steadyblogging on posterous

We happened upon this photo in the LIFE magazine archives. The caption reads: "Construction in NYC: land being cleared for 20 story building in East 60s — still occupied brownstone is soon to go." It was still occupied! The photo was taken in 1959... any guesses as to what block it was on?

Fantastic photo--even though it's on Gothamist, what flashed into my mind upon seeing it was "Detroit"...

Just today, walking back from lunch on E 56th St, I was noticing some of the remaining residential townhouses in the area. Midtown Manhattan is much-maligned, but it's fascinating in many ways. Recently, I've been looking up and around at the building--the skyscrapers, sure--but thinking about how all that glass and steel in midtown came up postwar.

(Looking forward to the augmented reality apps that will give us "then and now" snapshots on demand.)

Post-script: I decided to post this upon seeing the photo, but then noticed the comments thread--which quickly led into a discussion of Robert Moses. Nice coincidence, as I was just posting some tweets about Robert Caro and restarting "The Power Broker", after seeing Caro on the telly over the weekend. In fact, I was going to post that up here earlier today...

Another amazing interactive map from NYT. You'll have to click through for full functionality, such as zoon. But you get a fair amount of the interactivity even with the embedded graphic above.

How High Speed Rail Can Spread Across the U.S.

10/22/2009 by asladirt

The U.S. High Speed Rail Assocation, a new group formed to advocate for high speed rail, organized a conference in D.C. attended by Congressional representatives, smart growth advocates, and Governor Ed Rendell from Pennsylvania, a leading high speed rail proponent. Rendell argues that a nation-wide high speed rail network is critical and called for a “dedicated federal government capital budget” to fund the program. “We have just been nibbling at infrastructure,” Rendell argued. Rendell sees a dedicated ”infrastructure bank,” which would “take the politics out of transportation decisions,” funneling funds to high speed rail, transportation rehabilitation, and transportation improvement projects.  Rendell noted that the American Society of Civil Engineers said the U.S. needs to invest $2.2 trillion to ensure the country’s future competitiveness.

In addition to strengthening the U.S. competitive position, Rendell argues that high speed rail would help restore the U.S. construction and manufacturing base, and “bring millions or tens of millions of jobs and new factories.” Rendell compared current opposition to a country-wide high speed rail network to the early opposition against the Erie Canal. He noted that the $9 billion investment in the Erie Canal was repaid within nine years, and the investment helped revolutionize the U.S. economy. 

In terms of high speed rail networks, the U.S. is falling even further behind other developed countries. Japan’s already advanced network will add 16,000 miles of high speed rail line by 2020. Spain is spending $100 billion on another 6,000 miles. While the U.S. spends 2.5 percent of its GDP on infrastructure, Spain is spending up to 10 percent. The U.S. has spent $1.3 trillion on highways, but only $53 billion on passenger rail.

While the Obama administration has put $8 billion in recovery funds and $5 billion of the budget towards high speed rail, this will really only help in planning and making relatively minor improvements to existing networks. Rendell fears much of the funds have already gone to mid-speed rail. California alone requires $45 billion for their high speed corridor plans, which would run from the northern to the southern part of the state.

Rendell sees a new high speed rail line between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, one of the most congested transit routes in the country. Additionally, he wants the northeast corridor Acela line to become truly high-speed. ”The Acela trip between D.C. and New York City could be 1 hour and 35 minutes with infrastructure updgrades.” Overall, a nation-wide network would cost hundreds of billions, but is needed to replace relieve pressure off of highway infrastructure and crowded flight corridors. There are also environmental and health benefits. “High speed rail can take cars off the road.”

