a blog by Ian Kennedy
Whenever I want to describe my appreciation and admiration for the athletes in the NBA, I pull up this clip from a game last year.
Look how Luka steals falls down as he steals the ball and looks up and sees Kyrie. Luka passes it off to him with a casual, over-the-shoulder backhand and then Kyrie runs it down the court for what would seem to be a dunk but, sensing someone is behind him is a quick tip up so his teammate can slam the alley-oop.
Here it is again, in slow-motion.
My friend Rachel Tillman’s father worked on the Viking mission and she has devoted many hours collecting and archiving a large assortment of material related to the mission as the Founder and Executive Director of The Viking Mars Missions Education and Preservation Project.
Now the explorers are asking for your help to try and locate a family heirloom so I’m sending this out there, on the eve of the total eclipse, in hopes that someone will receive it and contact Rachel and re-unite her with this custom art piece.
OK this is a tough one, but since the internet reaches every possible corner now, I’m going to put this out there and pray, ask, the digital community to help me locate a family heirloom. This stain glass window was removed from our home when our house burned around 1986/7. It was stolen from storage and sold, but we don’t know where it ended up. This happened in Seattle Washington.
PLEASE SHARE THIS WIDELY
It was Commissioned by my Mother for my Father who worked on the Viking mission. We need this back in our family where it belongs. No questions asked. My guess is it may have changed hands a few times and current people may not even know it was removed without permission.
If you have ever seen this anywhere please PRIVATELY DM me.
Facebook Post
Thank you!
“This changing weather pattern is the result of climate change, and the sad reality is our climate is changing faster than our infrastructure can respond.”
Rohit Aggarwala, Department of Environmental Protection
Water streaming out between the tiles in the subway. Not too sure about the structural integrity of that column.
Brooklyn got over 6 inches of water over 12 hours. This bus drives through water so deep, it floods the aisle of the bus.
So much water on the subway tracks that a floating soda can is shorting out the third rail.
When enough rain drains on to the old electric cabling and water gets into the old cables, it shorts out and sets the insulation on fire.
Or just cause a lot of steam when the rain hits the steam pipes.
The Mayor asked citizens to unclog any drains to help drain the streets. Some places were so inundated with water that the drains turned into full on whirlpools
The water was so high in Central Park that the sea lions were able to swim out of their enclosure. They were quickly rounded up though.
New York City is starting to prepare for storm surges by constructing enormous sea walls around the perimeter of Manhattan. It gives me Game of Thrones vibes.
It’s ten feet high and set a bit inland; instead of hugging the waterline precisely, it approximately traces the outer rail of the FDR, perhaps 30 or 40 paces from the shoreline for much of its length. For those skeptical that a wall can stop the force of a coastal storm surge, there’s more to the gates than what’s aboveground: The foundations go deep and incorporate waterproof barriers to stop water from seeping past them from below. Their design life is specified at 100 years. They have enough structural strength to support an added three feet of height on top, should the worst projections of sea rise come into play. But it’s worth keeping in mind that they are meant to protect against one kind of storm but not another. They won’t be able to do anything about the immensely heavy rainstorms we’re now getting, including Ophelia, the storm we just had in late September. The gates weren’t closed for Ophelia, because that flooding came from above, not across.
Walling Up the East Side to Save It
I’m always looking for excuses to explore a new neighborhood so when I read about 239 Play, also known as “Dan’s Parent’s House,” I knew I had to check it out and visit City Island.
I took the ferry from 34th Street two stops to Ferry Point Park by Throgs Neck, just a 30 minute trip up the East River. At one point, we were directly under the flight path of the landing jets at LaGuardia Airport. I didn’t get a photo by the views of the Manhattan & Brooklyn skyline was pretty impressive as well.
I have an old beater mountain bike that I ride around on. I wouldn’t want to ride it too far but it’s fine for 30 – 50 mile exploration rides and the shocks are great for urban riding. After getting off the ferry (where I met someone who gave me some pointers on where to ride) I headed up past a Trump golf course and a couple of malls next to a freeway until I got into Pelham Bay Park which had some nice bike paths on the way towards City Island.
On the way back, I took a detour to check out Orchard Beach which was totally empty,
and then took a little back trail and stumbled across a scene that felt like rural Maine.
The journey is half the fun. I rode home instead of taking the ferry just to see how long it would take. Amazing to think all this greenery is only a 90 minute ride from midtown Manhattan.
