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Songs about Speeding Arrows & a Disgruntled Cat

The show at Manhattan’s Bowery Ballroom last Friday featuring The Weakerthans with Rah Rah was special in many ways. Before anything is even said about the music and the performances, consider that it was the seventh night of what by any measure must be considered an extraordinary bi-coastal residency that The Weakerthans had undertaken over the previous two weeks. Talk about ambitious! / / more . . .

The Henry Hudson Bridge–75 Years above the Sputyen Duyvil

As odious a public official as I find Robert Moses to have been, I would vastly prefer someone like him to the visionless so-called leaders we have today. Yes, it’s a pity that Moses didn’t ultimately uphold the progressive ideals to which he subscribed early in his career, as shown by Robert Caro in The Power Broker, but at least he left something behind that remains useful to denizens of the region today. All that Gov. Christie is going to leave posterity is a lot of hot air.

An 80th Birthday Makeover for The Great Gray Bridge

From a favorite college professor long ago I heard that the French Catholic theologian and philosopher Jacques Maritain swore that the sight of the George Washington Bridge and Manhattan, as seen traveling south on the Henry Hudson Highway, was the most breathtaking view he ever experienced.

A Marathon of Mao’s Long March, a One-of-a-Kind Reading

Ever imagined getting a whole slew of friends together to read a favorite book out loud? That’s pretty much what happened this past Sunday in the handsome ballroom of the West Village’s Jane Hotel when The New Inquiry, BOMB Magazine, ForYourArt, New Directions Publishing, and Google Places assembled more than 65 fans of The Adventures of Mao on […]

Harvey Wang’s Portraits of a Vanished NY at the Tenement Museum

Siegfried Liebman, mannequin maker; Eddie Day, brakeman on the Cyclone at Coney Island; Helen Giamanco, salad maker, Horn & Hardart Automat; Joe Baffir, boxing trainer; Julius Hans, tailor of rabbinical robes; Veronica Parker Johns, owner, Seashells Unlimited, a Third Avenue Manhattan store; and David Turnowsky, counterman at Katz’s Deli–these are just some of the New […]

Time Traveling With Lady Liberty

Cool b&w photo of Lady Liberty’s torch in Madison Square Park, before its placement atop the full statue in New York Harbor. This very period, the 1880s, is chronicled in Jack Finney’s great NY time travel novel, Time and Again. The 125th anniversary of the Statue’s dedication in New York City is upon us now.