Why We Love New York ...

post New York Primary vote message

no doubt the fix was in.

from the lack of fair coverage to the outright lies and propaganda,
Bernie got Burned by the corporate power structure, fucking lame.

My Name is New York: NYC through the eyes of Woody Guthrie

from Dangerous Minds:

For obvious reasons, it’s easy to think of the great American folksinger/songwriter Woody Guthrie as a lifelong hardscrabble dust bowl Okie, but the reality is, the man called New York City home for nearly three decades, from 1940 until his death in 1967.

Of course, that was at a time when lower Manhattan, especially Greenwich Village, was an urban bohemia, a haven and incubator for America’s artists and musicians. Those times are gone—I’m in NYC at least once a year, and every year, more and more of the Village looks like it’s been eaten by a strip mall. So it goes, but the character of what’s been lost there may be irreplaceable, as a startlingly rapid gentrification is eating into every once-affordable art enclave in that fabled city. I realize that the emergence of an arts district often heralds gentrification—I’ve long lived in such a neighborhood myself, and seen firsthand those kinds of changes, for better and worse—but from an outsider’s perspective, what’s been happening to NYC, especially the northern part of Brooklyn in the last several years, seems unusual and kind of alarming in speed and scope. So these photos of Woody Guthrie’s New York seem to me especially valuable documents. They’ll be part of a 3-disc audiobook set to be released in September, titled My Name is New York. A regular dead-trees edition, by Guthrie’s daughter Nora, has been available for a couple of years.



The Hotel Savoy-Plaza, 59th Street at 5th Avenue, Manhattan, at the southeast corner of Central Park. Guthrie lived here with Will Geer, an actor, activist and Communist who’d be blacklisted in the ‘50s, but would nonetheless go on to fame in the ‘70s as Grandpa on The Waltons. This is where the Apple Store is now.



Guthrie, rockin’ one out for the shoeshine guy.



Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie at Seeger’s wedding, 129 MacDougal Street, 1943. Currently an Italian restaurant, and for all I know it might have been one then, too.



Woody Guthrie in 1943, at McSorley’s Ale House, which still exists at 15 East 7th Street, Manhattan. Photo: Eric Schaal for Time Life. Used with permission from Getty Images. WGA.



31 East 21st Street, Manhattan, where Guthrie and Pete Seeger lived with sculptor Harold Ambellan in the ‘40s.



5 West 101st Street, Manhattan, right off Central Park West. Once Guthrie’s music started making him some money, he moved here, and sent for his wife and kids in Texas to join him. Frequent guests here included Alan Lomax, Lead Belly, Sonny Terry, and Burl Ives. The building is still there, but I’m assuming mere mortals can’t afford to live in it anymore.



Woody Guthrie performing in the New York City subway, 1943, a Bound for Glory publicity shot. Photo: Eric Schaal. WGA.



A Woody Guthrie paleo-selfie, from a subway photo booth, ca. 1945. WGA.

The audiobook set includes recorded interviews with, among others, Pete Seeger, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Bob Dylan, and totally unsurprisingly, Guthrie’s famous-in-his-own-right son, musician Arlo Guthrie. It’ll also include music, naturally, by Guthrie and others. Notably, one of the tracks is a home demo of the song that gives the package its name, “My Name Is New York.” Here are Guthrie’s typewritten lyrics, and the song itself.

Once upon a time in New York

A comparison of old and new, New York.

Gimme Some Truth: short doc on fracking, with Artists Against Fracking, and Yoko Ono

Above: Artists Against Fracking have released a short documentary by filmmaker Josh Fox on the group’s recent tour of fracking sites in Pennsylvania. The group will air a winning TV ad from its #DontFrackNY video contest next week. Below, Yoko Ono’s new television spot in response to NY Gov. Cuomo’s silence and his upcoming Feb. 27 deadline for a decision on fracking. The ad features Ono directly addressing the Governor, a response to her unmet requests for meetings.
“Gov. Cuomo, since you haven’t met with me about the dangers of fracking, I will show you. PS: Nice to meet you, Governor,” Ono says in the ad.

