There are all sorts of reasons why people become New York City police officers. Tradition. Family ties. The pension. Antonio Bolfo’s reasoning was simple.“I was bored,” he said.It was 2006, and Mr. Bolfo – a born-and-bred New Yorker with a degree from the Rhode Island School of Design – was an animator working on PlayStation games like Guitar Hero and Amplitude. Still, he was unfulfilled. The attack on the World Trade Center had gotten him thinking about law enforcement.“I wanted street-level experience, so I opted to be a cop,” he said recently. “I didn’t want to just ride a desk all day in the F.B.I. right off the bat. It was a really idealistic time in my life. I really thought I could make a ... Continue reading →

Marilynn K. Yee/The New York TimesThe groundhogs at the Museum of Natural History have never made an incorrect prediction about the weather.At 7:08 a.m. on Thursday, the sun rose over Manhattan. The groundhog in the American Museum of Natural History stood erect beside his burrow and gazed unblinking into the flat light. A faint shadow appeared at his feet but he did not retreat.At the burrow’s entrance, his partner peered out and beheld the dimly lit corridor of the Hall of North American Mammals.This may not sound like much of an achievement, let alone a useful tool for meteorological prognostication. But for the stuffed groundhogs at the museum, it is a very big deal. They had been in a sort of forced hibernation behind a ... Continue reading →

Man Selling Chihuahuas On NYC Subway by MY SMALL STORY “Valentines Day is right around the corner.” On a crowded, rush hour #4 train, a man appeared with a bag of “teacup” chihuahuas. “Puppies for sale!” Only in New York. Like this:Be the first to like this post. Posted on February 1, 2012 at 1:55 am in Animals, Chihuahua, Man Selling Chihuahuas On NYC #4 train, Man Selling Chihuahuas On NYC Subway, MTA Subway, Pets | RSS feed | Respond | Trackback URL Continue reading →

Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesCentral Park and Alaska have more in common than polar bears.Here’s an even stranger footnote to the history-is-stranger-than-satire factoid we noted Thursday regarding an Alaskan lawmaker’s modest proposal to have the federal government take over Central Park, which turns out to have been suggested with a straight face back in the dismal ’70s.This very same rhetorical exchange — comparing the relative demerits of big-government intervention in the Manhattan and Alaskan wildernesses — took place on a political stage in 1976.The occasion was a debate between the candidates for the United States Senate seat from New York: the eloquent, erudite and occasionally pompous Democrat, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and the eloquent, erudite, and occasionally pompous Republican incumbent, James L. Buckley. The two candidates ... Continue reading →

Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesRecords were apparently information storage devices popular in the 20th century.One of the more primitive features, historians and old people will recall, of the era before recorded music was a commodity that could be summoned on command from a tap like water or electricity, was this: not only was music physically engraved onto physical objects (made of plastic, though it might as well have been stone or walrus tusk), but these physical objects could be acquired only from specific physical locations — yard sales, mail-order houses or, more usually, those boxy fluorescent-lit places smelling of shrink-wrap and cardboard dust known as record stores.Though this system of goods delivery was laughably inefficient — “Let me get this straight: you’d travel to ... Continue reading →

Bleecker Bob's is one of the oldest record stores in New York City. But Bob's is going down, due to a rent hike or perhaps just bad business (even while most vinyl LP stores are thriving). I walked into Bob's the other morning and asked him straight up, "Is a Starbucks moving in here?" He replied "Maybe," not "absolutely not!" The manager of Cafe Reggio confirms the Starbucks takeover of Bob's space, adding "Starbucks will take 30% of our business. All the NYU kids want their mocha frappuccino." Continue reading →

Last week we presented 10 Web Design Trends For 2009, our review of the most promising developments and techniques in web design that may become big in 2009. In the first part we covered embossing letters (“letterpress”), rich user interfaces, PNG transparency, big typography, carousels and media blocks. This post is the second part of our review. It presents design trends for 2009 in terms of layouts, visual approaches and design elements. Please notice that this post showcases trends and developments that were extensively covered in our previous articles (e.g. handwriting, retro and vintage etc.) and therefore weren’t covered in this post (they are all linked in the overview, so feel free to explore these single posts as well). Did you miss any recent development ... Continue reading →

Alaska: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, via Reutrers; Central Park: Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesKnow your native species: the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska (left) and Central Park in New York City (right).In the interest of preserving an already-compromised sliver of urban wilderness, state legislators are asking the federal government to take over Central Park.State legislators in Alaska, that is.Annoyed with outsiders’ meddling with the right to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Representative Kyle Johansen, Republican of Ketchikan, introduced a resolution in Juneau on Monday that gives the states-rights-depriving Eastern elites a taste of their own medicine.It urges the feds to “declare Central Park to be a wilderness area and to prohibit any further improvement or development of Central Park unless ... Continue reading →

Hulton Archive/Getty ImagesAuthentic punk streetwear: Marky Ramone, second from right, modeling his jacket back in the day, with, from left, Johnny, Joey and Dee Dee.Updated, 5:55 p.m. | The online auction advertised a chance to own — and wear — a precious piece of the city’s punk-rock history: the black leather jacket worn onstage by the drummer Marky Ramone during the band’s gabba-gabba heyday from 1978 to 1983. Bidding started at $1,000 and by Tuesday afternoon had reached $3,146.But there’s a problem: Marky Ramone says that the jacket is not his.“I know nothing about it,” he posted on Facebook Monday. “It’s a fake. Yes, I had more than one coat. But this is not mine.”Mr. Ramone, who was on tour at a food fair in ... Continue reading →

January 24, 2012, 12:40 pmPunk-Rock History? Or Just a Leather Jacket? By AIDAN GARDINERHulton Archive/Getty ImagesAuthentic punk streetwear: Marky Ramone, second from right, modeling his jacket back in the day, with, from left, Johnny, Joey and Dee Dee.Updated, 3:45 p.m. | The online auction advertised a chance to own — and wear — a precious piece of the city’s punk-rock history: the black leather jacket worn onstage by the drummer Marky Ramone during the band’s gabba-gabba heyday from 1978 to 1983. Bidding started at $1,000 and by Tuesday afternoon had reached $3,146.But there’s a problem: Marky Ramone says that the jacket is not his.“I know nothing about it,” he posted on Facebook Monday. “It’s a fake. Yes, I had more than one coat. But this ... Continue reading →