Month: September 2013
“Come in, have a seat! Shall I make tea? I’ve got plenty of vodka! Want some cherries? Bread? I could cook you some chicken…” This is invariably how I’m greeted whenever I meet someone Russian. It doesn’t matter if he opens the door naked, if we’re just going to watch TV, or if the camera’s […]
Staten Island may soon be home to the world’s largest ferris wheel, thanks to the City Planning Commission, which announced its approval of the plan to build the wheel today. City Council has to give the OK next; if it does, the wheel will stand 625 feet tall near the northeast corner of the island, […]
Contemporary art photographer Jeff Cowen who has become widely known for his unique, painterly portraits and collages, but in the 1980s, earlier in his career, he captured several striking images of New York City’s drag queen culture. The images, now housed at the New York Historical Society are accompanied by a small written piece by the artist. […]
Courtesy of the forthcoming documentary More than Honey, here’s some very beautiful, almost unreal-seeming footage of two honeybees fucking each other. Why do you care? Well, because of course you care, but also because in this case, the queen bee approaches the male drone, sucks out his sperm, and leaves him to die. Damn. And the footage […]
There’s a lot of talk about the limitatons of Citi Bikes: they’re heavy, people say, they’re slow, and they’re more suited to boring workday commutes than cycling that’s exciting in any way. In the spirit of testing those supposed limits, we asked street BMX king Tyrone Williams–co-owner of Chinatown bike shop Dah Shop and Animal […]
Many people document the constant changes that happen in New York City, but not many do it quite like Randy Hage. Coming from a career building intricate models for both television and film, Hage creates miniature versions of New York City storefronts that are astonishingly accurate, right down to the authentic New York City graffiti that often […]
Around NYC today–in places like the Financial District, Union Square, and Bedford Avenue–modified pedestrian traffic lights are displaying two orange towers and the message “9/11. Forward. Together.” in place of the usual flashing hand. Created by a group of international students from Miami Ad School Brooklyn, the intervention art is intended “to show people that sharing the memory […]
While we in the United States are accustomed to choosing between Democratic, Republican, and maybe an unlikely handful of Libertarian or Green candidates for political office, Australian voters faced a list that was more like a fast-food menu for their recent September 7 election. Beyond the Labor, Liberal, and Green party politicians that make up […]
When I called up the director Vincent Morisset Tuesday morning, he was in recovery. “Reflektor,” his ambitious new interactive video for Arcade Fire, had debuted the day before as the first official taste of their new album of the same name, and the band had celebrated by playing a small show in their native Montreal. […]
A new report confirms that income inequality has reached its most drastic levels since 1928, the gilded moment before the stock market crash that led to the Great Depression. The study, conducted by professors at University of California and the Paris School of Economics, showed that the top one percent of earners–those that make $394,000 or […]