"After visiting with families in Pennsylvania whose water, homes and lives have been hurt by the gas industry, I wanted to show Gov. Cuomo and the public what I saw," she says. "He must know what could happen to New Yorkers -- our air, our water, our climate -- if he allows fracking."

Thanks,BoingBoing !

Flashback: When The Skateboarding Craze Took Over NYC

Interesting take on our sport/art from Gothamist:

Back in the 1960s, photographer Bill Eppridge documented the new fad: skateboarding. This was for LIFE magazine's cover story, for their May 14th, 1965 issue—the text on the cover read "The craze and the menace of skateboards," and featured a photo of Pat McGee, the national girl's skateboarding champ of the time.

According to the internet, skateboarding was born sometime in the late 1940s or early 1950s, with the first manufactured skateboards ordered by a Los Angeles surf shop. But the popularity of skateboarding didn't happen until the 1960s, a decade which even saw the birth of Skateboarder Magazine.

While I am totally familiar with the Patti McGee cover of LIFE magazine in the 60's, I had never seen these pictures from the inside of the issue before, or even knew of their existence, INCREDIBLE.

New York City in the 1940s Classic Photographs

Check out a few cool examples below, and the whole article HERE

NYC Transit Rules of Conduct Re: Skateboarding

NYC Transit Rules of Conduct -
It is a violation to:
Stand on a skateboard
Jump the turnstile or enter the system improperly
Move between end doors of a subway car whether or not train is in motion
Damage subway or bus property - that includes graffiti or scratches

Filmed and edited by Colin Read.

New York Becoming a Model for How to Effectively Create Green Jobs

A new law will help generate 1 million energy efficiency retrofits on homes and businesses and create over 14,000 full time permanent jobs.

By Emmaia Gelman and Chloe Tribich, on AlterNet

The New York State Legislature's passage of the Power NY Act was a bright moment in a session marred by budget cuts and layoffs. The new law allows the Green Jobs-Green NY program to advance toward goals of generating 1 million energy efficiency retrofits on homes and businesses and creating over 14,000 full-time permanent jobs.

Consider this: Sealing and insulating a home saves 20 to 50 percent on energy. But many owners can't afford this work. That's where Green Jobs-Green NY and the Power NY Act come in.

If you're a homeowner and a utility customer in good standing, the state will pay upfront for retrofits. Using "on-bill recovery" -- the financing mechanism created by the Power NY Act -- you'll repay the state over time via your utility bill.

The repayment is less than the monthly energy savings, so it doesn't increase expenses. The fact that utility customers rarely default on their bills -- even if they pay late -- allows the state to attract billions from investors. The potential environmental impact is also impressive: The program could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by the equivalent of removing about 1 million cars from the road.

To date, New York, like other states, has focused on saving the most energy at the lowest cost without regard to community impact. Not so Green Jobs-Green NY with on-bill recovery. Among other unique elements, the program provides funding for community groups to recruit and educate homeowners. It's a real effort to channel the benefits of efficiency toward hard-hit families.

This vision did not emerge from an office in Albany. It emerged from organizers whose daily work -- knocking on doors of cash-strapped homeowners and unemployed workers -- showed the necessity of interdisciplinary policymaking.

Across the state, grassroots organizers saw that low- and moderate-income families couldn't afford heating costs. They pointed out that utilities annually consume about a month's household income in moderate-income households, and up to 17 percent in poor households.

The problem was compounded by inadequate government policies: homeowners who struggled to pay energy bills usually earned too much to qualify for grant-funded weatherization and too little to take advantage of rebates.

So when Center for Working Families built a multi-sector coalition to devise solutions, grassroots groups emerged as driving forces. They laid out the challenges facing homeowners. They kiboshed proposals that may have appealed to financers but wouldn't work on the ground. They built partnerships with local businesses and labor leaders.

As a result of this work -- and with the powerful support of the Working Families Organization (connected to the Working Families Party), small business owners and labor unions -- the Green Jobs-Green NY Act of 2009 passed the state legislature with near unanimity.

