living skeleton, was exhibited yesterday to the students of the Rush Medical College, and was made the subject of a lecture by Dr. Henry M. Lyman. Several hundred students filled the tiers of seats that rose above each other to the roof of the amphitheatre, and in the small semicircle below sat the skeleton. A skeleton he was, indeed, for there did not appear to be a single vestige of flesh on his body, and the skin was drawn tightly over the bones. He wore a pair of trunks, leaving his legs, chest and arms nude, and a more repulsive sight to any lover of the ‘human form divine’ it would be difficult to imagine. The man’s spine was curved to one side and there was a tremulous pulsation in the neck over the right shoulder that produced an irritating effect upon an observer’s nerves. Sprague’s face is not attenuated in comparison with his body, and his neck seems to preserve some muscular tissues, but all the remainder is a mass of living articulated bones.

The skeleton said that he was forty-two years old and had been suffering from progressive muscular atrophy for thirty years. ‘Cases such as this,’ said the lecturer, ‘generally run their course in five years, and few have been known to exceed twenty years. It is safe to say that there is no case like the present one on record.’

‘Have you suffered much?’ the doctor asked.

‘No,’ said the skeleton in a voice almost as thin as his legs. ‘I have had almost no rheumatic pains; have suffered no loss of sleep; I can eat three hearty meals a day, and have been married twice and now have three children.’

The skeleton, in conclusion, told the students that he now weighs fifty pounds, which was half what he weighed when the disease began. He said, in an incidental and humorous way, that his wife weighed 172 pounds. He himself is five feet five and one half inches in height, and his boy, weighing 125 pounds, can carry his father about like a child.”

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Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

March 7, 2011 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

"There is also a legend about this cactus that someone long ago saw it doing strange motions." (Image by Donar Reiskoffer.)

Huge Cactus for Sale – $500 (Suffern NY)

Huge Cactus for Sale!!!
This cactus is a nature’s wonder. You may imagine a cactus small, spiky, green, with no leaves, and with flowers on it. Well, our cactus is tall, spiky, flower less (sorry), and leafy. Also, this cactus has lived over 100 years! Anyway, that does not mean that it is useless, or dead. There is also a legend about this cactus that someone long ago saw it doing strange motions, but noone ever knew if this was true. If you are really curios, well then buy the cactus and watch over it yourself. Please, if you notice anything, give us a call. You can keep this cactus in millions of places: at home, in your business office, where ever you want. It can also be used in schools to explain to kids about such plants and their features. Also, if you prefer you can buy branches from the cactus and grow it yourself. You can donate it to a museum, or plant it straight in your garden. If you are someone that always just can’t catch fish. Well, guess what we will bring you magic. Just through a piece of cactus into the water where the fish are and ta da! The fish will all jump up and all you have to do is catch them like butterflies. If you want to buy this amazing plant, but someone else in your family disagrees, please, convince them to buy it. Come on we can’t stand another week of that cactus breaking through our ceiling.

Danish Robot Professor Smiles (A Little)

March 7, 2011 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

From Aaron Saenz on the Singularity Hub: “Referred to as Geminoid-DK, the robot is a replica of Henrik Sharfe of Aalborg University in Denmark. This thing is amazing looking. Unlike many previous Geminoids we’ve seen in the past, Sharfe’s robotic copy is almost real enough to pass as human.”

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Bukowski On The Dark Side Of Democracy

March 7, 2011 in Books, Excerpts | Permalink

“Law,” by Charles Bukowski:

“Look,“ he told me,
“all those little children dying in the trees.”
And I said, “What?”
He said, “look.”
And I went to the window and sure enough, there they were hanging in the trees,
dead and dying.
And I said, “What does it mean?”
He said, “I don’t know it’s authorized.”

The next day I got up and they had dogs in the trees,
hanging, dead, and dying.
I turned to my friend and I said, “What does it mean?”
And he said,
“Don’t worry about it, it’s the way of things. They took a vote. It was decided.”
The next day it was cats.
I don’t see how they caught all those cats so fast and hung them in the trees, but they did.
The next day it was horses,
and that wasn’t so good because many bad branches broke.

And after bacon and eggs the next day,
my friend pulled his pistol on me across the coffee
and said,
“Let’s go,”
and we went outside.
And here were all these men and women in the trees,
most of them dead or dying.
And he got the rope ready and I said,
“What does it mean?”
And he said, “It’s authorized, constitutional, it past the majority,”
And he tied my hands behind my back then opened the noose.
“I don’t know who’s going to hang me,” he said,
“When I get done with you.
I suppose when it finally works down
there will be just one left and he’ll have to hang himself.”
“Suppose he doesn’t,” I ask.
“He has to,” he said,
“It’s authorized.”
“Oh,” I said, “Well,
let’s get on with it.”

