Okay this is SO cool. This one guy, Steve Duncan, is an expert at exploring the “Undercity” of New York City and he has a documentary filmmaker come with him to record it all. He goes into the subways to find an abandoned station, in sewers and even in rail road tunnels to talk to some of the Tunnel People who live there. This video is seriously awesome, completely suspenseful and it is definitely worth watching all 25 minutes. Enjoy!
So as we know, college is but a brief sojourn in our lives. As the elders among us graduate and move on, many will find themselves in the big cities: Chicago, Boston, Washington D.C., San Francisco, etc. But there’s one particular neighborhood in New York City that seems to attract a disproportionately high number of college grads. Its Park Slope, Brooklyn - land of beautiful brownstones, overpriced fair trade coffee, plaid shirts, and 3 AM yoga classes.
I found this hilarious, unconventional map that tracks all the stickers on the back of the cars parked in Park Slope. Its proof that once one graduates and moves to a hip urban neighborhood, the glorious days of college are still on the mind and in the windows of the cars. Glad to see TRINITY representing in the top left corner.
For any mill kids in the city
I highly recommend checking out The Highline, a recently opened park that was built on top of an old raised railroad track that cut through Chelsea and the Meatpacking district. The park has mainly small plants and wild grass to recreate the overworn feeling of the space. Between the plants, the old tracks occassionally appear, reminding you where you are. Early reviews say the space is amazing, the views are incredible and just the experience is totally surreal. Pictures below, check out their website here.
photos courtesy of the NYTimes
Digital Love… or something like it
New York based artist Kacie Kinzer’s public works of art are a fun concept that pushes surrounding observers to question how they interact with the inhabitants of urban space… in her case, it’s how they interact with robots.
Her project, Tweenbot, involves placing a 12 inch cardboard robot in public spaces and seeing how the people around interact with it. The tweenbot only moves in straight lines so it depends on people passing by to reorient it. While she originally assumed suspicion, negligence or mischief would quickly destroy the idea, she was surprised by the level of support and interaction her robot received.
The first task, getting the robot from the Northeast corner of Washington Park to the Southwest corner actually took 42 minutes with the help of 29 unknowing participants. Here’s a map of the Tweenbot’s journey.
here’s a short youtube video that Kinzer recorded as she observed her project’s path from afar
As we often get far too comfortable in our surroundings, i think its refreshing to a lighthearted idea ask us to step out of our comfort zone and show a little compassion with no real reward.