The state's initial implementation efforts were rocky. For timing reasons, on-bill recovery was excluded from the Green Jobs-Green NY Act. NYSERDA -- which has a deserved reputation as a top state energy organization -- was forced to begin implementation quickly. Community groups were not fully engaged.

The consequences became clear when NYSERDA created a loan product that would not work for vulnerable homeowners. Community groups quickly pointed out the problems with mounting late fees and untenable loan criteria. (One income stability requirement would've excluded workers with sporadic or seasonal incomes.) Disturbingly, promises to implement wage and hiring standards -- a critical component of the green jobs vision -- were mostly unmet, in spite of support from the NY State Department of Labor.

In the face of these challenges, the coalition, still anchored by Center for Working Families, held to its goals. Three years of organizing and wrangling are producing results.

The Long Island Progressive Coalition has launched a program with the Laborers' Union that has generated 100 energy audits and promises nearly as many retrofits. This has helped contractors go union and hire union-trained ex-offenders, displaced workers and low-income people, including a fair number of women. In Buffalo, People United for Sustainable Housing (PUSH) has built a coalition of contractors that, with the laborers' support, will develop its existing training infrastructure into union training, and will perform mold remediation, lead work and retrofits on Buffalo's troubled housing stock.

The prime lessons? One: Passing legislation requires a diverse coalition and real political muscle. Two: It's impossible to design meaningful efficiency programs without community engagement. In the absence of grassroots voices, energy policy reinforces economic inequalities and leaves masses of moderate-income households unserved. States wishing to replicate New York's program should take note.

In New York, where housing is inefficient and income disparities are large, the stakes are high. Implemented correctly, Green Jobs-Green NY with on-bill recovery will be the first state program to alleviate economic inequality by reducing energy consumption on a mass scale. If we succeed, it will be because we let communities lead the way.

Emmaia Gelman is the green & equitable economies strategist for Center for Working Families. Chloe Tribich is the communications director for Center for Working Families.

© 2011 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.

Mindrelic - Manhattan in motion

thanks, Luke

New York City in the year 1977

this is a really great documentary i first saw a few years ago on VH1 when i still had cable and they still played a few music related programs.

Savage Nomads and Savage Skulls: 1979 documentary on street gangs of the South Bronx

from DangerousMinds

In 1979, Gary Weis, known for his short films on Saturday Night Live, directed a documentary about South Bronx street gangs called 80 Blocks From Tiffany's . Weis came up with idea of doing the film after reading an article in Esquire magazine by Jon Bradshaw. The article, like the film, focused on two gangs: the Savage Nomads and the Savage Skulls.

Despite its role as an important and unflinching portrait of a profoundly interesting time in New York and, as pointed out by The New York Times, hip hop’s cultural history, 80 Blocks was, for many years, impossible to find, only briefly available as an educational VHS release in 1985. In the time since its initial release, the documentary has gained an overwhelming cult status. With little to no news coverage over the decades since its release dedicated fans continue to buzz about the film, especially now that the internet has provided fans common ground to fondly look back not only the documentary itself, but the era that it captured so vividly.

Here's 80 Blocks From Tiffany's in its entirety. If you dig the film and want to own a copy, you can purchase the DVD here. It comes with alot of extras, including interviews with the director, cinematographer, and a forty page book.

John Lennon in New York City - from PBS

Very cool documentary as only American Masters series can do.

Watch the full episode. See more American Masters.

thanks, DangerousMinds

What's New York's most-stolen street sign?

Sign for 'Joey Ramone Place' has been taken three times

from AP via Flaming Pablum

NEW YORK — Officials say a metal homage to the late punk legend Joey Ramone may be New York City's most-stolen street sign.

The Department of Transportation recently had the "Joey Ramone Place" sign reinstalled in lower Manhattan for the fourth time since 2003.

This time, it was raised eight feet to curb temptation. The New York Post says that puts it about 20 feet above street level.

