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the urban life
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the urban life
neighborhoods
The Lower East Side: Not What It Used To Be
The Lower East Side is changing! You blink once, and the neighborhood has gone from an immigrant-packed hovel of tenements to a rich jerk-packed hovel. Of condos! The National Trust for Historic Preservation has just named the entire freaking neighborhood one the nation's 11 most endangered places: More »
things we actually like
Master Subway Poster Artist Shows His Oeuvre
The mystery NYC subway poster artist whose works have instilled in us a new respect for cut-and-paste vandalism has a Flickr account! And it's chock-full of impressive works that have heretofore been seen only by those commuters lucky enough to happen upon them. But now we're bringing you five of the best new ad art remixes from his collection. Help "Fight marc ecko with one hand," after the jump: More »
real estate
Queens: The Brooklyn Of Brooklyn
Middling Queens neighborhood Jackson Heights (whoa now, Queens residents) is taking on fancy Brooklyn writer's enclave Park Slope in some provocative ads! "More Park Less Slope" they say, mystifyingly. "Queens Is The New Brooklyn." They also made themselves a neat little "JH" logo shaped as a man resembling Mr. Peanut. Break out the checkbooks, home buyers! Jackson Heights is preferable to Park Slope, based on arrogance levels alone. But the established lowest-to-highest rankings of NYC boroughs (Staten Island- Bronx- Queens- Brooklyn- Manhattan- Philadelphia) will never change. Bigger picture of the aspirational ad, after the jump. More »
personalities
Rogue Doodler May Be Drawing You Now
25-year-old sketch artist Jason Polan has an unachievable goal: to draw every person in New York. He moved here from Michigan, and was seized by the desire to capture all of us—you, me, Graydon Carter—in quick, vague line drawings. So far he has "a couple hundred sketches," which means that, assuming a static city population of 8 million and a generous rate of 50 sketches per day, fives days a week, Jason will be finishing his project up in a little more than 615 years. If you like, you can email him and tell him where you're going to be at a certain time and he'll show up and sketch you. Cute, but not really doing wonders for your time efficiency, Jason. After the jump, a few samples of his work. At least he's quick! More »
nightlife
Amy Sacco's London Love Is Unrequited
Bungalow 8 founder and Manhattan nightclub soothsayer Amy Sacco is being humble! "Most everything's overrated [about NYC nightlife]," she says. "Even I'm overrated!" She thinks that London is now "much more interesting than NYC." Funny, because last time we checked in on her London branch of Bungalow 8, local reviewers were calling it "empty." Surely those days are past? Well, recently they haven't been calling it empty, exactly—just overpriced, overcharging, and helmed by an ill-mannered doorman!: More »
investigations
A crazy man may be videotaping YOUR crotch. And putting the footage on the internet for all to see! The Post, in what is (trend alert) almost surely another story developed solely by poking around on YouTube, alerts the city to a man known only as "househead7d5." He enjoys taping men's crotches—at a phone booth, on the bus, on the subway—and posting the videos online, with clever comments like, "guy on the phone showin a little......gay sweatpants bulge phonebooth NYC," or, even creepier, "I love it when they fall asleep! not the biggest basket but he was a cutie pie nonetheless!" So who is this penis-peering multimedia madman? After the jump, we will investigate!
More »
Together We Can Stop The Crotch-Cam Madman!
A crazy man may be videotaping YOUR crotch. And putting the footage on the internet for all to see! The Post, in what is (trend alert) almost surely another story developed solely by poking around on YouTube, alerts the city to a man known only as "househead7d5." He enjoys taping men's crotches—at a phone booth, on the bus, on the subway—and posting the videos online, with clever comments like, "guy on the phone showin a little......gay sweatpants bulge phonebooth NYC," or, even creepier, "I love it when they fall asleep! not the biggest basket but he was a cutie pie nonetheless!" So who is this penis-peering multimedia madman? After the jump, we will investigate!
More »
advertising
'We're Just As Good As NYC,' Lies Rest Of New York
New York City: It is surrounded by New York state. This is the key message that state officials are hoping to communicate to you, the public, with their new and improved "I Love NY" campaign [NYT]. "There are a lot of beautiful pictures of serene mountains and lakes. How do you make your mountains and lakes different?" asked an ad exec. By polluting them with dioxin and a plethora of prescription drugs? No, it turns out the answer is to suggest that "we have the pulsating heart and soul of New York City in everything we do." In fact, it looks like the whole campaign is an attempt to slingshot some tourists out of the city for little jaunts upstate. Which will be hard, because New York state pretty much sucks. More »
nooooooooooo!