John Battelle has a wonderful reminisce about what’s lost as information moves from analog to digital. He specifically writes about the college course catalog and what’s lost as these guides have moved online in Digital is Killing Serendipity. In the comments, I shared an experience I had with a printed catalog at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and found there was more I wanted to share about that experience so here we are.
In the ’90s, I toured Europe by bicycle and one evening rolled into Edinburgh, Scotland during a three week festival called Festival Fringe. I did not know it at the time (I had to ask why all the hostels were booked solid) but this is the largest performing arts festival in the world. For three weeks there are literally hundreds of performances of stand up comedy, theater, dance, musicals, opera, children’s plays, spoken word, circus acts, street performers and everything else.
What inspired me to share this story is that my entry into the Fringe performances was via their printed catalog which was found in stacks around town. The guide was the size of a small phone book and had hundreds of entries with details of the where/what but also a few lines written (usually by the performer or producer) to entice people to come. As someone who has spent many long days solo, on the road, I was gobsmacked at the richness of what was on offer and overwhelmed with choice.
I was in town for three days and I realized I had spend most of the morning of the first day just reading the guide. In some effort to give my days a rhythm and theme, I went to the index (which was also a wonder in its variety) and chose “Vincent Van Gogh.” Over the course of three days, I was going to see several plays about Vincent Van Gogh.
Being a lone traveler it was easier to meet people and during those three days I had the chance to fall in with a group of Australian performers that had an excess of energy and talent. They were in town for a performance but they wanted to do something else on the side. The idea was they wanted to put on a cabaret to curate and showcase all the talent that was in town. One of them had a friend that had a space with a stage that was empty during the day so all we needed to do was line up some talent and we could sell tickets at the door.
Each of us pulled in people we had met during our stay. One guy had his haircut by a barber that told hilarious jokes so he was invited, I invited a busker who was popular around town, others performed short bits from their plays or performances as teasers for their scheduled acts.
I forgot what we called this extemporaneous cabaret show and couldn’t even tell you where the venue was but I do remember having the best time because the whole thing was totally chaotic in a wonderfully theatrical way. The audience was part of it, we all wanted to make it work. The show must go on! I remember a bunch of burly rugby guys were in the front row and getting antsy because the barber got stage fright and the punchlines to his jokes were falling flat. One of our group ran on stage and explained that he was actually really funny and, perhaps, if anyone would like to come up on stage to get their hair trimmed for free, it might calm the barber’s nerves so he could deliver his jokes. It worked brilliantly, the rugby team calmed down and someone got a free haircut.
On another night, I was in a pub and the band didn’t show up or maybe the electricity went out. Anyway there was no music or entertainment. Somebody jumped into the fray and started reciting a sports commentary of an entire soccer match of as if it were live. I don’t know if he was reciting a famous match from memory or just making it up as he went but as he described the skillful blocks of the back line, pinpoint passes and near misses hitting the crossbar in such wonderful detail that the entire audience in the pub was right there with him, “oohing” an “ahhing” at each turn it up as we could all see in our collective mind exactly what he was describing. Somebody later borrowed a couple of spoons and made music for awhile and, of course, there was singing. It was a night to remember, one reminding me that humanity is always able to entertain itself.
There were so many things I experienced during those three days in Edinburgh and the printed catalog was my trusty guide the whole time. There were things happening all around me and I loved the fact that I could thumb through the listings and immediately find something interesting. There’s something about the printed magazine form factor, rolled up in your back pocket but immediately available with calendars, listings, reviews of places to eat, maps, and other pages designed to quickly tell you what you need to know. The heft of the pages made you appreciate the expanse of the festival. I’m sure there’s an app that puts this all into a screen on your phone with drop down menus but it’s just not the same.
Update: Looks like they are still printing the “programme” and you can even request one via mail. The festival also uploads all 350+ pages of each year’s guide into a PDF viewer so you can see what last year’s guide looks like and they even have an archive of all guides back to the festival I stumbled on in 1994. It’s nice to see they’ve recognized that print information design is sometimes better than online.
I’m reflecting on the eve of a trip up to Boston to see what will most likely be the last time I will see the original members (really just Bob Weir and Mickey Hart) of the Grateful Dead play together. I’ve been seeing this band off and on over the years and have been to almost 50 shows. It’s been quite I ride and I realized I never blogged about “my first show.”
It was my freshman year at Occidental College in Los Angeles. I took a road trip up North to San Francisco with four classmates in February of 1985. Mary was from the Bay Area and and offered to show us around. I was new to California so eager to explore Northern California.
