i don't hate the interior space, but yeah the exterior is completely out of context. you have to go too far to make various transit connections, but there's not a lot they could have done about that. mostly i resent that it's just a nice mall that you *have* to walk through and that it cost $4 billion
tbf it's not as bad as penn station
― mookieproof, Friday, 10 May 2019 21:24 (five years ago) link
morbs, you gotta fight for life up in this dumb motherfucking city! keep hunting!
― Fuck the NRA (ulysses), Friday, 10 May 2019 21:37 (five years ago) link
also mookie otm
― Fuck the NRA (ulysses), Friday, 10 May 2019 21:39 (five years ago) link
the slanting ribs of the Oculus which pretty much have to be a direct quote of the famous shafts of light that used to fall in Grand Central before the buildings on either side blocked it out
I like that idea but I don’t think it was intentional, given the architect.
― Trϵϵship, Friday, 10 May 2019 21:40 (five years ago) link
Also for some reason Manhattan doesn’t feel like the right environment to encounter an “alien” or Kubrickian structure. I have to meditate on why I feel that way.
― Trϵϵship, Friday, 10 May 2019 21:41 (five years ago) link
mostly because i gotta get to fucking work!
― Fuck the NRA (ulysses), Friday, 10 May 2019 21:43 (five years ago) link
it'd be cool if the atrium was either not a mall or was a totally functionless space adjacent to the mall, for just going and breathing and looking at the light. a secular church, idk. as it is, it feels so much like the mall that it is that the things that are special/fancy or potentially-breathatking fall into the background (for me) - just feels like i'm in a mall.
― Good morning, how are you, I'm (Doctor Casino), Friday, 10 May 2019 21:49 (five years ago) link
the High Line is really nice early in the morning before it fills up with tourists
― Dan S, Friday, 10 May 2019 21:52 (five years ago) link
agreed w Treeship, I really do like the building but it's a square peg, it flirts with overreach the conservative abeyance of which for better or worse made the city look and feel like the city
― d'ILM for Murder (Hadrian VIII), Friday, 10 May 2019 21:54 (five years ago) link
it doesn't feel like "new york" but whatever that's a lost cause I guess
― d'ILM for Murder (Hadrian VIII), Friday, 10 May 2019 21:55 (five years ago) link
it's not even a USEFUL mall, it's a fucking apple store and high fashion storefronts. no arcade! NO ARCADE!?!?!?
― Fuck the NRA (ulysses), Friday, 10 May 2019 21:56 (five years ago) link
I don’t get why the mega powerful developers seem to think that New York needs more upscale malls. Doesn’t Hudson Yards have a mall too? Don’t they know that malls never did well in the city even when the rest of the country loved them?
― o. nate, Friday, 10 May 2019 22:20 (five years ago) link
Does anyone who really lives in ny actually go to these malls to buy things? Or even to brick and mortar retail stores regularly? All this stuff is for tourists.
― Yerac, Friday, 10 May 2019 22:21 (five years ago) link
Like, how many times a year does one really need to go to uniqlo (it's 2 for me). I guess maybe it's a cheap pastime for all the NYU students.
― Yerac, Friday, 10 May 2019 22:24 (five years ago) link
"This place is the worst" / "This place is better than all other places"
being a NYer is the ability to hold these two thoughts simultaneously, ime
― One Eye Open
this kind of thinking is literally how certain forms of clinical depression work
― Burt Bacharach's Bees (rushomancy), Saturday, 11 May 2019 00:16 (five years ago) link
I lived in NYC from '99-'11 in every borough save SI. Longest run was in Bushwick but my fondest memories are from the South Bronx in 2004. Got robbed by kids for groceries and accosted by cops thinking I was lost/buying drugs but it was super cheap (900/month for a 1200sf loft) and pretty convenient via the 4/5/6. My spot was 112th and Liberty (near Bruckner). I don't even want to look up what it's like now.
