City Living

After last month's construction accident at the Greenwich Lane site in the Village, in which a piece of flying plywood killed a young woman named Tina Nguyen who was just walking by, the Wall Street Journal investigated construction injuries to passersby (not construction workers). Their analysis of Department of Buildings data shows that on average one passerby per month is injured at a New York City construction site. According to the paper, "From 2008 through 2014, there were 96 construction accidents involving pedestrians and other passersby in New York City, resulting in 155 injuries. More than three-quarters of the accidents took place in Manhattan."
More details ahead

City Living

New Yorker Spotlight: Getting the Scoop with Jennie Dundas of Brooklyn’s Blue Marble Ice Cream

Blue Marble co-founders Alexis Gallivan (L) and Jennie Dundas (R) in one of their scoop shops, via Blue Marble

April 17, 2015

New Yorker Spotlight: Getting the Scoop with Jennie Dundas of Brooklyn’s Blue Marble Ice Cream

Spring may have taken its time this year, but the sun is shining, the trees are finally starting to bloom, and this means one thing–it's officially ice cream season. If you're looking for the perfect local scoop, which also happens to be consciously sourced and organic, then you might just stop by Blue Marble Ice Cream's Cobble Hill or Prospect Heights shops or pick up one of their pints on your next grocery store trip. Blue Marble Ice Cream was co-founded in 2007 by former roommates turned entrepreneurs Jennie Dundas and Alexis Gallivan. For Jennie and Alexis, who originally connected on Craiglist, a love of ice cream inspired them to open a scoop shop. And while neither had a business background, they were determined and opened up in Brooklyn. Fast forward several years, and Blue Marble is ready to expand nationwide after being picked up by a number of major supermarket chains. On a local scale, they're part of a wave of businesses helping to transform Industry City in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, something of which the company is extremely proud. We recently spoke with Jennie to get the scoop on Blue Marble's founding, its headquarters in Industry City, and of course, to find out why ice cream is everyone's favorite warm-weather (or year-round!) treat.
Read our interview with Jennie here

Where Did NYC’s Nickname ‘Gotham’ Come From?

Washington Irving (L) and the cover of Salmagundi (R)

April 17, 2015

Where Did NYC’s Nickname ‘Gotham’ Come From?

No, the answer isn't from "Batman." Creators of the comic book series were originally going to name its location Civic City, Capital City, or Coast City, but then flipped through a New York City phonebook and found Gotham Jewelers, lending inspiration to the now-famous Gotham City. But from where did this jewelry store get its name? The answer dates back to an 1807 issue of Washington Irving's satirical periodical Salmagundi which lampooned New York culture and politics.
Find out the rest of the story here

April 14, 2015

This Map Lets You Explore NYC’s 592,130 Street Trees by Species and Trunk Thickness

If you feel like your allergies go into overdrive when you're in the city, don’t be so quick to blame it on all the dust and must being kicked up by passing cars. As it turns out, New York’s flora is far more diverse and abundant than you’d suspect. Jill Hubley, a Brooklyn web developer, took data from the 2005-2006 Street Tree Census and found that there are about 592,130 trees on public streets alone. But beyond pinpointing where each street tree sits, Hubley's map also identifies a tree's species and trunk thickness. What emerges from her study is a kaleidoscope of colors and a fascinating look at the city's biodiversity.
Find out more here

How Would a Minimum Wage Hike Change the Way New Yorkers Spend Money?

Produce Department via photopin (license)

April 14, 2015

How Would a Minimum Wage Hike Change the Way New Yorkers Spend Money?

Today, the Daily News reports that increasing the minimum wage to $15/hour would add $10 billion annually to city paychecks and increase earnings for almost 1.5 million people, according to an analysis by City Comptroller Scott Stringer. Says the paper, "The typical family getting the boost would spend $1,100 to $1,800 more a year on housing, and up to $600 on groceries, $400 on entertainment, and $300 eating out, Stringer predicted." How would this increase in spending compare to a given family's financial patterns before the minimum wage hike? The Washington Post has used newly released data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics to analyze where the poor and rich spend really spend their money. Looking at four categories (housing, transportation, food, and pensions/life insurance) and three classes (low, middle, and high), the results are mainly as to be expected. The rich spend more all around, but as a percentage of their total income, they spend less; the middle class spends the most on transportation; and basically all Americans have similar spending patterns when it comes to groceries. But the big difference between the upper and lower classes is saving. "For every dollar they spend at the grocery store, the poorest households save 12 cents, while the wealthy sock away $3.07 in pensions and life insurance."
What does this mean? See the infographics here

April 10, 2015

New Yorker Spotlight: Caroline Weaver Is Making Pencils Cool Again with Her New LES Pencil Shop