We visited Berkeley and walked Telegraph Avenue hitting up book shops, Himalayan boutiques, record stores and cafes. I picked up an East Bay Express and saw that The Grateful Dead were playing a concert that evening in Oakland. I had no idea how to get tickets or anything so just went with the brilliant idea to ask the first person I saw in a tie-dyed t-shirt. It didn’t take long.
Random stroke of good luck because the guy we asked said he had two tickets and that he’d give them to us “at cost” because he was “burnt out from last night’s concert.” We bought the pair for $30 and Alison and I decided to go together to check it out while Mary went off to do something else.
The show was at the Kaiser Convention Center a mid-sized public auditorium built in 1914 near Lake Merritt in Oakland. I’m not sure how Alison and I got from Berkeley to the Kaiser, it might have been on the BART or maybe Mary dropped us off in her car. It’s hard to make out on the ticket but I think it says that the concert started at 8pm and remember wanting to get there before then.
The Grateful Dead were not that popular in 1985. This was before Touch of Grey, their big hit that brought in the stadium crowds. I remember the scene being very laid back and people being really friendly. We wandered in and walked right up to the front rail, just a few feet from the stage. I was surprised at how empty it was, people were milling around in loose groups, chatting with each other. The last concert I went to was Oingo Boingo at the Universal Amphitheater in LA and this was a totally different scene.
I’m not sure when the band finally came on stage but when they did, I remember everyone commenting on Jerry Garcia’s red t-shirt for the Chinese New Year. He had always worn black t-shirts and I thought it funny that this switch to red was such a momentous occasion.
I was not familiar with any of the songs but was entranced with the way the band members communicated with each other as they played. Being so close, you could see them nod and wink amongst themselves as they shifted from one part of a song to the next, a secret conversation for those in the know.
The music progressed though a number of songs that told stories about cowboys and drifters but it wasn’t until the set closer, China Cat Sunflower segued into I Know You Rider that I understood why this band was so compelling. The interplay that I saw earlier was more focused as the individual band members fused into a unit, completely in sync, driving each other, and those around us, like an unstoppable train trundling down a track.
During the set break, Alison and I got to know the people around us. Everyone was so nice and seemed genuinely happy to see us, two starry-eyed novices, just happy to be there, soaking it all in.
When the lights went down for the second set, the drummers started going right into a thumping rendition of Samson and Delilah and Bob Weir played a gospel preacher to his flock. Jerry slowed thing down with a beautiful rendition of his soulful tale of forgiveness, He’s Gone and towards the end of the song, the sound guy started messing with Jerry’s voice, throwing it back and forth from left to right and back again. Bobby then snarled his way into the old Howlin’ Wolf song Spoonful and I was again, entranced as to how skillfully the band was able to weave one song into the next and transform themselves with each transition. It was less a series of songs and more a multi-act play.
I still didn’t recognize any of the songs but when the band settled into the bubbly textures of Eyes of the World I finally latched on to a melody I recognized. My dad had a copy of Wake of the Flood that he played from time to time so I recognized this tune and its refrain.
Wake up to find out that you are the eyes of the world
Eyes of the World
The heart has it’s beaches, it’s homeland and thoughts of it’s own
Wake now, discover that you are the song that the morning brings
But the heart has it’s seasons, it’s evenings and songs of it’s own
It was during Eyes of the World that, feeling peckish, I took an apple out of my backpack and started to munch on it. I distinctly recall looking up at Jerry, noodling his way through one of his riffs, staring down his nose through his glasses like a wise old man, he just looked straight at me and broke into a grin.
Eyes blended into a Goin’ Down the Road, Feelin’ Bad which everyone sung together before the drummers took over and shifted over to a large marimba behind the stage and a long fretboard that I would later learn was called The Beam. The jungle sound of the marimba was fed through a echo delay and started swirling around the room again, this time more rapidly, not only left to right but also front and back to the point where you could almost see the notes swirling around the room. When Mickey Hart started to play the deep ripples of darkness from The Beam, all I could think of was the scenes of napalm dropped at dawn during Apocalypse Now. I later learned that this instrument was used on the movie’s soundtrack.
I’m pretty sure when the other members of the band came back out for “Space” I thought they were just taking a long time tuning up their instruments. The notes from China Doll emerged out of the fog and the musicians slowly resolved themselves back into a band. Brent threw himself at his keyboard like a man possessed during the next number, Baby What You Want Me To Do. Spit was flying and the Hammond B3 and its Leslie was in full, warbling bloom.