$100,000 Whitewash: Store Owner Paints Over Banksy Art
No matter how you feel about the British stencil artist Banksy, you have to admit one thing: his stuff sells for a lot of money. His works have been going for over half a million dollars lately. A homeowner in the UK with a Banksy mural on the side of her house decided to simply sell the mural through an art gallery, and throw in the home for free. But one NYC store owner lucky enough to have a Banksy piece on his building (pictured) was either too ignorant, or too stubborn to take advantage of it. Yes: he painted over it. I hope he loved his momentarily whitewashed wall, because it cost him hundreds of thousands of dollars. The kind of funny, and kind of painful pictures [via SuperTouch] of the man in the revenue-destroying act, after the jump. Ouch. More »
advertising
Good News: Even More Subway Ads
Not content to simply line the subway station entrances, station walls, station signs, and interior of buses and trains with advertisements, New York City transit is reportedly set to enter the final frontier: ads on the outsides of subway trains. They're already testing out the idea with Continental Airlines ads on the 42nd St. shuttle [NYP]. Subway officials think this idea will go great with their existing "brand cars," where one advertiser takes over the interior of a whole car. As terrifying as this practice sounds, we know they need the money. So we'd like to strike a compromise: they're allowed to sell every last inch of the trains to advertisers, but in return they have to bring back this practice: More »
the box
Anonymous Box Slanderer Still At Large?
Drug-and-celebrity-laden downtown nightspot The Box can add to its ongoing problems the fact that an unknown disgruntled person is posting angry fliers around town alleging that the club's doorman is a "DRUG PEDDLER who RAPED TWO WOMEN" last year. The Daily News reported today that the anonymous flier guy has been arrested. But today the "BOX-KILLER" weighed in on the comments section of a blog post to declare that he was NOT arrested because posting such fliers is free speech, and furthermore, he still thinks the doorman is an "animal" and a "criminal!" Anonymous fliers and anonymously sourced gossip items and anonymous blog posts: all the makings of a solid story. [Animal]
advertising
Smoke And Have Your Fingers Hacked Off
The City of New York has always run anti-smoking ads that are pretty great, in the sense that they're disgusting and make smokers jump up and change channels as quickly as possible. The city's newest campaign features "Marie," a 58 year-old who has smoked for 40 years, even as bits of her body were constantly being amputated because of her poor circulation [NY Sun]. This could backfire, though, because it just makes it easy to say "I'll stop after my first amputation." The ad is below—I particularly admire how they slipped in a picture of a bone saw. Something to think about on my smoke break. More »
stupidity
A Guide To Safer Subway Surfing
Ads like this one got me thinking: Do people really ride outside of subway cars? Do they do it to the extent that the city of New York must spend thousands of dollars on an ad campaign advising mouth breathers not to take their own lives in their hands and screw up commutes for the rest of us? And if you were going to ride outside a train, would you really do it by clinging onto the outside edge of the closed door, terrified face pressed against the window so all inside could see your horror before you inevitably fell onto the tracks and died? The answer to all of the above is, sadly, "yes." More »
murder
New York Will Kill You
Here's something else for you to do this weekend: avoid getting murdered. New York City's murder rate this year is up by 26% compared to last year [NYDN]—and just in time for the NYPD to cut 1,000 officers! Far be it from us to advocate for more cops, but this seems like it might be a problem. The police department argues that regardless of the increase, it's still the second-lowest murder rate in the city's recorded history. Okay fine, but that might not last long with all those Michael Bloomberg-branded firearms for sale now. Below, a handy NYC crime report with weekly, monthly, and yearly perspectives. Now go buy your gun. More »
video games
Blowing Up New York Still The Only Idea In Entertainment
Fabulous new idea for a video game: the destruction of New York City! You're just one man with a bunch of guns, and the Nazis are bombing Manhattan. They're blowing up the buildings! They're blowing up the Statue of Liberty! It'll be great. Who doesn't want to see NYC's violent demolition played out in digital graphics? I do! No, seriously, I might buy this one. But I will swear off the "violent demolition of NYC" movies. One medium at a time. After the jump, the full trailer for the new game, "Turning Point: Fall of Liberty," the latest in the disconcerting procession of entertainment based on Gotham's death. See if you can find your home exploding! More »
sellouts
