Tag: Rockefeller Center

Posted on

Catching the Vintage Train

New York Transit Museum operates a special subway train made out of a ragtag selection of vintage trains.  Normally these trains are used as a stationary exhibit, sometimes as a vehicle for special events (like the Old City Hall station tour), but sometimes all straphangers are in for a treat: the train operates on normal subway lines.

Most people view subway trains as uniform utilitarian objects, stainless steel worms that swallow them in point A and if everything goes well spit them out in point B. But in reality the modern NYCTA system is made out of a hodgepodge of different train models, a legacy of three different subway systems. Many old train models have been retired, like the beloved “Redbird” trains. And by retired I mean dumped into the ocean to become artificial reefs in NJ. I remember riding redbirds, and sometimes used to encounter other old trains before they have been scrapped in favor of the more technologically advanced, but poorly designed R160-style trains. The museum train is a special case of this.

The rivets and a mishmash of large windows and steel panels give the old R1 cars look of living prehistoric creatures. Graffiti writers of the 70s hated these cars because they did not have a lot of flat surface to cover in paint and called them “ridgys”. Modern train cars mostly do away with the front windows, cutting off the whole front for a spacious machinist’s cab.

This unfortunate design decision leaves less space for passenger and does not allow kids of all ages to get “machinist’s view”.

 

These trains don’t sound like the new ones: they don’t make the “ding-dong” sound when the doors are closing, but produce a pleasant “ksssht-pfft” noise of a pneumatic actuator. Instead of whining a few melodic notes like the R160s, R1s roar like propeller planes.


One unique feature is the lack of large plastic American flag stickers that were added to all trains after 9-11.

Helvetica was not dominating the typography of the subways yet. In fact, it was not yet created.

The alternate reality feeling permeates the cars. Dangerous looking ceiling fans, exposed incandescent lightbulbs and vinyl seats were from an era less concerned with vandalism.

State of the art pre-war climate control: rider-accessible vents

and futuristic fans

 

The tiny little rattan seat behind the machinist’s cab and the completely different design of the hand strap.

One of the biggest difference with the modern trains is how the conductor works. He operates the train with the two hand grips while standing precariously between the cars.

 

Here’s a video that shows this a little better

One of the coolest parts is the fact that you can ride between the cars (something that is against the modern MTA rules. “<a href=”http://www.deadprogrammer.com/looking-at-the-things-flashing-by/”>Looking at the things flashing by</a>” normally gets you a ticket, even if it’s an amazing experience.

 

Here’s a video:

Gold and pinstripe “CITY OF NEW YORK” signs are gorgeous, but the ad reproductions are more entertaining than authentic.

A friend of mine who remembered these trains from his youth told me that the part that he hated the most about them were the rattan seats: they tended to fray and fragment into pin-sharp pieces of fiber. Rattan seats look beautiful and are extremely comfortable when new, but I indeed sat down on one seat that had a broken section that was uncomfortably sharp. On the other hand all of these trains feature “conversation-style seats” turned 90 degrees to each other instead of the horisontal rows of benches that are the standard today.

Some dubious advice, although I’ve seen this happen.

I’m pretty sure this patent ran out by now.

Currently this train operates every Saturday through January 19th. This page lists the schedule of departures. A round trip to Queens takes about an hour. The best way to catch the train is to arrive on 2nd Avenue stop of the F line in Manhattan. The train spends about 10-20 minutes standing in the station there, so it’s easier to catch. In Queens it does not stand on the platform, but the departure times are pretty accurate. If it’s more convenient, you can just spend a 15 mintues to half an hour waiting along the weekday M train stops, like 47-50th Street/Rockefeller Center.

Posted on

Cinematic New York

When you live and work in New York, you spend a huge amount of time on tv and movie sets. Most of the time the sets are abandoned by the shooting crews, but very frequently tv or movie magic is happening as you are walking by.

Why is New York so overrepresented on screen? Part of it is because it’s New York. But it’s also because the city government is also very friendly to the moving picture industry.

When I worked on a website for Kenneth Cole, I learned an interesting factoid: the real name of this fashion powerhouse is Kenneth Cole Productions. It turns out that in the early days they abused a perk that the city gives to movie people: ability to park their huge trailers in places where normally only city services vehicles can linger. Cole applied for a permit to shoot a movie called “The Birth of a Shoe Company”, parked a huge truck in front of a hotel where a major shoe show was taking place, and proceeded to sell enough shoes while cameras were rolling (sometimes even with film) to start a company.