― Yelploaf, Saturday, 11 May 2019 00:27 (five years ago) link
It's the repertory movie theaters and the restaurants that are keeping me here
― Josefa, Saturday, 11 May 2019 01:13 (five years ago) link
Still Sh1tty, nothing to worry about
― calstars, Saturday, 11 May 2019 01:29 (five years ago) link
I have fantasized about living in New York since college years ago, but every time I get down to the details it seems like too much and I lose interest. It's great to visit though
I love my goddaughter and her parents. They live in a fantastic apartment on one of the High Line blocks in West Chelsea, but it still feels kind of industrial to me - no trees and lots of galleries and storage businesses. My friends who have apartments on Sutton Place on the East River are living in the best version of NY imo
― Dan S, Saturday, 11 May 2019 01:31 (five years ago) link
chose terrible shops to go inside it not including the Cole Haan shoe store who's interior signage and window displays are produced very well considering the extremely tight turnaround given no doubt due to an extremely capable team of production artists with excellent mechanical skills and print knowledge.
― dan selzer, Saturday, 11 May 2019 04:29 (five years ago) link
I feel no need to kvetch about present-day NY anymore. I’m well through the several stages of grief. But the NY I started visiting in ‘75, age 11, and then throughout the late seventies into the eighties, was an indescribable metropolis beyond dreams. NY is definitely not dead now, far from it, but it’s certainly more prosaic, more commonplace, cleaner (in more ways than one), and tamer... not just a matter of degrees, but really a profound qualitative difference; a separate ontological plane dare I say.
― never have i been a blue calm sea (collardio gelatinous), Saturday, 11 May 2019 05:08 (five years ago) link
lol dan
― Lil' Brexit (Tracer Hand), Saturday, 11 May 2019 09:03 (five years ago) link
Being real, if this was 1980 there is a zero percent chance I would live in Williamsburg and maybe a 10% chance I’d lcie in the city at all.
― Trϵϵship, Saturday, 11 May 2019 15:40 (five years ago) link
Which makes me part of the problem.
I felt Williamsburg was slightly more exciting when I’d visit in 2009/2010 but that could have just been youth.
― Trϵϵship, Saturday, 11 May 2019 15:41 (five years ago) link
I was apologizing for living in williamsburg back in 2003. I should've saved a lot of them up.
― Yerac, Saturday, 11 May 2019 15:46 (five years ago) link
― Trϵϵship, Saturday, May 11, 2019 8:41 AM (five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
nah it's practically unrecognizable from what it was then
― american bradass (BradNelson), Saturday, 11 May 2019 15:48 (five years ago) link
feels like an extension of manhattan now
― american bradass (BradNelson), Saturday, 11 May 2019 15:49 (five years ago) link
you don't have to go toooo far out of the bedford/driggs stop bubble to get back to something that looks not too different than it has for a long time.
― dan selzer, Saturday, 11 May 2019 17:14 (five years ago) link
I live off grand
― Trϵϵship, Saturday, 11 May 2019 17:15 (five years ago) link
There are good bars around. I like greenpoint a lot too and its close—my brother lives over there
― dan selzer, Saturday, May 11, 2019 10:14 AM (eleven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
this is also true enough!
― american bradass (BradNelson), Saturday, 11 May 2019 17:26 (five years ago) link
i miss Domsey's :(
― Lil' Brexit (Tracer Hand), Saturday, 11 May 2019 18:05 (five years ago) link
i got mugged coming back from Galapagos/90s
― Lil' Brexit (Tracer Hand), Saturday, 11 May 2019 18:06 (five years ago) link
an in-law lives in that Kushner building on Kent and there is no deeper pit in hell. apart from what they're planning to go right next to it, which looks literally like it belongs in Dubai. that building on Kent isn't even nice. yes there's a gym etc but the reception area, hallways, all the unavoidable PUBLIC SPACE of even a place like that has the same shitty lack of attention that typifies every other public place in New York. the corridors feel like JFK.
― Lil' Brexit (Tracer Hand), Saturday, 11 May 2019 18:18 (five years ago) link
Galapagos was cool
― calstars, Saturday, 11 May 2019 18:21 (five years ago) link
Now I'm reminiscing about Williamsburg. Anyone remember Kokie's. That must now be an Amazon locker.
― Yelploaf, Saturday, 11 May 2019 23:40 (five years ago) link
Still the Levee I think.