In an era where typing trumps writing by hand, it might come as surprise to learn of a one-month-old store on the Lower East Side devoted to all things pencil. Then again, perhaps the digital age has primed all of us for a return to the simplest writing implement of them all, which is exactly what owner Caroline Weaver hopes will happen with her store, CW Pencil Enterprise. Caroline opened the store mere weeks ago in March, following the launch of an online boutique back in October 2014. While the move from screen to storefront may seem fast, Caroline's decision was in response to stellar online sales. Her store provides a tactile shopping experience, but more than that, she wants to share her passion for pencils with New Yorkers. Customers will be delighted by Caroline's knowledge of pencil history as well as her understanding and appreciation that pencils are at the beginning of many great achievements. We recently stopped by the store to ask Caroline some sharp questions, and just like the pencils she carries, her answers were on point.
Read our interview with Caroline here

High Rents Lead Newlyweds to Seek Roommates

Image via Ramsey Beyer on flickr

April 10, 2015

High Rents Lead Newlyweds to Seek Roommates

For most New Yorkers, moving to the big apple means finding a roommate. And while switching from the dorms to another no-privacy situation isn't ideal, we usually slog through it because we tell ourselves it's only temporary. For many people, the light at the end of the tunnel is marriage–finally settling down and shacking up–but a story today in the New York Times takes a look at the increasing trend of newly married people living with roommates thanks to the city's ever-rising rents.
More on the trend here

Los Angeles Has Designed the Perfect Parking Sign–Can NYC Take Note?

Images courtesy of Parkwhiz (L) and LA Mayor’s Office (R)

April 7, 2015

Los Angeles Has Designed the Perfect Parking Sign–Can NYC Take Note?

If you own a car in New York, you know that parking can be a downright nightmare. Finding a spot is like hunting for a needle in a haystack, and when you do find one, it's hard not to approach it with trepidation: Why is this spot empty? New York City parking signs typically run the gamut of perplexing to misleading at best, requiring a Rosetta Stone and a prayer to keep a parking ticket from happening. But there's a beacon of hope shooting through all of that confusion in the form of well-designed signage.
MOre on the new signs here

Image: Timothy Krause via flickr

April 6, 2015

Rich People Sleep More, Researchers Say

Money may not buy happiness, but it does get you more sleep according to a new study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Researchers at the CDC examined results from the 2013 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) and found that there is indeed a positive correlation between dollars and zzzs earned.
FInd out more here

City Living

Can a Thai Restaurant Convince New York Hipsters to Move to Detroit?

Can a Detroit Thai restaurant's New York City marketing campaign convince East Coast hipsters to move to the Motor City? That's what Philip Kafka of Prince Media Co., the boutique billboard company behind the campaign, is hoping. Business Insider reports that New York-based Kafka is a partner in a forthcoming Thai restaurant in Detroit's Corktown neighborhood called KATOI, and he's looking to hire between 15 and 20 people. Of course, the publicity for his new venture can't hurt, but he said it's really a separate campaign "to encourage people–particularly artists and young creatives–to move to the financially troubled city," where he owns property and feels a renaissance is occurring among millennials.
Check out the billboards here

April 3, 2015

New Yorker Spotlight: Meet the Human Behind The Dogist, Elias Weiss Friedman

Elias Weiss Friedman has devoted himself to photographing everyday New Yorkers. His subjects are diverse, come in all shapes and sizes, and they also happen to be dogs. In a city that is estimated to have 600,000 dogs, it's only fitting that Elias developed The Dogist, a photo-documentary series capturing New York's four-legged friends. His work highlights the canines that bring so much character to the city, yet rarely get the recognition they deserve. As a photographer, blogger, and "dog humanitarian," Elias is committed to introducing the Big Apple's dogs to the world. We recently caught up with Elias to find out how The Dogist came to be, and to find out what it takes for a pup to grab his attention.
Our interview with The Dogist here

Manhattan Millennials Who Can Afford to Buy Are Still Choosing to Rent

via 20071110_0213 via photopin (license)

April 3, 2015

Manhattan Millennials Who Can Afford to Buy Are Still Choosing to Rent

Young professionals living in Manhattan who have the means to make a down payment on a seven-figure property are still opting to rent. Why make payments towards someone else's mortgage when you can be paying your own? It's a lifestyle choice, the Observer notes in a new article exploring the trend. "With their increasingly mobile jobs and lifestyles, successful New Yorkers in their 20s and 30s are shying away from making a commitment to one city, let alone one apartment. And despite Manhattan’s astronomical rents, it’s costlier still to buy here, with the average Manhattan apartment now going for $1.73 million."
More on the trend ahead