Came to this American Society of Landscape Architects post via @SmartCityTalk

Deutsch is not someone I've heard of, but he appears to be a pioneer in the field of quantum computing. Here is his Wikipedia page, and here his page on qubit.org ("the central website for all Quantum Information Processing (QIP) related activities at Oxford University"):

Looks as if he wrote a book about 10 years ago called "The Fabric of Reality". From the Wikipedia entry for the book:

The Fabric of Reality is a book by physicist David Deutsch - written in 1997- which expands upon his views of quantum mechanics and its implications for understandingreality. This interpretation, or what he calls the multiverse hypothesis, is one strand of a four-strand theory of everything. The four strands are:

1. Hugh Everett's many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics, "the first and most important of the four strands".
2. Karl Popper's epistemology, especially its anti-inductivism and its requiring a realist (non-instrumental) interpretation of scientific theories, and its emphasis on taking seriously those bold conjectures that resist falsification.
3. Alan Turing's theory of computation especially as developed in Deutsch's "Turing principle", Turing's universal Turing machine being replaced by Deutsch's universalquantum computer. ("The theory of computation is now the quantum theory of computation.")
4. Richard Dawkins's refinement of Darwinian evolutionary theory and the modern evolutionary synthesis, especially the ideas of replicator and meme as they integrate with Popperian problem-solving (the epistemological strand).

His theory of everything is (weakly) emergentist rather than reductive. It aims not at the reduction of everything to particle physics, but rather mutual support among multiverse, computational, epistemological, and evolutionary principles.

"It's not over, between you and me..."

This came up via an IM conversation w my man @kanelee...a Philly soul disco classic which became a staple of Chicago and NY proto-house.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Choice_(band)

I'm guessing what happened is people like Larry Levan and Frankie Knuckles would play this sort of stuff in NYC in the mid to late '70s, and then the latter took it with him to Chicago...and gave rise to Chicago House music:

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankie_Knuckles:

"While studying textile design at FIT in Manhattan, Knuckles began working as a DJ, playing soul, disco and R&B at The Continental Baths with fellow DJ Larry Levan. When he became better known, he DJed at the club Better Days. When the Warehouse club opened in Chicago in 1977, he was invited to play on a regular basis. He continued DJing there until 1982, when he started his own club, The Power Plant. It is possible that the term 'House Music' surfaced in reference to the sounds played at the Warehouse by Frankie. Initially it was a catch-all term to describe the wide range of music being played at the Warehouse. It soon became the word used to define the raw, drum machine based edits and tracks that Frankie was playing in the early 80s. Incidentally Frankie bought his first drum machine from a young Derrick May who regularly made the trip from Detroit to see Frankie at the Warehouse and fellow pioneer Ron Hardy at the Music Box."

Riding The Five Train

Maddow tweets that she doesn't "know if in US commentary there is a more beautiful writer than Ta-Nehisi Coates" and points to his recent post on obesity, class, and race. Hard to disagree:

When I lived in Brooklyn, the most depressing aspect of my day was the commute back home. The deeper the five train wended into Brooklyn, the blacker it became, and the blacker it became, the fatter it got. I was there among them--the blacker and fatter--and filled with a sort of shameful self-loathing at myself and my greater selves around me. One of the hardest thing about being black is coming up dead last in almost anything that matters. As a child, and a young adult, I was lucky. Segregation was a cocoon brimming with all the lovely variety of black life. But out in the world you come to see, in the words of Peggy Olson, that they have it all--and so much of it. Working on the richest island in the world, then training through Brooklyn, or watching the buses slog down 125th has become a kind of corporeal metaphor--the achievement gap of our failing bodies, a slow sickness as the racial chasm.

Cool to know that TNC lived in Brooklyn. He lives in Harlem now, as he often mentions on his blog (indeed, as he alludes to in the post above, "watching the buses slog down 125th").

If he lived deep in Brooklyn off the 5, it must have been Crown Heights, Prospect Lefferts Garden, or Flatbush that he resided in.

I take the 4-5 back to Bk for about 30% of my commutes. My stop is at Brooklyn's grand central subway junction, Atlantic-Pacific (the center of The Planet, as I like to think of it). At that point, the 4-5 are running together down the same line, which they do through all of Manhattan and into Brooklyn.

They continue running together from Atlantic-Pacific, under Flatbush Ave to Grand Army Plaza, and they veer together under Eastern Parkway into Crown Heights. The Eastern Parkway stop is the next one on the 4-5 after Atlantic Pacific.

