A crane in midtown has partially collapsed this afternoon, partially collapsing a construction crane.

From the post on the Architect’s Newspaper Blog:

The storm snapped the boom of the crane at the summit of the 95-story, 1,004-foot-tall residential tower, which now dangles precariously over the streets of midtown Manhattan. The scene on the street is still developing, but NY1 reports that the crane could become off-balance causing a further collapse.  Surrounding streets have been closed and emergency crews are on the scene. 

I went out to check out the neighborhood this morning around 10:30. Streets are fairly empty except for some joggers, dog-walkers, and people seeking out fodder for Facebook status updates. There are already some windblown branches (this one looks to be featured heavily in Facebook status updates).

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Went out for a walk in the East Village from 5:30 – 6:30 this evening. It’s getting gusty out there. The park is closed.

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Hurricane Sandy is coming to NYC, and we’ll soon see how big and bad it is. This note was posted on my apartment door yesterday:

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At St. Mark’s Church in the Bowery, there stands a statue of Peter Stuyvesant, featuring the world’s most unreadable block of text. I was only able to read through 10% or so before my eyes crossed and I had to look away.

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After countless moves and whittlings-down of belongings, I’ve somehow managed to save this Seattle Y2K readiness flyer for posterity.

The frenetically-designed Y2K logo and then-mayor Paul Schell’s letter attempt to convey confidence in the face of what was then a frightening question: will bugs in our computers inadvertantly trigger an apocalypse scenario? Continue reading →

As a brief addendum to my last post highlighting some dandy oddities on 7th Street, I submit this image from a nearby building. While I’m sure this dog was, at one point, cute and charming, it has since morphed into something rather terrifying.

Yesterday I moved to a new sublet apartment in Manhattan’s East Village. I’m just a few blocks away from the last place I was living, but what a difference it makes. I’m no longer right by an NYU dorm, and am now free from the ritual of drunk NYU students screaming on the sidewalk outside my window from 2-5am — every … single … night. That experience has galvanized my sympathies for the Save the Village movement. 

The entire move took just 45 minutes. That includes everything — moving out of the old place, and moving in to the new place. Remarkable, no? The past few years I’ve shed possessions down to the bare minimum, giving away furniture to my younger sisters and clothes to Goodwill stores. So these days I live as a sublet-hopping urban nomad. They say it’s hard to find an apartment in NYC, but temporary furnished sublets — with everything provided, including wifi — are, in my experience, very easy to find via craigslist. My last sublet was very temporary (just six weeks); I’m in my current place for three months with an option to extend.

This is the tree-lined, New Yorky street I now call home:

And here’s my building. I’m extremely curious about the story behind that rather unsettling bearded face atop the door. All I know is that the building dates back to 1910 or so. I emailed the primary tenant about the face and if I learn anything interesting, I’ll update this post.  
10/17 update: I heard back from the tenant; he said this: “I‘m sure there is an interesting story behind it but I don’t know it. Most people never look up. However, I can tell you that it was pretty recently that the eyes were painted. Weird.”

 A closer look at the face. Welcome home, Jonathan — mwa ha ha ha.

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On the flight back from a trip to Seattle a few days ago, I finished The First Tycoon, a biography of Cornelius Vanderbilt. For much of his life, he lived on West Fourth St, where NYU is now located. In one passage, the book describes his route up into the area of Manhattan that used to be rural farmland. When I was on my Manhattan Hike the weekend before last, I walked some of the same route, and took the photos below at the same spots described in the book.

“This week, like most weeks, Vanderbilt ordered a pair of his fastet horses harnessed to a light, open-air racing rig, then climbed aboard, took the reins in hand, and smartly whipped his team down the cobblestone passage into West Fourth Street. A left turn, then another left onto Broadway…”

“…and uptown he went, past aristocratic Grace Church…”

“…past Union Square, out of the city to where Broadway became Bloomingdale road.”

Over the latter half of the 19th century, Bloomingdale Road gradually morphed into Broadway (midtown and uptown sections) as development in Manhattan spread northward.

One more note: since walking much of Manhattan during the early morning hours on Sunday, I’ve been struck by how few people were really out and about at that time. For example — 18th and Broadway. I took the photo on the left at 8am Sunday. The photo on the right, at roughly the same spot, I took at 5:15pm the following Wednesday: