it’s the AMERICAN dream Something remarkable has happened. A few years ago I flirted with the idea of restaging the Battle of Brooklyn, the obscure (but huge) battle of the Revolutionary War that sent scampy colonials running for the Bronx via Manhattan — a huge, potential war-ending victory for the British before the war really got started. The problem is, someone already was … Read on
This week the East River Ferry has brought back regular ferry service to the 18-mile East River, which is a nice reminder that New York — down deep, away from skyscraper canyons — is a river city. New York was founded not because of the chunky rocks that glaciers pushed to present-day Central Park, but the Hudson and the East Rivers. The first … Read on
Bob Diamond is a classic New Yorker. Snubbing naysayers to discover, at age 19, the world’s oldest subway tunnel, under Brooklyn’s Atlantic Avenue in 1980. Two years later Bob started leading tour down there — raw tours, often peppered with fiery jabs at city officials. (I enjoyed one in July.) Last month the city closed them down, alas. Hopefully they’ll come back. Here’s … Read on
Episode #020F E A T U R I N G * 1 1 4 * B O N U S * S E C O N D S “You’re a photographer?” I had just snapped a shot of New York’s only living landmark, a four-floor-high magnolia tree that was moved to Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant in 1885 from North Carolina. I put away my camera … Read on
REPORT THE RATS A few months ago I started reporting rat spottings — all rat spottings — on Twitter under the hashtag of ‘#ratspotting.’ I invite you to do the same, wherever you may find them. After 11 years in New York, I had my first on-subway-platform viewing recently. One woman seeing it dropped her coffee with a shriek. I had my FlipVideo … Read on
Links: Info on the walrus Walrus Islands State Game Sanctuary, Alaska New York Aquarium — home to Tuusaq, who turned two on June 12! ‘It’s up to the dentist when Tuusaq returns,’ the Aquarium tells me. New York Times on walruses