While watching a movie or a show set in New York I get a lot of “oh, hey it’s” and a lot of “hmm, where’s that?” moments. Sometimes a movie or a show becomes more memorable just because its locations are so familiar to me.

Let me give you some examples about how cinematically impregnated my environs are. Take, for instance 30 Rock. I spent 7 years working in two buildings that are behind 30 Rock, and every little thing in, under and over Rockefeller plaza is seared in my brain. Also, I have the same last name of one of the actors (is Jane Krakowski a relative? Probably not).

The 47-50th Street/Rockefeller Center subway station that I got out at almost every day for those 7 years (unless I missed a few stops while reading or sleeping) is the one featured in a key scene in Darren Aranofsky’s “Pi”. The Brighton Beach bus stop in “Requiem for a Dream” – one of my first American jobs was right there, handing out fliers for a gypsy psychic. One of the buildings where I worked, 1211 Avenue of the Americas was very subtly featured as Sideshow Bob’s prisoner number in a Simpson’s episode.

Sterling Cooper corporate headquarters are famously located at a non-existing 405 Madison Avenue. On the other hand 415 Madison Avenue is a very real building where my wife used to work.

When I go to and from work now, I pass a grating which John McClane ripped off in one of the Die Hard movies to jump on the top of a moving train. The building where I work? Well, it doubles as the Massive Dynamic headquarters on “Fringe”. They do a lot of shooting at the floor where I work. You can see our big conference room called “Jail” in a number of commercials. You know, Doctor House, he’s supposed to stay in New Jersey, but one time he slept on “my” couch at the office after shooting a commercial there. The butterflies of doom from Fringe also live in “Jail”.

Ironically, the only famous person who went to my hight school is Larry David, the co-creator of a certain show about nothing set in New York, but shot in LA.

Posted on

Happy New Year!

Man, this was a tough year. I haven’t blogged much and you haven’t commented much, so I guess we are even.

A lot of things happened. The little tree that I grew out of a pine cone from Rockefeller Center tree that was featured in 2006 card is growing fast. So does Natalie E. I grew 30-40 pounds or so.  With a little help from the Joel I found a new job and left Rockefeller Center (you should really check out his job board). I am at World Trade Center 7 now. I am slowly but steadily switching to Linux. I am hoping that 2008 is going to be my annus mirabilis because this one was more anus than mirabilis.

Happy New Year!

You can see the old New Year’s cards are here.

Posted on

Subway Archeology

47-50th street station, Rockefeller Center, might be the portal to  Top of the Rock, but it is still one of the most dilapidated stations, even by the IND standard. And Independent Subway System stations are some of the most dilapidated stations ever  (thank you, Robert Moses).

Paint is peeling everywhere. On the railings it provides for an interesting history lesson. From what I can tell, the original color was a cheerful yellow, followed by white, followed by orange, followed by black, then white again, then a redder orange, then yellow again and finally black.  Some of the colors might be primers, of course.

Posted on

Rockefeller Center Wardrobe Malfunction

It’s now my 7th year working in the Rockefeller Center. I’ve been walking in it, around it and under it almost daily. Little by little the place opens its little secrets to me – a hidden restaurant here, an eccentric pigeon enthusiast or a subterranean piece of art there.

I used to walk around the place with my camera in hand, like a tourist. Now I am a bit more like the dozens of professional photographers that inhabit the place (Rock Center is home to many news agencies), as my camera is a little nicer. With the nicer gear I get to see smaller details.

John D. Rockefeller Sr., a very strict Baptist, did not approve of drinking and dancing. His son, John D. Jr, was a little less strict — there was dancing at his wedding, despite his father’s wishes (although still no booze). A lot of people think that John D. Sr was the one who built the Rockefeller Center, but you just need to look around the place to realize that Senior probably did not even set foot in it: the architectural art features dozens of naked or half-naked men and women.

For instance, Radio City Music hall features three beautiful metal rondels designed by Hildreth Meiere. These have more exposed nipples than a dosen Superbowls.

The one depicting “Drama” hides, what I guess is a little joke by Oscar Bach, the metalsmith who executed Meiere’s design.

The maiden on the right is sporting a piece of nipple jewelry in a form of an old fashioned slotted screw:

Posted on

Silence is Golden

Somehow, the less I write, the more readers I get. Or seem to get. At least, according to Feedburner.

To be honest with you, I lost some blogging motivation when I could not break the 800 reader barrier for such a long time. Also, not one reader left me a comment after my customary self-made New Year’s card. The one lonely comment is from someone to whom I bitterly complained about this terrible injustice and thus does not count.