••••••••••

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“Did Nabokov Consciously Borrow And Quote?”

March 6, 2011 in Books, Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

"Just like the old man in that book by Heinz von Lichberg" would have been the worst Police lyric ever.

The opening of Jonathan Lethem’s excellent long-form 2007 Harper’s essay, “The Ecstasy of Influence: A Plagiarism,” which looks at the way artists borrow, whether through cryptomnesia, repurposing or stealing:

“Consider this tale: a cultivated man of middle age looks back on the story of an amour fou, one beginning when, traveling abroad, he takes a room as a lodger. The moment he sees the daughter of the house, he is lost. She is a preteen, whose charms instantly enslave him. Heedless of her age, he becomes intimate with her. In the end she dies, and the narrator—marked by her forever—remains alone. The name of the girl supplies the title of the story: Lolita.

The author of the story I’ve described, Heinz von Lichberg, published his tale of Lolita in 1916, forty years before Vladimir Nabokov’s novel. Lichberg later became a prominent journalist in the Nazi era, and his youthful works faded from view. Did Nabokov, who remained in Berlin until 1937, adopt Lichberg’s tale consciously? Or did the earlier tale exist for Nabokov as a hidden, unacknowledged memory? The history of literature is not without examples of this phenomenon, called cryptomnesia. Another hypothesis is that Nabokov, knowing Lichberg’s tale perfectly well, had set himself to that art of quotation that Thomas Mann, himself a master of it, called ‘higher cribbing.’ Literature has always been a crucible in which familiar themes are continually recast. Little of what we admire in Nabokov’s Lolita is to be found in its predecessor; the former is in no way deducible from the latter. Still: did Nabokov consciously borrow and quote?” (Thanks Essayist.)

••••••••••

Vladimir Nabokov discusses Lolita in the 1950s:

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World’s Smallest Street-Legal Car

March 6, 2011 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

The Peel P50 weighs 132 pounds and seats two uncomfortably. (Thanks Autointhenews.)

Walking Across The Brooklyn Bridge (1905)

March 6, 2011 in Photography, Urban Studies | Permalink

Pedestrians make their way across the Brooklyn Bridge some time around 1905. Hats weren't mandatory, but they were welcome.

The Brooklyn Bridge, completed in 1883, essentially made is fate accompli that Kingsborough would eventually become incorporated into New York Cite  and the modern NYC that we know today would be formed. It is one of the oldest suspension bridges in the U.S. and a marvel of engineering. But it it lacks a tavern. It didn’t have to be the way, though, since one crazy visionary back on the day petitioned for the right to open a bar on the bridge. An excerpt from a story in the June 13, 1893 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

“The Brooklyn Bridge has long been a point of pilgrimage for ambitious cranks. The man who aspired to open a beer saloon at the nearer tower is by no means alone in extravagant ambition. Time is not distant since a woman philanthropist wanted to turn the structure into a nursery. Another charitable individual of the gentler sex proposed to raise a fund for the relief of deserving Hottentots by starting roof gardens on the summits of the granite piers. Professional jumpers and unprofessional suicides have given the swinging span a measure of grewsome notoriety that contrasts sternly with the more generous projects proposed. It only remains to ask the use of the roadway for a horse race or the promenade for a baseball match in order to realize the novelty of which the bridge is capable.

From the standpoint of conservative administration the trustees did right to reject the petition for a saloon franchise. They should not, however, feel too harshly toward the misguided man who submitted it. There are so few drinking places in these cities, especially in the neighborhood of the approaches, that the petitioner undoubtedly supposed he was entering on a project of mercy. There is visible a certain benevolence in his scheme to supply the gurgle of amber beer, the sparkle of delicious cocktails and the aroma of seductive juleps in a region bereft, down to date, of facilities for providing cooling and stimulating drinks.”

••••••••••

Brooklyn Bridge trolley crossing, 1899:

Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

March 6, 2011 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

"Ain't that a Will'y."

 

Television for the Aged

Me neighbor needs a free TV. She has a TV but cannot adjust channel to #3 to watch it. She is 84 yrs old and forgets things. Her friends appear to be in the same condition. Her remote has been missing. I’m not saying someone took it home but. I don’t know.

I’m in Williamsburg no transportation but I do have an old lady in need..

As we get older we get abandoned by our kids. Ain’t that a Will’y

Help this lady.

Please

 

Mister Brainwash In Fine Form

March 6, 2011 in Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

A truly spectacular idiot.

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