The group's longtime drummer, Marky Ramone, thinks Joey would appreciate the most-stolen distinction. But he adds: "Now you have to be an NBA player to see it."

The sign is at the corner of Bowery and East Second Street.

DOT spokesman Seth Solomonow said Broadway, Wall Street and Love Lane signs also have attracted sign thieves.

Joey with the Beastie Boys backstage at some show circa 1985

Rubble Kings: New York City street gangs and the music that brought them together

This looks incredible!



From Shan Nicholson, director of Downtown Calling, comes this new documentary on New York City gangs called Rubble Kings.

From 1968 to 1975, gangs ruled New York City. Beyond the idealistic hopes of the civil rights movement lay a unfocused rage. Neither law enforcement nor social agency could end the escalating bloodshed. Peace came only through the most unlikely and courageous of events that would change the world for generations to come by giving birth to hip-hop culture.

from DangerousMinds Via Stupefaction

"Greenwich Village Sunday" and "Jazz Is My Religion"The Roots of Hipsterism

Beatnik double bill, Village Sunday and an excerpt from Jazz Is My Religion. Both short films feature beat poet Ted Joans, a fine wordslinger who never got the recognition he deserved.

Village Sunday is narrated by Jean Shepherd, a New York radio personality who was known for his offbeat humor and Zen-like observations about life.

from DangerousMinds

What about the fucking Pier 62 Skatepark?

Oh Shit! Did i tell you i shot a few of my friends there almost two weeks ago? I shot one roll of E6 film and got it back pretty quickly, and i've yet to finish the one roll of Kodachrome I started, that I know is going to have some bad ass shots on it too. Anyway, this new park is amazing, over by the Chelsea piers sports complex, directly on the Hudson River at 23rd street, bus will take you to the gate of the skatepark practically... Well, i shot some cool stuff of old good friends Steve Olson, and Lance Mountain. check'em it out:



And here's the reverse angle photographed by Martin Fedor, of Olson and I shooting the above shot on the lip of the over vertical pocket.

the loudest thing i have ever heard anywhere.

Sunday was the classic Puerto Rican day parade. If you don't live in New York you may not know about it, but Puerto Rican pride is on display in an incredible ritual that most have come to love. Beside many folks adorning their automobiles in Puerto Rican flags, showing off the strength and volume of your car sound system is also a highlight. While walking home with my family from "House Of Vegetarian" in China Town (some 50 blocks away from the end of the actual parade), through Little Italy, we heard some really loud dance music that made us think there was a street fair or parade a block or two away, so we walked towards the direction of the music to see what was going on, it sounded like a lot of fun. As we got closer to the source it was getting so loud it was actually funny, seriously, i guess you "had to be there", but i was really enjoying the volume of the insanely obnoxious dance music, and then when I realized it was all coming from the back of a car, i was really loving it even more. To think just two guys cruising in a car could make so much noise, and entertain while simultaneously annoy so many people, put a huge smile on my face. As my wife says "You know us Puerto Ricans love to share our music"... Sharing indeed.

People's Garden of New York City

To Mayor Michael Bloomberg:

We, the undersigned people of New York City, respectfully request that a vegetable garden be planted in front of City Hall.

This garden will represent New Yorkers’ commitment to education, public service, healthy eating, and environmental stewardship. This garden will be tended by NYC public school students, in collaboration with the NYC Department of Parks & Recreation and our region’s talented gardeners and farmers. The harvest will be donated to a nearby food pantry to feed the hungry.

This garden will represent the vision of a more sustainable, livable City for all New Yorkers, and will contribute to achieving the intents of PLANYC by 2030.

SIGN THE PETITION HERE



City Hall vegetation in Baltimore and San Francisco:



related: Magnificent Urban Gardens

never know what you might see in NYC

Sunday we stumbled into central park just because the weather was so nice, no plan, had no idea which way were were walking and came upon this incredible view, and then just a half hour later we see ninety year old Pete Seeger performing at the close of an EcoFest (also in Central Park), Incredible.

(click on the top image to check the details)