Just in case you cared, the seeds that I harvested from the pine cone given to me by a kind Rockefeller Center security guard, spent some time in a fridge and were planted. Well, in fact, I misplaced the packet with most of them somewhere on my desk, but the few that were planted resulted in one baby Rockefeller Center tree.

Posted on

The Nutcracker Season

This holiday season finds me once again working in the Rockefeller Center. This time I am in the building with the funny neon sign.

Most of the lesser Rockefeller Center buildings put up gaudy X-mas decorations up front: a giant present box, a huge mound of ornaments, and a scary animatronic jack-in-the-box riding a train. My building has giant nutcracker statues.

While giant copies of their CO stand outside, in the lobby a trio of toy soldiers sing carols and gesticulate. They seem to be enjoying themselves, well, as much as three costumed men in makeup can enjoy singing carols to an endless procession of salarymen, suits, techies, administrative assistants and other denizens of corporate America.

I, for one, is very thankful for a pleasant and interesting new gig and many exciting opportunities, but my thoughts are with those in terrible jobs. Those of you who aren’t happy – there’s always the Internets with wonderful sites like the Joel on Software job board.

Still, those of you who think that you are unhappy, I’d like to leave you with a haiku that I made by lightly editing a very real lament of a Burger King worker that I found on Livejournal’s bkstories community. I count BK as one syllable, not two which is probably wrong.

Holiday season.
I work at BK near Walmart.
Shoot me in the face.

Posted on

Design Out of Reach

One of my favorite coffee shops, Joe The Art of Coffee, recently opened a new branch in an Alessi showroom at 130 Greene Street in Manhattan.

Alessi is one of those funny companies that sell expensive “design”. There are really three approaches to selling “design”. You can go the Ikea way: hire really good designers, mass-produce their designs, use cheap materials and sell them cheaply. On the other end of the spectrum is stuff like the concept pieces, like the magnetically floating bed that recently got all the gadget blogs very excited. The scale model will set you back over 100K euros, and the real one is so fricking impractical that it’s not even built. You can’t deny the coolness aspect though.

There’s the middle way that is tread by companies like Design Within Reach and Alessi. While a more proper description would be “Design Just Outside Most People’s Reach”, they do have a few items that are a relatively good value even for not particularly rich people like myself.

For instance, I really want an Alessi steam pitcher. But while a perfectly well made knockoff costs 35 bucks, a genuine item costs 114. Ouch. I have the knockoff, and it’s my favorite steam pitcher right now.

But when it comes to something that I use constantly, there’s really no alternative to getting the real thing. A Herman Miller Aeron chair is significantly better than most knockoffs that I’ve seen and usually sells only for 1/2 as much.

There’s another chair that I really want, the Eames “Time-Life Chair”. Manufactured and sold by Herman Miller, it was created for the lobby of the Time-Life building in Manhattan (where I used to frequently have lunch in the company cafeteria before they stopped letting in people from other Rockefeller Center buildings). The chair was made famous by Bobby Fisher who required it as one of his numerous conditions when he played in the world chess championship against Boris Spassky. These days it cost about $2,500 new (about $1000 for a vintage one on eBay). Back then it used to cost about 700 bucks, and made all the newspapers whine about Fisher’s expensive tastes. I really don’t see a reason why someone who earns his living while sitting down does not deserve an expensive chair. Dot com companies got a lot of flack for purchasing Aeron chairs – but those were probably the most prudent investments they’ve made. Putting computer programmers in cheap chairs will literally cripple them, while the chair’s resale value is still pretty good.

Eames Executive Chair made famous by Bobby Fisher / Time-Life Building

Another “high design” item that I really salivate over is the Bestlite lamp. Bestlite was made famous by Whinston Churchill who had one on his desk. While the price finally went down on the floor model from $748 to $349.95 at Levenger, it’s still out of reach for me.

Bestlite lamp

I see a lot of companies putting famous Barselona® chairs in their lobbies. These are pretty expensive at $3,499 a pop (a friend of mine slept on two of these during the big blackout of 03. Anyway, these chairs are classy, but are becoming a cliche. Wouldn’t a Frank Gheary living room set look much cooler? It’s also much cheaper – the sofa is “only” $1200.

But the item that really made me scratch my head is the Philippe Starck-designed fruit juicer sold by Alessi. It costs about 80 bucks. I really don’t know what to think here.