― dan selzer, Sunday, 12 May 2019 00:30 (five years ago) link
https://youtu.be/uuxE5ZA4WPM
― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Sunday, 12 May 2019 01:10 (five years ago) link
I guess you're right. Time Warner Center is another one. I was there today. For all the local character of the place, you could be in LA or Dubai or anywhere. It's probably reassuring to the rich tourists who just want to have all the high-end shops collected in one convenient place.
― o. nate, Sunday, 12 May 2019 01:50 (five years ago) link
I went to the Metropolitan Club in NY for dinner with friends a few weeks ago, after a lecture on Hoyle and a miniature book exhibition at The Grolier Club (a truly fantastic place). it was a very "old NY" experience, the rooms at both locations were incredibly evocative and the food was really good. I don't have any illusions about who would belong in places like this (not me), but I kept thinking I wouldn't have any experiences like these anywhere else in the world
― Dan S, Sunday, 12 May 2019 02:19 (five years ago) link
One thing I learned when I briefly lived in New York is that the places in New York that, when I was a tourist, I rigorously avoided as being "for tourists only" are, in fact, filled with New Yorkers who were less uptight than I was.
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Sunday, 12 May 2019 02:20 (five years ago) link
i also miss galapagos. interviewed there once!
― Fuck the NRA (ulysses), Sunday, 12 May 2019 12:23 (five years ago) link
Lol Kokie’s. I’ve read about it.
― Trϵϵship, Sunday, 12 May 2019 12:59 (five years ago) link
The Levee is, or was, functionally the same as Kokie's though Kokie's was clearer in its intent. They sold only the finest laxatives that helped one talk out of turn.
― Yelploaf, Sunday, 12 May 2019 16:44 (five years ago) link
Having never lived in nyc proper but been a frequent visitor over the last 20 years, i've definitely noticed a change over the years in the way people I know there (older and younger, different walks of life) talk about the city and their relationship to it... a gradual transition from a sort of fun-cynical "this city is fucked up and everything is hard and all the good stuff is gone and i love it" to depressed-cynical "this city is fucked up and everything is hard and all the good stuff is gone and i wish more than anything that i could leave but i am stuck here".
Last time I was there it was almost surreal, everyone I spent time with, inevitably at some point they would circle around to the universal topic of how badly they wanted to leave, "we're thinking about in the next year or so", etc... wistfully telling stories of people they know who've left in the same way folks talk about survivors of risky operations: "she's doing FINE now, I just talked to her the other day and she says she's NEVER FELT BETTER, honestly!" Definitely some kind of slow psychic change that has not been super fun to observe from a distance.
― One Eye Open, Sunday, 12 May 2019 17:15 (five years ago) link
Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hardlive in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft
― nonsense upon stilts (Sanpaku), Sunday, 12 May 2019 18:27 (five years ago) link
Last time I went to NYC was 2005. Stayed with my sister who was on a business trip at some fancy hotel near Grand Central, visited friends in Astoria & Park Slope, saw Jonathan Richman play (!) somewhere in Williamsburg. W’burg felt measurably busier than when I was last there in 2002, but everything still seemed cool and New Yorky as a tourist might want to experience it. Has much changed since then?
― Chuck_Tatum, Sunday, 12 May 2019 18:48 (five years ago) link
I worked on Bedford for about 3 years in the mid 2000s. You could still walk around normally to grab lunch, find quiet moments, there would be maybe a smattering of japanese street photographers. Now it's a throng of euro/asian tourists, recent transplants, a Chase, Whole Foods, Sephora, Apple Store all in a row. Oddly enough Sea and Earwax are still around.
― Yerac, Sunday, 12 May 2019 19:56 (five years ago) link
I still have a velvet suit jacket I bought new off the rack at Domsey's. It's been a while.
― There's more Italy than necessary. (in orbit), Monday, 13 May 2019 14:26 (five years ago) link
they used to have racks of old tuxedo jackets, pants, etc! i was an idiot for not buying that stuff. oh wait, not an idiot just broke.
― Lil' Brexit (Tracer Hand), Monday, 13 May 2019 14:54 (five years ago) link