“There’s another kind of activity that we call ‘People just standing there, alone.’ Life swirls about them, and they let it all pass by. They just ... stand there.” From The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces, by William H. Whyte.
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new york
Cycling seems more dangerous, more hassle-filled, and generally more aggro than when I moved here. Why? Maybe it’s me. I moved to Berkeley recently, and I’m pretty close to having a lawn that I can tell kids to get off of. Maybe it’s that the city has changed a lot. There are more cyclists, more [...]
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New York’s blizzard of 1977 makes a riveting cameo appearance in “El Super,” an indie (before the term was formalized) film about the hard adjustments that immigrants make in coming to New York. The movie is great for many reasons, but the blizzard steals a few scenes as the main character — a Cuban super — walks around town. [...]
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Even though I’m generally a West Coast kind of guy, I devour books about New York — its chaotic beginnings as a lawless, crazy quilt of neighborhoods and gangs; its transformation into a massive modern city; the peculiar dynamics of its organic growth. If New York didn’t destroy me everytime I visit, I think I’d probably live there. [...]
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This is an incredible mosaic in the bathroom of the New Museum of Contemporary art in New York. It is also EASILY the most impressive thing in the whole museum. New York was filled with good times, as usual, but a couple of the things that totally blew my mind (and that are link-friendly) were [...]
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Thanksgiving 2006 came and went, attended by friends, family and the customary dramas. An East Coast / West Coast feud flared up in the week before the holiday. Gabriel (East) sent what some in the West perceived as “a salvo across the bow” in the form of a PowerPoint presentation (a slide of which is [...]
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“People don’t know where they are anymore, “ [the writer Will Self] said, adding: “In the post-industrial age, [walking] is the only form of real exploration left. Anyone can go and see the Ituri pygmy, but how many people have walked all the way from the airport to the city?” This is from A Literary Visitor [...]
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The NYT just rolled out a beta of something they’re calling MyTimes. As a daily reader of both the print and online editions, I’m intrigued by new developments and ideas at the NYT, and I’ve been pleased with their recent site redesign. MyTimes, however, strikes me as somewhat misguided. First off, the name MyTimes sounds [...]
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So it seems I’m a couple of years late to this particular artist, but some recent conversation on the Book Arts list turned me on to Swoon, a NYC street artist. Her medium is the cutout — from paper, wood, linoleum — and she attaches these to walls all over NYC. The paper ones are the most amazing to [...]
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A few months ago, the NYT Sunday magazine ran a profile of architect Daniel Libeskind and his Tribeca loft. (Incidentally, check out that link to his website; there’s some pretty hot flouting of web conventions. For example, when you mouse over a link, almost everything on the screen disappears, except a few stray words and [...]
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My name is Doug LeMoine. I work both on, and for, the Internet. You can find more about me in the 