The juicer is definitely cool-looking and original (well, unless you count T4 Bacteriophage Virus, lunar lander and Spaceship Moya, etc) which resulted it being featured as a prop in several movies.

Interestingly enough, it usually ends up in the bedroom somehow. Here it is, masquarading as a lamp in the infamous puppet sex scene from Team America World Police:

Team America World Police Juicy Salif Lamp

I really don’t have 80 bucks to trow away on a Philippe Starck design, the question that bothers me is this: are all of those who say that the juicer is impractical right? From the looks of it, the juicer should work just fine and even be ergonomic. Also, is “Salif” even a word? And if so, what does it mean?

Posted on

Architectural Pain in the Ass

I have to apologize for this cringe inducing intro wherein I attempt to translate an old kindergarten joke from Russian into English. Sorry, but I really can’t find a better way to do this.

So, in an enchanted forest a wolf catches a rabbit. A talking rabbit, apparently, as the rabbit says — look, how about this — I’ll give you two puzzles to solve, and if you do, I’ll take you to the place where my friends and family hang out. If you can’t solve them — you let me go. The wolf agrees. The first puzzle is : “Two rings, two ends and a bolt in the middle.” The wolf does not know. “It’s scissors” – says the rabbit. OK, then, the second one. “No doors, no windows, house full of guests.” “No idea” – says the wolf. “It’s a cucumber” says the rabbit, and the wolf lets him go. Next day a bear catches the wolf, and the wolf makes a similar deal with the bear. OK, what is it – “no doors, no windows, ass full of cucumbers?”

Every time I pass 2 Columbus Circle that’s what I am thinking about. An ass full of cucumbers. (I shudder to think about where this page is going to be located in Google search results).

Edward Durrell Stone created this perforated windowless museum that looks like a Soviet-era public bathroom on crack. In fact, I am pretty sure that’s what Mr. Stone was smoking. Well, actually according to Great Fortune by Daniel Okrent he was a hardcore drinker during his earlier years and later quit. So I guess he either drank too much or not enough.

Unsatisfied with uglification through regular soulless International Style this architect came up with a whole new kind of ugly. He took the starkness of modernism and combined it with unnecessary and non-functional ornamentation. For his own house he took a normal 19th century brownstone and paced a perforated grille over it. Funnily enough, even though he raped the creation of a Victorian architect, his own widow could not undo the concrete monstrosity that he wrought — together with other brownstones his house is now protected as a landmark.

2 Columbus Circle is thankfully not considered a landmark. There are some people out there though that think that it should be. Even they agree that Stone’s building is ugly and useless. But they like the fact that it’s a challenge, a slap in the face of architects who built beautiful and/or useful buildings in Manhattan.

I remember seeing Edward Durrell Stone House while passing it by in a cab and immediately turning my head around and going “WTF!??”. None of the hundreds of good looking brownstones in New York ever evoked this reaction from me. They mostly make me count along these lines as I walk by: “2 million, 4 million, 6 million, 8 million, 9.5 million, 12 million and a carriage house – so let’s say 12.5 million worth of brownstones on this street in Brooklyn”.

Stone reminds me of another architect who also created some terribly ugly and uninspired buildings, in one of which I spent many years. Wallace Harrison spent most of his entire life building terrible International Style buildings. Actually, he started his career together with Stone, working as one of the architects working on the Rockefeller Center design. Rockefeller Center was severely criticized while it was being constructed, but later on became an almost immediate favorite of both critics and laypeople, becoming one of the most celebrated architectural landmarks of New York. His later creations were mostly in International Style. He designed the 6th avenue Rockefeller Center Extension which mixed Deco and International style, and then a horrible row of International style nightmares.

I absolutely love the quote from Grea Fortune: “”The new buildings, with their broad plazas, generous promenades. and underground concourse system… are an exciting integral extension of Rockefeller Center in design, concept and philosophy.” But this was like saying that nuclear war is an integral extension of Quakerism …”

Interestingly enough, Harrison, after being rejected by critics and his patron, Nelson Rockefeller, became very bitter and disillusioned with International Style as evidenced by this rather homophobic quote (also from Grea Fortune):

“His late life, he claimed was “ruined … by the German Bauhaus and its groups of friends who have had a disastrous effect on American architecture.” Elsewhere he characterized the proponents of the International Style as “homos who found it a good public relations [sic] to hang their hats on” “.

Well, I think that homosexuals (yeah, blame it all on them, right) have nothing to do with Harrison’s and Stone’s solidified nightmares. It’s just that they were horrible architects.