Author Archives: admin
Giant stoops.
Collectivist utopias never work. We’ve been told that over and over by the good folks over at the National Review (or, at least, back when people read it). You would think Gary Bettman was a subscriber. But he was out working the fields and writing poetry, and now the NHL is belly up, another dashed […]
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Entasis: Just a fancy name for a bulge.
The history of wavy buildings in New York is not one of great distinction. The short list includes a number designed by luminaries, and one can trace a theme of ‘genius’-driven arrogance to confound the grid formally while flaunting the economics that make it such a lucrative proposition. Granted, FARs and setback requirements and air […]
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I like Mike.
The other day a friend wrote and observed that I didn’t like Mike Bloomberg. I replied that this was not actually the case, only an effect of writing about him as pertains to only a single issue, the West Side Stadium (which, at the pace we are moving, will be termed the ‘Third Rail of […]
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I have to apologize: I used the adjective bilious improperly last week.
Let me clarify further: I did not necessarily use it improperly, but, better, I used it in haste. Were I to know that I would be walking in the East Village on a crisp, cold day, and coming upon the mostly complete superstructure of Charles Gwathmey’s “Sculpture for Living” in Astor Place, I would have […]
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I can hardly contain myself.
Apparently New York can only take the imposition of overscaled art work when it’s too cold out to properly appreciate it (though considering the two million plus at Central Park, a fall installation may well have broken even the elastic potential of our collective backyard). Just six days after The Gates close (and even as […]
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EPA: Still confused by that ‘Protection’ part.
Master Dissembler Kevin Rampe did a little lip service duty last week in front of City Council, announcing that the demolition of 130 Liberty Street would not begin until this summer at the earliest, and warned that any timeline speculation on completion would be foolhardy. I could bother to provide the myriad links detailing Rampe’s […]
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The poignancy might have been greater if we still had mimeograph machines.
Seen today in the Port Authority: a wire stand that exhorted passengers to peruse a bulletin from the PANY/NJ. It was about as tidy as one can expect of a wire stand with sheets of paper placed in the pathway of one of the busiest entrances in the city, a scattering of leaflets trapped beneath […]
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Westside development made more interesting with malice!
Yet who would have thought the old yards to have had so much potential in them? Turns out that the Dolans will spend $600MM to protect a $12MM a year subsidy — oh, and a monopoly on large event spaces in the city. And even better, it turns out that Adam Victor, the owner of […]
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Downtown tragedy made fresher with snark!
I received this email today from the tone-deaf folks at Project Rebirth. It looks like they are getting a little too envious of the popularity of Denton’s Kids: When the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation called for entries in their open Memorial design competition, they received over 5000 submissions, many of them from amateur — but […]
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Whither Bohemia?