Earlier today, Sheila at Gawker posted a Pic of the Day, which happened to be a shot of Manhattan circa 1942. The photo is from the Charles Cushman Collection at Indiana University. There are plenty more shots of Manhattan from the same era, such as the one below of the Northeast Corner of 1st Street and the Bowery taken on Oct. 4, 1942.
Or this one, taken on the same day, described only as "a block between Avenue A and Avenue B." Any guesses?
Gothamist had a great post yesterday on photographer/filmmaker Richard Sandler. He has made several documentaries, including Brave New York, which chronicles the East Village from 1988-2003. You can watch it here:
He has also made Sway, which, according to Gothamist, is 14 years of camcorder-recorded subway rides that have been edited together. Both films will be playing Aug. 22 in the community garden at Sixth Street and Avenue B. Some of his photos are in the permanent collection at the Brooklyn Museum.
Several nights last December, parts of Avenue A were jammed for yet another big movie production. That movie, Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist (based on the teen novel), will be released Oct. 3. The trailer is now in theaters. (And online...)
Here's a piece on the movie, where two teens meet cute in Manhattan and end up having a wacky night with the city as their playground, from MTV.com last Dec. 14:
Film sets are places of controlled spontaneity, but even MTV News got more than we bargained for during a late-night visit to the set of "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist," starring Kat Dennings and Michael Cera, where the wind howled, the people screamed and the actors threw everything but the kitchen sink at us — that is, when the fine citizens of the Big Apple weren't throwing it at them first. "That's filming in New York for you!" Dennings laughed when a loud truck cut her off midsentence. "Soon some homeless guy is going to throw a banana at me. We've had homeless guys throwing avocados, tomatoes, random blunt objects. It's been amazing! I mean, you really can't fake real New York." It would all be massively rude, if it all weren't somehow oddly appropriate, given the farcical nature of the story about two teens sharing one wild night in Manhattan, during which just about everything that can happen does.
This week's New York magazine has a feature called "Parallel Lives" in which they ask two LES residents to name some of their favorite places in the neighborhood...Oh, one of the residents has lived here less than one year; the other resident has lived here 58 years. Looks like they have at least one place in common.
Here, a high school student looks at the origins of the "I [heart] New York campaign. I give her a B- for her project. She seemed to have problems reading the cue cards.
Iggy and the Stooges played last night at a sold-out Terminal 5, that place on the west side on 56th Street and, oh, Weehawken. I'm not much of a concert reviewer...so. About all I can muster at the moment is that it was a great show. And Iggy was probably having more fun than anyone else in the place. He never stood in one place more than four seconds. Per usual, he invited everyone on stage during "No Fun." Here's a snippet of the song that I filmed:
Zeronea shot this footage of "I Wanna be Your Dog," where we lose the former Christodora House resident in the crowd for a minute.
And here's a link to a Stooges clip from 1970...love the local broadcaster trying to make sense of it all...
(By the way, as you may have read, the band had their gear ripped off in Montreal on Monday. It hasn't been recovered.)