I'll have to collect some rough data, but I'd say non-blacks will be in the minority on any given 4-5 train as soon as you go past Bowling Green--last stop in "the richest island in the world"--and drop down under the Harbor and go into Brooklyn.

But once you pass Atlantic-Pacific, I can't imagine that more than 5% of the people (so 1 out of 20, so maybe 3 or 4 on a full car?) on your average train are going to be non-black.

The last time we took the 4-5 deeper into Brooklyn was Labor Day, for the West Indian Day Parade. We came up on Eastern Parkway and it was wall-to-wall people--to the point where we hardly moved for half an hour. I've got to finally post some pics from that day.

After the Eastern Parkway stop, the 4 and 5 finally part ways, with the the 5 taking a hard turn south, into the above-mentioned neighborhoods. The 4 continues eastward for one more stop, which would put you out in what I believe is Brownsville. I've never been out there.

I've taken the 5 further a few times--to catch installments of the MLK Jr concert series: free shows by pretty big names, for a run of about 10 shows each summer. Those are held at Wingate Field, a few blocks from the Winthrop stop of the 5 (and the 2, which are running partners down there), across from the imposing Kings County Hospital.

An Afternoon with Mister Saturday Night and Moodymann

AN AFTERNOON WITH MISTER SATURDAY NIGHT AND MOODYMANN Last time Moodymann came to town, he ended up doing an impromptu late-night version of Freaky MF live with The Egyptian Lover providing backup on 808. The time before that he played radio DJ all night long, announcing nearly every song and shouting out people's birthdays. We never know what to expect with Kenny Dixon, Jr., and we wouldn't have it any other way.

Today the Detroit legend is joining Justin and Eamon for what is certainly the most exciting setting for any gig he's played in New York City--or probably many other places for that matter. We're hosting him for a special Saturday daytime version of Mister Saturday Night at 12-Turn-13, a loft with hardwood floors, hardwood ceilings, and a big, beautiful roof in the middle of Brooklyn. Bloody marys and mimosas are on the menu; our friend Fiore Tedesco from The Brooklyn Laundry is making egg tacos and other brunch snacks; and you, hopefully, are going to bring your little ones and your dogs! We love it when they come.

note. We just got hip to the fact that KDJ did an interview and DJ set on Gilles Peterson's show on BBC about two years ago. Have a listen. It's insightful and just plain good.

12-Turn-13 // 172 Classon Ave, Brooklyn // limited $10 advance tickets available at residentadvisor.net/mistersaturdaynight // $15 with RSVP to mister@mistersaturdaynight.com // $20 at the door // 3p - midnight // directions // KENNY WILL BE PLAYING IN THE EARLY EVENING, STARTING SOME TIME IN BETWEEN 6P AND 8P.

Started listening to KDJ when we lived in Ann Arbor. Both of us had listened to some Detroit stuff starting in the '90s--esp Derrick May, whose epic Mayday Mix was my introduction to house and techno. I came to it late--ironically never listened to that stuff while living in Chicago for school, and it was only ~'97 that a friend that had stayed in Chicago and was sort of on that house scene mailed me a cassette copy of the Derrick May mix.

To make a long story somewhat short, I started listening to a good amount of Chicago house and Detroit techno, and after we moved to Ann Arbor and met some people on the Detroit music scene that we discovered Detroit house.

I think we saw KDJ perform a few times in Detroit: once in a memorable and borderline pornographic live performance he did with his band, where he was clearly channeling Prince; at an afterparty to a concert Prince did at Joe Louis (the only time I've seen the Minneapolis Genius!)--in the downstairs space of a downtown Detroit sushi bar, where friends were throwing a weekly party, and got KDJ to come in and spin Prince all night; at one of the Detroit electronic music festivals, as part of the Three Chairs (3 Detroit guys tagteaming on the turntables), in a tent on Hart Plaza.

And then we've already seen him spin once here in NYC, at Santos--the night that's mentioned in the writeup above (though we didn't stay long enough for his Freaky MF interpretation with The Egyptian Lover.

Can't wait for Saturday. Don't be misled...