Brooklyn Bugle Book Club: “The Hundred Days” by Joseph Roth
After he left Elba, Napoleon made his way back to Paris, where he resumed his crown, raised an army…
January 30, 2015-
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Tim Sommer’s Letter to Blink 182 Fans
I understand that Tom DeLonge of Blink-182 has written a long and heartfelt letter to his fans, explaining and…
January 29, 2015 -
Since I’m Not Working: Native American Edition
I’m currently job hunting, and while writing resumes that no one will read is really exciting, I’ve decided to also take this (hopefully brief) time to do the things I wouldn’t normally have time to do if I had a job. I don’t have a particular agenda, just wherever the mood takes me. Perhaps you […]
January 28, 2015
(via Brooklyn Heights Blog) -
NYC Drive: The Best Show In Town
Without a doubt, one of my favorite television channels is NYC Drive. It features only one program, continuous but…
January 28, 2015 -
Happy Voyages, Joe Franklin
When his city hummed with radio waves, autumn colored incandescence heating up bakery brown Bakelite, He lived to be…
January 25, 2015 -
Kraftwerk’s Incredible Invention (and Where It Came From)
“The simplest description of emptiness in the Buddhist teachings is this sentence: This is because that is. A flower…
January 23, 2015 -
Tom Petty’s Tiny, Muppet-like Feet, and Other Observations from the Life of a (Sometimes Assholic) Music Journalist
I had the extraordinary good fortune to begin a career as a music journalist when I was barely 16.…
January 22, 2015 -
Reconsidering Elvis Presley
Somewhere in the sun-dulled suburbs clinging to Memphis, bleached yellow by the low, bright winter light and dotted by…
January 16, 2015 -
Lance Loud: The First Real Boy On The Sun
In 1973, I was unarguably a child, arguably pre-sexual, and extraordinarily curious about the world around me. I was…
January 12, 2015 -
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.
December 28, 2014
(via Self-Absorbed Boomer)