April 2, 2015

Believe It or Not: The World’s Population Can Fit Inside New York City

Though New York City is expected to surpass its 2020 population projections this year, rest assured that there's plenty of space for all of these folks—and then some. An amusing and quite informative experiment conducted by Tim Urban of the blog Wait But Why takes a look at just how much space you would need to fit the world's population comfortably(ish). The investigation, which puts 7.3 billion folks cozily shoulder to shoulder, hinges on the assumption that you can fit ten humans into a square meter.
learn more here

City Living

Chinatown, Once Unchanged, Now Attracting Hipsters–and Real Estate Developers

Image via CityRealty

March 31, 2015

Chinatown, Once Unchanged, Now Attracting Hipsters–and Real Estate Developers

"Canal Street is a gantlet of billboards and signs; Courvoisier, Pearl Paint, Bally's Grand Hotel, Salem Cigarettes, Lincoln Savings Bank, Mc Donald's, and signs in Chinese impend on traffic, which is the covered with signs and graffiti itself." A New Yorker article published in 1990 paints a picture of Chinatown that isn’t all that different from the one we know today. Despite its prime location, few developers have eyed Chinatown as a destination for luxury living. As a largely self-sustaining community—many stores don’t even bother with English—it has preserved its cultural fabric even as the city has gone through transformation after transformation just streets away. But all of this is changing. A new crop of shops, galleries and condos is starting to find its way into the neighborhood's depths, the Wall Street Journal reports, and brokers are predicting rapid change for Chinatown over the next decade.
more on changes in chinatown

March 27, 2015

New Yorker Spotlight: Gil Shapiro of Urban Archaeology Re-Imagines Beautiful Old Things

By Michelle Cohen

Native New Yorker Gil Shapiro founded Urban Archaeology in the early 1970s, when the salvaging movement was just catching on. With a collector’s–and creator's–eye and an entrepreneurial spirit, he began re-imagining architectural remnants as treasured additions to the home environment. This month the company has been preparing for an auction taking place on March 27th and 28th, handled by Guernsey’s auction house, when nearly 1,000 of their long-treasured pieces of history will be sold to prepare for a move to a new location. First opened in Soho in 1978, the store's early customers–including Andy Warhol and other denizens of what was undisputedly the epicenter of the art world–adored the unique and time-treasured aspects of Shapiro's restored architectural salvage pieces, yet they would always find ways they wished they could customize their favorite items. Finding that he excelled at bringing a fresh perspective to pieces of historical and architectural importance, he started reproducing individual pieces as well as creating new lines of bath fixtures and lighting, many of which originated in places like the Plaza Hotel, New York’s Yale Club and the St. Regis Hotel.
Read our interview with Gil here

NYC Will Get Richer and Denser, New Report Reveals

Bethesda Fountain Bethesda Fountain – Central Park via photopin (license)

March 27, 2015

NYC Will Get Richer and Denser, New Report Reveals

Think New York City is crowded now? You ain't seen nothing yet. According to census data and a new report by the Brookings Institute on job proximity, the city is on track for a population boom of professionals raking in big bucks. The city has by far the highest job density in the country, even when the national trend is for both people and jobs to move to the suburbs. Similarly, NYC tops the list of increase in population of college grads between 2007 and 2012 by a landslide. And as The Atlantic observes, this combination is creating a feedback loop that will make our already rich and crowded city even richer and more crowded. "The densest cities tend to be the most educated cities, which are also the richest cities, and often the biggest cities. They’re gobbling up a disproportionate share of college grads. And, as a result, they are becoming richer, denser, and more educated."
More details ahead

Chatting with Strangers on Your Commute Will Make You Happier, Study Says

Photo via 2010-03-12 via photopin (license)

March 25, 2015

Chatting with Strangers on Your Commute Will Make You Happier, Study Says

Here's a way to bring some relief to those seemingly never-ending subway delays: strike up a conversation with the stranger next to you. Research conducted by behavioral scientists Nicholas Epley and Juliana Schroeder reveals that engaging in chitchat with your fellow straphangers can actually improve your well-being.
learn more about their study

March 25, 2015

What Would You Do for a 212 Area Code?

Last month we posed the question, "Is 212 Fifth Avenue the ultimate Manhattan address?" Developers of a new condo at the location are hoping that the prestige of Fifth Avenue coupled with the synonymy of 212 with Manhattan (it served as the borough's sole area code for 45 years) will make their new residence the New York-iest address in town. But the 212 fanfare goes far deeper than a real estate marketing tactic. Just as “Seinfeld"'s Elaine stole her dead neighbor’s 212 phone number after hers got changed to a 646 area code, real New Yorkers are going to great lengths to secure a phone number beginning with those three coveted digits. Today, the New York Times delves into the hype surrounding the 212 area code, looking at those who buy the phone numbers from "brokers" who sell them for upwards of $1,000, as well as the mathematics behind the area code system.
What's with all the 212 hype?

