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Coney Island Brewing’s new "Overpass IPA" compared to its "Seas the Day" IPL.

Mmmm…..beer.
(via Self-Absorbed Boomer)

Why I’m worrying about the Mets already.

The Mets are in camp; they’ve yet to play a spring training game. That comes Friday, against the Tigers. Signs are good: Matt Harvey can throw well following Tommy John surgery; David Wright is healthy (at least for now); everything else seems to be in…
(via Self-Absorbed Boomer)

Lesley Gore, 1946-2015

Lesley Gore, who died today at 68, is most remembered for her first hit, “It’s My Party (and I’ll Cry If I Want To),” which began a successful collaboration with Quincy Jones as her producer.She was a Brooklyn native, but her family moved to New Jersey…
(via Self-Absorbed Boomer)

432 Park Avenue: Harry Macklowe flips off New York City

432 Park Avenue (center in the photo above) claims the title of tallest residential building in the Western Hemisphere, and second tallest building (after the new One World Trade Center) in New York City, but if measured by roof height the tallest. It’s described by its architect, Rafael Viñoly, as designed around “the purest geometric form: the square.” Not only is the building’s horizontal cross section a square, but all the windows are squares.  It dominates the midtown skyline with the grace of a colossal headless Pez dispenser, or upraised middle finger (the photo above was taken from Pier 1, Brooklyn Bridge Park). Aaron Betsky admires its “relentlessness”; I demur. Betsky also celebrates how 432 Park “represents the transformation of this and every other city into a place for the wealthy to live and play” as if driving out struggling artists and other relatively impecunious but creative people, and the inexpensive infrastructure that supports them, constitutes progress.

With bad luck, we may be subjected to more Viñoly designs, like 125 Greenwich Street, all of which will end up being pieds a terre for billionaires, with perhaps a few lower floor, smaller apartments going to mere multi-millionaires.

Viñoly discusses his design philosophy in this video. He plays piano well.

The developers of 432 Park are CIM Group and Macklowe Properties. Harry Macklowe is a developer whose company was once fined two million dollars for reckless endangerment resulting from the rapid night-time demolition of two buildings. Macklowe compares 432 Park to the Mona Lisa.
(via Self-Absorbed Boomer)

Liam Clancy and Tommy Makem, "The Green Fields of France"

Today, June 28, 2014 is the centenary of the assassination in Sarajevo of Archduke Francis Ferdinand and his wife,…
(via Self-Absorbed Boomer)

Planxty: "Raggle Taggle Gypsy/Tabhair dom do lámh"

This is great stuff. I’ve loved Planxty (about whom I’ve posted before) since I got a copy of The Planxty Collection at a little shop, no doubt long gone, somewhere on Bleecker Street between Sixth Avenue and Christopher Street, in the late 1970s. I es…
(via Self-Absorbed Boomer)

Stout standoff: Guinness vs. Brooklyn Dry Irish

A few weeks ago I noticed Brooklyn Brewery’s “Dry Irish Stout” on a shelf at my local supermarket. This piqued my curiosity. “Dry” isn’t a word I’ve associated with stout. I decided to get some and compare it to the stout I, and most people, know best:…
(via Self-Absorbed Boomer)

Locks of Love on the Brooklyn Bridge

In my walks across the Brooklyn Bridge and back over the past year or so, I’ve noticed that couples have been writing their names on padlocks and attaching those locks to the fences beside the pedestrian walkway, as shown in the photo above. Sometimes,…
(via Self-Absorbed Boomer)

Coney Island Brewing’s Mermaid Pilsner

A couple of weeks ago I tried Coney Island Brewing Company’s “Seas the Day” India Pale Lager. Now I’ve also had their Mermaid Pilsner. It’s good beer.Pilsner (or Pilsener) is a style of lager–a lager being any beer made with bottom fermenting yeast–t…
(via Self-Absorbed Boomer)

Gram and Emmylou; Emmylou, Dolly, and Linda

When I go for walks, I usually take my iPod set in the “shuffle” mode. Because of my eclectic interests in music, this sometimes leads to odd concatenations, as on a recent walk during which the Sinfonia from Verdi’s Nabucco was followed immediately by…
(via Self-Absorbed Boomer)