The second set finished with Sugar Magnolia and we got to watch Bobby make full use of the whammy bar on his guitar, jumping back and forth and flipping his hair back and lighting up the crowd and playing to his adoring fans.
Alison and I gathered our things and started to think about how to get back to Mary’s place in Marin. I had no concept of how mass transit was laid out in the Bay Area. Natives know how ridiculous I must have sounded when I turned to the friends we had made earlier and asked at 11:30 pm, “Which BART train can get us to Marin?”
Mass transit in the Bay Area is spotty, especially late at night. It’s non-existent if you need to get over to Marin, on the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge. BART doesn’t go there and this was before Uber & Lyft and taxis were out of the question. You need to hop two bridges to make it back to Marin, it’s at least a 40-minute drive.
In hindsight I realize how extremely lucky we were when our friend turned to us and replied, “There’s no BART to Marin but I’m driving over there, where do you need to go?” It was at that point that I realized we didn’t really get an address from Mary. All we could remember was that they lived in a development called “Enchanted Knoll” which sounded ridiculous as soon as I uttered it. This was the before cell phone times so there was no referencing Google Maps or even texting Mary to ask.
Lucky again, our friend replied matter-of-factually, “Oh yeah, I know where that is.” We hopped into the back of her car and at 1 am or so we were skipping up the driveway of Mary’s parent’s house.
Every time I look back on this concert and how the stars aligned to get me there (and back) that night, I learn something new that makes it even more special. Remember the guy in the tie-dyed t-shirt that sold us the tickets because he was burnt out from the night before? Turns out this was the first concert of the year. The last time the band played was on New Year’s Eve!
Postscript: Many years later I found out that Joseph Campbell was in the audience the night of my first show. Here’s how the famed professor of comparative mythology described what he experienced.
I had a marvelous experience two nights ago. I was invited to a rock concert. I’d never seen one. This was a big hall in Berkeley and the rock group were the Grateful Dead, whose name, by the way, is from the Egyptian Book of the Dead. And these are very sophisticated boys. This was news to me.
Rock Music has never seemed that interesting to me. It’s very simple and the beat is the same old thing. But when you see a room with 8000 young people for five hours going through it to the beat of these boys … The genius of these musicians- these three guitars and two wild drummers in the back… The central guitar, Bob Weir, just controls this crowd and when you see 8000 kids all going up in the air together… Listen, this is powerful stuff! And what is it? The first thing I thought of was the Dionysian festivals, of course. This energy and these terrific instruments with electric things that zoom in… This is more than music. It turns something on in here (the heart?). And what it turns on is life energy. This is Dionysus talking through these kids. Now I’ve seen similar manifestations, but nothing as innocent as what I saw with this bunch. This was sheer innocence. And when the great beam of light would go over the crowd you’ d see these marvelous young faces in sheer rapture- for five hours ! Packed together like sardines! Eight thousand of them! Then there was an opening in the back with a series of panel windows and you look out and there’s a whole bunch in another hall, dancing crazy. This is a wonderful fervent loss of self in the larger self of a homogeneous community. This is what it is all about!
It reminded me of Russian Easter. Down in New York we have a big Russian Cathedral. You go there on Russian Easter at midnight and you hear Kristos anesti! Christ is Risen! Christ is Risen! It’s almost as good as a rock concert. (laughter) It has the same kind of life feel. When I was in Mexico City at the Cathedral of the Virgin of Guadeloupe, there it was again. In India, in Puri, at the temple of the Jagannath- that means the lord of the Moving World- the same damn thing again. It doesn’t matter what the name of the God is, or whether its a rock group or a clergy. It’s somehow hitting that chord of realization of the unity of God in you all, that’s a terrific thing and it just blows the rest away.
Joseph Campbell and the Grateful Dead
At what point do you start calling yourself a New Yorker? What event triggers in your mind that you are now “from New York,” an active citizen of this city? In no certain order here are some of those things that I’ve gathered up when I asked people this question. I am not a New Yorker yet, but know what it means to be one.
I will add to this list as I think of things. Leave a note below in the comments if you have something to add.
All distances are defined in blocks and avenues. You know that it takes approximately 20 minutes to walk 20 blocks uptown or downtown.
You’ve taken a “cash only” taxi ride.
You know that when a subway pulls up and the car in front of you is empty, it means the heat’s on in the summer or someone’s puked on the floor.
You’ve won at Subwaydle.
You know where you need to get on a train so, when you arrive at your destination, you’re right at the exit you need.