City Living

March 25, 2015

POLL: Has Brooklyn Been Dethroned as Hipster Central USA?

Our article last week on Hoboken being named the hipster capital of America certainly got people talking. Some felt that Hoboken is the frat capital of the country, while others were simply shocked that Brooklyn, the land of artisanal mayonnaise and lumbersexuality, didn’t even make the list of most hipster cities. The New Jersey city […]

City Living

Are You Considered ‘Middle Class’ in NYC?

Image via 6sqft flickr

March 24, 2015

Are You Considered ‘Middle Class’ in NYC?

Following up on our recent post taking a look at how much you need to earn to be considered "rich" where you live, here's a brand new study by Quoctrung Bui of NPR's Planet Money which investigates what's considered "middle class" in the United States. Although most Americans would humbly identify themselves as median earners, whether they're raking in $30K or $300K, there are actually benchmarks for this segment of the population. But as you may have guessed, they vary greatly depending on where you live.
Find out where you stack up here

City Living

Manhattan BP Gale Brewer Unveils Plan to Save Small Businesses in NYC

Papaya King, a dying small business breed, via Papaya King via photopin (license)

March 24, 2015

Manhattan BP Gale Brewer Unveils Plan to Save Small Businesses in NYC

Yesterday, standing inside the Upper West Side's Halal Guys restaurant, Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer unveiled her "Small Business Big Impact: Opportunity for Manhattan Storefronts" report (PDF), which outlines ideas to help small businesses survive and thrive in a city where even Starbucks can't afford the rents. A major part of the plan is a mandatory negotiation period between landlords and commercial tenants, where the landlord would have to notify the store owner 180 days in advance of the end of the lease whether a renewal will be offered. The borough president and Councilman Robert Cornegy, chair of the small business committee, are drafting a proposed bill that would enforce the plan. "Small storefront businesses and vendors create jobs and add value, vibrancy, and diversity to our neighborhoods—New York would not be New York without them," asserted Brewer.
More details on Brewer's plan

March 23, 2015

INTERVIEW: Melinda Hunt Memorializes the Unclaimed New Yorkers Buried on Hart Island

Since 1980, inmates at Rikers Island have buried 62,000 unclaimed and unidentified New Yorkers in mass graves on Hart Island, a small, mile-long piece of land to the east of the Bronx that is the largest tax-funded cemetery in the world, holding over one million bodies. Before its current use, the island served many uses, including a prison, psychiatric institution, tuberculosis sanatorium, and a boys' reformatory. The Department of Corrections gained control of the land in 1968, and it has been closed to the public ever since. That's all changing, though, thanks to artist Melinda Hunt, who created the Hart Island Project, an interactive online memorial that provides access to information about the burials on Hart Island and tools for storytelling so that no one is omitted from history. The site's Traveling Cloud Museum lets users look up information on their loved ones and share their personal memories. Last year, Melinda led the introduction of legislation that would give control of the cemetery to the Department of Parks and Recreation so that New Yorkers can freely visit the island and its graves. And coming up this Labor Day weekend, Emmylou Harris will sing at the gated entrance to the dock, calling attention to the Hart Island Project's efforts. We chatted with Melinda about her passion for Hart Island, how the Project has evolved, and what we can expect in the near future.
Read our interview with Melinda Hunt here

March 20, 2015

New Yorker Spotlight: The Couch Doctor Is In–How Sal Giangrande Deals with Furniture That Won’t Fit

Every New Yorker has been there: After searching for and securing the perfect apartment, moving day comes and you just can't get your favorite piece of furniture into the elevator or up the stairs. With movers on the clock, and stress setting in, you begin to consider ditching your couch altogether. But instead, you take a deep breath, grab your phone, and let Sal Giangrande come to the rescue. Like knights in shining armor on moving day, Sal and his team over at New York Couch Doctor are experts at disassembling and reassembling everything from couches to pool tables to box springs. They liken their precision to that of surgeons, cutting into and stitching back together dressers and entertainment centers seam unseen (for the most part). And, like surgeons, they're on call 24 hours a day. We recently chatted with Sal to learn more about his days being New York's go-to furniture doctor.
We chat with sal

New Report Shares What You Need to Earn to be Considered ‘Rich’ in Your City

Image: roboppy via photopin cc

March 19, 2015

New Report Shares What You Need to Earn to be Considered ‘Rich’ in Your City