No one calls it Avenue of the Americas – it’s Sixth. Never North or South, just Uptown and Downtown. Oh, and if you pronounce “Houston” like the Texas city, you’re a dead giveaway for an out-of-towner.
You secretly dread the sudden appearance of Showtime on your subway ride.
You grumble at slow-walking tourists on the sidewalk and avoid Times Square at all costs.
The Don’t Walk light is strictly optional.
. . . but be sure to look both ways before crossing the street, especially on a one-way, gotta watch out for those bikes. (@albertcox – world traveler)
You feel totally fine spending a weekend at home being cozy because, yes, NYC has tons of things to do, but it’s also home and you don’t need to DO all the things to know that you could if you wanted to. (thanks Clarice Meadows!)
You’ve never been to the Statue of Liberty. You know it’s there, it’ll always be there.
On a hot summer day, the local neighborhood hydrant cool down is only a phone call away. (thx Oliver Blank!)
You’ve been to Katz’s but know a better place to get a pastrami sandwich.
You not only have your local go-to pizza joint, you know a decent place within 20 blocks of any place you may be in your borough.
You have a local fruit stand guy/bodega/barista/bartender that knows you by name and asks where you’ve been if you go away for a few weeks.
You know the real Chinatown is in Queens.
You have a favorite dinner or drinks spot that closed and, forever after, you mentally pour one out when you pass by the new place that’s taken over. (thanks Clarice Meadows!)
You’ve complained to, and reached a compromise with, your neighbor.
Your ears perk up whenever you overhear of a place with in-apartment washer & dryer.
You realize that the cluster of blocks where you live is your small village linked together to other small villages in this city of millions.
You’ve had a public argument with someone on the street.
To be a NYer is to be yourself, and so to feel ownership everywhere. True New Yorkers don’t wait on line for anything. Especially brunch. (@moorehn)
While out walking on errands, you run into at least two people you know.
You know at least fifteen yiddish slang words.
You understand, on a deeper level, the inside jokes in the New Yorker.
You’ve cried on the subway.
You stop saying, “I’m from the Bay Area” or “I’m half-Japanese.” You just say, “I’m a New Yorker.”
The first time I heard David Lindley was when he came out on stage as the warm up act for Santana and The Grateful Dead in the Sierra foothills in California. It was a hot August day and it was still early afternoon so the sun was blazing down on the crowd. We had just watched an airshow above our heads with prop planes tearing up the skies above us so everyone’s face was hot and necks were sore. David came out on stage in a polyester body suit and went into a version of Twist and Shout (2nd track on the player below) that sounded like nothing I’d ever heard before.
He was ripping it up and within minutes started sweating so much that his long hair immediately grew straggly and stuck to his face. I was worried he would spontaneously combust in the heat but Lindley and the band soldiered on and launched into fast ska version of Papa Was A Rolling Stone (5th track) that immediately got everyone on their feet. He jumped through several genres and also showed off his mastery of the slide guitar on Mercury Blues (10th track)
I saw him again in Tokyo, many years later, as he toured with Ry Cooder and both their kids. I had heard that Lindley was playing the World Music scene with Henry Kaiser, capturing field recordings in Madagascar for A World Out of Time. When he came to Tokyo, Lindley and Cooder brought all sorts of instruments I had never heard before, explaining each before playing them. They played in a small theater in Gotanda and I felt lucky to see them.
The final time I saw Lindley was at the invitation of a friend (thanks Rick!) who said he’d be playing at a birthday party in the Berkeley hills. As when I saw him in Tokyo, he was chatting up the crowd and explaining each of the instruments he had with him, their origins and he learned about them and where he got the one he was holding before us. Lindley was a musicologist (his bushy mutton chops accentuated his professorial air) but he played each of his instruments with a passion and soul that would make the instrument, designed for another type of music, sound new.
Listen below to David play the old blues tune Minglewood Blues on a Middle-Eastern Oud. Playing an old American folk tune on an ancient instrument from Northern Africa connects the two cultures in a weird way that makes you rethink all your preconceptions of the song and rediscover its story in a new light. Then you look up and see the guy playing for you is in a Hawaiian shirt and is sporting yellow patent-leather loafers and you smile at the wonderfully diverse world around us that makes it all work.
A new hotel going up near Times Square is proposing putting one of those vertical-drop rides on the top of the building.
In the request, Extell suggests that vertical-drop rides will pull in tourists as well as “a few jaded New Yorkers,” and pitches it as the next level for hoteliers who “must think flexibly in order to survive.”
Skyscrapers, Now With More Terror
Fun or Folly? Would you ride it?
